Message retry patterns in Azure Functions

22nd of May, 2017 / / 3 Comments

Azure Functions provide ServiceBus based trigger bindings that allow us to process messages dropped onto a SB queue or delivered to a SB subscription. In this post we’ll walk through creating an Azure Function using a ServiceBus trigger that implements a configurable message retry pattern.
Note: This post is not an introduction to Azure Functions nor an introduction to ServiceBus. For those not familiar will these Azure services take a look at the Azure Documentation Centre.… [Keep reading] “Message retry patterns in Azure Functions”

Calling WCF client proxies in Azure Functions

17th of April, 2017 / / 2 Comments

Azure Functions allow developers to write discrete units of work and run these without having to deal with hosting or application infrastructure concerns. Azure Functions are Microsoft’s answer to server-less computing on the Azure Platform and together with Azure ServiceBus, Azure Logic Apps, Azure API Management (to name just a few) has become an essential part of the Azure iPaaS offering.

The problem

Integration solutions often require connecting legacy systems using deprecating protocols such as SOAP and WS-*.… [Keep reading] “Calling WCF client proxies in Azure Functions”

Automate the archiving of your CloudHub application logs

24th of November, 2016 / / No Comments

CloudHub is MuleSoft’s integration platform as a service (iPaaS) that enables the deployment and management of integration solutions in the cloud. Runtime Manager, CloudHub’s management tool,  provides an integrated set of logging tools that allow support and operations staff to monitor and troubleshoot application logs of deployed applications.
Currently, application log entries are kept for 30 days or until they reach a max size of 100 MB. Often we are required to keep these logs for greater periods of time for auditing or archiving purposes.… [Keep reading] “Automate the archiving of your CloudHub application logs”

DataWeave: Tips and tricks from the field

12th of October, 2016 / / 1 Comment

DataWeave (DW) has been part of the MuleSoft Anypoint Platform since v3.7.0 and has been a welcome enhancement providing an order of magnitude improvement in performance as well as increased mapping capability that enables more efficient flow design.
However, like most new features of this scope and size (i.e. brand new transformation engine written from the ground up), early documentation was minimal and often we were left to ourselves. At times even the most simple mapping scenarios could take an hour or so to solve what could have taken 5 mins in data-mapper.… [Keep reading] “DataWeave: Tips and tricks from the field”

Connecting Salesforce and SharePoint Online with Azure App Services

26th of April, 2015 / / 1 Comment

Back in November I wrote a post that demonstrated how we can integrate Salesforce and SharePoint Online using the MuleSoft platform and the MuleSoft .NET Connector. In this post I hope to achieve the same thing using the recently released into preview Azure App Services offering.

Azure App Services

Azure App Services rebrands a number of familiar service types (Azure Websites, Mobile Services, and BizTalk Services) as well as adding a few new ones to the platform.… [Keep reading] “Connecting Salesforce and SharePoint Online with Azure App Services”

Hands Free VM Management with Azure Automation and Resource Manager – Part 2

17th of March, 2015 / / 3 Comments

In this two part series, I am looking at how we can leverage Azure Automation and Azure Resource Manager to schedule the shutting down of tagged Virtual Machines in Microsoft Azure.

  • In Part 1 we walked through tagging resources using the Azure Resource Manager PowerShell module
  • In Part 2 we will setup Azure Automation to schedule a runbook to execute nightly and shutdown tagged resources.

Azure Automation Runbook

At the time of writing, the tooling support around Azure Automation can be politely described as a hybrid one.… [Keep reading] “Hands Free VM Management with Azure Automation and Resource Manager – Part 2”

Hands Free VM Management with Azure Automation and Resource Manager – Part 1

9th of March, 2015 / / 4 Comments

Over the past six months, Microsoft have launched a number of features in Azure to enable you to better manage your resources hosted there.

In this two part series, I will show how we can leverage two of these new features – Azure Automation and Azure Resource Manager – to schedule the shutting down of tagged Virtual Machines in Microsoft Azure.

  • In Part 1 we will walk through tagging resources using the Azure Resource Manager features and
  • In Part 2 we will setup Azure Automation to schedule a runbook to execute nightly and shutdown tagged VM resources.
… [Keep reading] “Hands Free VM Management with Azure Automation and Resource Manager – Part 1”

Mule ESB DEV/TEST environments in Microsoft Azure

16th of February, 2015 / / No Comments

Agility in delivery of IT services is what cloud computing is all about. Week in, week out, projects on-board and wind-up, developers come and go. This places enormous stress on IT teams with limited resourcing and infrastructure capacity to provision developer and test environments. Leveraging public cloud for integration DEV/TEST environments is not without its challenges though. How do we develop our interfaces in the cloud yet retain connectivity to our on-premises line-of-business systems?

In this post I will demonstrate how we can use Microsoft Azure to run Mule ESB DEV/TEST environments using point-to-site VPNs for connectivity between on-premises DEV resources and our servers in the cloud.… [Keep reading] “Mule ESB DEV/TEST environments in Microsoft Azure”

Migrating Azure Virtual Machines to another Region

16th of November, 2014 / / 11 Comments

I have a number of DEV/TEST Virtual Machines (VMs) deployed to Azure Regions in Southeast Asia (Singapore) and West US as these were the closet to those of us living in Australia. Now that the new Azure Regions in Australia have been launched, it’s time to start migrating those VMs closer to home. Manually moving VMs between Regions is pretty straight forward and a number of articles already exist outlining the manual steps.

To migrate an Azure VM to another Region

  1. Shutdown the VM in the source Region
  2. Copy the underlying VHDs to storage accounts in the new Region
  3. Create OS and Data disks in the new Region
  4. Re-create the VM in the new Region.
… [Keep reading] “Migrating Azure Virtual Machines to another Region”

Connecting Salesforce and SharePoint Online with MuleSoft – Nothing but NET

5th of November, 2014 / / No Comments

Often enterprises will choose their integration platform based on the development platform required to build integration solutions. That is, java shops typically choose Oracle ESB, JBoss, IBM WebSphere or MuleSoft to name but a few. Microsoft shops have less choice and typically choose to build custom .NET solutions or use Microsoft BizTalk Server. Choosing an integration platform based on the development platform should not be a driving factor and may limit your options.

Your integration platform should be focused on interoperability.… [Keep reading] “Connecting Salesforce and SharePoint Online with MuleSoft – Nothing but NET”