Notes for Logic Apps around Webhook Actions

31st of May, 2017 / / 2 Comments

Azure Logic Apps (Logic Apps) is one of serverless services that Azure is offering. Of course the other one in Azure is Azure Functions (Functions). Logic Apps consists of many connectors and triggers to interconnect services outside Azure. A webhook connector is one of them which has unique characteristics to the others. In this post, we are briefly looking at some tips we should know when we use webhook actions in a Logic Apps workflow.… [Keep reading] “Notes for Logic Apps around Webhook Actions”

How to create and auto update route tables in Azure for your local Azure datacentre with Azure Automation, bypassing firewall appliances

24th of May, 2017 / / 2 Comments

When deploying an “edge” or “perimeter” network in Azure, by way of a peered edge VNET or an edge subnet, you’ll likely want to deploy virtual firewall appliances of some kind to manage and control that ingress and egress traffic. This comes at a cost though. That cost being that Azure services are generally accessed via public IP addresses or hosts, even within Azure. The most common of those and one that has come up recently is Azure Blob storage.… [Keep reading] “How to create and auto update route tables in Azure for your local Azure datacentre with Azure Automation, bypassing firewall appliances”

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”

API Mocking for Developers

18th of May, 2017 / / 2 Comments

API is the most common practice to exchange messages in a microservices architecture world. There are actually two different approaches for API development. One is called Model First and the other is called Design First. Usually the latter, AKA Spec-Driven Development (SDD), is preferred over the former.
When is the Model First approach useful? If you are running legacy API applications, this would be a good example of using this approach. If those systems are well documented, API documents can be easily extracted by tools like Swagger which is now renamed to Open API.… [Keep reading] “API Mocking for Developers”

Know Your Cloud Resource Costs on Azure

5th of May, 2017 / / No Comments

An organisation used to invest their IT infrastructure mostly for computers, network or data centre. Over time, they spent their budget for hosting spaces. Nowadays, in cloud environments, they mostly spend their funds to purchase computing power. Here’s a simple diagram about the cloud computing evolution. From left to right, expenditure shifts from infrastructure to computing power.

In the cloud environment, when we need resources, we just create and use them, and when we don’t need them any longer, we just delete them.… [Keep reading] “Know Your Cloud Resource Costs on Azure”

Automating Source IP Address updates on an Azure Network Security Group RDP Access Rule

25th of April, 2017 / / No Comments

Recently I’ve migrated a bunch of Virtual Box Virtual Machines to Azure as detailed here. These VM’s are in Resource Groups with a Network Security Group associated that restricts access to them for RDP based on a source TCPIP address. All good practice. However from a usability perspective, when I want to use these VM’s, I’m not always in the same location, and rarely on a connection with a static IP address.
This post details a simple little script that;

  • Has a couple of variables associated with a Resource Group, Network Security Group, Virtual Machine Name and an RDP Configuration File associated with the VM
  • Gets the public IP Address of the machine I’m running the script from
  • Prompts for Authentication to Azure, and retrieves the NSG associated with the Resource Group
  • Compares the Source IP Address in the ‘RDP’ Inbound Rule to my current IP Address.
… [Keep reading] “Automating Source IP Address updates on an Azure Network Security Group RDP Access Rule”

Getting Azure 99.95% SLA for Cisco FTD virtual appliances in Azure via availability sets and ARM templates

20th of April, 2017 / / No Comments

First published on Lucian’s blog at Lucian.Blog. Follow Lucian on Twitter: @LucianFrango or connect via LinkedIn: Lucian Franghiu.

In the real world there are numerous lessons learned, experiences, opinions and vendors recommendations that dictate and what constitutes “best practice” when it comes to internet edge security. It’s a can of worms that I don’t want to open as I am not claiming to be an expert in that regard. I can say that I do have enough experience to know that not having any security is a really bad idea and having bank level security for regular enterprise customers can be excessive.… [Keep reading] “Getting Azure 99.95% SLA for Cisco FTD virtual appliances in Azure via availability sets and ARM templates”

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”

Adapting to the changes in the AzureAD Preview PowerShell Module ADAL Helper Library

13th of April, 2017 / / No Comments

I’m a big proponent of using PowerShell for integration and automation of Azure Active Directory Services using the Azure AD GraphAPI. You may have seen many of my posts leverage the evolving Azure AD Preview PowerShell Module helper libraries. Lines in my scripts that use this look like the one below. In this case using preview version 2.0.0.52.

# the default path to where the ADAL GraphAPI PS Module puts the Libs
Add-Type -Path 'C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\AzureADPreview\2.0.0.52\Microsoft.IdentityModel.Clients.ActiveDirectory.dll'
… [Keep reading] “Adapting to the changes in the AzureAD Preview PowerShell Module ADAL Helper Library”

Azure AD Connect – Upgrade Errors

16th of March, 2017 / / No Comments

 
 
Azure AD Connect is the latest release to date for Azure AD sync or previously known as Dirsync service. It comes with some new features which make it even more efficient and useful in Hybrid environment. Besides many new features the primary purpose of this application remains the same i.e. to sync identities from your local (On-Prem) AD to Azure AD.
Of the late I upgraded an AD sync service to AD connect and during the install process I ran into a few issues which I felt are not widely discussed or posted on the web but yet are real world scenarios which people can face during AD connect Install and configuration.… [Keep reading] “Azure AD Connect – Upgrade Errors”