Break down your templates with Linked Templates (Part 2)

30th of April, 2016 / / 2 Comments

Continued from part 1

The 2nd part of the series will describe how we construct Azure Resource Manager linked templates.

Quick Recap

In the first part, we set up the first template which deploys the storage, virtual network, and subnets. This will be our “master” template where we will link all our related templates.

 

Linked templates.png

  • 1st template: master template – we will modify this template slightly to capture parameters and the linked templates
  • 2nd template: two web servers (IIS) – this is a new template
  • 3rd template: DB server (MySQL) – a new template

We will use the Azure quickstart templates on GitHub as the basis for the second and third templates.… [Keep reading] “Break down your templates with Linked Templates (Part 2)”

WebHook your WebJob – With Visual Studio Team Services integration example

26th of April, 2016 / / No Comments

WebHooks, also known as ‘HTTP(S) call backs’ are becoming very popular for reporting asynchronous events to trigger business workflows. The latest release of Microsoft Azure WebJobs can now be triggered using WebHooks. In this post I will cover the configuration of a WebJob to use a WebHook as a trigger using a sample scenario of integrating a WebJob with Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) to explain the workflow.

Support for WebHooks is packaged as an extension to WebJobs and is currently in a pre-release state.… [Keep reading] “WebHook your WebJob – With Visual Studio Team Services integration example”

Moving SharePoint Online workflow task metadata into the data warehouse using Nintex Flows and custom Web API

23rd of April, 2016 / / No Comments

This post suggests the idea of automatic copying of SharePoint Online(SPO) workflow tasks’ metadata into the external data warehouse.  In this scenario, workflow tasks are becoming a subject of another workflow that performs automatic copying of task’s data into the external database using a custom Web API endpoint as the interface to that database. Commonly, the requirement to move workflow tasks data elsewhere arises from limitations of SPO. In particular, SPO throttles requests for access to workflow data making it virtually impossible to create a meaningful workflow reporting system with large amounts of workflow tasks.… [Keep reading] “Moving SharePoint Online workflow task metadata into the data warehouse using Nintex Flows and custom Web API”

Entity Framework 7 Data Migration through KUDU

16th of April, 2016 / / 1 Comment

From DevOps perspective, everything needs to be automated in regards to application setup and deployment. There’s no exception for database migration. If database schema change occurs, it should be automatically applied before/after the application deployment. Unlike Entity Framework 6.x using PowerShell cmdlets for database migration, Entity Framework 7 (EF7) uses DNX for it.

Applying Database Migration with EF7

In EF7, updating database change can be done by running the following command:

… [Keep reading] “Entity Framework 7 Data Migration through KUDU”

Break down your templates with Linked Templates (Part 1)

16th of April, 2016 / / 3 Comments

Templated deployment is one of the key value propositions of moving from the Azure classic to Resource Manager (ARM) deployment model.  This is probably one key feature that made a big stride towards Infrastructure as a Code (IAC).  Personally, I have been looking forward to this feature since it’s a prominent feature on the other competing platform.

Now that this feature is live for a while, one aspect which I found interesting is the ability to link templates in Azure Resource Manager. … [Keep reading] “Break down your templates with Linked Templates (Part 1)”

Creating Accounts on Azure SQL Database through PowerShell Automation

12th of April, 2016 / / 6 Comments

In the previous post, Azure SQL Pro Tip – Creating Login Account and User, we have briefly walked through how to create login accounts on Azure SQL Database through SSMS. Using SSMS is of course the very convenient way. However, as a DevOps engineer, I want to automate this process through PowerShell. In this post, we’re going to walk through how to achieve this goal.

Step #1: Create Azure SQL Database

First of all, we need an Azure SQL Database.… [Keep reading] “Creating Accounts on Azure SQL Database through PowerShell Automation”

Azure SQL Pro Tip – Creating Login Account and User

8th of April, 2016 / / 3 Comments

With Azure Resource Manager (ARM), while creating an Azure SQL Database instance, we can only set up an admin account. As we all know, using this admin account is not safe in most cases. Therefore, we need to create another accounts with fewer privileges.

However, unlike MS SQL Server, Azure SQL Database has some restrictions. Those restrictions also apply to create login accounts and users. In this post, we are going to create login accounts with limited permissions on Azure SQL Database.… [Keep reading] “Azure SQL Pro Tip – Creating Login Account and User”

When to use an Azure App Service Environment?

5th of April, 2016 / / 44 Comments

Introduction

An Azure App Service Environment (ASE) is a premium Azure App Service hosting environment which is dedicated, fully isolated, and highly scalable. It clearly brings advanced features for hosting Azure App Services which might be required in different enterprise scenarios. But being this a premium service, it comes with a premium price tag. Due to its cost, a proper business case and justification are to be prepared before architecting a solution based on this interesting PaaS offering on Azure.… [Keep reading] “When to use an Azure App Service Environment?”

Add workdays and public holidays to your Azure Automation runbooks

16th of March, 2016 / / 1 Comment

Azure Automation runbooks are a great way to automate various aspects of your Azure environment. Probably the task it is used for the most (at least at the moment) is starting and stopping a virtual machine or a bunch of vms on a schedule. The runbook scripts take care of the “powering on” or “shutting down”. Adding a schedule to these scripts is a great way to save cost by only running virtual machines when they are required.… [Keep reading] “Add workdays and public holidays to your Azure Automation runbooks”

Implement a SharePoint Timer job using Azure WebJob

15th of March, 2016 / / 1 Comment

The SharePoint Timer service runs in background to do long running tasks. The Timer service does some important SharePoint clean up tasks in the background but can also be used to provide useful functional tasks. For instance, there may be  a situation when you want to send newsletters to your users on regular basis or want to keep your customer up to date with  some regular timed information.

I will be using SharePoint Timer Service to send an email to newly registered customers/users for this demo.… [Keep reading] “Implement a SharePoint Timer job using Azure WebJob”