Is Azure Functions over Web API Beneficial?

1st of January, 2017 / / 22 Comments

Whenever I meet clients and give a talk about Azure Functions, they are immediately interested in replacing their existing Web API features with Azure Functions. In this post, I’d like to discuss:

  • Can Azure Functions replace Web API?
  • Is it worth doing?

It would be a good idea to have a read through this article, Serverless Architectures, before starting.

HTTP Trigger Function == Web API Action

One of characteristics of Serverless Architecture is “event-driven”.… [Keep reading] “Is Azure Functions over Web API Beneficial?”

Azure AD Connect pass-through authentication. Yes, no more AD FS required.

8th of December, 2016 / / 18 Comments

Originally posted on Lucian.Blog. Follow Lucian on Twitter: @LucianFrango.

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Yesterday I received a notification email from Alex Simons (Director of PM, Microsoft Identity Division) which started like this:

Todays news might well be our biggest news of the year. Azure AD Pass-Through Authentication and Seamless Single Sign-on are now both in public preview!

So I thought I’d put together a streamlined overview of what this means for authentication with regards to the Microsoft Cloud and my thoughts on if I’d use it.… [Keep reading] “Azure AD Connect pass-through authentication. Yes, no more AD FS required.”

Debugging Azure Functions in Our Local Box

2nd of December, 2016 / / No Comments

Because of the nature of Azure Functions – Serverless Architecture, it’s a bit tricky to run it on my local machine for debugging purpose.
There is an approach related to the issue in this post, Testing Azure Functions in Emulated Environment with ScriptCs. According to the article, we can use ScriptCs for local unit testing. However, the question on debugging still remains because testing and debugging is a different story. Fortunately, Microsoft has recently released Visual Studio Tools for Azure Functions.… [Keep reading] “Debugging Azure Functions in Our Local Box”

Azure AD Connect – Using AuthoritativeNull in a Sync Rule

1st of December, 2016 / / No Comments

There is a feature in Azure AD Connect that became available in the November 2015 build 1.0.9125.0 (listed here), which has not had much fanfare but can certainly come in handy in tricky situations. I happened to be working on a project that required the DNS domain linked to an old Office 365 tenant to be removed so that it could be used in a new tenant. Although the old tenant was no long used for Exchange Online services, it held onto the domain in question, and Azure AD Connect was being used to synchronise objects between the on-premise Active Directory and Azure Active Directory.… [Keep reading] “Azure AD Connect – Using AuthoritativeNull in a Sync Rule”

Configuring AWS Web Application Firewall

30th of November, 2016 / / No Comments

In a previous blog, we discussed Site Delivery with AWS CloudFront CDN, one aspect in that blog was not covered and that was WAF (Web Application Firewall).
What is Web Application Firewall?

AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps protect your web applications from common web exploits that could affect application availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources. AWS WAF gives you control over which traffic to allow or block to your web applications by defining customizable web security rules.

… [Keep reading] “Configuring AWS Web Application Firewall”

How to use a Powershell Azure Function to Tweet IoT environment data

29th of November, 2016 / / No Comments

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/76015/BlogImages/FunctionIOTWeather/Azure%20Function%20Twitter.png

Overview

This blog post details how to use a Powershell Azure Function App to get information from a RestAPI and send a social media update.
The data can come from anywhere, and in the case of this example I’m getting the data from WioLink IoT Sensors. This builds upon my previous post here that details using Powershell to get environmental information and put it in Power BI.  Essentially the difference in this post is outputting the manipulated data to social media (Twitter) whilst still using a TimerTrigger Powershell Azure Function App to perform the work and leverage the “serverless” Azure Functions model.… [Keep reading] “How to use a Powershell Azure Function to Tweet IoT environment data”

How to use a Powershell Azure Function App to get RestAPI IoT data into Power BI for Visualization

29th of November, 2016 / / No Comments

Overview

This blog post details using a Powershell Azure Function App to get IoT data from a RestAPI and update a table in Power BI with that data for visualization.
The data can come from anywhere, however in the case of this post I’m getting the data from WioLink IoT Sensors. This builds upon my previous post here that details using Powershell to get environmental information and put it in Power BI.  Essentially the major change is to use a TimerTrigger Azure Function to perform the work and leverage the “serverless” Azure Functions model.… [Keep reading] “How to use a Powershell Azure Function App to get RestAPI IoT data into Power BI for Visualization”

Exchange Deployment in the Cloud

28th of November, 2016 / / No Comments

A little Introduction
Some organisations, would still prefer hosting their own Exchange server(s), rather than migrating to Office 365. And since the Cloud is the way to go for many organisations, deploying an Exchange server in the Cloud, be it Azure or AWS, could be challenging on so many levels. This includes latency, failovers, data disk corruption, replication and so forth.
If you’re unsure on how to start, unfortunately Azure does not provide a free test drive for Exchange server (as of this writing).… [Keep reading] “Exchange Deployment in the Cloud”

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”