Passing Parameters to Linked ARM Templates

Recently, my workmate Vic wrote some great posts regarding to Azure Linked Templates. This is, a supplementary post to his ones, to show how to share parameters across the linked templates.

Scripts and templates used in this post can be found at: https://github.com/devkimchi/Linked-ARM-Templates-Sample

parametersLink and parameters Properties

We have a master template, master-deployment.json, and it looks like:

Each nested template has a parameter called environment that has the same value as the one in the master template.… [Keep reading] “Passing Parameters to Linked ARM Templates”

Performance Tuning Ubuntu Server For Use in Azure cloud

The following describes how to performance tune Ubuntu Server virtual machines for use in Azure. Although this article focuses on Ubuntu Server because it’s better established in Azure at this time. It’s worth mentioning that Debian offers better performance and stability overall, albeit at the cost of some of the more recent functionality support available in Ubuntu. Regardless many of the optimizations discussed below apply equally to both although commands and settings may vary occasionally.

Best practice recommendations from Microsoft.… [Keep reading] “Performance Tuning Ubuntu Server For Use in Azure cloud”

A Twitter Management Agent for Microsoft Identity Manager

In the last couple of weeks I’ve been evaluating a number of different approaches/concepts for some upcoming MIM development projects. Some of these I’ve blogged about already.

Having an Identity Manager Metaverse with identity data is a key dependency to being able to validate ideas and concepts. So what’s a good source of some interesting and varied identity data with string, integer, reference, and boolean attributes? Twitter? Yeah why not. There’s an API. Should be pretty quick to get some sample data right?… [Keep reading] “A Twitter Management Agent for Microsoft Identity Manager”

Azure Deployment Models And How To Migrate From ASM to ARM

This is a post about the two deployment models currently available in Azure, Service Management (ASM) and Resource Manager (ARM). And how to migrate from one to the other if necessary.

About the Azure Service Management deployment model

The ASM model, also known as version 1 and Classic mode, started out as a web interface and a backend API for the PaaS services Azure opened with at launch.

Features

  1. ASM deployments are based on an XML schema.
[Keep reading] “Azure Deployment Models And How To Migrate From ASM to ARM”

Adding/Removing User Office365 Licences using PowerShell and the Azure AD Graph RestAPI

In a recent blog post here I posted about the Azure AD v2.0 Preview Powershell cmdlets that are currently in preview. These update the functionality the current MSOL cmdlets provide whilst also supporting features they don’t (such as managing users with MFA).

The Azure AD v2.0 cmdlets interface with the Azure AD Graph API and this week I tried using the Set-AzureADUserLicense cmdlet to add/remove licenses from users in a test tenant. With no sample documentation for syntax I didn’t kick any goals so I figured I’d just go straight to using the Azure AD Graph API to get the job done direct from Powershell instead.… [Keep reading] “Adding/Removing User Office365 Licences using PowerShell and the Azure AD Graph RestAPI”

Continuous Deployment on Visual Studio Team Services for .NET Core Applications

This post is going to talk about continuous deployment on Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) for .NET Core applications. With VSTS, we can manage projects, codes, builds, tests, and releases. However, it doesn’t fully support .NET Core applications at the time of this writing. More specifically, all necessary environment has been ready but the official build steps by Microsoft are not ready. Therefore, we’re writing our own PowerShell scripts for both continuous integration (CI) and continuous deployment (CD), and integrate them with VSTS build/release pipelines.… [Keep reading] “Continuous Deployment on Visual Studio Team Services for .NET Core Applications”

Simple reporting from the FIM/MIM Metaverse to PowerBI using the Lithnet FIM/MIM Sync Service PowerShell Module

I have a customer that is looking to report on FIM/MIM identity information. The reports they are looking for aren’t overly complex and don’t necessarily justify the need the full FIM/MIM reporting infrastructure. So I spent a few hours over a couple of days looking at alternatives. In this blog post I give an overview of using the awesome Lithnet FIM/MIM Sync Service PowerShell Module recently released from Ryan Newington to do basic reporting on the Microsoft (Forefront) Identity Manager Metaverse into PowerBI.… [Keep reading] “Simple reporting from the FIM/MIM Metaverse to PowerBI using the Lithnet FIM/MIM Sync Service PowerShell Module”

Goodbye Set-MsolUser, Hello Set-AzureADUser & Azure Graph API

Update: April 13 2017. 
See this post for adapting to changes in the AzureAD 
PowerShell Module Helper Libraries

Recently Microsoft released the preview of the v2.0 Azure AD PowerShell cmdlets. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/azure-ad-new-powershell-cmdlets-preview/

I’ve got a project coming up where I’m looking to change my approach for managing users in Azure using Microsoft Identity Manager. Good timing to do a quick proof of concept to manage users with the new cmdlets and directly using the Graph API in preparation to move away from the msol cmdlets.… [Keep reading] “Goodbye Set-MsolUser, Hello Set-AzureADUser & Azure Graph API”

Effective Error Handling in PowerShell Scripting

There are two typical cases we meet almost everyday while writing PowerShell scripts. Seeing red-coloured error messages is the one and number of result messages displayed on the screen is the other. Have you ever thought you wanted to see nothing or, at least, minimise those messages? In this post, we are going to run a few tricks not to see those error (or unwanted) messages for your happy PowerShell scripting.

Hiding Execution Messages

By design, PowerShell shows result messages after running cmdlets.… [Keep reading] “Effective Error Handling in PowerShell Scripting”