Kerberos Web Application Configuration and Federation.

4th of June, 2015 / / 2 Comments

I’ve spent a lot of time at a client site recently working on a large complex application migration project. In my scenario, the client is migrating applications from another domain, to their own. There are no domain trusts in place, so you could consider it as an acquisition/merger type scenario.

One of the common challenges often encountered in this type of work is troubleshooting Kerberos authentication process for web apps. Once the concepts of Kerberos authentication are understood, the process is relatively straight forward.… [Keep reading] “Kerberos Web Application Configuration and Federation.”

Xamarin Plugins

12th of May, 2015 / / No Comments

Cross-platform NuGet Packages

Xamarin Plugins are a special kind of NuGet package that let you easily add cross-platform functionality to your apps. Using NuGet to distribute Plugins means that anyone can create them, and of course consume them. The platforms supported by Plugins include Android, iOS, iOS Unified (64bit), Windows Phone 8, Windows Phone 8.1 RT and Windows Store.

Plugins abstract common device functionality or expose cross-platform APIs via a single interface

Plugins are small, have few or no dependencies, and provide a simple mechanism for accessing a single device function or feature.… [Keep reading] “Xamarin Plugins”

Let’s Hack It: Securing data on the mobile, the what, why, and how

6th of May, 2015 / / No Comments

Here is the presentation of tonight’s talk. It was great to see so many passionate developers and business people at Melbourne Mobile. I have embedded the slides below and I hope you find it useful.

Talk Summary

This presentation is basically a summary of what I have learned and the experience I have had going through my recent project. In trying to secure the users data on the mobile device, I have come to learn quite few common flaws in the security implementation, I have learned more reasons why you need to protect the data on your mobile app, and have come to know and use few useful open source projects.… [Keep reading] “Let’s Hack It: Securing data on the mobile, the what, why, and how”

Announcing KeyChain.NET: a unified API for using KeyChain on many platforms

6th of May, 2015 / / No Comments

Storing and accessing private keys and passwords can be a tricky task. How far do you need to go to protect your (and the user’s) data? This is where KeyChain on iOS comes in handy. It allows you to store keys in a (arguably) secure database. This has seen great improvements since iOS 8 and iOS devices (since iPhone 5S) equipped with a special A7 chip designed particularly for holding your keys. More on iOS KeyChain can be found on Apple’s website here.… [Keep reading] “Announcing KeyChain.NET: a unified API for using KeyChain on many platforms”

Reachability.Net: A unified API for reachability (network connectivity) on Xamarin Android and iOS

4th of May, 2015 / / No Comments

Do you need to check for an active internet connection in your mobile app? Don’t we all do it often and on many platforms (and for almost all apps)? I found myself implementing it on iOS and Android and then pulling my implementation to almost all the mobile apps that I write. This is not efficient, and can be done better, right? 🙂

As a result I have created a library called Reachabiliy.Net which can be found as a nuget package for everything related to network connectivity.… [Keep reading] “Reachability.Net: A unified API for reachability (network connectivity) on Xamarin Android and iOS”

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”

Connection Options When Building An Azure Hybrid Cloud Solution

7th of April, 2015 / / 3 Comments

If your business is migrating workloads to Azure the chances are at some point you will probably want to create a form of private interconnect with Azure. There is more than one way to achieve this, so in this post I’ll take a look at what options you have and the most appropriate scenarios for each.

We’ll work through the connection types from simplest (and quickest to provision) to more complex (where you’ll need IP networking expertise and hardware).… [Keep reading] “Connection Options When Building An Azure Hybrid Cloud Solution”

Migrating Sitecore 7.0 to Azure IaaS Virtual Machines – Part 1

26th of March, 2015 / / 1 Comment

INTRODUCTION

Recently, I had the opportunity of working on a Sitecore migration project. I was tasked with moving a third-party hosted Sitecore 7.0 instance to Azure IaaS. The task sounds simple enough but if only life was that simple. A new requirement was to improve upon the existing infrastructure by making the new Sitecore environment highly available and the fun begins right there.

To give some context, the CURRENT Sitecore environment is not highly available and has the following server topology:

  • Single Sitecore Content Delivery (CD) Instance
  • Single Sitecore Content Management (CM) Instance
  • Single SQL Server 2008 Instance for Sitecore Content and Configurations
  • Single SQL Server 2008 Instance for Sitecore Analytics

The NEW Sitecore Azure environment is highly available and has the following server topology:

  • Load-balanced Sitecore CD Instances (2 servers)
  • Single Sitecore CM Instance (single server)
  • SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Group (AAG) for Sitecore Content (2 servers)
  • SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Group (AAG) for Sitecore Analytics (2 servers)

In this tutorial I will walk you through the processes required to provision a brand new Azure environment and migrate Sitecore.… [Keep reading] “Migrating Sitecore 7.0 to Azure IaaS Virtual Machines – Part 1”

Moving resources between Azure Resource Groups

24th of March, 2015 / / 16 Comments

The concept of resource groups has been around for a little while, and is adequately supported in the Azure preview portal. Resource groups are logical containers that allow you to group individual resources such as virtual machines, storage accounts, websites and databases so they can be managed together. They give a much clearer picture to what resources belong together, and can also give visibility into consumption/spending in a grouped matter.

However, when resources are created in the classic Azure portal (e.g.… [Keep reading] “Moving resources between Azure Resource Groups”

Better Documenting your BizTalk Solutions

18th of March, 2015 / / 19 Comments

The BizTalk Documenter has been available for many years on Codeplex for different BizTalk versions, starting with 2004 all the way to 2013 R2. The Documenter for 2004, 2006, 2006 R2 and 2009 can be found here. Some years later, a version for BizTalk 2010 was created. Last year, MBrimble and Dijkgraaf created a newer version which also supports BizTalk 2013 and 2013 R2. They did a great job; all improvements and fixes are listed here.… [Keep reading] “Better Documenting your BizTalk Solutions”