Secure Azure Virtual Network and create DMZ on Azure VNET using Network Security Groups (NSG)

7th of November, 2014 / / 20 Comments

At TechEd Europe 2014, Microsoft announced the General Availability of Network Security Groups (NSGs) which add security feature to Azure’s Virtual Networking capability. Network Security Groups provides Access Control on Azure Virtual Network and the feature that is very compelling from security point of view. NSG is one of the feature Enterprise customers have been waiting for.

What are Network Security Groups and how to use them?

Network Security Groups allow us to control traffic (ingress and egress) on our Azure VNET using rules we define and provide segmentation within VNET by applying Network Security Groups to our subnet as well as Access Control to VMs.… [Keep reading] “Secure Azure Virtual Network and create DMZ on Azure VNET using Network Security Groups (NSG)”

Addressing Cross-Site Request Forgery in public/hybrid APIs

6th of November, 2014 / / No Comments

Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF or Session Riding) is the invocation of unauthorised commands that are triggered by a trusted user. A malicious website could make use of the fact that a user is logged in to a vulnerable website to then ride that session and forge requests. CSRF is a very common type of attack and ASP.NET has had the AntiForgery library for a long time. What’s interesting is when you have a hybrid/public API that your website is using and it is also used by other clients like Powershell, Mobile, etc.… [Keep reading] “Addressing Cross-Site Request Forgery in public/hybrid APIs”

Start-up like a pro or fast track cloud in your enterprise. . .

30th of October, 2014 / / No Comments

As part of my job I regularly interact with IT and business leaders from companies, across a diverse range of industries. A similarity I see across most businesses is that they contain a bunch of knowledge workers that all need to interact both internally and externally with common parties (internal departments / branches, customers, suppliers, vendors and government / regulatory bodies).

So how do knowledge workers in today’s highly connected world collaborate and communicate? Aside from telephone and face to face communication, email is still the primary tool of communication, why?… [Keep reading] “Start-up like a pro or fast track cloud in your enterprise. . .”

IPv6 – Are we there yet??

15th of October, 2014 / / No Comments

The topic of IPv6 seems to come up every couple of years. The first time I recall there being a lot of hype about IPv6 was way back in the early 2000’s, ever since then the topic seems to get attention every once in a while and then disappears into insignificance alongside more exciting IT news.

The problem with IPv4 is that there are only about 3.7 billion public IPv4 addresses. Whilst this may initially sound like a lot, take a moment to think about how many devices you currently have that connect to the Internet.… [Keep reading] “IPv6 – Are we there yet??”

Kloud delivers infrastructure reforms for one of SA’s largest privately-owned companies

19th of September, 2014 / / No Comments

Customer Overview

Cavpower is one of South Australia’s largest privately-owned companies and has been the dealer for the supply, service and maintenance of Caterpillar equipment in SA and Broken Hill since 1972. They provide equipment sales and product support to the mining, quarry, local government, building/heavy construction, power generation, industrial services, petroleum, road transport, waste management, forestry and marine industries.

Business Situation

Cavpower self-manage the majority of their ICT in-house. The company’s infrastructure is largely centralised with core servers and infrastructure hosted on–premises at their head office. … [Keep reading] “Kloud delivers infrastructure reforms for one of SA’s largest privately-owned companies”

HOW I REDUCED THE WORKER ROLE TIME FROM ABOVE 5 HRS TO LESS THAN 1 HOUR

10th of August, 2014 / / No Comments

This post talks about my experience in reducing the execution time of the Worker Role from above 5 hours to under 1 hour. This Worker Role is set up to call some external APIs to get a list of items with their promotions and store them locally. A typical batch update process that you would see in many apps. Our client was only interested in quick fixes that would help them reduce the time it is taking the Worker Role to run.… [Keep reading] “HOW I REDUCED THE WORKER ROLE TIME FROM ABOVE 5 HRS TO LESS THAN 1 HOUR”

Highly Available SQL 2012 across Azure VNET (Part 2)

5th of August, 2014 / / 1 Comment

Part 1 can be found here.

In this Part 2 we will discuss:

  • Create DC on Azure and confirm VNET to VNET connectivity
  • SQL VMs
  • Configure WSFC and lastly configure AAG

DC and Connectivity VNET to VNET

First thing first, we need VMs for the Domain Controller (DC) and SQL Server 2012. I will use my script below to create few VMs

I created 2 DC , one on each VNET: AZSEDC001 and AZUSDC001
I registered both as DNS on Azure.… [Keep reading] “Highly Available SQL 2012 across Azure VNET (Part 2)”

Highly Available SQL 2012 across Azure VNET (Part 1: VNET Peering)

1st of August, 2014 / / 1 Comment

Just over a year Microsoft announced the support of SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability Groups (AAG) on Microsoft Azure IaaS. Last month, Microsoft announced the support of SQL AAG between Azure Regions. This is a great news for great technology like SQL Server 2012 for highly available and disaster recovery scenario. SQL AAG released in SQL 2012 and enhanced in SQL 2014. AAG will detect anomaly which will impact SQL availability. When We will discuss how to do this in two blog posts:

  • Part1: Design SQL 2012 AAG across Azure VNET and How to create Microsoft Azure VNET to VNET peering
  • Part2: SQL, WSFC, Configure Quorum and Voting (SQL) and Configure AAG

Part1 SQL 2012 AAG across Azure VNET SQL 2012 AAG is designed to provide high availability for SQL database and Azure IaaS is great place where this technology can live.… [Keep reading] “Highly Available SQL 2012 across Azure VNET (Part 1: VNET Peering)”

Static DIP Request, VIP Reservation on Microsoft Azure

18th of July, 2014 / / No Comments

 

Firstly, what is Azure VIP (Virtual IP address) and DIP (internal IP address assigned by Azure DHCP) on Microsoft Azure?

Microsoft Azure VM has two known IP addresses:

  • VIP: Public IP address pointing to Azure Cloud Service where VM is deployed. Every Cloud Service has a VIP and every Cloud Service can have several VMs. A VIP assigned to Cloud Service won’t be released until last VM on that Cloud Service is Stopped (De-allocated)
    or Deleted
  • DIP: Internal IP address assigned to the VM by Azure DHCP.
… [Keep reading] “Static DIP Request, VIP Reservation on Microsoft Azure”

Portable Inversion of Control (IoC) Container for Mobile Development

4th of July, 2014 / / 3 Comments

TDD in Mobile Development – Part 2

This post is the second in a series that talks about TDD in Mobile Development, the links below show the other parts of the series.

TDD in Mobile Development
1. Unit Testing of Platform-Specific Code in Mobile Development.
2. Portable IoC (Portable.TinyIoC) for Mobile Development
3. Mobile Test-Driven Development – Running your unit tests from your IDE

[Update Date = 3rd July 2015]

I wrote this post sometime back when TinyIoC was the only one that I know that worked well on Xamarin.… [Keep reading] “Portable Inversion of Control (IoC) Container for Mobile Development”