Azure reference architecture

tl;dr

  • What is a reference architecture
    • My definition of a reference architecture
  • I stop using the word architecture after the first 3 paragraphs – word overkill
  • What are some important topics to cover in said document
  • Is it easy to write? NO
  • Final words – don’t jump into Azure without a reference architecture

I’m not going to lie to you. This is not a quick topic to write about. When it comes to Azure, you absolutely, 100% cannot dive straight in and consume services if you’re planning on doing that for pretty much any size organisation. The only way this could be averted is in a development environment, or a home lab. Period.

Without order nothing exists.

-someone awesome

This is where an Azure reference architecture comes in. Let’s define a reference architecture, or most commonly a reference architecture document (or series of documents);

Within IT: A reference architecture is a set of standards, best practices and guidelines for a given architecture that architects, consultants, administrators or managers refer to when making decisions on future implementations in that environment.

Since I think I’ve reached the word quota limit for “architect” or “architecture”, I will attempt to limit the use of those from this point forward. If necessary, I’ll refer to either of those as just the “a-word“.

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Designing for emotion

What is it that makes us advocates of the products we love? Why are we loyal to a few bunch of apps and websites? When I connected the dots, I realised that all the things I love in my life has one thing in common – emotional attachment.

What is emotional design?

Emotional design is a technique of infusing the elements of emotion into product design. It aims to evoke positive emotions and engagement with consumers.… [Keep reading] “Designing for emotion”

Introduction to User Experience Design

User Experience is everything that affects a user’s behaviour and interaction with a product or service. It’s about how a person feels, understands, and perceives a product.

Many people confuse User Experience with aesthetics of a product. User Experience Design – rather than focusing just on visual or technical aspects, largely deals with the psychology and behaviour of people.

Also, UX is an umbrella term which comprises of four major disciplines:ux

  1. Information architecture
  2. Interaction design
  3. Visual design
  4. User research

When someone refers to themselves as UX designers, it usually means they have a good understanding of all the four disciplines and are experts at probably a couple of them.

[Keep reading] “Introduction to User Experience Design”

Why you should use Git over TFS

I have been an advocate of git for long time now and I might be biased a little bit, but take a moment to read this and judge for yourself whether git is the way to go or not.

If you are starting a new greenfield project, then you should consider putting your code on a git repository instead of TFS. There are many reasons why git is better suited, but the two main ones in my perspective are:

Cross-Platform Support
Git tools are available for all platforms and there are many great (and FREE) GUI tools like GitExtensions or SourceTree.… [Keep reading] “Why you should use Git over TFS”

Kerberos Web Application Configuration and Federation.

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.”

Microsoft Azure Pricing Calculator

Originally posted in Lucian’s blog over at lucian.blog.


Whether you’re wanting to deploy a new workload in Microsoft Azure, wanting to extend an existing workload via a hybrid scenario or like me wanting to use Azure outside of work to gain more knowledge and experience, the pay-as-you-go charge model can often times intimidate and even deter many from using a cloud service like Azure. From a lab or dev point of view, it is all well and good to dabble in Azure at the various tiers of engagement, but at the end of the day you could be left with a credit card bill allot larger than expected. Enter the Microsoft Azure Pricing Calculator where you can accurately estimate your potential usage for any given service.

2015-03-16-APC-001

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The Business Case for Microsoft Office 365

Businesses of all sizes and industries are considering adopting Microsoft Office 365. Some customers have a clear vision of the desired capabilities. Others have weighed up the options and identified that there are savings to be leveraged. Others still have heard the hype, but don’t know where to start.

Office 365, like any technology, offers a variety of solutions and risks to any business. Kloud has extensive skills and experience in Microsoft Office 365 and have assisted many commercial and public sector enterprise customers successfully navigate the journey onto Office 365.… [Keep reading] “The Business Case for Microsoft Office 365”

Testing your mobile app – plan ahead before it’s too late

More than ever before, organisations are now preparing themselves to engage with their customers not only to attract business but also to get to know them better. This proliferation of information makes it possible to personalise user experience for a targeted audience. Building your own Mobile App is a great medium to achieve that. But be cautious – a poorly rated app can ruin everything!

The inspiration for this blog is a piece of work that we did for one of our customer few months back.… [Keep reading] “Testing your mobile app – plan ahead before it’s too late”

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

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)”

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

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. . .”