Plugging the Gaps in Azure Policy – Part One

14th of March, 2019 / / 2 Comments

Introduction

Welcome to the first part of a two part blog on Azure Policy. Multi-part blogs are not my usual style, but the nature of blogging whilst also being a full time Consultant is that you slip some words in when you find time, and I was starting to feel if I wrote this in a single part, it would just never see the light of day. Part one of this blog deals with the high-level overview of what the problem is, and how we solved it at a high level, part two will include the icky sticky granular detail, including some scripts which you can shamelessly plagiarise.… [Keep reading] “Plugging the Gaps in Azure Policy – Part One”

Using Ansible to deploy an AWS environment

13th of March, 2019 / / No Comments

First published at https://nivleshc.wordpress.com

Background

Over the past few weeks, I have been looking at various automation tools for AWS. One tool that seems to get a lot of limelight is Ansible, an open source automation tool from Red Hat. I decided to give it a go, and to my amazement, I was surprised at how easy it was to learn Ansible, and how powerful it can be.

All that one must do is to write up a list of tasks using YAML notation in a file (called a playbook) and get Ansible to execute it.… [Keep reading] “Using Ansible to deploy an AWS environment”

A scenario-based tutorial for Azure Kubernetes Service – Part 1

4th of March, 2019 / / 1 Comment

First published at https://nivleshc.wordpress.com

Introduction

Containers are gaining a lot of popularity these days. They provide an easy way to run applications, without having to worry about the underlying infrastructure.

As you might imagine, managing all these containers can become quite daunting, especially if there are numerous containers. This is where orchestration tools such as Kubernetes are very useful.

Kubernetes was developed by Google and is heavily based on their internal Borg system. It is an excellent tool to manage containers, where you provide a desired state for your containers and Kubernetes takes care of everything to ensure the containers are always in that state (for example, if a pod dies, Kubernetes will automatically start a new pod for that container, to ensure that the defined number of pods are always running).… [Keep reading] “A scenario-based tutorial for Azure Kubernetes Service – Part 1”

Weekly AWS Update: Friday 1st March 2019

1st of March, 2019 / / No Comments

Well, it’s Friday, March 1st, 2 months into 2019 which means Its time again for my weekly update on all things AWS. The last couple of weeks have been a little quiet when it comes to Amazon Web Services product announcements, but there are still a few interesting things to cover off this week. Numerous announcements have been made in the Database space as well as an update to Amazon Worklink and Amazon FXs for windows.… [Keep reading] “Weekly AWS Update: Friday 1st March 2019”

Enabling Billing Visability for IAM Users in AWS

25th of February, 2019 / / No Comments

Today I’ve going to cover off an issue that I’ve seen in a couple of customer environments recently and that’s around allowing users the correct level of access to their AWS billing, Budgets, and account settings. This is an important topic as cost optimization and operational excellence are two of the 5 pillars of the AWS Well Architected Framework and if you can’t monitor your spend, it’s hard to ensure your delivering business value.

AWS Cost Management Tools

Firstly, when we talk about billing and cost management within AWS, there are typically 4 main tools/dashboards that you might want to use:

  • Billing & Cost Management Dashboard.
… [Keep reading] “Enabling Billing Visability for IAM Users in AWS”

Weekly AWS update: Friday 15th February 2019

15th of February, 2019 / / No Comments

Well, it’s Friday again and that can only mean one thing…. It’s time again for my weekly update on all things AWS. Last week was a big week for developers and while this week has also seen a number of new features for our developer friends, Amazon Web Services has also brought us new instance types, storage options and functionality to what’s becoming a favourite of mine, Amplify. This article continues our weekly series on the happenings in the world of Amazon Web Services.… [Keep reading] “Weekly AWS update: Friday 15th February 2019”

AWS Site-to-Site VPN and Transit Gateway

14th of February, 2019 / / 3 Comments

I recently implemented an AWS site-to-site VPN for a customer to connect their on-premise network to their newly deployed AWS account.

The requirement was network level connectivity from their on-premise network to their management VPC. Support of production VPC resources would be carried out from bastion hosts in the management VPC.

The setup of this was simple from an AWS perspective. With Cloud Formation we deployed a Customer Gateway (CGW) using the IP address of their on-premise firewall, created a Virtual Private Gateway (VPG) and then the VPN Gateway (VPN).… [Keep reading] “AWS Site-to-Site VPN and Transit Gateway”

Weekly AWS update: Friday 8th February 2019

8th of February, 2019 / / No Comments

DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS… oh wait, wrong cloud. Regardless of who said those words, this week has been a busy one for our friends over at Amazon Web Services with a host of new products and features that are sure to delight the developers among us. This article continues the weekly series we are doing this year to help customers with a brief overview of the happenings within the AWS world over the last week. This is to try and help surface some of the more important announcements.… [Keep reading] “Weekly AWS update: Friday 8th February 2019”

Automating Azure Instrumentation and Monitoring – Part 4: Metric Alerts

5th of February, 2019 / / No Comments

One of the most important features of Azure Monitor is its ability to send alerts when something interesting happens – in other words, when our telemetry meets some criteria we have told Azure Monitor that we’re interested in. We might have alerts that indicate when our application is down, or when it’s getting an unusually high amount of traffic, or when the response time or other performance metrics aren’t within the normal range. We can also have alerts based on the contents of log messages, and on the health status of Azure resources as reported by Azure itself.… [Keep reading] “Automating Azure Instrumentation and Monitoring – Part 4: Metric Alerts”

Weekly AWS update: Friday 1st February 2019

1st of February, 2019 / / No Comments

And here we are, in February of 2019 already… 1/12 of the year has already been and gone. This week it’s been a little quiet in the world of Amazon Web Services, but there’s still been several announcements and releases this week that will help those building and developing in the World of AWS. This article continues the weekly series we are doing this year to help customers with a brief overview of the happenings within the AWS world over the last week to try and help surface some of the more important announcements.… [Keep reading] “Weekly AWS update: Friday 1st February 2019”