0.09 ms latency using Azure Proximity Placement Groups

14th of January, 2020 / / 2 Comments

Reducing network latency for critical apps running on Azure IaaS has become easier since Microsoft’s announcement of General Availability for Proximity Placement Groups (PPG) on Dec 2019.

Today I’ll give you a quick intro to Proximity Placement Groups demonstrating how to deploy a test environment into your Azure Subscription using one of my favourite tools AzureCLI. I’ll also test network latency with a PPG and without to show you the difference.

If you’re undecided about using AzureCLI or ARM templates for your Azure deployments have a look @ Pascal Naber’s post https://pascalnaber.wordpress.com/2018/11/11/stop-using-arm-templates-use-the-azure-cli-instead/

… [Keep reading] “0.09 ms latency using Azure Proximity Placement Groups”

Integration Testing Precompiled v2 Azure Functions

8th of November, 2018 / / 1 Comment

Azure Functions code can often contain important functionality that needs to be tested. The two most common ways of testing code are unit testing and integration testing. Unit testing runs pieces of code in isolation, and this is relatively simple to do with Azure Functions. Integration testing can be a little trickier though, and I haven’t found any good documentation about how do this with version 2 of the Functions runtime. In this post I’ll outline the approach I’m using to run integration tests against my Azure Functions v2 code.… [Keep reading] “Integration Testing Precompiled v2 Azure Functions”

Enterprise-ready testing in Xamarin

8th of May, 2018 / / No Comments

As focus moves towards mobile-first development, enterprise developers should also focus on automated testing. In an enterprise setting, we like to test for merge conflicts, sync issues, authentication failures, etc and we need to test this on hundreds of devices.
In this post, we will look at how we can set UI test project and application code so that we can test against scenarios that we face in a real-life situation (no connection, sync issues, authentication failures).… [Keep reading] “Enterprise-ready testing in Xamarin”

cloudready

Run Chromium OS without having to buy a Chromebook thanks to CloudReady

19th of October, 2016 / / No Comments

Thanks to the good folks at Neverware, you can now run Google’s cloud centric OS on a wider range of hardware than just Chromebooks alone. To enable this, what Neverware have done is repackage Google’s Chromium operating system.  This OS is at the core of it’s range of branded laptops, and is now made available to all.

The differences
Where Google build and maintain open source versions of Android and Chromium, their real value proposition is to add proprietary features onto both before selling them on branded devices.… [Keep reading] “Run Chromium OS without having to buy a Chromebook thanks to CloudReady”

Azure Deployment Models And How To Migrate From ASM to ARM

4th of August, 2016 / / 9 Comments

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”

Mocking ADAL for Unit Tests

18th of June, 2016 / / 5 Comments

Active Directory Authentication Library (ADAL) provides developers with great experiences to easily integrate Azure Active Directory (AAD) with their application for authentication and authorisation. With minimum efforts, we can implement OAuth authentication against AAD, using ADAL. However, in the unit testing world, it’s not that easy to test application when the application uses ADAL because ADAL is not unit-testable. We don’t test ADAL itself, but we do need mock it to test applications using ADAL. In this post, we are going to implement how to implement wrapper classes for ADAL’s AuthenticationContext, AuthenticationResult and DeviceCodeResult.… [Keep reading] “Mocking ADAL for Unit Tests”

Windows 10 – First Look: Scaling on the Surface Pro 3

10th of June, 2015 / / 2 Comments

As a fellow Surface user, I love my device.

The surface is a great device, which packs plenty of performance for heavy duty workloads such as running guest virtual machines or 3d rendering. It’s also extremely light which is great for work meetings and note taking on the go. You could say the Surface is great for any task that you can throw at it, almost…

Remember the first time you plugged your brand spanking new Surface into an external display to enable a little more desktop real estate in the office?… [Keep reading] “Windows 10 – First Look: Scaling on the Surface Pro 3”

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.”

Sending SMS Through PowerShell with Telstra’s New API

12th of February, 2015 / / 5 Comments

The code detailed in this post won’t work anymore. If you’re looking for updated PowerShell to use with Telstra’s APIs, please check out this updated post. 

Recently, Telstra released their first public API, which in true telco fashion leverages an existing product in their stable; SMS. The service allows anyone with a Telstra t.dev account (get one here) to get an API key which will allow you to send up to 100 messages per day, 1000 per month to Australian mobiles.… [Keep reading] “Sending SMS Through PowerShell with Telstra’s New API”

Xamarin Test Cloud – the new kid on the block?

9th of January, 2015 / / No Comments

Early last year I was working for one of our customers to find out an optimum test solution for their upcoming mobile application. The idea was that it should be heavily automated, efficient and cost-effective. The first observations (and the feeling) that I had was that we have very little choice in the way of tool choices. That was unfortunate, but the reality.

Almost a year later, when looking back and reflecting on some of those findings, I can see things have changed immensely.… [Keep reading] “Xamarin Test Cloud – the new kid on the block?”