ViewModel-first approach in Xamarin forms

15th of May, 2018 / / No Comments

There are primarily 3 patterns to choose when developing mobile applications. They are MVC, MVVM and MVP. For a detailed discussion about them check Xamarin application architecture.
The focus of this post will be around MVVM pattern. One of the earliest and most stable MVVM libraries for Xamarin has been the MVVM Cross library Like most libraries, this also followed a ViewModel-first approach. What this means, that the focus of the developer is always on the ViewModel and the data in the application.… [Keep reading] “ViewModel-first approach in Xamarin forms”

Key Vault Secrets and ARM Templates

15th of May, 2018 / / No Comments

What is Azure Key Vault

Azure Key Vault helps safeguard cryptographic keys and secrets used by cloud applications and services. By using Key Vault, you can encrypt keys and secrets (such as authentication keys, storage account keys, data encryption keys, .PFX files, and passwords) using keys protected by hardware security modules (HSMs).
Key Vault streamlines the key management process and enables you to maintain control of keys that access and encrypt your data. Developers can create keys for development and testing in minutes, and then seamlessly migrate them to production keys.… [Keep reading] “Key Vault Secrets and ARM Templates”

Highly Available deployment and availability pattern for heritage Windows applications on AWS

14th of May, 2018 / / No Comments

Quite often I am presented with the challenge of deploying Windows COTS applications onto the AWS platform with a need to requirement for taking advantage of cloud native patterns like auto-scaling and auto-healing. In this blog post I’m going to describe how I’ve used Auto Scaling Groups, Load Balancers, Cloudwatch Alarms and Route 53 to provide a self healing implementation for a heritage COTS Windows application. This pattern was also extended to use lifecycle hooks to support a Blue/Green deployment with zero downtime.… [Keep reading] “Highly Available deployment and availability pattern for heritage Windows applications on AWS”

ITSM – Continual Service Improvement (CSI) – All you need to know

11th of May, 2018 / / No Comments

Why Continual Service Improvement (CSI) is Required?

  • The goal of Continual Service Improvement (CSI) is to align and realign IT Services to changing business needs by identifying and implementing improvements to the IT services that support Business Processes.
  • The perspective of CSI on improvement is the business perspective of service quality, even though CSI aims to improve process effectiveness, efficiency and cost effectiveness of the IT processes through the whole life-cycle.
  • To manage improvement, CSI should clearly define what should be controlled and measured.
… [Keep reading] “ITSM – Continual Service Improvement (CSI) – All you need to know”

Defining IT Strategy

9th of May, 2018 / / No Comments

Information Technology (IT) Strategy is a comprehensive plan that outlines how technology should be used to meet IT and business goals.

The following approach can be used to define your organisation’s IT Strategy.

Inputs:

  1. Organisational Business Priorities
  2. Organisational Key Behaviours
  3. How Business will be Supported by IT
  4. Technology Influences
  5. IT Strategic Principles
  6. IT Service Management Operating Principles

First of all, in order to define an IT Strategy, we need to obtain the above inputs (as much as possible).… [Keep reading] “Defining IT Strategy”

Azure Policy for Auditing VM Tags

4th of May, 2018 / / 4 Comments

Azure Policy

Azure Policy is a service in Azure that you use to create, assign and, manage policy definitions. Policy definitions enforce different rules and actions over your resources, so those resources stay compliant with your corporate standards and service level agreements. Azure Policy runs an evaluation of your resources, scanning for those not compliant with the policy definitions you have.
Ref: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-policy/azure-policy-introduction
Mentioned below are the steps required for configuring Azure policies to monitor tags
Step 1 : Login on to the Azure Portal and search for Policy.… [Keep reading] “Azure Policy for Auditing VM Tags”

OMS Patching – Active Directory Groups

4th of May, 2018 / / No Comments

OMS : Update Management Solution in Azure 
The Update Management solution in Azure automation allows you to manage operating system updates for your Windows and Linux computers deployed in Azure, on-premises environments, or other cloud providers. You can quickly assess the status of available updates on all agent computers and manage the process of installing required updates for servers.
Ref: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/automation/automation-update-management
This blog details the steps required for configuring patching through Azure OMS service.
Assumptions: 

  • The OMs client is installed on all the VMs.
… [Keep reading] “OMS Patching – Active Directory Groups”

Xamarin Forms – Platform Specifics (iOS) : Blur Effect

12th of April, 2018 / / No Comments

As a Xamarin mobile developer ever wonder, why we need write some much of code in PCL and iOS projects to do simple Native feature, some of which are usually one-liners code natively.
Xamarin has now introduced a nice nifty feature that helps us to write code in Xamarin Forms in the form of Platform Specifics.
In short, Platform Specifics helps us to consume the features or functionalities that are only available on iOS, without needing to implement custom renderers or effects in the required platform project.… [Keep reading] “Xamarin Forms – Platform Specifics (iOS) : Blur Effect”

Adding a Display to the Teenager Notification Service Azure IoT Device

10th of April, 2018 / / No Comments

Overview

A couple of weeks back I wrote this post that detailed Building a Teenager Notification Service using Azure IoT an Azure Function, Microsoft Flow, Mongoose OS and a Micro Controller. 
Over the Easter break I enhanced it with the inclusion of a display. I was rummaging around in a box of parts when I found a few LCD displays I’d purchased on speculation some time ago. They are SSD1306 LCD driven units that can be found on Amazon here.… [Keep reading] “Adding a Display to the Teenager Notification Service Azure IoT Device”