Your 2020 Study Guide to Azure DevOps Solutions (AZ-400)

3rd of February, 2020 / / No Comments

With Microsoft announcing sweeping changes to a few Azure exams later in March 2020 the time is ripe to blog about an exam I’ve had my eye on for a while: Azure DevOps Solutions (AZ-400). This is an advanced exam that targets professionals familiar with Azure administration and Azure development. I can see this exam providing value to engineers, consultants, and architects who are driving for increased adoption of Agile practices and Infrastructure as Code.

After doing a few of these exams over the years you’ll find a rhythm that works for you.… [Keep reading] “Your 2020 Study Guide to Azure DevOps Solutions (AZ-400)”

Deploying App Services with ‘Run From Package’, Azure Storage, and Azure Pipelines

6th of November, 2018 / / 2 Comments

Azure App Service recently introduced a feature called Run From Package. Rather than uploading our application binaries and other files to an App Service directly, we can instead package them into a zip file and provide App Services with the URL. This is a useful feature because it eliminates issues with file locking during deployments, it allows for atomic updates of application code, and it reduces the time required to boot an application. It also means that the ‘release’ of an application simply involves the deployment of a configuration setting.… [Keep reading] “Deploying App Services with ‘Run From Package’, Azure Storage, and Azure Pipelines”

Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment

15th of December, 2017 / / No Comments

I have been working on an Azure Pass Project recently and try to leverage VSTS DevOps CICD features to automatic the build and deployment process. Thanks to my colleague Sean Perera, he helped me and provided a deep dive on the VSTS CICD process.
I am writing this blog to share the whole workflow:

  1. Create new project in VSTS, create Dev branch based on the master branch

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  1. Establish the connection from local VS to the VSTS project

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  1. Push web app codes to the VSTS dev branch environment

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3.1

  1. Set up the endpoint connections between VSTS and Azure:
  • Login to the Azure tenant environment, create new registration for VSTS tenant.
… [Keep reading] “Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment”

VSTS Build Definitions as YAML Part 2: How?

26th of November, 2017 / / 13 Comments

In the last post, I described why you might want to define your build definition as a YAML file using the new YAML Build Definitions feature in VSTS. In this post, we will walk through an example of a simple VSTS YAML build definition for a .NET Core application.

Application Setup

Our example application will be a blank ASP.NET Core web application with a unit test project. I created these using Visual Studio for Mac’s ASP.NET… [Keep reading] “VSTS Build Definitions as YAML Part 2: How?”

VSTS Build Definitions as YAML Part 1: What and Why?

26th of November, 2017 / / 1 Comment

Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) has recently gained the ability to create build definitions as YAML files. This feature is currently in preview. In this post, I’ll explain why this is a great addition to the VSTS platform and why you might want to define your builds in this way. In the next post I’ll work through an example of using this feature, and I’ll also provide some tips and links to documentation and guidance that I found helpful when constructing some build definitions myself.… [Keep reading] “VSTS Build Definitions as YAML Part 1: What and Why?”

Building websites with Ionic Framework, Angular and Microsoft Azure App Services

4th of September, 2017 / / 5 Comments

The Ionic Framework (https://ionicframework.com/) is an angular 4 based framework that is designed to build beautiful applications quickly and easily that can be targeted to native platforms as well as Progressive Web Apps (PWAs).  In this blog post, I’ll walk through the steps to start your own Ionic PWA hosted on Azure App Services, which will then serve your application.

What is Microsoft Azure App Services?

Microsoft Azure is a cloud platform that allows you to host server workloads that you’d previously host locally in a data centre or on a server somewhere to be hosted in an environment where massive scale and availability becomes available at an hourly rate.… [Keep reading] “Building websites with Ionic Framework, Angular and Microsoft Azure App Services”

Static Security Analysis of Container Images with CoreOS Clair

21st of August, 2017 / / No Comments

Container security is (or should be) a concern to anyone running software on Docker Containers. Gone are the days when running random Images found on the internet was common place. Security guides for Containers are common now: examples from Microsoft and others can be found easily online.
The two leading Container Orchestrators also offer their own security guides: Kubernetes Security Best Practices and Docker security.

Container Image Origin

One of the single biggest factors in Container security is determined by the origin of container Images:

  1. It is recommended to run your own private Registry to distribute Images
  2. It is recommended to scan these Images against known vulnerabilities.
… [Keep reading] “Static Security Analysis of Container Images with CoreOS Clair”

Azure Build Pipeline using ARM Templates and Visual Studio Team Services

24th of June, 2017 / / No Comments

Overview

When having to deploy resources within Azure you can easily log in to the Azure Portal and start deploying resources, however with the number of components needed to build a working solution this can quickly become time consuming. You may also need to deploy the same solution in a Development, Test, and Production environment and then make some changes to the environment along the way.
There is a lot of talk about DevOps and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) in the IT industry at the moment.… [Keep reading] “Azure Build Pipeline using ARM Templates and Visual Studio Team Services”