Moving SharePoint Online workflow task metadata into the data warehouse using Nintex Flows and custom Web API

23rd of April, 2016 / / No Comments

This post suggests the idea of automatic copying of SharePoint Online(SPO) workflow tasks’ metadata into the external data warehouse.  In this scenario, workflow tasks are becoming a subject of another workflow that performs automatic copying of task’s data into the external database using a custom Web API endpoint as the interface to that database. Commonly, the requirement to move workflow tasks data elsewhere arises from limitations of SPO. In particular, SPO throttles requests for access to workflow data making it virtually impossible to create a meaningful workflow reporting system with large amounts of workflow tasks.… [Keep reading] “Moving SharePoint Online workflow task metadata into the data warehouse using Nintex Flows and custom Web API”

Break down your templates with Linked Templates (Part 1)

16th of April, 2016 / / 3 Comments

Templated deployment is one of the key value propositions of moving from the Azure classic to Resource Manager (ARM) deployment model.  This is probably one key feature that made a big stride towards Infrastructure as a Code (IAC).  Personally, I have been looking forward to this feature since it’s a prominent feature on the other competing platform.

Now that this feature is live for a while, one aspect which I found interesting is the ability to link templates in Azure Resource Manager. … [Keep reading] “Break down your templates with Linked Templates (Part 1)”

When to use an Azure App Service Environment?

5th of April, 2016 / / 44 Comments

Introduction

An Azure App Service Environment (ASE) is a premium Azure App Service hosting environment which is dedicated, fully isolated, and highly scalable. It clearly brings advanced features for hosting Azure App Services which might be required in different enterprise scenarios. But being this a premium service, it comes with a premium price tag. Due to its cost, a proper business case and justification are to be prepared before architecting a solution based on this interesting PaaS offering on Azure.… [Keep reading] “When to use an Azure App Service Environment?”

Highly available WordPress deployment on Azure

15th of March, 2016 / / 8 Comments

WordPress is the leading content management system today owning more than 50% of the market share. WordPress on Microsoft Azure is becoming a very popular offering with the ability to host WordPress as an Azure WebApp. While Microsoft has made the process of spinning up a WordPress site very easy with built in gallery images, running business critical applications on a cloud platform also introduces challenges in terms on availability and scalability.

WordPress Architecture

A typical WordPress deployment consists of the following two tiers:

  • Web Frontend – PHP web site
  • Backend Data store
    • Relational data store – Hierarchical entity store
    • Object data store – Used to store uploaded images and other artefacts

In order to guarantee high availability and scalability, we need to ensure that each of these service tiers are decoupled and can be separately managed.… [Keep reading] “Highly available WordPress deployment on Azure”

Azure WebJob logs demystified

14th of March, 2016 / / 4 Comments

Asynchronous jobs are usually hard to troubleshoot due to the very nature of its execution. This post talks about how we can monitor and trouble shoot Azure WebJobs both during development and when it is deployed on an Azure Web App. The key is to understand the layout of the logs the WebJob runtime creates during its execution.

WebJob storage accounts

To enable logging, WebJob needs two Azure storage account connection strings to be configured:

  • AzureWebJobsDashboard
  • AzureWebJobsStorage

AzureWebJobsDashboard

This storage account is primarily used by Azure WebJob SDK to store logs from the WebJobs Dashboard.… [Keep reading] “Azure WebJob logs demystified”

Cloud Cushioning using Azure Queues

1st of March, 2016 / / 1 Comment

The distributed world

The cloud revolution has revived the importance of distributed computing in today’s enterprise market with the distribution of compute and storage workloads across multiple decoupled resources helping corporates optimise their capital and operational expenditure.

While there are benefits of moving to the cloud, it’s important to understand the ground rules of the cloud platform. Running your business critical services on commodity hardware with a service SLA of three nines (99.9) against five nines (99.999) does call for some precautions.… [Keep reading] “Cloud Cushioning using Azure Queues”

Background business – Azure Worker role Vs Web Job

29th of February, 2016 / / 7 Comments

Importance of asynchronous work loads

Background processes play a key role in enabling distributed asynchronous computing. Background tasks have been used in the past to handle secondary workloads like logging, monitoring, scheduling and notifications, but today’s systems use background processing to improve user experience by decoupling User Interfaces from heavier tasks. Microsoft Azure provides two ways to host background tasks:

  • Worker Roles (PaaS)
  • Web Jobs (API apps. SaaS)

Worker Roles are dedicated virtual machines which can be pictured as an executable unit of work, unlike Web Jobs.… [Keep reading] “Background business – Azure Worker role Vs Web Job”

Feb 2016 Azure AD Connect Upgrade Fails – IndexOutOfRangeException resolution

26th of February, 2016 / / 3 Comments

I’ve been doing some work for a client recently who decided to upgrade their Azure AD Connect appliance to the latest February release. This was a prerequisite task for future work to follow. As an aside, it’s always nice to run the current version of the sync client. Microsoft regularly update the client to provide new features and improvements. A key driver for this client in particular was the fact that the new client (1.1.105.0 – Released 16/2/2016) will allow you to synchronise every 30 minutes, which is a welcome change from the previous 3-hour sync cycles.… [Keep reading] “Feb 2016 Azure AD Connect Upgrade Fails – IndexOutOfRangeException resolution”

Automating the simultaneous deployment of AzureRM Virtual Machines for a development environment

22nd of February, 2016 / / 14 Comments

This post is details my method for automating the creation of AzureRM virtual machines for use in a development environment. I’m using this process to quickly standup an environment for testing configurations on.

In summary this process;

  • parallel creation of the AzureRM Virtual Machines
  • All machines have the same configuration
    • NIC, Disks etc
  • All machines are created in a new Resource Group, with associated Virtual Network

Simultaneous Creating the AzureRM Virtual Machines for MIM 2016

For my MIM 2016 Lab I’m going to create 5 Virtual Machines.… [Keep reading] “Automating the simultaneous deployment of AzureRM Virtual Machines for a development environment”

Simultaneously Start|Stop all Azure Resource Manager Virtual Machines in a Resource Group

10th of February, 2016 / / 13 Comments

Problem

How many times have you wanted to Start or Stop all Virtual Machines in an Azure Resource Group ? For me it seems to be quite often, especially for development environment resource groups. It’s not that difficult though. You can just enumerate the VM’s then cycle through them and call ‘Start-AzureRMVM’ or ‘Start-AzureRMVM’. However, the more VM’s you have, that approach running serially as PowerShell does means it can take quite some time to complete.… [Keep reading] “Simultaneously Start|Stop all Azure Resource Manager Virtual Machines in a Resource Group”