Get Azure Virtual Networks with PowerShell

11th of November, 2014 / / 6 Comments

I needed to make my life easier the other day as a colleague and I worked through setting up a Azure IaaS network topology to connect to an enterprise production network. One of our clients requirements meant that whilst we created the network sites, subnets and segments we needed to report on what we had created to verify it was correct. This simple task of viewing network names and associated subnets is currently missing from the Azure cmdlets, so we have pieced together this quick bit of re-usable code.… [Keep reading] “Get Azure Virtual Networks with PowerShell”

Secure Azure Virtual Network and create DMZ on Azure VNET using Network Security Groups (NSG)

7th of November, 2014 / / 20 Comments

At TechEd Europe 2014, Microsoft announced the General Availability of Network Security Groups (NSGs) which add security feature to Azure’s Virtual Networking capability. Network Security Groups provides Access Control on Azure Virtual Network and the feature that is very compelling from security point of view. NSG is one of the feature Enterprise customers have been waiting for.

What are Network Security Groups and how to use them?

Network Security Groups allow us to control traffic (ingress and egress) on our Azure VNET using rules we define and provide segmentation within VNET by applying Network Security Groups to our subnet as well as Access Control to VMs.… [Keep reading] “Secure Azure Virtual Network and create DMZ on Azure VNET using Network Security Groups (NSG)”

Deploy an Ultra High Availability MVC Web App on Microsoft Azure – Part 2

4th of November, 2014 / / 2 Comments

In the first post in this series we setup our scenario and looked at how we can build out an ultra highly available Azure SQL Database layer for our applications. In this second post we’ll go through setting up the MVC Web Application we want to deploy so that it can leverage the capabilities of the Azure platform.

MVC project changes

This is actually pretty straight forward – you can take the sample MVC project from Codeplex and apply these changes easily.… [Keep reading] “Deploy an Ultra High Availability MVC Web App on Microsoft Azure – Part 2”

Deploy an Ultra High Availability MVC Web App on Microsoft Azure – Part 1

3rd of November, 2014 / / 2 Comments

As public cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure mature it is becoming easier to build deployment architectures that are substantially resilient to faults in cloud platforms that are increasingly unlikely to ever eventuate due to the previously mentioned maturity!

We’ll take a look at how we can deploy an ultra highly available database-backed ASP.Net MVC Website using Microsoft Azure across this post and my next one.

Desired State

The diagram below shows what we will be aiming to achieve with our setup.… [Keep reading] “Deploy an Ultra High Availability MVC Web App on Microsoft Azure – Part 1”

Azure VM Security using Azure VM Security Extensions, ConfigMgr and SCM Part 2

31st of October, 2014 / / 1 Comment

This post is part of the series. Part 1 can be found here. As I mentioned on previous post, this post to wrap up my session at TechEd Sydney 2014 DCI315 Azure VM Security ad Compliance Management with Configuration Manager and SCM.

Let’s jump to our next focus:

Patch Azure VM

ConfigMgr  is long famous for its capability for patch management. Three points on how the patch management lifecycle is running with ConfigMgr 2012 R2 for our Azure VMs:

  • Scan and Measure
    Scan&Measure
  • Remediate Non-Compliant – Patch the non-compliant
  • Reporting
    reportdefinition

Patch is straight forward and utilize ADR (Automatic Deployment Rules) to set schedule update/patch.… [Keep reading] “Azure VM Security using Azure VM Security Extensions, ConfigMgr and SCM Part 2”

Azure VM Security using Azure VM Security Extensions, ConfigMgr and SCM Part 1

30th of October, 2014 / / 1 Comment

This post to wrap up my session at TechEd Sydney 2014 : DCI315 Azure VM Security and Compliance Management with Configuration Manager and SCM.

In this blog post series we will dispell some of the myths and dive into Azure VM Security.

With Azure AU Geo launched on TechEd Sydney 2014, Azure now has 19 Regions. More and more enterprises start migrating their workloads into Azure. Most of our clients have the same question – How do we manage security and compliance on Azure VM?… [Keep reading] “Azure VM Security using Azure VM Security Extensions, ConfigMgr and SCM Part 1”

Azure Table Storage little gem – InsertOrMerge

19th of October, 2014 / / No Comments

This blog describes the usage of the InsertOrMerge operation for Azure Table Storage.

Each entity in Table Storage is defined by the PartitionKey/RowKey combination. InsertOrMerge will insert the entity if it doesn’t exist and, if it exists, it would merge the properties of updated entity with the existing one. For more details, see the Azure Storage blog.

When comparing with the existing table schema, not all properties are required to be specified for this operation.… [Keep reading] “Azure Table Storage little gem – InsertOrMerge”

Deploy Hardened HA-Proxy Azure VM from VM Depot (Microsoft Open Technologies)

10th of October, 2014 / / No Comments

In this post, we will discuss how to deploy various VM image developed by community from VM Depot (Microsoft Open Technologies).

Microsoft Azure Cross Platform Command Line (X-Plat CLI)

I blogged Microsoft Azure Cross Platform Command Line previously. This post will continue to explore Microsoft dedication on Open-Source technologies.

Firstly let’s prepare quickly our tools to run Azure X-Plat CLI:

1. I am using my Windows machine. I run my Azure Command Prompt or You can use node.js… [Keep reading] “Deploy Hardened HA-Proxy Azure VM from VM Depot (Microsoft Open Technologies)”

How to create custom images for use in Microsoft Azure

10th of September, 2014 / / No Comments

In this post I will discuss how we can create custom virtual machine images and deploy them to the Microsoft Azure platform. To complete this process you will need an Azure Subscription, the Azure PowerShell module installed and a pre-prepared VHD which you would like to use (VHDX is not supported at present.)

You can sign up for a free trial of Microsoft Azure here if you don’t currently hold a subscription.

Completing this process will allow you take advantage of platforms which aren’t offered “out of the box” on Microsoft Azure eg, Server 2003 and Server 2008 for testing and development.… [Keep reading] “How to create custom images for use in Microsoft Azure”

Highly Available SQL 2012 across Azure VNET (Part 2)

5th of August, 2014 / / 1 Comment

Part 1 can be found here.

In this Part 2 we will discuss:

  • Create DC on Azure and confirm VNET to VNET connectivity
  • SQL VMs
  • Configure WSFC and lastly configure AAG

DC and Connectivity VNET to VNET

First thing first, we need VMs for the Domain Controller (DC) and SQL Server 2012. I will use my script below to create few VMs

I created 2 DC , one on each VNET: AZSEDC001 and AZUSDC001
I registered both as DNS on Azure.… [Keep reading] “Highly Available SQL 2012 across Azure VNET (Part 2)”