Querying against an Azure SQL Database using Azure Automation Part 1

5th of July, 2018 / / 1 Comment

What if you wanted to leverage Azure automation to analyse database entries and send some statistics or even reports on a daily or weekly basis?
Well why would you want to do that?

  • On demand compute:
    • You may not have access to a physical server. Or your computer isn’t powerful enough to handle huge data processing. Or you would definitely do not want to wait in the office for the task to complete before leaving on a Friday evening.
… [Keep reading] “Querying against an Azure SQL Database using Azure Automation Part 1”

PowerShell gotcha when connecting ASM Classic VNETs to ARM ExpressRoute

5th of July, 2018 / / No Comments

Recently I was working on an Azure ExpressRoute configuration change that required an uplift from a 1GB circuit to a 10Gb circuit. Now thats nothing interesting, but, of note was using some PowerShell to execute a cmdlet.
A bit of a back story to set the scene here; and I promise it will be brief.
You can no longer provision Azure ExpressRoute circuits in the Classic or ASM deployment model. All ExpressRoute circuits that are provisioned now are indeed Azure Resource Manager (ASM) deployments.… [Keep reading] “PowerShell gotcha when connecting ASM Classic VNETs to ARM ExpressRoute”

Set up a Microsoft Graph App for Office 365 and SharePoint Online management to use in Azure Functions, Flow, .Net solutions and much more

4th of May, 2018 / / No Comments

Microsoft Graph API can be used to connect and manage the Office 365 SaaS platforms such as SharePoint Online, Office 365 Groups, One Drive, OneNote, Azure AD, Teams (in beta) and much more.
A Graph app is an Azure AD app that has privileges (with provided permissions) to authenticate and then execute operations when using PowerShell, Azure Functions, Flow, Office Online CSOM, SharePoint Online and many other tools.
It is quite easy to set up a graph app, below is a brief preview of the process.… [Keep reading] “Set up a Microsoft Graph App for Office 365 and SharePoint Online management to use in Azure Functions, Flow, .Net solutions and much more”

Global Azure Bootcamp 2018 – Creating the Internet of YOUR Things

21st of April, 2018 / / No Comments

Today is the 6th Global Azure Bootcamp and I presented at the Sydney Microsoft Office on the Creating the Internet of YOUR Things.
In my session I gave an overview on where IoT is going and some of the amazing things we can look forward to (maybe). I then covered a number of IoT devices that you can buy now that can enrich your life.
I then moved on to building IoT devices and leveraging Azure, the focus of my presentation.… [Keep reading] “Global Azure Bootcamp 2018 – Creating the Internet of YOUR Things”

Demystifying Managed Service Identities on Azure

13th of April, 2018 / / 5 Comments

Managed service identities (MSIs) are a great feature of Azure that are being gradually enabled on a number of different resource types. But when I’m talking to developers, operations engineers, and other Azure customers, I often find that there is some confusion and uncertainty about what they do. In this post I will explain what MSIs are and are not, where they make sense to use, and give some general advice on how to work with them.… [Keep reading] “Demystifying Managed Service Identities on Azure”

Deploy active/active FortiGate NGFW in Azure

10th of April, 2018 / / 22 Comments

I recently was tasked with deploying two Fortinet FortiGate firewalls in Azure in a highly available active/active model. I quickly discovered that there is currently only two deployment types available in the Azure marketplace, a single VM deployment and a high availability deployment (which is an active/passive model and wasn’t what I was after).
FG NGFW Marketplace Options
I did some digging around on the Fortinet support sites and discovered that to you can achieve an active/active model in Azure using dual load balancers (a public and internal Azure load balancer) as indicated in this Fortinet document: https://www.fortinet.com/content/dam/fortinet/assets/deployment-guides/dg-fortigate-high-availability-azure.pdf… [Keep reading] “Deploy active/active FortiGate NGFW in Azure”

Deploy VM via ARM template: Purchase eligibility failed

23rd of March, 2018 / / No Comments

I recently tried to deploy a VM using an ARM template executed via PowerShell and I encountered the purchase eligibility failed error as seen below.
PurchaseEligibilityFailedError
As I have encountered this before I ensured I accepted marketplace terms for the VM image in question using the PowerShell commands:

Get-AzureRmMarketplaceTerms -Publisher PublisherName -Product ProductName -Name Name | Set-AzureRmMarketplaceTerms -Accept

I then reattempted to deploy my VM using my ARM template and still got the same error, I even waited 24 hours and tried again with no luck.… [Keep reading] “Deploy VM via ARM template: Purchase eligibility failed”

Azure ARM architecture pattern: a DMZ design with a firewall appliance

9th of March, 2018 / / No Comments

Im in the process of putting together a new Azure design for a client. As always in Azure, the network components form the core of the design. There was a couple of key requirements that needed to be addressed that the existing environment had outgrown: lack of any layer 7 edge heightened security controls and a lack of a DMZ.

I was going through some designs that I’ve previously done and was checking the Microsoft literature on what some fresh design patterns might look like, in case anythings changed in recent times.… [Keep reading] “Azure ARM architecture pattern: a DMZ design with a firewall appliance”

Azure ARM architecture pattern: the correct way to deploy a DMZ with NSGs

9th of March, 2018 / / No Comments

Isolating any subnet in Azure can effectively create a DMZ. To do this correctly though is certainly something that is super easy, but, something that can easily be done incorrectly.
Firstly, all that is required is a NSG and associating that with any given subnet (caveat- remember that NSGs are not compatible with the GatewaySubnet). Doing this will deny most traffic to and from that subnet- mostly relating to the tag “internet”. What is easily missed is not applying a deny all rule set in both the inbound and outbound rules of the NSG itself.… [Keep reading] “Azure ARM architecture pattern: the correct way to deploy a DMZ with NSGs”

Cosmos DB Server-Side Programming with TypeScript – Part 6: Build and Deployment

20th of February, 2018 / / No Comments

So far in this series we’ve been compiling our server-side TypeScript code to JavaScript locally on our own machines, and then copying and pasting it into the Azure Portal. However, an important part of building a modern application – especially a cloud-based one – is having a reliable automated build and deployment process. There are a number of reasons why this is important, ranging from ensuring that a developer isn’t building code on their own machine – and therefore may be subject to environmental variations or differences that cause different outputs – through to running a suite of tests on every build and release.… [Keep reading] “Cosmos DB Server-Side Programming with TypeScript – Part 6: Build and Deployment”