Automatic Key Rotation for Azure Services

Securely managing keys for services that we use is an important, and sometimes difficult, part of building and running a cloud-based application. In general I prefer not to handle keys at all, and instead rely on approaches like managed service identities with role-based access control, which allow for applications to authenticate and authorise themselves without any keys being explicitly exchanged. However, there are a number of situations where do we need to use and manage keys, such as when we use services that don’t support role-based access control.… [Keep reading] “Automatic Key Rotation for Azure Services”

Cloud Cushioning using Azure Queues

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”

Use Mobile Services Scripting to invoke a BizTalk Service Bridge to insert into LOB SQL Azure Database.

Introduction

This blog demonstrates the key fundamentals in creating, invoking and deploying a Windows Azure BizTalk Services (WABS) Message Flow Itinerary to Azure, inserting data into a Windows Azure SQL Database.

It also uses the new Scripting feature of Azure Mobile Services to integrate with BizTalk Services.

Scenario

In the Managed Services Business Unit for the company I work for, a person every month was using MS Excel to generate monthly reports based on various Service Desk metrics.… [Keep reading] “Use Mobile Services Scripting to invoke a BizTalk Service Bridge to insert into LOB SQL Azure Database.”