#Azure

Playing with Azure and Terraform

I recently presented "Playing with Azure and Terraform" at our user group locally in Durban, there were some requests for a recording so I thought I'd share it here 😊 We play with a lot of different tech in this session like GitHub Codespaces, Azure, Cloudflare and Snyk

Posted on September 01, 2022 - Azure Azure SQL Azure Web Apps Cloudflare DevSecOps GitHub GitHub Codespaces IaC Security SecurityScanning snyk Terraform YouTube Videos

Interacting with Cloudflare DNS and Origin Certs using Terraform

In this video we'll take a look at connecting to Cloudflare with terraform to fully automate a full (strict) SSL/TLS encryption mode setup We'll also cover setting up a basic nginx server which we'll use to validate that our setup is working as expected.

Posted on August 17, 2022 - Azure Cloudflare GitHub IaC Terraform

Managing GitHub secrets using terraform

In this video we'll take a look at Managing GitHub secrets using terraform as well as federated identities from GitHub into Azure. You should only be storing secrets if you absolutely need to, in this demo although we are only accessing storage accounts the change from a storage connection string to Azure Federated Identity means that we can access any of resource the identity has access too using RBAC which is a much better overall approach.

Posted on August 11, 2022 - Azure GitHub IaC Security Terraform

Building basic Azure infrastructure using Terraform

In this video we'll take a look at how to build some basic Azure infrastructure using Terraform.

Posted on August 04, 2022 - Azure IaC Terraform

Rethink your application boundary and use Cloudflare

In this video I'm going to talk to you about... Rethinking your application boundary and using Cloudflare

Posted on October 21, 2020 - Azure Cloudflare GitHub GitHub Actions msdug YouTube Videos

How to lower the real cost of a SQL Server Virtual Machine in Azure

Whenever you take out an Azure VM you generally get a single disk which is not that big, when you select a SQL Server based VM (even web edition) you automatically get a 1TB disk, if you are using managed disks you pay for that whole TB even if you are only using 1GB of it. This post will show you how you can lower the price of that virtual machine if you are in this situation

Posted on March 27, 2020 - Azure Tips

Create pfx certificate file for Azure Web Apps from Cloudflare origin cert using openssl

Every time I create a new project using Azure Web Apps or even IIS and I need to add a pfx file for end to end https, Cloudflare gives you a private key and certificate but you can't use those directly with Azure Web Apps and I keep forgetting how to do this exactly so as I do sometimes I'm going to post the steps so that it's helpful to others as well as future me.

Posted on March 24, 2020 - Azure Cloudflare Linux openssl Security

Publish aspnet core sites to Azure easily using GitHub actions

Have a site sitting in GitHub that you currently maybe manually deploy to Azure or use some other tool? Why not useGitHub Actionsto quickly and easily publish to Azure. I was pushing a small site (Guid.Empty) to Azure through GitHub and decided to document the couple steps for future me 😋... oh and for you of course 😅

Posted on March 23, 2020 - Azure dotnet core GitHub GitHub Actions

Creating an Azure dashboard for Application Insights in 1,2,3

So watching this weeks asp.net community standup ASP.NET Community Standup - December 11, 2018 - 2.2 Release Party! and Scott Hanselman shows how to make a dashboard for your application insights resource in no time.

Posted on December 12, 2018 - Application Insights Azure Dashboards Monitoring

Moving Application Insights resources between subscriptions in Azure

There is documentation available for Move resources to new resource group or subscription but things are easier to do with exact sample code so here it goes . The steps below will work for moving between Resource Groups as well, you'll just skip some steps that would be obvious.

Posted on January 03, 2018 - Application Insights Azure PowerShell

Converting Html to Pdf using C# and magic!

Everyone at some point needs to convert and html page into a PDF for some reason or another. For this I've always used a component which was cheap at the time (and is far from it now). This component has worked well for the last 8(ish) years, most ish in the last while because it doesn't deal well with https sites. When contacting the vendor they said hey but our latest version which can be expected I guess because it's 8 years down the line but then came the it's ALL OF THE $ . The last issue is that the component I used doesn't work in Azure. That lead me to some investigation and then ultimately this post.

Posted on May 22, 2017 - Azure GitHub Projects Just Coding Pdf-to-Html

Implementing a dynamic robots.txt

Firstly you might want to know why would you want to implement a dynamic robots.txt? Isn't it better to just put a static file in the web app? Yes it is but when you running your application on certain platforms like web apps in Azure when you using deployment slots. I found this handy link which explains deployment slots quite nicely , but basically what happens is when you switch 2 slots Azure will do a virtual IP switch so traffic from your slots will now be switched (not the files from each slot).

Posted on April 12, 2017 - Azure Deployment slots Just Coding MVC robots text file

Visual Studio Team Services Overview - Video Series

A couple weeks ago I was asked to present at DUT to a group of students. The presentation was quite a long one so I had to cut some bits out in order to present in the timeslot that I had. So I decided that I'd record all the content and post it up so that others can potentially benefit from it as well.

Posted on May 03, 2016 - Automated Builds Azure Load Testing Release Management Source Control Test Manager VSTS / TFS Work Item Management

Load testing using Azure

So everyone wants to have the ultimate system that never breaks can handle ‘all’ the users and shows no strain when doing so. How do you accomplish something like this? Well you could hire developers that know all the best ways to do everything, experts in everything related to configuring applications to run the best that they can on the hardware and software it sits on but what’s the odds of that happening. The other option is to have a bank account that is never ending and throw ‘all’ the hardware at your application to make sure it doesn’t ever have a slow day but then how are you making your money, how do you know when ‘all’ the hardware isn’t enough.

Posted on October 08, 2015 - Azure Load Testing Visual Studio Team Services

A 'Hello World' for VSTS Extensions

So if you haven't heard yet VSO Extensions are now in a private preview where you can sign up to get into the preview on extensions integration site. These extensions in the shortest sentence a supported way of doing customizations to VSO that will replace any of the "hacky" extensions that you may be playing around with at the moment like Tiago Pascal's Task Board Enhancer or maybe you have even created your own following similar steps to what I show in my TFS 2013 Customization book.

Posted on June 18, 2015 - Azure Free Stuff Getting Started GitHub Projects Grab Some Coffee Rangers Research Visual Studio Team Services VSTS / TFS VSTS Extensions

Using Azure Resource Manager

In the new Azure Portal you create all your resources in Resource Groups, there is also as part of the Azure SDK's a module called AzureResourceManager by default the module loaded for the Azure SDK is AzureServiceManagement. A blurb from one of the Azure documentation page reads

Posted on December 17, 2014 - Azure Azure Resource Manager PowerShell Rangers Research

Creating a new Azure Active Directory User

Open the Azure Management Portal, login and then navigate to the Active Directory tab and click on the Active Directory resource you want to add a user to, alternatively create a new Azure Active Directory resource and then come back to this post.

Posted on December 17, 2014 - Azure Azure Active Directory

Assign a Azure Subscription to a existing user

If you have logged into the Azure Management Portal and see a message like below then you need to have a azure subscription assigned to you in order to use the portal and this post is going to help you (probably your Administrator) assign a subscription to your account.

Posted on December 17, 2014 - Azure Subscriptions

Application Insights for Windows Store Apps in Azure Portal

If you've been using Application Insights for a while now you would have noticed that with recent Visual Updates the Application Insights SDK had been updated to use a new version that logs AI data into the new Azure Portal. From this if you use Windows Store Apps you would probably have noticed that if you instrument a Windows Store application with the new SDK that you can't actually find your data anywhere although you can see it being logged from the Visual Studio Output window and using Fiddler. The good news is that you will soon be able to have a great experience with the new AI SDK for Windows Store apps as you do for your currently for your web applications, the better news is that below you'll see how to use the new SDK for your Store Apps and see the data in the Azure Portal.

Posted on December 10, 2014 - Adoption Blockers Application Insights Azure Rangers Research

How to get your identity tokens

This post has been ported from http://gbeeming.wordpress.com/2013/10/08/how-to-get-your-identity-tokens/.

Posted on June 02, 2014 - Azure Facebook Google Microsoft Account OAuth Old Blog Posts Twitter

Sharing code that uses Application Insights

So you have a project that uses Application Insights and want to share it with the world. Sure you just post it to CodePlex, GitHub or some other place that allows publishing of code don't you.

Posted on May 14, 2014 - Application Insights Azure My View Rangers Research

Using Application Insights with an existing Windows Store App

If you haven't heard or read about Application Insights you should go to MSDN and read up on all the awesomeness that you can get by using this new feature of VSO. You can also take a look at the Channel 9 series on Application Insights for Visual Studio Online by Charles Sterling.

Posted on May 12, 2014 - Application Insights Azure Rangers Research Windows Store App

Using Application Insights with a new Windows Store App

If you haven't heard or read about Application Insights you should go to MSDN and read up on all the awesomeness that you can get by using this new feature of VSO. You can also take a look at the Channel 9 series on Application Insights for Visual Studio Online by Charles Sterling.

Posted on February 18, 2014 - Application Insights Azure Windows Store App