Every week, I publish my reading notes. Those are the articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, and books that catch my interest and that I found interesting. It's a mix of the actuality and what I was looking for.
Cloud
Azure Mystery Mansion - Microsoft in Business Blogs (Em Lazer-Walker) - Very interesting post. As I'm writing myself a text-based adventure game(just for fun) it's interesting to see the different approaches and tools available.
Azure DevOps Roadmap update for 2019 Q4 (Gloridel Morales) - Since the multi-stage pipeline launch in May, the team as been listening to his community. In this post learn more about what they have been working on and what is their roadmap.
Code Comments (Donn Felker) - Very smart idea! I'm staring using that rule right away.
Microservices Fundamentals (Mark Heath) - New course on Pluralsight about an indeed challenging topic. This post shares the plan of that Microservices course.
Stop Waiting! Start using Async and Await! (Simon Hawe) - Learn the power of async in this excellent post. The example may be in Python the idea is the same however language we are using.
What’s in my bag for Microsoft Ignite 2019 (Thomas Maurer) - As I'm packing my own bag, going to Ignite for the first time it's interesting to see what others bring... (Note to myself next time don't leave at home your network cable adapter)
I really like this book, and planning to read it again soon. I like the way things are simply explained. Like if you deconstructed a situation and then re-building it. It felt authentic and true. It's nothing transcending, but the way it is explained is great.
How the .NET Team uses Azure Pipelines to produce Docker Images (Matt Thalman) - Woaaah! I knew there were many docker images, but I didn't think it was that much. It's Incredibly interesting to read everything that is in place to do all those images...automatically.
It's so nice to be able to add some serverless components in our solution to make them better in a snap. But how do we manage them? In this post, I will explain how to create an Azure resource manager (ARM) template to deploy any Azure Function and show how I used this structure to deploy an open-source project I've been working on these days.
Part 1 - The ARM template
An ARM template is a JSON file that describes our architecture. To deploy an Azure Function we need at least three recourses: a functionApp, a service plan, and a storage account.
The FunctionApp is, of course, our function. The service plan could be set as dynamic or describe the type of resource that will be used by your function. The storage account is where is our code.
In the previous image, you can see how those components interact more with each other. Inside the Function, we will have a list of properties. One of those properties will be the Runtime, for example, in the AZUnzipEverything demo, it will be dotnet. Another property will be the connection string to our storage account that is also part of our ARM template. Since that resource doesn't exist yet, we will need to use the dynamic code.
The Function node will contain a sub-resource of type storageAccount. This is where we will specify where is our code, so it cant be clone to Azure.
Building ARM for a Simple Function
Let's see a template for a simple Azure Function that doesn't require any dependency, and we will examine it after.
The first resources listed in the template is the Account Storage. There nothing specific about it.
The Service Plan
The service plan is the second resource in the list. It's important to notice that to be able to use the SKU Dynamic you will need at least the API version of apiVersion to be "2018-02-01". Then you specify the SKU.
"sku": {
"name": "Y1",
"tier": "Dynamic"
}
Of course, you can use the other SKU if you prefer.
The Function App
Final resources added to the mixt, and this is where all the pieces are getting together. It's important to notice that the other in which the resources are listed are not considered by Azure while deploying (it's only for us ;) ). To let Azure knows you need to add dependencies.
This way the Azure Function will be created after the service plan and the storage account are available. Then in the properties we will be able to build the ConnectionString to the blob storage using a reference.
The last piece of the puzzle is the sub-resource sourcecontrol inside the FunctionApp. This will define where Azure should clone the code from and in which branch.
To be sure that everything is fully automatic the properties publishRunbook and IsManualIntegration must be set as true. Otherwise, you will need to do a synchronization between your Git (in this case on GitHub), and the Git in Azure.
Of course, all the source code of both the Azure Function and the ARM template are available on GitHub, but let me highlight how the containers are defined from an ARM template.
Just like with sourcecontrol, we will need to add a list of sub-resources to our storage account. The name MUST start by 'default/'.
Part 2 - Four Deployment Options
Now that we have a template that describes our needs we just need to deploy it. There are multiple ways it could be done, but let's see four of them.
Deploy from the Azure Portal
Navigate to the Azure Portal (https://azure.portal.com), from your favorite browser and search for "deploy a custom template" directly in the search bar located at the top of the screen (in the middle). Or go at https://portal.azure.com/#create/Microsoft.Template. One in the Custom deployment page, click on the link Build your own template in the editor. From there, you can copy-paste or upload your ARM template. You need to save it to see the real deployment form.
Deploy with a script
Would it be in PowerShell or in Azure CLI you can easily deploy your template with these two commands.
In Azure CLI
# create resource group
az group create -n AzUnzipEverything -l eastus
# deploy it
az group deployment create -n cloud5mins -g AzUnzipEverything --template-file "deployment\deployAzure.json" --parameters "deployment\deployAzure.parameters.json"
In PowerShell
# create resource group
New-AzResourceGroup -Name AzUnzipEverything -Location eastus
# deploy it
New-AzResourceGroupDeployment -ResourceGroupName AzUnzipEverything -TemplateFile deployment\deployAzure.json
Deploy to Azure Button
One of the best way to help people to deploy your solution in their Azure subscription is the Deploy to Azure Button.
You need to create an image link (in HTML or Markdown) to this to a special destination build in two-part.
However, this URL needs to be encoded. There is plenty of encoders online, but you can also do it from the terminal with the following command (A big thanks to @BrettMiller_IT who showed me this trick during one of my live streams).
Clicking the button will bring the user at the same page on the Azure Portal but in the user subscription.
Azure DevOps Pipeline
From the Azure DevOps portal (https://dev.azure.com), select your project and create a new Release Pipeline. Click on the + Add an artifact button to connect your Git repository.
Once it's added, you need to add a task the current job. Click on the link 1 job, 0 task (4). Now you just need to specify your Azure subscription, the name of the resource group and select the location of your ARM template inside your repository. To make the deployment automatic with each push in the repository, click that little lightning bolt and enable the Continuous deployment trigger.
Wrapping-up
Voila, you know have four different ways to deploy your Azure Function automatically. But don't take my word for it, try it yourself! If you need more details you can visit the project on GitHub or watch this video where I demo the content of this post.
Azure Functions using Node with Simona Cotin (.NET Rocks!) - Great show. I just switch my website following that Jam stack pattern. I was planning to use Azure Functions to add a few little twists.... I'm happy to see that I not alone thinking like that!
0230 - Alain Vezina - Le métier du DevOps (Visual Studio Talk Show) - Super épisode, très intéressant d'entendre parler du rôle de DevOps de quelqu'un qui le vie au quotidien. Merci de la suggestion, je crois, bien que je suis du pour relire The Pheonix Project.
Goal Setting Tips & Tracking KPIs (Video Pursuit Podcast) - Really interesting episode. Everybody is talking about matrix and KPI... But it's not frequent to hear about the "how". I really like how the goals are explained, achievable, but not easy... And how we should react when we don't reach them.
How Azure Resource Graph is gonna change the way you search and script (Stephane Lapointe) - Whaat?! 15x faster! If you are not using Azure graph yet... This post is for you. If you do use graph, still read that you may learn a few tricks. In short, it's a mandatory read for anyone using Azure.
Cloud
Azure Blueprints: ISO27001 Shared Services (Eric Leonard) - This excellent second post of a series goes dipper and shares details about one specific blueprint template. And explains some pitfall to avoid.
Azure Blueprints: Intro (Eric Leonard) - If you don't know Blueprint this post is an excellent first contact.
Was MongoDB Ever the Right Choice? (Justin Etheredge) - Nice post that put in perspective what's NoSql and why MondoDB could or not be a good solution for our project.
Static websites are lightning fast, and running them inside an Azure Blob Storage instead of a WebApp is incredibly economical (less than $1/ month). Does it mean you need to do everything manually? Absolutely not! In a previous post I explained how to automatically generated your static website using a Build Pipeline inside Azure DevOps. In this post, let's complete the CI-CD by creating a Release Pipeline to deploy it.
The Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Template
First thing first. If we want our release pipeline to deploy our website in Azure, we need first to be sure our Resources are available "up there." The best way to do this is by using an Azure Resource Manager (ARM template). I will use the same project started in the previous post, feel free to adapt to your structure or copy it from it.
Create a new file named deploy.json in the deployment folder. We need a simple storage account.
I used a parameter (StorageName) to define the name of the storage account. This way I could have multiple pipelines deploying in different storages.
Not to make the ARM template accessible to the release pipeline we also need to publish it. The easiest way to do it is to add another Copyfile task in our azure-pipeline. Add this task just before the PublishBuildArtifacts.
Once you commit and push these changes, it will trigger a build. When done, the ARM template will be available, and we will be able to start working on the release pipeline.
The Release Pipeline
Navigate to the DevOps project created in the previous post. This time, create a new Release Pipeline. When asked, select an empty template, we will pick manually the tasks we need.
First, we need to define the trigger and where are our artifacts. Click on the thing at the left of the screen. Select the build projects and let's use the latest version of the artifact to our deployment.
To get a continuous deployment, you need to enable it by clicking on the lightning bolt and selecting the enabled button.
Now let's select our tasks. Click on the "+" sign to add new tasks. We need three of these: Azure Resource Group Deployment, Azure CLI, and Azure File Copy.
Task 1 - Azure Resource Group Deployment
The first one will be an Azure Resource Group Deployment. The will be used to deploy our ARM template and be sure that the resources are available in Azure.
To configure the ARM deployment we need to select the Azure subscription and authorize the pipeline to have access. Then you will need to specify the name of the resource group you will be deploying into; it's location and finally points where is the linked ARM template.
Task 2 - Azure CLI
The second one is an Azure CLI. As I am writing this post, it's not possible to enable the static website property of a storage account. Therefore we will execute an Azure CLI command to change that configuration. Once you picked the Azure subscription, select inline script and enter this Azure CLI command:
az storage blob service-properties update --account-name wyamfrankdemo --static-website --index-document index.html
This will enable the static website property of the storage account named wyamfrankdemo, and set the default document to index.html.
Task 3 - Azure File Copy
The last task is an Azure File Copy to copy all our files from $(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)/drop/drop/outpout to the $web container (in our Azure Blob storage). The container must be named $web, that's the name used by Azure for the static website.
Wrapping up
Once you are done configuring the Release Pipeline, it's time to save it and run it. After only a minute or two (this demo is pretty small) the blog should be available into Azure. To find your endpoint (aka URL) you can go into the portal.azure.com and look at the static website property of the blob storage that we just create.
I have that little website, a blog that doesn't consume much bandwidth, and I was looking to optimize it. Since Azure blob storage is such a low expensive resource, I thought it would be the perfect fit. I could use a static website generator to transform my markdown file into a nice looking blog and publish that in Azure! Using Azure DevOps pipeline I could at every "git push)" do that all automatically without having anything installed on my machine... meaning I could write a new blog post from anywhere and still be able to update my blog.
In this post, I will explain all the steps required to create a continuous integration and continuous deployment process to deploy a static website into Azure.
The Goal
The idea here is to have on a local machine a folder tracked by git. At every push, we want that change to trigger our CI-CD process. The Build Pipeline will generates the static website. The Release Pipeline will create our Azure resources and publish those artifacts.
The Static Website
In this post, I'm using Wyam.io as static website generator. However, it doesn't matter. There is a ton of excellent generator available: Jekyll, Hugo, Hexo, etc. I selected Wyam because it is written in .Net and If eventually, I want to dig dipper it would be easier for me.
For all those generated websites, it the same pattern. You have an input folder where you have all your posts and images and an output folder that contains the generated result. You don't need to track the content of your output folder, so it would be a good practice to modify the .gitignore file accordingly. As an example here how look mine.
The build pipeline will generate our website for us. There so, it needs to have the generator installed. A great tool to do this kind of tasks is Cake. What I like with that tool is that it is cross platform so I can use it without worrying on wish OS it will run.rd.
The Azure pipeline is defined in an azure-pipeline.yml file. Installing Cake should definitely be in our first steps. To know how to do that, navigate to the Get started page of the Cake's website, it's explained that we need to execute a build.ps1 or build.sh (depending on your build setup). That will install Cake and execute the file build.cake. Those files can be found on the GitHub repository as mentioned on the website.
On the Wyam website, in the deployment section of the documentation, you will find a sample for our required build.cake file. It looks like this:
On the first line, it will install the required NuGet package (you should definitely specify the version). Then it defines some tasks, and run the generation command. Create that file at the root of the website folder.
Now let's have a look at the azure-pipeline.yml file.
The first line is to specify the pipeline trigger. In our case, we will look at the master branch. Then I declare a variable to keep the .Net Core version. That way, it will be easier to maintain the script in the future.
The pool command is to specify what kind of server is created. Here I'm using a Windows one, yet I could have used Linux too (all components are cross-platform).
Then comes the list of steps. The first one install .Net Core. The second step is a powershell command to execute our build.ps1 file. At this stage, the static website should be generated in a subfolder output. The last two steps are to copy the content of the output folder into the ArtifactStagingDirectory and then publish it. This way the Release Pipeline can access the artifacts.
There is detailed information about all the commands for a YAML Azure Pipeline file in the documentation. Create your own or copy-paste this one in a new azure-pipeline.yml file under a subfolder named deployment. Once your file is created, commit and push them to GitHub or any repository.
Navigate to Azure DevOps (dev.azure.com). Open your project, or create a new one. Now from the left menu click on the Pipeline (the rocket icon), to create a new one. If you are using an external repository, like me, you will need to authorize Azure DevOps to your repo.
To configure the pipeline, since we already have created the azure-pipeline.yml file, select the Existing Azure Pipeline YAML file option and point it to our file in the deployment folder.
It will open our YAML file. If you wish you could update it. Run it, by clicking to Run blue button in the top-right corner. Your build pipeline is done. Now every time you will push changes into your repository that build will get triggered and generate the static website.
First steps with Docker and Kubernetes - Introduction (Matteo Pagani) - Wow, fantastic post to get started with Kubernetes the author mention that after reading this you won't be an expert... However, you will definitely know enough to be dangerous.
Migrating Azure Functions from v1 (.NET) to v2 (Jeremy Likness) - A great story and an migration walkthrough. It's most likely that by following these steps we can only be successful with our migration.
Applied AI in Software Development (Afsana Atar) - This post is an excellent overview of whats AI at ten thousand feet in the air. Perfect if you are not a data scientist and would like to learn more about that trend.
My Twitch Live Coding Setup (Suz Hinton) - A great post from Suz (aka Noopkat) a long time technical streamer, who his both very smart and generous. Definitely, a post to read.
Rust Governance: Scaling Empathy (Manish Goregaokar) - A friend recently introduced me to Rust. This post assumed we all already familiar to it, and talk about the current problems of this new language and potential solutions.
Azure Automation of A-to-Z, Part I (dbakevlar) - This is a great post very instructive, that explains how and why we should structure our scripts.
Azure Policies (Gregor Suttie) - One of the best tools to he lp us with the governance in Azure is the policies. This post is a nice introduction to how it could help.
Cloud