Reading Notes #288

Cloud

• Building an Azure Analysis Services Model on Top of Azure Blob Storage (Kay Unkroth) - A very detailed and interesting series that explains at every step the reasons behind it choices and how to do them.

• Step-By-Step: Configuring a site-to-site VPN Gateway between Azure and On-Premise (Dishan Francis) - Most cloud solutions are hybrid or use resources on-premise. For those, a VPN is often the best solution to stay secure, and this post explains how to do it and clearly identify what you need before getting started.

• Why Docker Can’t Solve All Your Problems in the Cloud (Chris Gervais) - Definitely a good post to read when thinking about going all in with containers.

Programming

• 10 Myths About Docker That Stop Developers Cold (Derick Bailey) - This post is a must. With Docker being more and more popular, it's a good idea to have a little education before those conversations reach you.

• Keep your ASP.NET Core secrets safe in production using Azure Application Settings. (Jon Hilton) - To every secret his solution.

Reading Notes #287

Cloud

• .NET: Manage Azure Container Service, Cosmos DB, Active Directory Graph and more (Asir Selvasingh) - I'm a bit scared about this .Net new feature, but at the same time curious to see where it will go.
• Azure Redis Cache Geo-Replication in Public Preview (Ye Gu) - Nice tutorial that will help to have a better disaster recovery plan.
• Deploying Applications to Azure Container Service (atulm) - Great tutorial to start orchestrating containers on Azure.
• Designing Globally Resilient Apps with Azure App Service – Opsgility (Chris Pietschmann) - Great post that lists a lot of tools available in Azure to get a better architecture for your solution.
• Enhanced app usage monitoring and investigative features in Azure Application Insights (Rahul Bagaria) - Wow, so many new features, exactly what I needed!
• Microsoft’s Logic Apps Aims to Bring Serverless Functionality to Non-Coders (Mark Boyd) - Nice post that gives a glimpse at the Logic Apps future.
• Receive emails from Azure WebJobs when errors are detected (Vivien Chevallier) - Nice tutorial that explains how to manage error in a webjob and implement the best practices.

Programming

• Docker for .NET Developers (Part 4) - Steve Gordon's Blog (Steve Gordon) - This post of the series explains the Docker file and few useful commands. I really like this series.
• Porting a 15 year old .NET 1.1 Virtual CPU Tiny Operating System school project to .NET Core 2.0 (Scott Hanselman) - We all have those prehistoric pieces of code, and it required lots of courage to share them with the public. However, what all of us learn from it, is priceless. Thank you, Scott.
• Speed of dotnet run vs the speed of dotnet for published apps (plus self-contained .NET Core apps) (Scott Hanselman) - Great post that explains a few differences between the published and just builds performance.

Miscellaneous

• How to Get into the Habit of Time Tracking - Toggl Blog (Liza Plotnikova) - I don't count the times where Toogl "saved my life" when it was time to do my timesheet. A tool to try.

Reading Notes #286

Cloud

• Azure Portal: The missing ClearDB MySQL database (Iris Classon) - Wooo! This is an amazing workaround of what could be a major problem. Good catch!
• Azure Site Recovery between Azure regions - Easier than ever.
• Enable client side monitoring in Azure with Application Insights (Beckylin Orooji) - Pretty slick new way to get client side Application Insights running.
• Tutorial: Login with Amazon Integrations - Auth0 - Cool tutorial to add more flexibility in our Amazon web apps.

Programming

• Docker for .NET Developers (Part 3) (Steve Gordon) - Great post that gives all the details on the context of this series. Why Docker, why .Net Core...etc.
• Testing ASP.NET Core MVC Controllers: Getting Started (Jason Roberts) - Nice little tutorial it shows us how to build our first test using moq and .Net Core.

Reading Notes #284

Cloud

• Azure TLS Certificates changes (Rashmi Jha) - Because security is always a big concern, I thought it would be nice sharing this post.
• Deploying Visual Studio 2017 Function Projects with VSTS (Donna Malayeri) - This tutorial explains in simple steps how to configure our build in vsts, a reel time saver.
• Docker for AWS and Azure: Secure By Default Container Platform - Docker Blog (Riyaz Faizullabhoy) - Like they say build it ship it run it.
• Kicking The Tires On This Serverless Thing (Rob Conery) - Very interesting post that introduces many different flavors of serverless.
• New sample model for Azure Analysis Services (Josh Caplan) - Nice little post that gives everything we need to get started.
• What is Azure PowerShell? How It Works, Installation, Best Practices, and More (Angela Stringfellow) - The perfect post to get started. It a really good source of references.

Programming

• .NET and Docker (Scott Hanselman) - Very interesting post that clarifies the purpose of all those dotnet container.
• Connecting Power BI to your Visual Studio Team Services Account (Charles Sterling) - It't always cool (and potentially useful to get better) to visualize our data like that.

Miscellaneous

• How to buy and read e-books in Windows 10 Mobile Creators Update (Cale Hunt) - Nice tips. However, I do read from tine to time books on my Surface, but I simply use the App from my e-book reader.
• Pomodoro Technique – the Good, the Bad and the Tomato | Rubik's Code on WordPress.com (Nikola Zivkovic) - Interesting method. Simple and yet efficient.
• The humble checkbox (OneNote Team) - Nice to see how a simple checkbox could change your work.

Reading Notes #283

Suggestion of the week

• Docker for .NET Developers (Part 2) - Steve Gordon's Blog (Steve Gordon) - Fantastic second part of a series of tutorials. This one focus on the building phase.

Cloud

• Create an Intelligent App With Google Cloud Speech and Natural Language APIs (Ashraff Hathibelagal) - A very nice tutorial that will help us to get started with Google API.
• Using Azure Automation with Multiple Subscriptions (John Knightly) - This post explains how to overpass a challenging barrier: executing a script in multiple subscriptions.

Programming

• Azure CLI 2.0: Make Bash Output More Readable (Chris Pietschmann) - Useful post.It not because we are using prompt that it must be difficult to ready the information.
• Azure CLI 2.0: Reset / Change Azure VM Password (Chris Pietschmann) - So simple when you know it...
• Choice amongst cross-platform .NET IDEs - VS Code, Visual Studio for Mac, JetBrains Rider (Scott Hanselman) - What I like the most is that you can now stay productive on different OS, because you are still using the same tools.
• Docker for .NET Developers (Part 1) - Steve Gordon's Blog (Steve Gordon) - This post is perfect for those who know nothing about Docker, and would like to understand the vocabulary before getting deeper.
• How a 650MB Node.js Image for Docker Uses Less Space Than a 50MB Image (Derick) - As unusual, the devil is in the details, and this post does an excellent job at explaining those details.
• Testing PowerShell with Pester (Adam Bertram) - I use Pester a little while ago and loved it. It's definitely a framework that worth a try.

Databases

• Azure Cosmos DB: Build a .NET application using the Table API (Benjamin Xue) - This post shares few tips to fix common issue when working with Cosmo DB.

Miscellaneous

• How to Build a Personal Brand and Reputation as a Software Developer (John Sonmez) - Nice article (chapter) that explains how to improve your life.

Reading Notes #282

Cloud

• Enhancements to Application Insights Smart Detection (Anton Fritz) - Really cool new service that will improve our way to detect problems.
  
• How to easily and silently obtain AccessToken (Bearer) from an existing Azure PowerShell session (Stéphane Lapointe) - Nice optimization of our environment and still be secure.

Programming

• Deploy Cognitive Toolkit model to Azure Web Apps (Ilia Karmanov) - Nice short demonstration, all the code is available on GitHub.
  
• Load Balancing Node.js Applications with NGINX and Docker (Bruno Krebs) - This is a really good tutorial that explains thing very clearly and simply.
  
• Using .NET and Docker Together (Rich Lander) - This post is a fantastic list of references to get started with .Net Core and Docker combination.
  
• Kubernetes in action: How orchestration and containers can increase uptime and resiliency (Brendan Burns) - Wow I was really impressed by how Kubernetes works and mange things effortless (for simple cases).

From a Docker container to MySQL as a Service in Azure in 5 minutes

Hello MySQL! It's been a while eh? You were at version 3 something, I was just getting stated with my professional career. We had fun for years... Then you know things changed, and I did something else. I was really happy when Microsoft announced, at the MSBuild,  the availability of MySQL as a Servive in Azure.
 


Creating a MySQL database with the portal is extremely simple. As usual, you enter the server name, database name and the Admin's password. At the time I'm writing this post, it was not possible to use any CLI, but I'm sure it will be available shortly. For the ones who are not used at Database as Service in Azure, one thing you will need to do to get access to your database from your computer is white listed your IP. It's very easy to do from the Azure Portal, just select the Connection Security tab on the left menu and add your address. Oh! And don't forger to click the save button. ;)



During my tests, I've tried different applications (WordPress, Azure WebApp, custom on-premise app.) that use MySQL as backend database, I didn't notice any problem, and performance were great. It was just... simpler; no server to configure, no VM to configure, no update. The only "issue" I got was trying to connect Power BI Desktop to a MySQL, but I think it more related to the drivers since the service was still in early preview. I notified Microsoft, and I'm sure it will be available shortly.

Since it's been a while since I did some reel work with MySQL I didn't have any client install on my laptop. In fact, I had no idea which one I should take.

I knew we can run some CLI inside a Docker container with an interactive interface. So I decided to give it a try. A quick docker search mysql shows me that an image existed. Here are the steps to get setup.

First, let's download the image, and create an instance named mySQLTools of MySQL 8.0:

docker run --name mySQLTools --env "MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=Passw0rd" -d mysql:8

Then using the -it let's bring the bash prompt to our terminal.

docker exec -it mySQLTools bash -l 

Finally we connect to our client using the usual settings (note that you must have no space between -p and your password):

mysql -h _ServerName.database.windows.net_  -u _UserName@ServerName_ -p_MyPassword_ _DatabaseName_

Voila! That's all what it takes to get started. And by the way, it will also work great with a Azure SQL Database.

docker pull shellmaster/sql-cli 

docker run -it --rm --name=sqlTools shellmaster/sql-cli mssql -s ServerName.database.windows.net  -u UserName@ServerName  -p YourPassword -d DatabaseName -e

Reading Notes #279

Cloud

• 5 Tips for Successful Azure App Development (Alex Bennett) - Nice simple tips to get started on th good foot and get the best of cloud architecture.
  
• Deployment made easy with Zeit (Scott Hanselman) - Interesting podcast. I will definitely try both hyper console and that new deployment tool.
  
• Enabling Azure CDN from Azure web app and storage account portal extension (Manling Zhang) - Configuring a CDN as never been that easy. Awsome.
  
• In-order delivery of correlated messages in Logic Apps by using Service Bus sessions (Aprana Seth) - This post explains all the details on how to respect the message's publishing order when using LogicApp in your integration solution.
  
• Tactical Integration with Logic Apps (Michael Stephenson) - Interesting post about the advantages of doing integration using PaaS on Azure.

Programming

• Contributing to .NET for Dummies (Rion Williams) - Another post where the author shares his experience (I love those. That's the real life); this one about participating in an open-source project.

Databases

• Introduction to Azure PowerShell Modules for the SQL Server DBA Part 4 (Edwin Sarmiento) - Of course, things could be created outside of the Azure portal. This last post of the series puts all the pieces together... and even gives us the full script.
  
• Mashup: SQL Server on Linux in Docker on a Mac with Visual Studio Code (Julie Lerman) - Cool post where Julia shares with us the results of her "database in a container" experience.

Miscellaneous

• Reckon you've seen some stupid security things? Here, hold my beer... (Troy Hunt) - Ouf..... I'm not sure if I'm more scared or shocked.

Reading Notes #277

Cloud

• Azure Functions Tools Roadmap (Andrew B Hall) - Interesting post that explains why we should prefer the Azure function template over the VS2015 tooling.
• Monitoring errors in Azure WebJobs with the ErrorTrigger extension (Vivien Chevallier) - Nice tutorial, with the full solution available on Github, that explains how to catch the error in our Azure webjobs.
• Unmasking your swagger with proxies in Azure Functions (Shayne Boyer) - This post explains how to use Azure functions Proxy to improve the developers' experience.
• Use a container to show your function swagger (Shayne Boyer) - Nice quick tutorial to get a more professional structure easily.

Programming

• Dockerizing Nerd Dinner: Part 1, Running a Legacy ASP.NET App in a Windows Container (Elton Stoneman) - Interesting walkthrough where a legacy application is packaged in a Docker container.
• Dockerizing Nerd Dinner: Part 2, Connecting ASP.NET to SQL Server (Elton Stoneman) - Second step in a great tutorial that goes further than the usual hello word, showing how to migrate an application into a multi-container solution.
• Easy data generation with Faker.Data (Guy Barrette) - A quick introduction to a nice little gem that saves us a lot of time.
• Getting Started With Chart.js: Line and Bar Charts (Monty Shokeen) - I've use Chart.js in a project recently, and should I had this great tutorial would have saved me a lot of time.
• Using memory cache in ASP.NET Core (Gunnar Peipman) - Great quick tutorial to know how to setup cache and distributed cache (required in cloud solution).

Miscellaneous

• Bots are the new Apps – Part 2 (Alexandre Brisebois) - This post asks a lot of questions. .Bots are could be very powerful but are they easy to build? Iterate, test, fail, learn, and try again.

Reading Notes #275

Cloud

• Do more or less with default values in the Azure CLI (Shayne Boyer) - That clever! Great optimization of the CLI.
  
• HTTP-triggered Azure Functions (Gunnar) - Azure functions are such a powerful tool. This post explains how to use them with a Http endpoint.
  
• How to send emails with SendGrid in Azure WebJobs using the SendGrid extension (Vivien Chevallier) - Nice tutorial that explains very clearly how to use SendGrid in our solution. All the code is also available.

Programming

• Microsoft + Docker – Investing in the future of your applications - It's a very exciting time to build an application. This post lists the Microsoft-related talks at the DockerCon.
  
• Testing Azure Functions with Postman and Swagger (Shayne Boyer) - Great update to an already awesome tool.

Miscellaneous

• Shutting down CodePlex ( Brian Harry) - If you have a project sitting at Codeplex, don't panic. This post explains what will happen, and if you would like to migrate, what are your options.
  
• Password managers don't have to be perfect, they just have to be better than not having one (Troy Hunt) - Interesting post about password managers. Are you using one? Learn here why you should.

~Frank

Reading Notes #272

Cloud

• Cloud Messaging – Amazon or Azure? (Steve Smith) - Great post that suggests an answer to the eternal question.
  
• Connect Tableau to an Azure Analysis Services server (Josh Caplan) - Nice integration.
  
• Visual Studio Talk Show - Les données et Azure (Guy Barrette) - It was really pleasant to record that podcast. I hope it is also to listen.
  
• Leverage the Azure CLI with these examples (Brian Benz) - If you would like to help Azure CLI to get better, this post explains how you could help.
  
• Using templates to customize restored VMs from Azure Backup (Trinadh Kotturu) - This post shares nice tips to get the maximum of our VMs backup.

Programming

• ASP.NET Core Error Management with elmah.io (Damien Bod) - Elmah is a fantastic tool. This tutorial explains how to use it with .NetCore.
  
• Options for CSS and JS Bundling and Minification with ASP.NET Core (Scott Hanselman) - Nice tutorial that shows the how to find our sweet spot with the minification in VS2017.
  
• ZEIT now deployments of open source ASP.NET Core web apps with Docker - Scott Hanselman (hanselman.com) - Interesting new tools. I'm looking forward to trying it myself.

Databases

• Planet scale aggregates with Azure DocumentDB (Aravind Ramachandran Program Manager) - Fantastic news that was requested a lot by all the users. Get all the details in this post about all these new capabilities.

Reading Notes #270

Suggestion of the week

• Azure Command Line 2.0 now generally available (Kamaljit Bath) - Azurecli definitely made a great jump in this version 2.0. With it reaching GA, we should all start using it.

Cloud

• Azure Managed Disk–Overview (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon ) - This post is a nice quick introduction on what are managed disks.
  
• Azure brings 5 new services to Canada (Chelsea Carter) - Good news for our clients that need to stay in Canadian Data centers, they now have a lot more tools in their box.
  
• Deploying ARM Templates using Visual Studio Team Services (Jakob Ehn) - This post shows how to automate Azure deployments. It doesn't do it with the usual happy path, but with a very common situation where we need access Key and other information from the deployed resources to complete the deployment.
  
• Deploying a web app and an Azure SQL database with ARM template without providing any password (Vivien Chevallier) - Great tutorial that gives us a very good opportunity to learn some best practices.
  
• Integrating SharePoint With Other Services Using Azure Logic Apps - Part One (Nakkeeran Natarajan) - Nice quick intro to the SharePoint connector in Logic Apps.
  
• Serverless architecture with Azure - Simple Talk (Christos Matskas) - Good post that does a little tour of the serverless services in Azure.However, I would disagree on the simplistic view of Logic Apps and its limitation. Furthermore, I would have talked more about are extremely powerful these services can become if put together in a solution.

Databases

• Loading files from Azure Blob Storage into Azure SQL Database (Jovan Popovic) - Cool. This bulk command has been so useful on-premises; it's great to have them back.
  
• Deploy Docker Container to Oracle Cloud Service (Arun Gupta) - Great post that explains a lot on how to use databases in dicker containers.

Miscellaneous

• GitKraken vs the CLI (Brett Goldman) - Cool comparison between the Git prompt and GitKranken.
  
• Introducing Raspberry Pi Zero W - Great news from Raspberry Pi this week, this new version is simply gorgeous.

Reading Notes #267

Cloud

• Announcing custom domain HTTPS support with Azure CDN (Manling Zhang) - Great new! Now https is supported end to end.
  
• Announcing general availability of Managed Disks and larger Scale Sets (Corey Sanders) - Wow! The world of Virtual Machine just got a fantastic push. It's now much easier than ever.
  
• Automating Azure Analysis Services processing with Azure Functions (Orsolya Gal) - Awesome tutorial that explains how to use Azure function as a real-live cron job.
  
• Getting Around Blocked Ports (Alexandre Brisebois) - Cool tutorial on how to configure our jumpbox in Azure using PowerShell and ARM.
  
• Preview the new enhancements to Azure Security Center (Sarah Fender) - Wow, so many new tools to helps us to detect security attack on vNets, VMs and databases.

Programming

• Introducing Docker Secrets Management - Docker Blog (Ying Li) - Thus post introduces the great new secret manager of Docker.

Miscellaneous

• 10 GitHub samples with Azure DocumentDB you shouldn’t miss! (Rimma Nehme) - Nice list where everybody should find something interesting in favorite code language.
  
• Trying out 'dotnet new' template updates and csproj with VS2017 (Scott Hanselman) - Nice update on both VS2017 and .Net Core.
  
• Ultimate Linux on the Desktop (Jessie Frazelle) - Interesting point of view about running a laptop all in containers and the structure it required.

Reading Notes #265

Suggestion of the week

• Dockerizing a real world asp.net core application (Thien Nguyen) - Fantastic post. I really like it when authors are sharing with us their trials and errors because it the best way to really learn something.

Cloud

• How Azure Functions Pricing Works (Chris Pietschmann) - This post cannot explain more clearly and simply the pricing formulas. At least for this service...
  
• How to download a file from Blob Storage using Azure API Management? (Alexander Laysha) - Great post that explains how we can optimize or performance without lowering our security.
  
• Job Handlers and Dependency Injection in Azure WebJobs (Vivien Chevallier) - A very useful tutorial that closes a series on Azure Web jobs.
  
• Manage App Service, SQL Database, and more - Azure Management Libraries for .NET (Asir Selvasingh) - It's time to try the new fluent interface. A good way to build an easy to read a script, that will build our solution.
  
• Single Instance VMs Now With 99.9% SLA - Good news, double with good SLAs.

Programming

• Calling Windows 10 APIs From a Desktop Application (Michael Crump) - Great! Windows IoT for all!
  
• Docker for Devs Part 1: Containerizing Your Application - Lock Me Down (Thien Nguyen) - Amazing post, first of series that explains how to use containers and Docker tools.

Databases

• Loading data into Azure SQL Data Warehouse just got easier (Casey Karst) - Interesting tips that can save us so much time...

Miscellaneous

• VIDEO: How to get started with technical public speaking! (Scott Hanselman) - This one-hour video is a great way to relief yourself a lot of pressure if you are, or want to start giving talks... It's definitely a good investment of your time.

Reading Notes #264

Cloud

• Azure Logic App Updates January 2017 (Chris Pietschmann) - You through the number of new features would be less because of holidays Guess again, once again this team delivers tons of new stuff.
  
• Collaboration and federation: Azure Service Bus Messaging on-premises futures (Clemens Vasters) - Important announcement about Service Bus and his sibling's future.
  
• DevOps with Azure Functions - a holistic approach (Christos Matskas ) - Excellent post that explains why so many people love and use Azure Functions (or any serverless options).
  
• Easily Manage Azure Web App Connection Strings using PowerShell | Opsgility (Chris Pietschmann) - Great tutorial in PowerShell that provides guidance on editing AppSetting in Azure.
  
• How to enable the public preview of IaaS backups with Recovery Services in Canada using PowerShell (Stéphane Lapointe) - You want backup capabilities today, and you live in Canada? This is the post for you.

Programming

• Introducing Docker 1.13 (Docker Core Engineering) - This post summarizes all the great features added in the new release and shows again why Docker is such a fantastic tool in the containers' world.

Databases

• Automated Partition Management with Azure Analysis Services (Christian Wade) - Interesting ideas ready to be reviewed... more to come.

Miscellaneous

• Atom on Windows (Damien Guard) - Nice update.

Reading Notes #261

Suggestion of the week

• Pragmatic Web Error Handling in ASP.NET MVC - Simple Talk (Dino Esposito) - Another great article from Dino Esposito that explains his thoughts about exception and error in a pragmatic way.

Cloud

• Advanced Azure Resource Manager template patterns – t-shirt sizing and optional resources | endjin blog (Richard Kerslake) - With ARM gaining in popularity, it's importNt to get some best practices and patterns in mind. T-Shirt size is a must.
  
• Azure Subscription Spending Limit Reached! Now What? (Chris Pietschmann) - A classic mistake. Read this post before being part of the statistic.
  
• Docker for Azure Public Beta - Docker Blog (Michael Friis) - Docker contain now supported on two big cloud provider. They may only support Linux-based container but surely windows bases are coming too.
  
• New Azure Logic Apps innovation – general availability of cloud-based Enterprise Integration Pack (Frank Weigel) - Until the last days of the year, the Logic Apps team have provided multitudes of new features, see the detail of the latest release in this post and important milestone reached.

Programming

• Convert ASP.NET Web Servers to Docker with Image2Docker - Docker Blog (Elton Stoneman) - With the growing desire of containers, this tool looks perfect to do the rough job and get us started.
  
• Exploring Wyam - a .NET Static Site Content Generator (Scott Hanselman) - Very interesting project. something to follow on github and keep in mind.
  
• Tips for Troubleshooting Apps in Production with Docker Datacenter - Docker Blog (Andy Clemenko) - Great source of wisdom, because who want to screw something in Prod?!

Miscellaneous

• Slack on the Commodore 64 thanks to Raspberry Pi - Raspberry Pi (Lucy Hattersley) - Aaah the C= 64.... Cool project.

Reading Notes #258

Suggestion of the week

• Announcing the public preview of Azure Advisor (Shankar Sivadasan) - This is definitely the most asked question from clients: how can I optimize my solutions. I was very positively surprised by the quality and precision of the suggestions of the advisor service. It's a must.

Cloud

• Announcing auto-shutdown for VMs using Azure Resource Manager (Xiaoying Guo) - Really awesome feature that is finally available.
• Connect your things with the Azure IoT Gateway SDK (Sam George) - Interesting post that introduces us to the SDK and tells us a bit about how it could help us.

Programming

• Creating a New View Engine in ASP.NET Core (David Paquette) - Interesting post , where the Asp Monsters are sharing their experience building a view engine. Pretty cool.
• Getting to Know Containers (Alexandre Brisebois) - This post answers questions like: why? How? and why now?

Lessons learn while trying to deploy a Docker container in Azure

(Ce billet en aussi disponible en français.)

Since I saw Donovan Brown do his demo during the Connect(); // 2016 Keynote, I really want to have a taste of that left click to turn a project to Docker containers. So last Sunday I wake up early and armed with a big bowl of cafe latte start prepping my VM to try it. But as you could imagine, it didn't work on the first attempt, and that what I want to share to you.

Let's get started

I build a new VirtualBox virtual machine (VM) using an ISO of Windows 10, then install all the updates to get the anniversary edition. I afterward went to visualstudio.com to get the Visual Studio 2017 RC and install it with a few components: web, azure, etc. And next when looking for Docker for windows. Same here super easy just need to download and install the MSO from docker.com and voila... or not. Like specified in the Docker documentation the installer noticed that Hyper-V was not present in my environment and suggested installing it and reboot the machine. Until then, everything was going fine, but when Docker try to start, after the reboot, I got an error message:

Error creating machine: Error in driver during machine creation: This computer doesn't have VT-X/AMD-v enabled. Enabling it in the BIOS is mandatory

However, the setting was set, as you can see in the screenshot.



After a short investigation, I found that VirtualBox was not supporting nested virtualization, yet. Well, let's try another virtualization platform then.

First Success

I created a new VM under VMware Player this time and repeated all the steps as before. After the reboot, the little white whale in the system didn't prompt any error... Was it working? Let's try to create a Nginx Hello-world container to check. And the answer was YES!

Docker and Azure

Now let's get serious. It's time to do the left click on the project and add Docker Project Support. Then press F5 to try it locally.

ERROR: for mystuff Cannot create container for service mystuff: C: drive is not shared. Please share it in Docker for Windows Settings Encountered errors while bringing up the project..

I got too excited, and I had skipped some reading... It's written black on white in the documentation that you need to share some drive to make it work.



After that it when smoothly and in few minutes, I got my website to run in a Docker container accessible via localhost:32768. Great! Now to get it available on Azure, I need to create a registry where all the images will be saved. To do that simply left click again on the project, and select Publish. The guided dialog will popup and help you to create and deploy your things. An interesting point is before clicking the "Create" button you will have the option to export your template as a json file, very useful. But for now click Create, then Publish.



After a moment you should have a new browser window that will popup with your App now deployed in Azure.



Wow! That was really a great experience. It's definitely a very simple process to get started. I really appreciate the Docker for Windows and Kitematic user interface. Of course, all the command-line are still available, but now I also have another option for the day where I feel more for clicking instead of typing.



Let's build it and ship it, from any platform to the cloud!

Reading Notes #257

Suggestion of the week

• Microsoft Connect(); 2016 Recap (Joseph Hill) - Three full day of great content. However, if you are like me, you didn't that much free time. Fortunately, all the presentations are available in video on demand. You need a summary because even if the keynote was really good... it is still 2h30, this post is the place to start.

Cloud

• .NET Web Development and Tools Blog (Jeffrey T. Fritz) - Really cool tutorial with Visual studio, Docker, and Azure that repeat the Connect keynote demo.
  
• Five Days of Azure Functions (James Chambers) - Nice post to know more about these Azure functions that everyone is talking about.
  
• Azure App Services Continuous Delivery (Gopinath C) - This post explains how easy it is to setup a continuous integration with Azure.

Programming

• Visual Studio 2017 Release Candidate (John Montgomery) - More details about all the new stuff announced this week related to VS.
  
• The expanding Visual Studio family of products - Another post that lists all the new Visual Studio's news for the week.
  
• Using MongoDB with Web API and ASP.NET Core (Mahesh Sabnis) - Dotnet core is now much more stable and so much more performant. It worth to try it.
  
• Visual Studio Code just keeps getting better - with extensions (Scott Hanselman) - Visual Studio Code is awesome; get a list of some cool extensions in this post.

Miscellaneous

• 8 million GitHub profiles were leaked from GeekedIn's MongoDB - here's how to see yours (Troy Hunt) - Interesting post about a leak of information related to Github account.
  
• Reconnect Outlook 2016 or Outlook 2013 to Outlook.com to fix issues after Outlook.com upgrade - Outllook.com is doing a facelift. That an important upgrade could impact your access to it. If you are syncing it from Outlook on your desktop. This post explains what to do, when to it, and how to proceed.
  
• Docs.microsoft.com - I didn't have the chance to look yet, but now that have done it... Wow great job, and well organized.

ReadingNotes #256

Cloud

• Bots are the new Apps (Alexandre Brisebois) - This interesting post answers many questions and probably will make yourself ask as much.
• Azure Relay – cross-platform, open-protocol connections (Clemens Vasters) - Plenty of new services available on Azure that will help us in our integration solution.
• Visual Studio Talk Show : 0200 - Stephane Lapointe - Azure Functions - Cool podcast episode where you learn more about what serverless really means.

Programming

• Docker Container Anti Patterns (Arun Gupta) - 12 great anti-patterns to use with containers.
• Using dotnet watch test for continuous testing with .NET Core and XUnit.net (Scott Hanselman) - Nice tutorial that shows the next step after the Hello word…
• Entity Framework Tips and Tricks (Robert Green) - Awesome video from the queen of EF herself.
• The Source of Truth: The Role of Repositories in DevOps (Kraig Brockschmidt) - Very interesting article about devops real word.
• Data Points - Run EF Core on Both .NET Framework and .NET Core (Julia Lermans) - Great article that shows how to use the stuff we like all together, the good way.

Miscellaneous

• Automated notifications from Azure Monitor for Atlassian JIRA (Paul Bouwer) - Really cool integration.