Showing posts with label vm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vm. Show all posts

Reading Notes #324

Cloud

IMG_20180421_092215


Programming



Miscellaneous



Books


Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by [Tracy, Brian]Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time

Author: Brian Tracy

A short book that pushes to action. I really enjoyed it. A book to read and read again.

ASIN: B01MYEM8SZ








Reading Notes #323

Suggestion of the week


Cloud


Programming


Miscellaneous


Databases


Books


This book doesn't age! 

This book may be old, but it's still incredibly true. I loved the way the reader was speaking and the rich vocabulary. It's definitely a must.

ASIN: B003WEAI4E







Reading Notes #303

logo-glyphSuggestion of the week

  • Writing tests in Postman (joyce) - With all the connected things and all the API in our system, this post shows a brilliant and simple way to test all those external calls.

Cloud


Programming


Data


Miscellaneous




Reading Notes #302

Autumn

Cloud


Programming


Data


Miscellaneous




Reading Notes #297

Jekyll_AppService

Suggestion of the week

  • How to uninstall Scrum (Erwin Verweij) - When you will read that post (because you must read it... Seriously), you will smile, giggle and maybe even laugh.


Cloud


Programming


Miscellaneous





Reading Notes #289

IMG_20170710_092837

Cloud


Programming


Databases

  • Migrating to Azure SQL Database (Gavin Payne) - Very interesting and complete post that regroups references and gives details about some of the alternatives when it's migration time.


Reading Notes #276

roslynSuggestion of the week


Cloud


Programming


Miscellaneous

Reading Notes #272

Show_me_the_wayCloud


Programming


Databases



Reading Notes #267

IMG_20170208_201247Cloud


Programming


Miscellaneous




Reading Notes #258

AzureAdvisorSuggestion 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


Programming



Reading Notes #253

2016-10-17_09-17-05Suggestion of the week


Cloud


Programming


Databases



Reading Notes #252

ReadingNotesAppCloud

  • Azure Subscription Migration to CSP (Kirill Kotlyarenko) - Excellent post that explains the differences between the different types and how to migrate ... with a minimum of pain.
  • New lower Azure pricing (Takeshi Numoto) - Really good news more VMs types and lower prices.
  • Storing and using secrets in Azure (Bertrand Le Roy) - This p is great tutorial that explains all h steps to configure use the Azure Vault, when our secrets need more then sits in a config file.

Programming


Databases

  • Avoid ORDER BY in SQL Server views (Aaron Bertrand) - Sometimes we need workarounds to bend some services to our wishes, but we must keep in mind the real best practices.



Reading Notes #251

CAW8uq8UwAA_ffsCloud


Programming


Miscellaneous



Reading Notes #247

23Cloud


Programming


Miscellaneous

Reading Notes #236


WhyAzureCLISuggestion of the week


Cloud


Programming


Miscellaneous

  • Happiness is DevOps’ Cornerstone (Alexandre Brisebois) - Interesting post that asks a lot of questions... I would like to see some graph or pie chart about our answers.
  • 5 Habits that Help Code Quality (View all posts by Erik Dietrich) - Yet another post about how to code better, but this one is refreshing. It explains why the opposite would be harmful and also give us a training plan for better chance of success.
  • What’s in your highlights folder? (Marc Gagne) - Because life is not only mistakes and bad luck.Here good tips to help you giving some sunshine into your life when needed.

Reading Notes #235

ImaginationSuggestion of the week


Cloud


Reading Notes #234

tree in a blue skySuggestion of the week


Cloud


Programming


Miscellaneous



Azure Resource Manager (ARM) for beginners

(Ce billet en aussi disponible en français: Azure Resource Manager (ARM) pour débutants)

You know that image where you see people pulling a cart with square wheels, a man on the side wants to show them a circle wheel but the group reply they are too busy to care... Well, that was me with Azure Resource Manager (ARM). I knew it was good, but it looks too complicated, so I was waiting. Last weekend, I decided it was enough I needed to learn it! Right after few minutes, you cannot imagine my disappointment! It's so simple, so powerful and also so fast. This post explains how to deploy an ARM template, and how it works.

squarewheels

5 easy steps to deploy our first ARM template


To get started the easiest way possible I decided to use Visual Studio. For this sample let's create simple Windows Virtual Machine (VM). Only five steps are required to do it:

Step #1 - Create an Azure Resource Project

From Visual Studio create a new project of type Azure Resource Group. Be sure to have already installed on your machine the latest version of Azure SDK and Visual Studio updates.

step-1-Create_arm_project.1

Step #2 - Select the Arm template

This is where we select what we want in our template. Many options are available in VisualStudio and a lot more can be found on Github at: Azure Arm Git Template. In our case, let's select the sample Windows Virtual Machine, and click the Ok button.

step-2-Select_Tempplate

Step #3 - Deploy the new template

Visual Studio will now generate multiple files, we will come back to it later, right now we will only deploy our solution. Right-click on the project et select Deploy.

step-3-Start_deploy

Step #4 - Configure the deployment

Our first deployment is mostly ready, we just need to specify few details like the subscription and the resource group. Once you click Deploy, one last thing will be asked: the adminPassword.

step-4-Config_deploy

Step #5 (the easiest one) - Enjoy

Voila! After few minutes, the virtual machine will be created, and we should be able to connect remotely to it.

Let's explain the magic


When the project was created, three folders were populated: Script, Template, and Tools. The last one is a bit obvious, it contains AzCopy, a tool to copy files. If you don't know AzCopy, you can learn more in a post I wrote recently.

Open the Deploy-AzureResourceGroup.ps1 contained in the Scripts folder. It's this script that will do all the hard lifting to deploy our rescourceGroup. If we look a bit closer, you will notice some parameters are declared, at the beginning of the file. Two of then should catch our attention.
    [string] $TemplateFile = '..\Templates\WindowsVirtualMachine.json',
    [string] $TemplateParametersFile = '..\Templates\WindowsVirtualMachine.parameters.json',

TemplateFile is the path of our template (the one we selected previously), and the second TemplateParametersFile will contained all the parameters values to fill the blank of our template. This will be especially useful to deploy the same template in a different environment. In fact, this is a really big advantage. You can deploy the exact same schema to your development and production environment just by having two parameters.json file.

Let's have a peek at the template, in this case WindowsVirtualMachine.json. It's a 'json' file, so it's human-friendly, but it can be a bit scary at first. In the image just below, I collapse the collections to be able to emphases the visibility of the three prime elements: parameters, variables, and resources.

jsonTemplate

We already know parameters, so let's jump the variables. This section contains a list of key pair value like: imagePublisher, vmSize, virtualNetworkName, diagnosticsStorageAccountName, etc. Those can be fixed value or dynamics by using other variables or parameters. Here some example:
    "vmSize": "Standard_A2"
    "vhdStorageName": "[concat('vhdstorage', uniqueString(resourceGroup().id))]"
    "virtualNetworkName": "[parameters('virtualNetworkName')]"

Last section but not least: the resources. This is where everything is put together to build the solution you will deploy. The resources are defined by specifying their type, name, and properties. You can assign any value from a static string, parameter value or a variable value.

Now that we know it works, why should we use it


Explain all the advantages to use ARM template could be a post by itself, and go further of the scope of that post. However, here few reasons:
  • A template file is light and easy to keep in a repository.
  • It's very simple to have the exact same template deployed in multiple environments.
  • ARM templates are really fast to deploy.
  • Easy to edit/ customize/ expand.
  • Easy to delete.

In Video Please


If you prefer, I also have a video version of this post.



What's Next


This post was voluntary very simple to be easy to understand. Now it's your turn deploy a modest schema or something more complex. Many different templates can be found at various places: Visual Studio, Azure Arm Git Template, and Azure Quickstart Templates. Great tools exist also to help you to visualize or edit these templates: Azure Resource Explorer and Download Azure Resource Manager Tools for VS Code

Resources:

~ Frank


Reading Notes #223

P1020050Cloud


Databases


Programming


Miscellaneous



Reading Notes #222

hourglassSuggestion of the week


Cloud


Data