Avoiding Azure Functions Cold Starts (Mark Heath) - Does cold starts are affecting your solutions? Maybe not, but if they are this post lists three scenarios to reduce them as must as possible.
A really interesting book that helps to focus and keep in mind the most important. I didn't read it with a purpose of business really, but it did make me remember past experiences and it was easy to make the relationship between success and when the story was clear. Take the time to read it, do the exercises/ reflections required... it's worth it.
For a project I have, I wanted to validate if containers were easier to use compare to regular code with services in Azure. I needed to refresh myself with Docker, so I decide to do what I thought would be a simple test: Create an Asp.Net Core web site in a container and access it on my machine.
This post is about my journey to finally achieve this goal, as you may guess it didn't work on the first attempt.
The Goal
One reason why I was looking at containers, it's because it's supposed to be working everywhere right? Well yes but sometimes with a little of effort. The goal here is to be able to run the same container on my main PC, my surface, a Linux VM and of course in Azure.
The context
I have a different setup on my main machine and on my surface. On my PC, I'm using VirtualBox for my VMs so I'm not running Docker for windows, but Docker Toolbox. This flavor (older version) of Docker will create a VM in VitualBox instead of Hyper-V. I couldn't use Docker for Windows like on my Surface, because the two virtualization softwares don't run side by side.
I also wanted to use only tools available on each of this platform, so I decided not to use Visual Studio IDE (the big one). Moreover, I wanted to understand what was happening so I didn't want too much magic involve. Visual Studio is a fantastic tool and I love it. :)
Installing Docker
I needed to install Docker on my Surface. I downloaded Docker Community Edition (CE), and because Hyper-V was already installed everything ran smoothly. On Windows, you need to share the "C" drive from the Docker setting. However, I was getting a strange "bug" when trying to share mine. It was asking my to login with AzureAD and was ignoring my request by letting the share drive unchecked.
Thanks to my new friend Tom Chantler, I did search for too long. See the thing is I'm using an AzureAD account to login, and something is not working right at the moment. As explained in Tom's post: Sharing your C drive with Docker for Windows when using Azure Active Directory, to walkaround this situation, I only had to create a new user account with the exact name as my AzureAD account, but without the AzureAD prefix (ex: AzureAD\FBoucher became FBoucher). Once that was done I could share the drive without any issue.
Let's get started with the documentation
The HelloWord container worked like a charm, so I was ready to create my Asp.Net Core website. My reflex was to go on docs.docker.com and follow the instruction from Create a Dockerfile for an ASP.NET Core application. I was probably doing something wrong, because it didn't work. So I decided to start from scratch and do every step manually... I always learn more that way.
Let's start by the beginning
Before moving everything in a container, we need a web application. This can be easily done from the terminal/ command prompt, with the commands:
dotnet new mvc -o dotnetcoredockerappservicedemo
cd dotnetcoredockerappservicedemo
dotnet restore
dotnet publish -c release -o app/ .
Here we create a new folder with a website using the mcv template. I then go in that new folder and restore the Nuget package. To test the we site locally simply use dotnet run. And finally, we build and publish the application into the subfolder app.
Moving to Docker
Now that we have our app it's time to containerize it. We need to add some Docker instruction in a dockerfile. Add a new file name dockerfile (no extension) to the root folder and copy/paste these commandes:
To start Docker with Docker Tool just start the Docker Quickstart Terminal
This instruction will specify how to build our container. First, it will download the image microsoft/aspnetcore or microsoft/dotnet:2.1-aspnetcore-runtime. We specify the work directory, then copy the app folder to app folder inside the container. Finally, we specify the entry point of our application telling it to start with dotnet.
Like Git and it's gitIgnore file docker has the same thing with .dockerignore (no extension). Add that file into your folder to ignore the bin and obj folder.
# .dockerignore
bin\ obj\
Now that the instructions about how to build our container are completed, we can build our container. Execute the following command:
docker build -t dotnetcoredockerappservicedemo .
This will build dotnetcoredockerappservicedemo from the current folder.
Running Docker container locally
Everything is in place, the only thing missing is to run it. If you want to run it locally just go with this command:
docker run -p 8181:80 dotnetcoredockerappservicedemo
On my machine, the port 80 is always used. So I remap the port 80 to 8181, feel free to change it at your convenience. The website will be available at localhost:8181
If you are running Docker Tool (older version of Docker), you need to get the IP of your VM. To get it do
docker-machine ip
Running in the cloud
To run our container into Azure you will need to publish it to the cloud first. It could be on DockerHub or in a private registry on Azure. I decided to go with Azure. First, we need to create a registry, then publish our container.
az group create --name dotnetcoredockerappservicedemo --location eastus
az acr create --resource-group dotnetcoredockerappservicedemo --name frankContainerDemo01 --sku Basic --admin-enabled true
az acr credential show -n frankContainerDemo01
The last command az acr credential show will provides information to tag our container with our repository name and also gives us the credential to be able to push. Of course, you could go to the portal.azure.com and get the information from the Registry's Access Keys blade.
docker tag dotnetcoredockerappservicedemo frankcontainerdemo01.azurecr.io/dotnetcoredockerappservicedemo:v1
Let's connect our docker to our registry, and then push (upload) our container to Azure.
# The https:// is important...
docker login https://frankcontainerdemo01.azurecr.io -u frankContainerDemo01 -p <Password_Retreived>
docker push frankcontainerdemo01.azurecr.io/dotnetcoredockerappservicedemo:v1
Great the container is in Azure. Now let's create a quick webApp to see it. We could also use the Azure Container Instance (ACI) that would be only one command, but because the demo is a website, it won't make sense to use ACI for that.
To get an Application service, we need a Service plan, and then we will create an "empty" webapp. To do that we will specify the runtime without providing any code/binary/container. I wasn't able to create a webapp from a private Azure registry in one command, so this is why I'm doing it in two.
az appservice plan create --name demoplan --resource-group dotnetcoredockerappservicedemo --sku S1 --is-linux
az webapp create -g dotnetcoredockerappservicedemo -p demoplan -n frankdockerdemo --runtime "DOTNETCORE|2.1"
On Windows, I got the following error message: '2.1' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. The PowerShell command line escape "--%" solves the problem: az --% webapp create -g dotnetcoredockerappservicedemo -p demoplan -n frankdockerdemo --runtime "DOTNETCORE|2.1"
If you check the website right now you should have page saying that the site is up but empty. Let's update the container settings with our registry and container settings.
az webapp config container set -n frankdockerdemo -g dotnetcoredockerappservicedemo --docker-custom-image-name frankcontainerdemo01.azurecr.io/dotnetcoredockerappservicedemo:v1 --docker-registry-server-url https://frankcontainerdemo01.azurecr.io --docker-registry-server-user frankContainerDemo01 --docker-registry-server-password <Password_Retreived>
It's works of course!
Conclusion
It's only four steps: create the .Net Core application, package it into a Docker container, publish our container into our Azure Registry, and create an application service base on that container. However, because all this tech are cross-platform, sometimes you get some little tiny differences between the platform, and those could become time-consuming. It was a great little project that turned out to be a lot more than expected, but I learn so much!
I'm very happy with the result... expect more of Docker in the future!
Why Developers Should Install WSL Today (Matt Hyon, August Banks) - I love WSL (aka Bash on Windows). It has evolved, and become something much more. After ready this post you will either install it right away or smile because it's already installed.
Why Responsive Web Design? (Chris Love) - A nice post that explains clearly why you really need to think responsive design, even more in 2018.
The RULES of Blogging (Darren Rowse) - If you are already bloging, or thinking about starting, take two minutes and watch this short video... The rules are.... Simple.
Copy, Download or Upload from-to any combination of Windows, Linux, OS X, or the cloud
Data is and will always be our primary concern. Whether shaped as text files, images, VM VHDs or any other ways, at some point in time, our data will need to be moved. I already wrote about it previously, and the content of this post is still valuable today, but I wanted to share new options and convert all ground (meaning Linux, Windows and OS X).
Scenarios
Here few scenarios why you would want to move data.
Your Microsoft Azure trial is ending, and you wish to keep all the data.
You are creating a new web application, and all those images need to be moved to the Azure subscription.
You have a Virtual Machine that you would like to move to the cloud or to a different subscription.
...
AZCopy
AzCopy is a fantastic command-line tool for copying data to and from Microsoft Azure Blob, File, and Table storage. At the moment, to write this post AzCopy is only available for Windows users. Another solution will be introduced later in this post for Mac and Linux users. Before AzCopy was only available on Windows. However, recently a second version built with .NET Core Framework is available. The commands are very similar but not exactly the same.
AzCopy on Windows
In his simplest expression, an AzCopy command looks like this:
If you earlier have installed an Azure SDK on your machine, you already have it. By default, AzCopy is installed to %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft SDKs\Azure\AzCopy (64-bit Windows) or %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Azure\AzCopy (32-bit Windows).
If you need only AzCopy for a server, you can download the latest version of AzCopy.
Let's see some frequent usage. First let's say you need do move all those images from your server to an Azure blob storage.
These examples were simple, but AzCopy is a very powerful tool. I invite you to type one of the following commands to discover more about using AzCopy:
For detailed command-line help for AzCopy: AzCopy /?
For command-line examples: AzCopy /?:Samples
AzCopy on Linux
Before you could install AzCopy you will need to install .Net Core. This is done very simply with few commands.
It is very similar to the original version, but parameters are using -- and - instead of the / and where a : was required, it's now a simple space.
Uploading to Azure
Here an example, to copy a single file GlobalDevopsBootcamp.jpg to an Azure Blob Storage. We pass the full local path to the file into --source, the destination is the full URI, and finally the destination blob storage key. Of course, you could also use SAS token if you prefer.
To copy the image to a second Azure subscription, we use the command the source is now an Azure Storage URI, and we pass the source and the destination keys:
Azure CLI is a set of cross-platform commands for the Azure Platform. It gives tools to manipulate all Azure components, but this post will focus on azure storage features.
There are two versions of the Azure Command-Line Interface (CLI) currently available:
Azure CLI 2.0: written in Python, conpatible only with the Resource Manager deployment model.
Azure CLI 1.0: written in Node.js, compatible with both the classic and Resource Manager deployment models.
Azure CLI 1.0 is deprecated and should only be used for support with the Azure Service Management (ASM) model with "classic" resources.
Installing Azure CLI
Let's start by installing Azure CLI. Of course, you can download an installer but since everything is evolving very fast with not getting it from Node Package Manager (npm). The install will be the same, you just need to specify the version if you absolutely need Azure CLI 1.0.
sudo npm install azure-cli -g
To keep the previous scenario, let's try to copy all images to a blob storage. Unfortunately, Azure CLI doesn't offer the same flexibility as AzCopy,and you must upload the file one by one. However, to upload all images from a folder, we can easily put the command in a loop.
for f in Documents/images/*.jpg
do
azure storage blob upload -a frankysnotes -k YoMjXMDe+694FGgOaN0oaRdOF6s1ktMgkB6pBx2vnAr8AOXm3HTF7tT0NQWvGrWnWj5m4X1U0HIPUIAA== $f blogimages
done
In the previous command -a was the account name, and -k was the Access key. This two information can easily be found in the Azure portal. From the portal (https://portal.azure.com), select the storage account. In the right band click-on Access keys.
To copy a file (ex: a VM disk aka VHD) from one storage to another one in a different subscription or region, it's really easy. This time we will use the command azure storage blob copy start and the -a and -k are related to our destination.
The nice thing about this command is that it's asynchronous. To see the status of your copy just execute the command azure storage blob copy show
azure storage blob copy show -a frankshare -k YoMjXMDe+694FGgOaN0oPaRdOF6s1ktMgkB6pBx2vnAr8AOXm3HTF7tT0NQVxsqhWvGrWnWj5m4X1U0HIPUIAA== imagesbackup 20151011_151451.MOV
Azure CLI 2.0 (Windows, Linux, OS X, Docker, Cloud Shell)
The Azure CLI 2.0 is Azure's new command-line optimized for managing and administering Azure resources that work against the Azure Resource Manager. Like the previous version, it will work perfectly on Windows, Linux, OS X, Docker but also from the Cloud Shell!
Cloud Shell is available right from the Azure Portal, without any plugging.
Uploading to Azure
The command if the same as the previous version except that now the command is named az. Here an example to upload a single file into an Azure Blob Storage.
Let's now copy the file to another Azure subscription. A think to be aware is that --account-name and --account-key are for the destination, even if it's not specified.
If you prefer, I also have a video version of that post.
One More Thing
Sometimes, we don't need to script things, and a graphic interface is much better. For this kind of situation, the must is the Azure Storage Explorer. It does a lot! Upload, download, and manage blobs, files, queues, tables, and Cosmos DB entities. And it works on Windows, macOS, and Linux!
It's just the beginning
This post was just an introduction to two very powerful tools. I strongly suggest to go read in the official documentation to learn more. Use the comment to share all your questions and suggestion.
Microsoft Azure Stack is ready to order now (Mike Neil) - It worth the time we wait, now hybrid solutions will be so much more simple to create. And I will definitely try that ASDK (dev version)
Nested Virtualization in Azure (Joy Fan) - A VM in a VM, it does sound like the movie Inception, but it's, in fact, very powerful.
Push your images to Azure CDN on publish with gulp (Shayne Boyer) - We all understand that CDN could seriously help our web application. Well, this post will show you that it could be really easy to implement and integrate to your CI/CD.
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.
Windows Insider Program.next() (Dona Sarkar) - The Windows 10 anniversary edition is out since August 2nd. This post is about the community who made that possible, and explains how you could join.
Recently, I got a very unpleasant problem: I needed to remove all my Microsoft Azure accounts from Visual Studio. An error was popping every time Visual Studio was trying to connect to Azure preventing me to anything else. It could happen to everyone, so I decide to share that story so other could save time and energy trying to fix that.
The Context
Long time ago I created my Azure account using my Hotmail account. I modified the administrator to my Outlook.com when it came-up (approx. two years ago). When I installed Azure SKD 2.6, the problem started.
The Error
In Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 or VS 2015 RTM, every time VS was trying to connect to Azure, I was receiving this error message.
Every time Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 or VS 2015 try to connect to Azure...
The Fix
If you only need Visual Studio, remove the "damaged" Azure account. If you need Visual Studio to work with Azure you have two options:
Azure SDK 2.5 will work, if that is an acceptable workaround. You would need to make sure Azure SDK 2.6 was never installed on the machine, otherwise it will still have the offending dll.
Install Azure SDK 2.7 and/or Visual Studio 2015. In my case, it fixed everything!
Visual Studio Code and Docker (Chris Dias [MSFT], Mark Rendle, DvdBrink Sean McBreen [MSFT]) - Nice post, I am happy to see that great plugin are coming.
Recently I add to upgrade an web site running in Azure Webrole from Azure OS famille 1.6 to a more recent version. While the migration was not complicated I encounter some little particularity that I found could be interesting to share.
The Context
The website was a Visual Studio 2010 project using Azure SDK 1.6 and a library call AspNetProvider that was part of Microsoft's sample few years ago to manage session and membership. Using the AspNetProvider library the session was saved in Azure blob storage, and the membership was saved in an SQL database.
The Goal
The application must stay a Visual Studio 2010 project, but using the most-recent Azure SDK and Azure Storage Client as possible.
The Solution
Azure SDK 2.1
Azure.StorageClient 4.0
Universal Provider version 2.1
OS famille 4
The Journey
Migration from SDK 1.6 to SDK 2.1
Azure SDK version 2.1 is the higher version compatible with Visual Studio 2010. And can be downloaded from Microsoft's website. Once it is installed, just open the project in Visual Studio and right-click on the Azure Project. By clicking on the upgrade button the magic will happen. Some errors could stay but the hard work will be done for you.
Migration from AspNetProvider to UniversalProvider
we need to remove all reference to the AspNetProvider library. Just expand the resources node in the Solution Explorer and delete the reference. One thing important is that since we are using Visual Studio 2010 the latest version of the UniversalProvider we can use is 1.2. More recent version are using .Net 4.5 and this is not compatible with the present solution. To get the reference added to the project just execute the following Nugget command:
Install-Package UniversalProvider -version 1.2
Check the web.config file to clean the membership connections.
Migration of the Azure Storage Client
This one is the easiest, just remove the reference in the reference node and then execute the following Nugget Command:
Install-Package Azure.Storage.Client
Migration of the membership data
The AspNetProvider was using prefixed SQL tables: aspnet_user, aspnet_membership, etc. The new membership manager is using another sets of tables. We must migrate the data from one set to the other one. Here a SQL script that will to exactly that. The script can be run multiple times because it will only copie the unmoved data.
-- ========================================================
-- Description: Migrate data from asp_* tables
-- to the new table used by Universal provider
-- ========================================================
DECLARE @CNT_NewTable AS INT
DECLARE @CNT_OldTable AS INT
-- --------------------------------------------------------
-- Applications -------------------------------------------
INSERT INTO dbo.Applications (ApplicationName, ApplicationId, Description)
SELECT n.ApplicationName, n.ApplicationId, n.Description
FROM dbo.aspnet_Applications o
LEFT JOIN dbo.Applications n ON o.ApplicationId = n.ApplicationId
WHERE n.ApplicationId IS NULL
SELECT @CNT_NewTable = Count(1) from dbo.Applications
SELECT @CNT_OldTable = Count(1) from aspnet_Applications
PRINT 'Application Count: ' + CAST(@CNT_NewTable AS VARCHAR) + ' = ' + CAST(@CNT_OldTable AS VARCHAR)
-- --------------------------------------------------------
-- Roles --------------------------------------------------
INSERT INTO dbo.Roles (ApplicationId, RoleId, RoleName, Description)
SELECT o.ApplicationId, o.RoleId, o.RoleName, o.Description
FROM dbo.aspnet_Roles o
LEFT JOIN dbo.Roles n ON o.RoleId = n.RoleId
WHERE n.RoleId IS NULL
SELECT @CNT_NewTable = Count(1) from dbo.Roles
SELECT @CNT_OldTable = Count(1) from aspnet_Roles
PRINT 'Roles Count : ' + CAST(@CNT_NewTable AS VARCHAR) + ' = ' + CAST(@CNT_OldTable AS VARCHAR)
-- --------------------------------------------------------
-- Users --------------------------------------------------
INSERT INTO dbo.Users (ApplicationId, UserId, UserName, IsAnonymous, LastActivityDate)
SELECT o.ApplicationId, o.UserId, o.UserName, o.IsAnonymous, o.LastActivityDate
FROM dbo.aspnet_Users o LEFT JOIN dbo.Users n ON o.UserId = n.UserID
WHERE n.UserID IS NULL
SELECT @CNT_NewTable = Count(1) from dbo.Users
SELECT @CNT_OldTable = Count(1) from aspnet_Users
PRINT 'Users count: ' + CAST(@CNT_NewTable AS VARCHAR) + ' >= ' + CAST(@CNT_OldTable AS VARCHAR)
-- --------------------------------------------------------
-- Memberships --------------------------------------------
INSERT INTO dbo.Memberships (ApplicationId, UserId, Password,
PasswordFormat, PasswordSalt, Email, PasswordQuestion, PasswordAnswer,
IsApproved, IsLockedOut, CreateDate, LastLoginDate, LastPasswordChangedDate,
LastLockoutDate, FailedPasswordAttemptCount,
FailedPasswordAttemptWindowStart, FailedPasswordAnswerAttemptCount,
FailedPasswordAnswerAttemptWindowsStart, Comment)
SELECT o.ApplicationId, o.UserId, o.Password,
o.PasswordFormat, o.PasswordSalt, o.Email, o.PasswordQuestion, o.PasswordAnswer,
o.IsApproved, o.IsLockedOut, o.CreateDate, o.LastLoginDate, o.LastPasswordChangedDate,
o.LastLockoutDate, o.FailedPasswordAttemptCount,
o.FailedPasswordAttemptWindowStart, o.FailedPasswordAnswerAttemptCount,
o.FailedPasswordAnswerAttemptWindowStart, o.Comment
FROM dbo.aspnet_Membership o
LEFT JOIN Memberships n ON o.ApplicationId = n.ApplicationId
AND o.UserId = n.UserId
WHERE n.UserId IS NULL AND n.ApplicationId IS NULL
SELECT @CNT_NewTable = Count(1) from dbo.Memberships
SELECT @CNT_OldTable = Count(1) from aspnet_Membership
PRINT 'Memberships count: ' + CAST(@CNT_NewTable AS VARCHAR) + ' >= ' + CAST(@CNT_OldTable AS VARCHAR)
-- -------------------------------------------------------
-- UsersInRoles ------------------------------------------
TRUNCATE TABLE dbo.UsersInRoles
INSERT INTO dbo.UsersInRoles SELECT * FROM dbo.aspnet_UsersInRoles
SELECT @CNT_NewTable = Count(1) from dbo.UsersInRoles
SELECT @CNT_OldTable = Count(1) from aspnet_UsersInRoles
PRINT 'UsersInRoles count: ' + CAST(@CNT_NewTable AS VARCHAR) + ' >= ' + CAST(@CNT_OldTable AS VARCHAR)
Migration from OSFamilly 1 to 4
Open the file .cscfg and edit the OS Family attribute. It's in the ServiceConfiguration node.
The only step left is to deploy in the staging environment to see if everything is working as expected. would recommend also to plan to upgrade as soon as possible because the Azure SDK 2.1 official retirement date is November 2015. I hope this post could help you, even if you are migrating from and to a different version. Any comments, suggestions and/or questions are welcome.
Cloud
.
Cloud
