Reading Notes #247

23Cloud


Programming


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Reading Notes #246

IMG_20160826_115405Cloud


Programming


Databases


Miscellaneous


Reading Notes #245

Cloud


Miscellaneous


Reading Notes #244

cakeWin10Cloud


Programming


Miscellaneous



Everything we Should Know About the new Azure Usage And Billing (AUBI) Portal

(Ce billet en aussi disponible en français.)

If one image is worth a thousand words, then it's incredible the amount of information you have in Azure Usage And Billing (AUBI). This portal is a open-source project that has been announced a few weeks ago. In this post, I will share my first impressions about it.

Portal

The project is still young, but every alive. When I installed it, I had one or two minor issues, but by the time I wrote this post all of them were already fixed.

Where it is?

The Azure Usage And Billing site is not a website like portal.azure.com; it consists of a solution you need to deploy in an Azure subscription. It doesn't require to be the subscription you wish to monitor, just a subscription you have access. The solution contains: two web sides with both Application Insights and one also with webjobs, an SQL Database, a storage account and you will also need to deploy a Power BI report.

resourcesgroup

All of it can be easily deployed using the PowerShell script and Azure Resource Manager (ARM) template included. Only a few manual steps will be required. Hopefully, a very clear and completed documentation is available in video or written. Both present on the Github project page.

What can I do with it?

Once fully deployed, you will need to navigate to your instance of the Registration portal (ex: http://frankregistrationv12.azurewebsites.net) and register all the subscriptions you want. After the webjobs are finished bringing all the data, they will all be available in the Power BI Reports.
Power BI does an incredible work by showing all the information about your subscription(s). A very useful point here is that all information present in the dashboard is interactive! Whatever you select simply one or many subscriptions or only a specific category of Azure service, all the other tiles will be automatically adjusted.

Aubi_800

What's Next?

If it's not already done, I highly recommend installing the AUBI portal and start enjoying the detail of all that information available to you without any effort, and presented in such a beautiful way. For all the details about the prerequisites or the install procedure got to the Github project page.



Reference:



Reading Notes #243

valutoBusinessSuggestion of the week


Cloud


Programming


Miscellaneous



Reading Notes #242

mapCloud


Programming

  • Exploring dotnet new with .NET Core (Scott Hanselman) - I discover the different types in dotnet new command during Julie Lerman's talk at DevTeach and now this post shows a list of incredible opportunities.

Miscellaneous


Reading Notes #241

IMG_20160711_083348Cloud


Programming


Miscellaneous


Create and Deploy .NET Core WebApp to Azure from Linux

(Ce billet en aussi disponible en français.)

The other day, I was glued to my PC, and I had spare time (yah, I know very unusual). Since .Net Core 1.0 was just released few days before, I decide to give it a try. To add an extra layer of fun in the mix, I decided to do it from my Ubuntu VM. In less than 15 minutes, everything was done! I was so impressed I knew I needed to talk about it. That's exactly what this post is about.

The preparation

Before we get started, it's important to know which version of Ubuntu you are using, because some commands will be slightly different. To know the version you are running you simply need to click the gear in the top right of the desktop screen and select About this Computer. In my case, since I'm using Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, I will be using command related to this version. If you are using a different version, please refer to .NET Core documentation.

ubuntu_version

Now we need to install .Net Core. Nothing more easy. Open a Terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and type those three commands:

# Setup the apt-get feed adding dotnet as repo
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://apt-mo.trafficmanager.net/repos/dotnet/ trusty main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/dotnetdev.list'
apt-key adv --keyserver apt-mo.trafficmanager.net --recv-keys 417A0893

# Get the latest packages
apt-get update

# Install .NET Core SDK
sudo apt-get install dotnet-dev-1.0.0-preview2-003121
Once it's all done you can type dotnet --info and you should see something like that.

dotnet_info


Create the Local WebApp

From the same Terminal we will create an empty folder for our solution and move into it. Execute these commands.
mkdir demodotnetweb
cd demodotnetweb
We now want to create our new web project. This is done by the command dotnet new, but we need to specify the type otherwise it will create a console application.
dotnet new -t web
Now to download all the references (nuget packages) of our project required, execute the following command:
dotnet restore
Base on the speed of your Internet connection and how many dependencies are required, this can take from few seconds to more than one minute.
To test if our solution works locally type the command:
dotnet run
That will compile our solution and start an AspNetCore Internal hosting. Launch a web browser and go to http://localhost:5000 to see the App in action.

dotnetcore_localhost

Deploy to Azure

To deploy our new project to the cloud, we will use the continuous deployment capability of Azure. First, navigate to portal.azure.com and create a Web App.

create_webApp

Once the the application is created, you should see the This web app as been created message when you navigate to the [nameofWebApp].azurewebsites.net

successfully_created

It's now time to add a local Git repository. In the WebApp Settings select Deployment source. Click on the Configure Required Settings, then select the Local Git Repository option.

add_source_control

After setting the user credential for the repository, we can get the URL from the Essential section.

repourl

Back to our Ubuntu Terminal, we will have to execute these commands:

# create a git repository
git init
# commit all files
git commit -m "Init"

# Add the remote repository
git remote add azure https://username@demowebcore.scm.azurewebsites.net:443/demowebcore.git

# Push the code to the remote
git push azure master
After a minute or so you should have your WebApp online!

dotnetcore_azure


Voila! That was fun!.

Reading Notes #240

Cloud


Programming


Data


Miscellaneous


Reading Notes #239

2016-07-04_05-54-55Cloud


Programming


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Reading Notes #238

docker_ascii_artCloud


Programming


Miscellaneous

  • Back to my core - In this post, Darrel shares the beginning of a new adventure... Congradulation to you and looking forward to reading again from you. Microsoft gained a really good developer.


Reading Notes #237

2016-06-20_06-39-16Cloud


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.

Automating Docker Deployment with Azure Resource Manager

Recently, I had to build a solution where Docker container were appropriate. The idea behind the container is that once there are built you just have to run it. While it's true, my journey was not exactly that, nothing dramatic, only few gotchas that I will explain while sharing my journey.

The Goal

The solution is classic, and this post will focus on a single Virtual Machine (VM). The Linux VM needs a container that automatically runs when the VM starts. Some files first download from a secure location (Azure blob storage) then passed to the container. The solution is deployed using Azure resources manager (ARM). For the simplicity, I will use Nginx container but the same principle applies to any container. Here is the diagram of the solution.

Docker-in-Azure2

The Solution

I decided to use Azure CLI to deploy since this will be also the command-line used inside the Linux VM, but Azure PowerShell could do the same. We will be deploying an ARM template containing a Linux VM, and two VM-Extension: DockerExtension and CustomScriptForLinux. Once the VM is provisioned, a bash script will be downloaded by CustomScriptForLinux extension from the secure Azure blob storage myprojectsafe, then executed.

Reading Notes #235

ImaginationSuggestion of the week


Cloud


What's your plan B when the Azure Portal is not responding

(Ce billet en aussi disponible en français.)

You are about to test the last version of your solution. You just need to change some configuration in the Micosoft Azure Portal, and you are good to go. To do it, you log in the portal at http://portal.azure.com and navigate to your component and... Error! What you see is a little sad cloud.

OneSadCloud

The Problem

This just happened to the team I'm working with. They needed to change the traffic manager's endpoint to do a traffic test. Unfortunately, the grid that contains the Endpoint was in a bad status and was not available. It looked like a deadened!

ManySadClouds

But it is really? Of course not. Here what you can do.

The Solution

Remember Microsoft is sharing the same API the Azure portal is using. That the beauty of the Azure Portal, you can use it has a convivial way to do your what you need, or you can access it via many different SDKs that are available today: .Net, Java, Node.js, Php, Python, Ruby and more! You also have command line tools that could help to manage your Azure services and apps using scripts.
To know more about all the SDK available or the command-line refer to the Azure SDKs documentation pages online.

Remember

This time we were in a Windows environment, and we needed to modify one Endpoint of a Taffic Manager. Here what we did using Azure PowerShell Cmdlets:

# Login to our account
Login-AzureRmAccount

# Set the context we will work in. Use Get-AzureRmSubscription to list all your subscriptions. 
Set-AzureRmContext -SubscriptionName "MySubscriptionName"

# List All Traffic Manager Profile 
Azure Get-AzureTrafficManagerProfile 

# Load our endpoint in a variable, change the value we need and put it back.
$endpoint = Get-AzureRmTrafficManagerEndpoint -Name myendpoint -ProfileName myprofile -ResourceGroupName "MyResourceGroupName" -Type ExternalEndpoints
$endpoint.Weight = 50
Set-AzureRmTrafficManagerEndpoint -TrafficManagerEndpoint $endpoint


In this case, we used the Azure Resource Manager (ARM) commands, but all the commands are also available in the service mode. To know more about how to deploy with ARM you can read my previous post. To see all the command available supported with ARM to configure your solution, go see the documentation online.
Happy testing!


References: