Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win (Jocko Willink, Leif Babin) - Very interesting book. Yes, it contains a lot of battle details, and first I was not sure, but then things "fall" all in place when you understand what the story was "demonstrating." It also contains more business focus examples. Everything is very clear, well explained in plain English.
Your Must-Have PowerShell Aliases for Docker (Elton Stoneman) - This post is gold! Seriously, it has a lot of really good code snippet ready to use and if gave me so many ideas...
The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything...Fast (Josh Kaufman) - That was a very interesting book. I devoured it much faster than I thought! As I was reading it, I was thinking... hey as a developer/programmer I already do a lot of those things... Things change so fast, technology changes... And a few pages later, the author was saying the same thing. :) It looks like we can adapt to many deferent situations. The author share with us a few journeys as he was learning new stuff. While I may not be interested to learn how to play to Go, I found all part of the book very interesting as those journeys a pact with tons of information.
ISBN: 1591845556 (ISBN13: 9781591845553)
Node.js Everywhere with Environment Variables! (John Papa) - Wow! This awesome post brings you from zero to hero with steps of a extreme clarity. If you are interested in Node.js it a must.
Cloud
Azure Functions Contact Form HTTP Trigger (Tom Faltesek) - A really interesting and useful utilization of an Azure Function to boost an existing solution (in this case a blog)
Building a Web App With Yeoman (Oscar Salas) - A very complete and detailed post about yeoman. What it is, what it can do, how to install it. The only thing missing could be one final example to get started.
The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business (Josh Kaufman) - An interesting book that helps to get in the mood, get prepared, and maybe for some whom weren't sure yet about the idea of a personal MBA (compare to the regular one)... Help to start planning and get moving. This book isn't an one book miracle MBA certification, but most likely a really good way to understand the journey the reader is about to start. The complete list of books to achieve this adventure is constantly updated and is available online.
For a project I just started, I need to create Azure resources from code. In fact, I want to create an Azure Container Instance. I already know how to create a container from Logic Apps and Azure CLI/PowerShell, but I was looking to create it inside an Azure Function. After a quick research online, I found the Azure Management Libraries for .NET (aka Fluent API) a project available on Github that do just that (and so much more)!
In this post, I will share with you how this library work and the result of my test.
The Goal
For this demo, I will create a .Net Core console application that creates an Azure Containter Instance (ACI). After it should be easy to take this code and migrate to an Azure Function or anywhere else.
The Console Application
Let's create a simple console application with the following command: dotnet new console -o AzFluentDemo cd AzFluentDemo dotnet add package microsoft.azure.management.fluent The last command will use the nuget package available online an add it to our solution. Now we need a service principal so our application could access the Azure subscription. A since way to create one is the use Azure CLI az ad sp create-for-rbac --sdk-auth > my.azureauth This will create an Active Directory (AD) Service Principal (SP) and write the content into the file my.azureauth. Perfect, now open the solution, for this kind of project, I like to use Visual Studio Code so code . will do the work for me. Replace the content of the Program.cs file by the following code.
using System;
using Microsoft.Azure.Management.Fluent;
using Microsoft.Azure.Management.ResourceManager.Fluent;
using Microsoft.Azure.Management.ResourceManager.Fluent.Core;
namespace AzFluentDemo
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string authFilePath = "/home/frank/Dev/AzFluentDemo/my.azureauth";
string resourceGroupName = "cloud5mins";
string containerGroupName = "frank-containers";
string containerImage = "microsoft/aci-helloworld";
// Set Context
IAzure azure = Azure.Authenticate(authFilePath).WithDefaultSubscription();
ISubscription sub;
sub = azure.GetCurrentSubscription();
Console.WriteLine($"Authenticated with subscription '{sub.DisplayName}' (ID: {sub.SubscriptionId})");
// Create ResoureGroup
azure.ResourceGroups.Define(resourceGroupName)
.WithRegion(Region.USEast)
.Create();
// Create Container instance
IResourceGroup resGroup = azure.ResourceGroups.GetByName(resourceGroupName);
Region azureRegion = resGroup.Region;
// Create the container group
var containerGroup = azure.ContainerGroups.Define(containerGroupName)
.WithRegion(azureRegion)
.WithExistingResourceGroup(resourceGroupName)
.WithLinux()
.WithPublicImageRegistryOnly()
.WithoutVolume()
.DefineContainerInstance(containerGroupName + "-1")
.WithImage(containerImage)
.WithExternalTcpPort(80)
.WithCpuCoreCount(1.0)
.WithMemorySizeInGB(1)
.Attach()
.WithDnsPrefix(containerGroupName)
.Create();
Console.WriteLine($"Soon Available at http://{containerGroup.Fqdn}");
}
}
}
In the first row, I declare a few constants. The path of the service principal created earlier, resource group name, the container group name, and the image I will use. For this demo aci-helloworld. Then we get access with the Azure.Authenticate. Once we got access, it's y easy and the intellisense is fantastic! I don't think I need to explain the rest of the code as it already self-explanatory.
Got an Error?
While running you main in contour an error message complaining about the namespace not being registered or something like that ( I'm sorry I did not note the error message). You only need to register it with the command:
az provider register --namespace Microsoft.ContainerInstance
It will take a few minutes. To see if it's done you can execute this command:
az provider show -n Microsoft.ContainerInstance --query "registrationState"
Wrap it up
And voila! If you do a dotnet run after a minute or two, you will have a new web application running inside a container available from http://frank=containers.eastus.azurecontainer.io. It's now very easy to take that code and bring it to an Azure Function or in any .Net Core Application that runs anywhere (Linux, Windows, Mac Os, web, containers, etc.)!
Ghost Contact Form with Azure Functions (Tom Faltesek) - Being myself a user of both Ghost and Azure function I'm very excited about this new series of posts.
Building offline Blazor application (Gunnar Peipman) - A very interesting post about an experience done with Blazor. It's usually during those that I learn the most.
Introducing the Cake.Discord Addin (Gary Ewan Park) - A few weeks ago I used cake to deploy in Azure and I was very impressed by cake. Its great to see this project continues to evolve and get new addin is very cool.
Marking up the Web with ASP.NET Core and Markdown (Rick Strahl) - So many great ideas and cool projects in this article. If you use Markdown it's a must. If you are not using markdown, hmmm... what?!
Fast Focus (Damon Zahariades) - Great short book. Not like the other of his kind, this book goes right to the point and offers actionable item. It's very practical and accessible to everyone. At the end of the book, you know what to do to get started and improve your focus.
I'm about to start a new project and want to have it with a continuous integration (CI) and continuous deployment (CD). I've been using VSTS for a while now but didn't have the chance to try the new pipelines. If you didn't know VSTS as been rebranded/ redefined as Azure Devops. Before going in with the real thing I decided to give it a try with a simple project. This post is to relay those first steps.
Get Started
Let's start by creating our Azure Devops project. Navigate to Dev.Azure.com and if you don't already have an account create one it's free! Once you are logged-in, create a new project by clicking the New project blue button in the top right corner.
You will need to provide a unique name and a few simple information.
The Application
First thing first, we need an application. For this post, I will be using a simple Asp.Net Core site. For the repository, we have options. AzureDevOps (ADOps) support many repository: GitHub, Bitbucket, private Git and its own. Because the project I've created is public I decided to keep the code at the same place as everything else.
From the left menu, select Repos. From here if the code already exist just add a remote repository, or clone the empty one on your local machine, the usual. Create and add your code to that repository.
The Azure WebApp
The next step is to create a placeholder for our CD pipeline. We will create an empty shell of a web application in Azure with these three Azure CLI commands. You can execute them locally or from the Cloud Shell. (Don't forget to validate that you are in the good subscription)
az group create --name simplegroup --location eastus
az appservice plan create --name simpleplan --resource-group simplegroup --sku FREE
az webapp create --name simplefrankweb --resource-group simplegroup --plan simpleplan
The first command will create a Resource group. Then inside of this group we create a service plan, and finally we create a webapp to the mix.
Continuous Integration
The goal is to have the code to get to compile at every commit. From the left menubar, select Pipelines, and click the create new button. The first step is to identify where our code is, as you can see Azure DevOps is flexible and accept code from outside.
Select the exact repository.
This third step displays the YAML code that defines your pipeline. At this point, the file is not complete, but it's enough to build, we will come back to it later. Click the Add button to add the azure-pipelines.yml file at the root level of your repository.
The build pipeline is ready click the Run button to execute it for the first time. Now at every commit, the build will be triggered. To see the status of your build just on to into the build section from the left menubar.
Continuous Deployment
Great, our code gets to compile at every commit. It would be nice if the code could also be automatically deployed into our dev environment. To achieve that we need to create a Release Pipeline. And our pipeline will need artifacts. We will edit the azure-pipelines.yml to add two new tasks. You can do this directly in the online repository or just from your local machine; remember the file is at the root. Add these commands:
Those two tasks are to publish our application (package it), and make it available in our Artifact folder. To learn more about the type of command available and see example have a look the excellent documentation at: https://docs.microsoft.com/azure/devops/pipelines/languages/dotnet-core. Once you are done, save and commit (and push if it was local).
From the left menubar, click on e the Pipeles, select Release, and clienk the New Release blue button. Select the template that matches your application. For this post Azure App Service deployment is the one we need.
The next thing to will be to rename the environment for something else than Stage 1, I named mine "to Azure" but it could be dev, prod or anything that make sense for you. Click on the Add an Artifact button.
You will now specify to the pipeline were to pick the artifacts it will deploy. In this case, we want the "output" of our latest build. And I renamed the Source alias as Drop.
To get our continuous deployment (CD) we need to enable that trigger by clicking on the little lightning bolt and enabled it.
The last step to configure the Release pipeline is to specify a destination. By clicking on the "1 job, 1 task" in the middle of the screen (with the little red exclamation point in a circle), that will open the window where we will do that.
Select the subscription you would like to use, and then click on the Authaurize button on the right. Once it's done go change the App Service Name. Click on it and wait 2-3 seconds you should see the app we created with our Azure CLI display. Select it, and voila!
Now add a ReadMe.md file by checking out the code on your local machine or directly in Azure DevOps. Grab a badge from the build and/or release and copy paste it in the ReadMe. To get the code snippet of your badge, go to your build/ release definition, and click the ellipse button. Select Status badge and copy the snippet that matches your destination file (in our case the Markdown).
Now when you go to the Overview page, you will have a nice badge that informed you. It also works on any web page just use the HTML snippet instead.
Installing Azure Data Studio (Steve Jones ) - A quick review of the tool. Personally, I love it, but I don't spend as much time in it as I use too when working with MSMS.
elementary OS 5 Juno is Here – elementary – Medium (Cassidy James Blaede) - ELementary was already one of my favorite Linux distribution. With this new version named Juno it's just... Hmmmm so smooth and beautiful. Try it you will see.
Creating the perfect MVP Summit (Charles Sterling) - The MVP summit is a very special event. However, these suggestions are also applicable to other technical event.
Cloud
Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win (Jocko Willink, Leif Babin) - Very interesting book. Yes, it contains a lot of battle details, and first I was not sure, but then things "fall" all in place when you understand what the story was "demonstrating." It also contains more business focus examples. Everything is very clear, well explained in plain English.
Suggestion of the week
The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything...Fast
Node.js Everywhere with Environment Variables!
The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business
Cloud