Azure – Page 6 – Buchatech.com

Third Pluralsight Course Published – Microsoft Azure Pricing and Support Options

July 17, 2020 by sbuchanan

Today my third Pluralsight course has been published. This course is titled “Microsoft Azure Pricing and Support Options“. It is a part of an AZ-900 learning path that will help you prepare for the Microsoft Azure Fundamentals AZ-900 exam. Learn more about that exam here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/exams/az-900 .

I was excited about this course as it is a part of my day to day focus on Azure. Also, this is a chance to help those that are getting started with Azure. Here is what you will gain from this course:

This course will teach you the fundamental knowledge about the pricing and support options in Azure one of the core skills measured in the AZ-900: Azure Fundamentals exam.

In this course, Microsoft Azure Pricing and Support Options, you’ll learn to estimate the pricing and support of Azure cloud services. First, you’ll explore Azure subscriptions, subscription management, and management groups.

Next, you’ll discover, plan, and manage Azure costs. Finally, you’ll learn how to understand Azure SLA’s, various Azure service lifecycles, and how to select the right support options. When you’re finished with this course, you’ll have the skills and knowledge of Azure pricing and available support needed to estimate Azure costs and select the right support options.

Please check out this new course here: https://app.pluralsight.com/library/courses/microsoft-azure-pricing-support-options

Also, be sure to follow my profile on Pluralsight so you will be notified as I release new courses! I will be releasing more courses soon!

Here is the link to my Pluralsight profile: https://app.pluralsight.com/profile/author/steve-buchanan

Speaking at Inside Azure Management Summit

July 7, 2020 by sbuchanan

I was recently added to the speaker lineup for the “Inside Azure Management Summit” happening on 7/23/2020. This event is a FREE 1-day virtual event. It features the Microsoft cloud experts from the authoring team of “Inside Azure Management” book, Microsoft MVP’s, and community experts from around the world.

Attendees will get a day full of deep-dive technical sessions across a variety of Microsoft cloud topics including:

DevOps and Automation
Cyber Security
Cloud Governance
Migration and Monitoring
Docker and Kubernetes
AI and Identity

The sessions will span a 13-hr period to allow audiences from around the world to join a portion of the event.

I will be giving a session on Azure Policy. Here is my session info:

Session Title:

Azure Policy Insights & Multi-Tag demo via Azure Policy

Session Abstract:

Azure Policy is a great tool when it comes to auditing and ensuring your cloud governance is met. In this session 9 time Microsoft Azure MVP Steve Buchanan is going to take you on a full-speed ride on the ins and outs of Azure Policy and land you with a recipe for handling a multi-tagging strategy with Azure Policy. Some of the key topics you will learn from this session include:

Overview of Azure Policy
Azure Policy Use Cases
How Azure Policy can meet NIST standards
Azure Policy vs RBAC
Overview of Azure Policy Guest Configuration
Tagging and more

Here is the direct link to my session:

https://insideazuremgmt.com/session/azure-policy-insights-multi-tag-demo-via-azure-policy /

Be sure to register for this event to check out all the great sessions including mine on Azure Policy.

Here is the link to the official site:

https://www.insideazuremgmt.com

Here is the link to register:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/inside-azure-management-the-virtual-summit-tickets-109230577598?aff=ebdssbeac

Guest on “Lisa at the Edge” Podcast EP13

June 26, 2020 by sbuchanan

I recently had the honor of being a guest on the “Lisa at the Edge” Podcast. Lisa is a Microsoft Hybrid Cloud Strategist and an influencer in the hybrid cloud community based out of Scotland. She runs a blog and this year she started a popular podcast.

On Lisa’s podcast, she covers Careers in Tech and Microsoft Hybrid Cloud and a range of other topics with experts across the tech community.

This is an episode you don’t want to miss. This was one of the most entertaining podcasts I have been on. It took some interesting turns in regards to topics and very engaging. In the podcast episode Lisa and I talk about:

Evolving your career as technology evolves
Transformation of IT dept to Strategic Business Partner
DevOps
Containers 101
Azure Kubernetes Service
Diversity in tech

You can listen to the episode here:

or here
https://anchor.fm/lisaattheedge/episodes/EP13—Career-Development–Containers-101-and-Diversity-in-Tech-with-Steve-Buchanan-efnjrp

You can stay up to date with what Lisa is doing in the tech community here:

Lisa at the Edge Podcast – – https://anchor.fm/lisaattheedge
Lisa at the Edge Blog – https://lisaattheedge.com/blog/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/lisaattheedge

Use Azure Container Registry with Azure Kubernetes Service

April 13, 2020 by sbuchanan

When working with Containers a common need is to store Container images somewhere. Container Registries are the go-to for this. Docker hub is an example of a Container Registry and it is the most well-known Container Registry.

What is a Container Registry?

A Container Registry is a group of repositories used to store container images. A container repository is used to manage, pull or push container images. A Container Registry does more than a repository in that it has API paths, tasks, scanning for vulnerabilities, digital signature of images, access control rules and more.

Container registries can be public or private. For example, a public registry is Docker Hub and anyone can access its container repositories to pull images. A private registry is one that you would host either on-premises or on a cloud provider. All of the major cloud providers including Azure has a Container Registry offering.

Integrate ACR with AKS

With AKS it is a good idea to use a private container registry to host your container images. The process is used Docker to build your image>push the image to your Azure Container Registry>Pull the image from the registry when deploying a Pod to your AKS cluster.

There are 3 ways to integrate AKS with Azure Container Registry. I typically only use one way and will focus on that in this blog post.

2 of the ways you can integrate AKS with Azure Container Registry. The first is through an Azure AD service principal name (SPN) that assigns the AcrPull role to the SPN. More on this here. You would use this first way in scenarios where you only have one ACR and this will be the default place to pull images from.

The second is to create a Kubernetes ServiceAccount that would be used to pull images when deploying pods. With this you would add “kind: ServiceAccount” to your Kubernetes cluster and it would use the ACR credentials. Then in your pods yaml files you would need to specify the service account for example “serviceAccountName: ExampleServiceAccountName”.

The way I like to integrate AKS with Azure Container Registry is to use Kubernetes Secret of type docker-registry. With this option basically, you create a secret in the Kubernetes cluster for your Azure Container Registry. You then specify the secret in your pod yaml files. This allows you to have multiple container registries to pull from. This option is also quick and easy to setup. Ok.

To get started you need to build your Docker image and push it up to your Azure Container Registry. In this blog post, I will not cover deploying ACR, or building the Docker image assuming you have already done these things. Now let’s set up the ACR and AKS integration using a docker-registry Kubernetes secret.

1. For the first step, you will need the credentials to your Azure Container Registry. To get this go navigate to:

Azure Portal (portal.azure.com) > Container registries > YOURCONTAINERREGISTRY | Access keys

2. The second step push your Docker image up to your ACR.

# Log into the Azure Container Registry
docker login ACRNAMEHERE.azurecr.io -u ACRUSERNAMEHERE -p PASSWORDHERE

# Tag the docker image with ACR
docker tag DOCKERIMAGENAMEHERE ACRNAMEHERE.azurecr.io/DOCKERIMAGENAMEHERE:v1

# Push the image to ACR
docker push ACRNAMEHERE.azurecr.io/DOCKERIMAGENAMEHERE:v1

3. The third step create the docker-registry Kubernetes secret by running following syntax from Azure Cloud Shell:

kubectl create secret docker-registry NEWSECRETNAME --docker-server ACRNAMEHERE.azurecr.io --docker-username ACRUSERNAMEHERE --docker-password YOURPASSWORDGOESHERE

4. The fourth step is to create the Yaml file for your pod. The following is an example:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: myapp
spec:
  containers:
  - name: myapp
    image: ACRNAMEHERE.azurecr.io:myapp:v1
  imagePullSecrets:
  - name: NEWSECRETNAME

The following is an example of a yaml file with a service, deployment, and pod:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: eotdservice
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  ports:
    - port: 80
      targetPort: 80
  selector:
    app: eotd
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: eotddeployment
  labels:
    app: eotd
spec:
  replicas: 4
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: eotd
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: eotd
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: eotd   
        image: ACRNAMEHERE.azurecr.io/eotd:v1
        imagePullPolicy: Always
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80
      imagePullSecrets:
       - name: NEWSECRETNAME

5. The fifth and final step is to deploy the pod to your AKS cluster by running the following syntax from Azure Cloud Shell.

kubectl apply -f YOURPODNAME.yaml

That wraps up this blog post. Thanks for reading and happy containerizing!

Delete Azure App Registrations Script

March 29, 2020 by sbuchanan

When working in my Azure labs I tend to end up with a lot of Azure App Registrations. Recently I had hundreds and hundreds of them in the directory. Its been a while since I cleaned this up. I needed to clean this out and did not want to do this manually through the portal. PowerShell to the rescue.

I pulled together a script that will place your app registrations in a variable. It will then loop through the app registrations to remove them. Note you will be prompted with a confirmation to remove each one.

You can download the script here: https://github.com/Buchatech/Delete-Azure-App-Registrations-

Build & release a Container Image from Azure DevOps to Azure Web App for Containers

March 11, 2020 by sbuchanan

I recently published a blog post on 4sysops.com about Web App for Containers on Azure here: https://4sysops.com/archives/web-app-for-containers-on-azure. That blog post is about the often-overlooked service in Azure that can be used to host a container/s on a web app in Azure App service.

This is a great service if you just need to run a single container or even a couple of containers that you have in Docker Compose. This service is PaaS and abstracts away an orchestration system like Kubernetes. If you need insight into the Azure App Service Web App for Containers service check out the blog post on 4sysops.

In this long blog post I am going to take things a step further and walk-through the build & release of a Container from Azure DevOps to Azure Web App for Containers. The overall goal of this post is to help someone else out if they want to setup a build and release pipeline for building and deploying a container to Azure App Service. We will use a very simple PHP web app I built that will run in the container.

Here are the components that are involved in this scenario:

Azure Container Registry (ACR): We will use this to store our container image. We will be pushing up the container image and pull it back down from the registry as a part of the build and release process.
Azure DevOps (ADO): This is the DevOps tooling we will use to build our container, push it up to ACR, pull it down into our release pipeline and then deploy to our Azure App Service.
App Service Web App for Containers: This is the web server service on Azure that will be used to host our container. Under the hood this will be a container that is running Linux and Apache to host the PHP web app.

Here is the data Flow for our containerized web app:

Deploy the Azure App Service Web App for Containers instance
Deploy the Azure Container Registry
Deploy the Azure DevOps organization and project, create repository to host the code, clone repository in VS Code (Not shown in this blog post. Assume you know how to this up.)
Update the application code (PHP code and Docker image) in Visual Studio code
Commit application code from Visual Studio code to the Azure DevOps repo (Not shown in this blog post. Assume you know how to this up.)
Setup build and then run container build and push the container image to ACR
Setup release pipeline and then kick off the release pipeline pulling down the container image from ACR and deploys the container to the App Service Web App for Containers instance.

Here is a diagram detailing out the build and release process we will be using:

Note that all code used in this blog post is hosted on my GitHub here: https://github.com/Buchatech/EOTD-PHP-APP-DOCKER-CONTAINER

Ok. Let’s get into the setup of core components of the solution and the various parts of the build and release pipeline.

For starters this solution will need a project in Azure DevOps with a repo. Create a project in Azure DevOps and a repo based on Git. Name the repo exerciseoftheday. Next up let’s create the core framework we need in Azure.

Deploy Azure App Service Web App for Containers

Let’s create the Azure App Service Web App for Containers that will be needed. We will need a resource group, an app service plan and then we can setup the app service. The PHP app we will be running is named Exercise Of The Day (EOTD) for short so our resources will use EOTD. Use the following steps to set all of this up.

We will do everything via Azure Cloud Shell. Go to https://shell.azure.com/ or launch Cloud Shell within VS Code.

Run the following Syntax:

# Create a resource group

az group create –name EOTDWebAppRG –location centralus

# Create an Azure App Service plan

az appservice plan create –name EOTDAppServicePlan –resource-group EOTDWebAppRG –sku S1 –is-linux

# Create an Azure App Service Web App for Containers

az webapp create –resource-group EOTDWebAppRG –plan EOTDAppServicePlan –name EOTD –deployment-container-image-name alpine

# Create a deployment slot for the Azure App Service Web App for Containers

az webapp deployment slot create –name EOTD –resource-group EOTDWebAppRG –slot dev –configuration-source EOTD

Deploy Azure Container Registry

Now let’s create the Azure Container Registry. Again, this is where we will store the container image. Run the following Syntax:

# Create Azure Container Registry

az acr create –resource-group EOTDWebAppRG –name eotdacr –sku Basic –admin-enabled false –location centralus

Note the loginServer from the output. This is the FQDN of the registry. Normally we would need this, admin enabled, and the password to log into the registry. In this scenario we won’t need admin enabled or the password because we will be adding a connection to Azure DevOps and the pipelines will handle pushing to and pulling the image from the registry.

When it’s all done you should see the following resources in the new resource group:

Next, we will need to build an application and a container image.

Azure Policy evaluation on-demand PowerShell Script

March 10, 2020 by sbuchanan

Last year I wrote a blog post on how to use the modify effect in Azure Policy to enforce multiple tags. Here is the link to that full walk-through post: https://www.buchatech.com/2019/09/walk-through-use-azure-policy-modify-effect-to-require-tags/

In that blog post, I called out an Azure Policy on-demand evaluation PowerShell script I wrote. This PowerShell script will trigger Azure Policy to run the evaluation right away so you don’t have to wait for the next time Azure Policy will run the evaluation.

This is especially helpful when you are developing Azure Policies and you want to see if they are working properly or not. You can run the on-demand evaluation PowerShell script in Azure Cloud Shell at https://shell.azure.com/.

Well, that brings us to the end of this blog post. I wanted to make a short blog post for this script so that it would be easier to find.

You can get the policy evaluation trigger script on my GitHub here: Az Policy evaluation Trigger v1.ps1

Cloud Governance, Bringing Order To Your Cloud Chaos – Podcast

January 30, 2020 by sbuchanan

Recently I was a guest on the “Day Two Cloud” podcast hosted by fellow Microsoft MVP/Pluralsight author Ned Bellavance.

We talked about how native Azure governance & management tools Azure Policy, Tagging, and Blueprints can be used to bring order to your cloud environments. Listen now here:

Check it out here:

https://packetpushers.net/podcast/day-two-cloud-033-cloud-governance-bringing-order-to-your-cloud-chaos

Master Azure with VS Code

January 1, 2020 by sbuchanan

At Experts Live Europe 2019 I presented a session titled “Master Azure with VS Code”. This was a fun session with an engaging audience that took to twitter after the session. There was some chatter asking this session was recorded. It was not. I did note that I planned to write a blog post on this topic.

Here is that blog post and it is the first one of 2020 for me! In this post, we are going to dive into how VS code is helpful when working with Azure and many extensions I find useful when working with Azure. This post is not set to be an end-all to using VS Code with Azure but from my experience. Use this post as a starting point or a reference for expanding your use of VS Code with Azure. Also, check out the many other community experts and Microsoft MVPs for their additional knowledge plus tips and tricks on this topic.

VS Code Overview

First off if you are not using VS Code stop reading this right now, go download it and install it then come back to finish reading. 🙂 VS Code is a must-have in your toolbox and it is free! For those that are new to VS Code, it is an open-source – code editor developed by Microsoft that runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS. Here is a shortlist of the many benefits of VS Code:

Has support for hundreds of languages.
Has Integrated Terminal.
Also powerful developer tool with functionality, like IntelliSense code completion and debugging.
Includes syntax highlighting, bracket-matching, auto-indentation, box-selection, snippets, and more.
Integrates with build and scripting tools to perform common tasks making everyday workflows faster.
Has support for Git to work with source control.
Large Extension Marketplace of third-party extensions.

Note that yes, VS Code is for the “IT Pro”. Not just developers.

Azure Extensions in VS Code

VS Code has a ton of extensions in general. There are a number of Azure specific extensions and you can work with Azure directly from VS Code.

If you go to the VS Code Marketplace here: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/vscode and search on Azure you will see results for many published by Microsoft and many community based extensions for Azure. As of the time of writing this blog post, there are 93. Here is a screenshot showing some of the results:

You can also go directly to the Azure Tools extension from Microsoft here:

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/itemdetails?itemName=ms-vscode.vscode-node-azure-pack

Or the

Azure Extensions from Microsoft here:

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/azure/extensions

In the rest of this post, I am going to share some key extensions I use with Azure. I will post the marketplace links at the end of each extension I talk about and if it is maintained by community or Microsoft.

Deploy to Azure using VS Code

It is important to note that not all of the Azure extensions available in VS Code can be used to deploy to Azure. Some can but most can’t here is a list of the services that you can deploy to from extensions in VS Code.

Azure Service	Description
Azure Functions	Build and manage Azure Functions serverless apps directly in VS Code with the Azure Functions extension.
App Service	Manage Azure resources directly in VS Code with the Azure App Service extension.
Docker	Deploy your website using a Docker container.
Azure CLI	Create, deploy, and update a website using a terminal and the Azure CLI.
Static website	Create, deploy, and update a static website on Azure Storage.

NOTE: This list is current at the time of writing this blog post. This will change over time.

Azure Cloud Shell in VS Code

Cloud Shell is something you should be using with Azure to make your life easier. It is an interactive command-line shell. You are authenticated to your Azure account when you launch it, It typically runs in the browser and is used for managing Azure resources. When you launch it you can choose the shell experience that best for you, either Bash or PowerShell. With VS Code you can launch Cloud Shell directly in VS Code!

Cloud Shell is a part of the Azure Account extension. Here are some key points on using Cloud Shell with VS Code:

Free (storage consumed has costs.)
Launch Azure Cloud Shell directly in VS Code.
Launch Bash, PowerShell, or Upload.
Works in the Integrated Terminal.

Azure and open-source Tooling in Cloud Shell:

Azure Tools:
blobxfer Azure CLI and Azure classic CLI Azure Functions CLI AzCopy Service Fabric CLI Batch Shipyard

Open-Source:
Bash Terraform Packer Ansible Chef InSpec Puppet Bolt Docker Kubectl Helm DC/OS CLI iPython Client Cloud Foundry CLI

PowerShell Modules in Cloud Shell

You get the following PowerShell modules in Cloud Shell:
Azure Modules (Az.Accounts, Az.Compute, Az.Network, Az.Resources, Az.Storage)
Azure AD Management (Preview)
Exchange Online (In development)
MicrosoftPowerBIMgmt
SqlServer

Marketplace Link:

Azure Account: https://marketplace

Maintained By Microsoft