Cloud

Azure VM VNet to VNet Migration Script

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Moving an Azure VM from one virtual network (VNet) to another VNet is not a new problem. If you find yourself having to do this just know it is a pain. Anyone that has faced the Vnet-to-Vnet VM Move conundrum before knows that moving a VM to another subnet is a trivial task and would think a VM move to another VNet would be the same. However, when it comes to moving a VM to a new VNet there is no supported way to do this from Microsoft and that is by design. There are some workarounds to moving a VM to a new VNet but in the end these boil down to redeploying the VM. When moving a VM to a new VNet you will need to plan for downtime.

In this blog post, I am not going to go through the steps of the workarounds for moving a VM to a new VNet. There are plenty of other blog posts out there covering how to do this manually or using ASR. If you want to read up on this there is one article I keep bookmarked by Microsoft MVP Tim Warner that you can find here. In this blog post, I am going to share and talk about a PowerShell script I pulled together to make the Vnet-to-Vnet VM Migration less painful by automating it. Download link is at the end of this blog post. I put together the script to work with PowerShell 5 using the AzureRM Module and one that works with PowerShell 7 (Core) using the AZ module.

Again, in general, the script is not moving the VM. The script is facilitating a migration of sorts by creating a new VM in new VNet while retaining the original VMs configuration and data disks. Here are the steps that are performed in the script:

(1) Gathers info on existing VM, VNet, and subnet.
(2) Removes the original VM while saving all data disks and VM info.
(3) Creates VM configuration for new VM, creates nic for new VM, and new availability set.
(4) Adds data disks to new VM, adds nics to new VM, adds VM to the new VNet.
(5) Creates new VM and adds the VM to the new VNet.

Let’s look at some other general information about the script. The script is a single script that has code for both PowerShell 5 using the AzureRM Module and PowerShell 7 (Core) using the AZ module. When you run the script it prompts you to choose what Azure module you are using. The script is interactive so it will prompt you to log in and prompt you for your Azure subscription in case you are running multiple subscriptions. The script is intended to migrate a single VM. It assumes the VM is deployed into an availability set and will migrate to a new availability set or in the existing availability set. You can also migrate to a new resource group or place the new VM in the existing resource group. Ok. Let’s dive into running the script. Here is a walk-through of running the script.

Open PowerShell and run Vnet-to-Vnet VM migration.ps1.

You will first be prompted for the following information:

Enter the Resource Group of the original VM:
Enter the original VM name:
Enter the new VM name:
Enter the new availability set name:
Enter the new VNet resource group:
Enter the new VNet name:
Enter the new Subnet name:

Next, you will be prompted to select your PowerShell version and Azure module as shown in the following screenshot.

The main differences between PowerShell 5 using the AzureRM Module and PowerShell 7 (Core) using the AZ module are the interactive login methods as well as cmdlets. Here are screenshots of the different logins.

PowerShell 5 with AzureRM Module:

A window will pop up for you to log into your Azure account.

Next a grid will pop up for you to select your subscription from the list.

PowerShell 7 (Core) with AZ module:

A warning will pop up prompting you with the device login info. To log into Azure go to https://microsoft.com/devicelogin and entering the code the warning gave you as shown in the screenshot.

List of your subscriptions will output. Go ahead and copy the subscription ID you plan to use. NOTE* Ignore this if you only have one subscription.

You are prompted to enter your subscription ID. This is to set the PowerShell session to the specified Azure subscription.  Again ignore this if you only have 1 subscription. Note if you leave it blank and click enter it will error. Even with the error, it will finish the rest of the script just fine.

Next in both PS 5 or PS 7 you will see the following prompt confirming that you want to remove the specified original VM. Confirm yes and press enter.

Virtual machine removal operation
This cmdlet will remove the specified virtual machine. Do you want to continue?
[Y] Yes [N] No [S] Suspend [?] Help (default is “Y”): Y

NOTE* the rest of the script will run. It will take a while so be patient. As it runs you should see some output similar to this:

OperationId : a4299a3f-ea34-4c22-ba71-f6cc42ebbdff
Status : Succeeded
StartTime : 9/9/2019 5:33:14 PM
EndTime : 9/9/2019 5:50:30 PM
Error :

||
||

WARNING: Since the VM is created using premium storage or managed disk, existing standard storage account, diagstwfyhhi3jyz54e, is used for boot diagnostics.
VERBOSE: Performing the operation “New” on target “VMMove012”.

When it is all said and done if it was successful you will see:

RequestId :
IsSuccessStatusCode : True
StatusCode : OK
ReasonPhrase : OK

That’s it. Now go into the Azure portal and you will see that your VM is moved to a new VNet and will have the data disks still. Check out the following screenshots for an example showing what the resource groups look like before and after the script runs.

Before

After

I have used this script and it has saved me time and avoid a headache. The goal is this will be useful for others as well. You can download the version of the script released with this blog post here: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/VM-VNet-to-VNet-Migration-a7308ca2

If you want to contribute and enhance the script check it out on GitHub here: https://github.com/Buchatech/Azure-VM-VNet-to-VNet-Migration-Script

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Presenting on Azure Stack and Native Azure Management in June/July 2019

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It has been a while since presenting on Azure Stack. On June 26th I will be presenting on “Azure Stack 101 in 45 minutes” at an Azure Virtual Day Camp for a D365 user group. Here is a link to the main site:

https://www.d365ug.com/participate/azure-virtual-day

Here is a direct link to my session:

https://azurevirtualdaycamp2019.sched.com/event/PTQE/azure-stack-101-in-45-minutes?iframe=no&w=100%&sidebar=yes&bg=no

In July I will be co-presenting with Kyle Weeks at the Minnesota Azure User Group on Azure Management. The session is titled “Scale Matters: Policy + Azure Management Groups”. Come check out this session if you want to go through what Azure Management Groups are, how they scale to any complexity and the best part… how to do this with policy configurations + Azure blueprints + RBAC. Here is a link to register for the meeting:

https://www.meetup.com/Minneapolis-Azure-Cloud-Computing-Meetup/events/dtbmtpyzkbgb/

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Featured on Cloudskills.fm and New Azure course

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FEATURED ON CLOUDSKILLS.FM ~

CloudSkills.fm is a podcast by fellow Microsoft MVP Mike Pfeiffer and veteran in the tech space with 5 books under his belt and numerous courses on Pluralsight. The podcast can be found here: cloudskills.fm. Mike is an all around good guy and I was honored to be a featured guest on one of his podcast episodes. The podcast is weekly with technical tips and career advice for people working in the cloud computing industry. The podcast is geared for developers, IT pros, those making move into cloud.

On this episode Mike and I talked about managing both the technical and non-technical aspects of your career in the cloud computing industry. We also discuss DevOps stuff around Docker, Azure Kubernetes Service, Terraform and cloud stuff around Azure management including my 5 points to success with cloud. You can listen to the podcast here:

https://cloudskills.fm/015

Also on you can listen here: iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/cloudskills-fm/id1448194100 and PlayerFM: https://player.fm/series/cloudskillsfm/ep-015-managing-your-cloud-career .

NEW AZURE COURSE ~

I’m very excited Opsgility recently published a new Azure course by me titled: “Deploy and Configure Infrastructure”. This course is part of the AZ 300 certification learning path for Microsoft Azure Architect Technologies. More about the AZ 300 certification can be found here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/exam-az-300.aspx. The course is over 4 hours of Azure content!

Description of the course:

In the course learn how to analyze resource utilization and consumption, create and configure storage accounts, create and configure a VM for Windows and Linux, create connectivity between virtual networks, implement and manage virtual networking, manage Azure Active Directory, and implement and manage hybrid identities.

Objectives of the course:

  • Configure diagnostic settings on resources
  • Create baseline for resources
  • Utilize Log Search query functions
  • Configure network access to the storage account
  • Implement Azure storage replication
  • Configure high availability
  • Deploy and configure scale sets
  • Modify ARM Templates
  • Configure Azure Disk Encryption for VMs
  • Create and configure VNET peering
  • Install and configure Azure AD Connect

It can be watched here:

https://skillmeup.com/courses/player/deploy-and-configure-infrastructure

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Deploy Rancher on Azure for Kubernetes Management

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Lately I have been hearing a lot about a solution named Rancher in the Kubernetes space. Rancher is an open source Kubernetes Multi-Cluster Operations and Workload Management solution. You can learn more about Rancher here: https://www.rancher.com.

In short you can use Rancher to deploy and manage Kubernetes clusters deployed to Azure, AWS, GCP their managed Kubernetes offerings like GCE, EKS, AKS or even if you rolled your own. Rancher also integrates with a bunch of 3rd party solutions for things like authentication such as Active Directory, Azure Active Directory, Github, and Ping and logging solutions such as Splunk, Elasticsearch, or a Syslog endpoint.

Recently training opened up for some Rancher/Kubernetes/Docker training so I decided to go. The primary focus was on Rancher while also covering some good info on Docker and Kubernetes. This was really good training with a lot of hands on time, however there was one problem with the labs. The labs had instructions and setup scripts ready to go to run Rancher local on your laptop or on AWS via Terraform. There was nothing for Azure.

I ended up getting my Rancher environment running on Azure but it would have been nice to have some scripts or templates ready to go to spin up Rancher on Azure. I did find some ARM templates to spin up Rancher but they deployed an old version and it was not clear in the templates on where they could be updated to deploy the new version of Rancher. I decided to spend some time building out a couple of ARM templates that can be used to quickly deploy Rancher on Azure and add a Kubernetes host to Rancher. In the ARM template I pulled together it pulls the Rancher container from Docker Hub so it will always deploy the latest version. In this blog post I will spell out the steps to get your Rancher up and running in under 15 minutes.

First off you can find the ARM Templates here on my Github here: https://github.com/Buchatech/DeployRanchertoAzure.

The repository consists of ARM templates for deploying Rancher and a host VM for Kubernetes. NOTE: These templates are intended for labs to learn Rancher. They are not intended for use in production.

In the repo ARM Template #1 named RancherNode.JSON will deploy an Ubuntu VM with Docker and the latest version of Rancher (https://hub.docker.com/r/rancher/rancher) from Docker Hub. ARM Template #2 named RancherHost.JSON will deploy an Ubuntu VM with Docker to be used as a Kubernetes host in Rancher.

Node Deployment

Deploy the RancherNode.JSON ARM template to your Azure subscription through “Template Deployment” or other deployment method. You will be prompted for the following info shown in the screenshot:

Host Deployment

Deploy the RancherHost.JSON ARM template to your Azure subscription through “Template Deployment” or other deployment method. Note that that should deploy this into the same Resource Group that you deployed the Rancher Node ARM template into. You will be prompted for the following info shown in the screenshot:

After the Rancher Node and Rancher Host ARM templates are deployed you should see the following resources in the new Resource Group:

NameType
RancherVNet Virtual network
RancherHost Virtual machine
RancherNode Virtual machine
RancherHostPublicIP Public IP address
RancherNodePublicIP Public IP address
RancherHostNic Network interface
RancherNodeNic Network interface
RancherHost_OSDisk Disk
RancherNode_OSDisk Disk

Next navigate the Rancher portal in the web browser. The URL is the DNS name of the Rancher Node VM. You can find the DNS name by clicking on the Rancher Node VM in the Azure portal on the overview page. Here is an example of the URL:

https://ranchernode.centralus.cloudapp.azure.com

The Rancher portal will prompt you to set a password. This is shown in the following screenshot.

After setting the password the Rancher portal will prompt you for the correct Rancher Server URL. This will automatically be the Rancher Node VM DNS name. Click Save URL.

You will then be logged into the Rancher portal. You will see the cluster page. From here you will want to add a cluster. Doing this is how you add a new Kubernetes cluster to Rancher. In this post I will show you how to add a cluster to the Rancher Host VM. When it’s all said and done Rancher will have successfully deployed Kubernetes to the Rancher Host VM. Note that you could add a managed Kubernetes such as AKS but we won’t do that in this blog. I will save that for a future blog post!

Click on Add Cluster

Under “From my own existing nodes” Click on custom, give the cluster a name and click Next.

Next check all the boxes for the Node Options since all the roles will be on a single Kubernetes cluster. Copy the code shown at the bottom of the page, click done and run the code on the Rancher Host.

In order to run the code on the Rancher Host you need to SSH in and run it from there. To do this follow these steps:

  1. In the Azure Portal, from within the resource group click on the Rancher Host VM.
  2. On the Overview page click on Connect.
  3. Copy “ssh ranchuser@rancherhost.centralus.cloudapp.azure.com” from the Connect to virtual machine pop up screen.
  4. Open a terminal in either Azure cloud shell or with something like a terminal via VS Code and past the “ssh ranchuser@rancherhost.centralus.cloudapp.azure.com” in.

Running the code will look like this:

When done you can run Docker PS to see that the Rancher agent containers are running.

In the Rancher portal under clusters you will see the Rancher host being provisioned

The status will change as Kubernetes is deployed.

Once it’s done provisioning you will see your Kubernetes cluster as Active.

From here you can see a bunch of info about your new Kubernetes cluster. Also notice that you could even launch Kubectl right from hereand start running commands! Take some time to click around to see all the familiar stuff you are used to working with in Kubernetes. This is pretty cool and simplifies the management experience for Kubernetes. 

If you want to add more nodes or need the configuration code again just click the ellipsis button and edit.

In Edit Cluster you can change the cluster name, get and change settings and copy the code to add more VMs to the cluster.

That’s the end of this post. Thanks for reading. Check back for more Azure, Kubernetes, and Rancher blog posts.

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Where to host Docker Containers on Azure (AKS, ASE, or ASF)?

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Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) service Azure App Service Environment (ASE) Azure Service Fabric (ASF) Comparison

Scenario:

So, your team recently has been tasked with developing a new application and running it. The team made the decision to take a microservices based approach to the application. Your team also has decided to utilize Docker containers and Azure as a cloud platform. Great, now it’s time to move forward right? Not so fast. There is no question that Docker containers will be used, but what is in question is where you will run the containers. In Azure containers can run on Azure’s managed Kubernetes (AKS) service, an App Service Plan on Azure App Service Environment (ASE), or Azure Service Fabric (ASF). Let’s look at each one of these Azure services including an overview, pro’s, cons, and pricing.

This Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Pros and Cons chart is clickable.
This Azure App Service Environment (ASE) Pros and Cons chart is clickable.
This Azure Service Fabric (ASF) Pros and Cons chart is clickable.

Conclusion:

Choose Azure Kubernetes Service if you need more control, want to avoid vendor lock-in (can run on Azure, AWS, GCP, on-prem), need features of a full orchestration system, flexibility of auto scale configurations, need deeper monitoring, flexibility with networking, public IP’s, DNS, SSL, need a rich ecosystem of addons, will have many multi-container deployments, and plan to run a large number of containers. Also, this is a low cost.

Choose Azure App Service Environment if don’t need as much control, want a dedicated SLA, don’t need deep monitoring or control of the underlying server infrastructure, want to leverage features such as deployment slots, green/blue deployments, will have simple and a low number of multi-container deployments via Docker compose, and plan to run a smaller number of containers. Regarding cost, running a containerized application in an App Service Plan in ASE tends to be more expensive compared to running in AKS or Service Fabric. The higher cost of running containers on ASE is because with an App Service Plan on ASE, you are paying costs for a combination of resources and the managed service. With AKS and ASF you are only paying for the resources used.

Choose Service Fabric if you want a full micros services platform, need flexibility now or in the future to run in cloud and or on-premises, will run native code in addition to containers, want automatic load balancing, low cost.

A huge thanks to my colleague Sunny Singh (@sunnys101) for giving his input and reviewing this post. Thanks for reading and check back for more Azure and container contents soon.

If you want to download this blog post as a PDF click the download button:

Download

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Monitoring Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) with Azure Monitor & Log Analytics

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Part of running Kubernetes is being able to monitoring the cluster, the nodes, and the workloads running in it. Running production workloads regardless of PaaS, VM’s, or containers requires a solid level of reliability. Azure Kubernetes Service comes with monitoring provided from Azure bundled with the semi-managed service. Kubernetes also has built in monitoring that can also be utilized.

It is important to note that AKS is a free service and Microsoft aims to achieve at least 99.5% availability for the Kubernetes API server on the master node side.

But due to AKS being a free service Microsoft does not carry an SLA on the Kubernetes cluster service itself. Microsoft does provide an SLA for the availability of the underlying nodes in the cluster via the Azure Virtual Machines SLA. Without an official SLA for the Kubernetes cluster service it becomes even more critical to understand your deployment and have the right monitoring tooling and plan in place so when an issue arises the DevOps or CloudOps team can address, investigate, and resolve any issues with the cluster.

The monitoring service included with AKS gives you monitoring from two perspectives including the first one being directly from an AKS cluster and the second one being all AKS clusters in a subscription. The monitoring looks at two key areas “Health status” and “Performance charts” and consists of:

Insights – Monitoring for the Kubernetes cluster and containers.

Metrics – Metric based cluster and pod charts.

Log Analytics – K8s and Container logs viewing and search.

Azure Monitor

Azure Monitor has a containers section. Here is where you will find a health summary across all clusters in a subscription including ACS. You also will see how many nodes and system/user pods a cluster has and if there are any health issues with the a node or pod. If you click on a cluster from here it will bring you to the Insights section on the AKS cluster itself.

If you click on an AKS cluster you will be brought to the Insights section of AKS monitoring on the actual AKS cluster. From here you can access the Metrics section and the Logs section as well as shown in the following screenshot.

Insights

Insights is where you will find the bulk of useful data when it comes to monitoring AKS. Within Insights you have these 4 areas Cluster, Nodes, Controllers, and Containers. Let’s take a deeper look into each of the 4 areas.

Cluster

The cluster page contains charts with key performance metrics for your AKS clusters health. It has performance charts for your node count with status, pod count with status, along with aggregated node memory and CPU utilization across the cluster. In here you can change the date range and add filters to scope down to specific information you want to see.

Nodes

After clicking on the nodes tab you will see the nodes running in your AKS cluster along with uptime, amount of pods on the node, CPU usage, memory working set, and memory RSS. You can click on the arrow next to a node to expand it displaying the pods that are running on it.

What you will notice is that when you click on a node, or pod a property pane will be shown on the right hand side with the properties of the selected object. An example of a node is shown in the following screenshot.

Controllers

Click on the Controllers tab to see the health of the clusters controllers. Again here you will see CPU usage, memory working set, and memory RSS of each controller and what is running a controller. As an example shown in the following screenshot you can see the kubernetes dashboard pod running on the kubernetes-dashboard controller.

The properties of the kubernetes dashboard pod as shown in the following screenshot gives you information like the pod name, pod status, Uid, label and more.

You can drill in to see the container the pod was deployed using.

Containers

On the Containers tab is where all the containers in the AKS cluster are displayed. An as with the other tabs you can see CPU usage, memory working set, and memory RSS. You also will see status, the pod it is part of, the node its running on, its uptime and if it has had any restarts. In the following screenshot the CPU usage metric filter is used and I am showing a containers that has restarted 71 times indicating an issue with that container.

 In the following screenshot the memory working set metric filter is shown.

You can also filter the containers that will be shown through using the searching by name filter.

You also can see a containers logs in the containers tab. To do this select a container to show its properties. Within the properties you can click on View container live logs (preview) as shown in the following screenshot or View container logs. Container log data is collected every three minutes. STDOUT and STDERR is the log output from each Docker container that is sent to Log Analytics.

Kube-system is not currently collected and sent to Log Analytics. If you are not familiar with Docker logs more information on STDOUT and STDERR can be found on this Docker logging article here:  https://docs.docker.com/config/containers/logging.

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Deploy MySQL and WordPress on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

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In this blog post I am going to walk through the steps for deploying WordPress to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) using MySQL and WordPress Docker images. Note that using the way I will show you is one way. Another way to deploy WordPress to AKS would be using a Helm Chart. Here is a link to the WordPress Helm Chart by Bitnami https://bitnami.com/stack/wordpress/helm. Here are the images we will use in this blog post:

MySQL WordPress
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: wordpress-mysql
labels:
app: wordpress
spec:
ports:
– port: 3306
selector:
app: wordpress
tier: mysql
clusterIP: None
—
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
name: mysql-pv-claim
labels:
app: wordpress
spec:
accessModes:
– ReadWriteOnce
resources:
requests:
storage: 20Gi
—
apiVersion: apps/v1 # for versions before 1.9.0 use apps/v1beta2
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: wordpress-mysql
labels:
app: wordpress
spec:
selector:
matchLabels:
app: wordpress
tier: mysql
strategy:
type: Recreate
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: wordpress
tier: mysql
spec:
containers:
– image: mysql:5.6
name: mysql
env:
– name: MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD
valueFrom:
secretKeyRef:
name: mysql-pass
key: password
ports:
– containerPort: 3306
name: mysql
volumeMounts:
– name: mysql-persistent-storage
mountPath: /var/lib/mysql
volumes:
– name: mysql-persistent-storage
persistentVolumeClaim:
claimName: mysql-pv-claim		 apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: wordpress
labels:
app: wordpress
spec:
ports:
– port: 80
selector:
app: wordpress
tier: frontend
type: LoadBalancer
—
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
name: wp-pv-claim
labels:
app: wordpress
spec:
accessModes:
– ReadWriteOnce
resources:
requests:
storage: 20Gi
—
apiVersion: apps/v1 # for versions before 1.9.0 use apps/v1beta2
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: wordpress
labels:
app: wordpress
spec:
selector:
matchLabels:
app: wordpress
tier: frontend
strategy:
type: Recreate
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: wordpress
tier: frontend
spec:
containers:
– image: wordpress:4.8-apache
name: wordpress
env:
– name: WORDPRESS_DB_HOST
value: wordpress-mysql
– name: WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD
valueFrom:
secretKeyRef:
name: mysql-pass
key: password
ports:
– containerPort: 80
name: wordpress
volumeMounts:
– name: wordpress-persistent-storage
mountPath: /var/www/html
volumes:
– name: wordpress-persistent-storage
persistentVolumeClaim:
claimName: wp-pv-claim

The first thing we need to do is save these files as mysql-deployment.yaml and wordpress-deployment.yaml respectively.

Next, we need to setup a password for our MySQL DB. We will do this by creating a secret on our K8s cluster. To do this launch the bash or PowerShell in Azure cloud shell like in the following screenshot and run the following syntax:

kubectl create secret generic mysql-pass –from-literal=password=”YOURPASSWORDHERE”

Note: Replace “PASSWORDHERE” in the syntax with your own password.

The secret is now created. To ensure it was created you can run the following syntax to list the secrets:

kubectl get secrets

You also can see the secret in the Kubernetes dashboard as shown in the following screenshot.

Next the mysql-deployment.yaml and wordpress-deployment.yaml files from the beginning of this post need to be uploaded to Azure cloudrive storage.

You can also do this in the Cloudshell as shown in the following screenshot.

Run ls in the shell to make sure the files are on your clouddrive.

You will need your home drive. Mine was. /home/steve. To see this, click on Download. It will show you what yours is.

Next create the MySQL Pod and service by running the following syntax.

kubectl apply -f /home/steve/mysql-deployment.yaml

NOTE: You could use kubectl create /home/steve/mysql-deployment.yaml instead of apply to create the MySQL pod and service. I use apply because I typically use the declarative object configuration approach. kubectl apply essentially equals kubectl create + kubectl replace. In order to update an object after it has been created using kubectl create you would need to run kubectl replace.

There are pros and cons to using each and it is more of a preference for example when using the declarative approach there is no audit trail associated with changes. For more information on the multiple Kubernetes Object Management approaches go here: https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/overview/object-management-kubectl/overview.

Note that in the mysql yaml file it has syntax to create a persistent volume. This is needed so that the database stays in tact even if the pod fails, is moved etc. You can check to ensure the persistent volume was created by running the following syntax:

kubectl get pvc

Also, you can run the following syntax to verify the mysql pod is running:

kubectl get pods

Deploying the WordPress Pod and service is the same process. Use the following syntax to create the WordPress pod and service:

kubectl apply -f /home/steve/wordpress-deployment.yaml

Again, check to ensure the persistent volume was created. Use the following syntax:

kubectl get pvc

NOTE: When checking right after you created the persistent volume it may be in a pending status for a while like shown in the following screenshot:

You can also check the persistent volume using the K8s dashboard as shown in the following screenshot:

With the deployment of MySQL and WordPress we created 2 services. The MySQL service has a clusterip that can only be accessed internally. The WordPress service has an external IP that is also attached to an Azure Load Balancer for external access. I am not going to expand on what Kubernetes services are in this blog post but know that they are typically used as an abstracted layer in K8s used for access to Pods on the backend and follow the Pods regardless of the node they are running on. For more information about Kubernetes services visit this link: https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/services-networking/service.

In order to see that the services are running properly and find out the external IP you can run the following syntax:

kubectl get services (to see all services)

or

kubectl get services wordpress (to see just the WordPress service)

You also can view the services in the K8s dashboard as shown in the following screenshot:

Well now that we have verified the pods and the services are running let’s check out our new WordPress instance by going to the external IP in a web browser.

Thanks for checking out this blog post. I hope this was an easy to use guide to get WordPress up and running on your Azure Kubernetes Service cluster. Check back soon for more Azure and Kubernetes/Container content.

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Azure Cost Management (Cloudyn)

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IT financial management (ITFM) is an important part of IT operations as business dependency on IT continues to grow in the age of digital transformation. ITFM is a part of ITIL as a Service Strategy element in the framework. ITFM is a key part of CloudOps as well because spending in the cloud is based on an OPEX model and every single cost is tracked. ITFM and cost management in the cloud should be used to effectively and concisely connect the dollars spent on IT to the value delivered to the business. We can do this with Azure Cost Management. In this post, I am going to give an overview of Azure cost management highlighting many of the things you can do with it. Let’s dive into the solution now.

Overview

In June of 2017, Microsoft acquired Cloudyn a startup that had tooling for cloud monitoring and analytics tools focused on cloud financial management. Cloudyn’s solution is multi-cloud covering Azure, Azure Stack, AWS, and GCP. Through the acquisition of Cloudyn Microsoft was able to bring the tooling into the Azure ecosystem giving Azure customers an enhanced way to track and control cloud spend improving the improving the Azure cloud governance story.  As of right now, there is a free level and a paid level for Azure cost management. The following table lists what features are available with each level.

FREE capabilities:

Reporting Report on cost and usage
Data enrichment Categorize by resource tags
Budgets Create and manage cost and usage budgets
Alerting Create alerts on cost and usage budgets
Recommendations Eliminate idle cloud resources

Right-size cloud resources
PAID capabilities:

Chargeback features including cost markup, redistribution, and custom charges
Import external budgets
Customize recommendation thresholds
Categorize costs with custom meta-tags

Since the acquisition, Microsoft has added a link to the Cloudyn portal directly in Azure and integration with your Azure subscriptions giving you the ability to launch a new Cloudyn account that is tied to your subscription. Microsoft added Cost Management in Azure and this is where you will find Cloudyn and sign up. As shown in the following screenshot you can see the “Go to Cost Management” button. After clicking on that you will go the Cloudyn portal and will be able to add your various cloud accounts.  The thing that I really like about Azure cost management is that there is a ton of data and dashboards that are available right out of the box after adding a cloud account. There is not a bunch of configuration that you need to do to get the default dashboards and optimization tools.

After you are all signed up and have your cloud accounts added your dashboards will start to show data. The next two screenshots show a couple of the default dashboards.

The management dashboard gives a good summary of your cloud financials on one pane of glass.

 

The cost controller dashboard shows cost trends, some forecasting info, a breakdown of costs and more.

As you can see from the previous screenshots there are several other dashboards with other content. You can modify any of these dashboards adding or removing widgets. You also can create your own dashboard adding whatever widgets you want to it.

In Azure cost management, you can add cost centers known as Cost Entities. Entities are intended to mirror your organization’s hierarchical structure such as business units, divisions, departments, or teams within your organization some examples are engineering, R&D, development, marketing etc. The goal of the entities is to give you a way to track cloud spend by the entities. Keep in mind the cost entities can be anything that fits the way you want to structure and track cloud costs. You also can leverage tags, add budgets, and then associate costs and or budgets to the cost entities into cost models. Cost models give you a way to distribute and allocate costs. You can track costs back to these cost entities and you can track costs against budgets for showback or chargeback scenarios. Below is a screenshot of the cost entities screen. Keep an eye out for a detailed blog from me walking through how to structure and set up this part of Azure cost management. This area of Azure cost management warrants its own dedicated blog.

Here is an example of a budget set on a cost entity.

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Azure Mobile App

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Microsoft has a mobile Azure mobile app for Android and IOS. At first I was skeptical about the need of a mobile app for cloud but I found myself actually using it a few times for various tasks that I did not want to log onto my computer to do. In this blog post I am going to give one example. Before I jump into the example let’s explore the app.

First off you can load the app from Itunes or Google Play. You also can check it out here: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/features/azure-portal/mobile-app/ and here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.azure&hl=en.

With the app in general you can see your Azure resources, their metrics, their health along with alerts, and diagnose and fix some issues through some actions you can perform on the resources via the mobile app. Some of the actions you can perform are Restart a web app or connect to a VM. Something else you can do with the app is access the Azure cloud shell. It supports Bash and PowerShell.  The following are some screenshots from the app.

Here is the app on my Android:

After the app launches for the first time you will be prompted to log into your subscription. Once you are logged in you will see all of your resources.

You can actually click on the filter icon to scope down to a specific type of resources.

The last screenshot here is of the Azure cloud shell in the mobile app.

Now lets talk about one reason you may use the app. I host an Azure user group website on WordPress on Azure. I have an availability monitor in Application Insights monitoring the site. If the site goes down I get an email from Application Insights as shown in the following screenshot.

I also get a notification in the UG board Slack channel by Logic Apps if the site is down. Well one day I got the notification from Slack on my phone.

I was not at my computer and did not want to go to it just to see what was going on with the site. I checked and sure enough the site was down.

Instead of logging onto my computer to troubleshoot I just used the app on my phone. Logging in I was able to see the site was up.

After clicking on the web app I was able to quickly restart it. It was up after that and I did it all from my phone.

I know restarting a web app is a basic thing. It saves time not having to log all the way into a computer to do this. I recommend trying out the mobile app. You never know when it might come in handy for a quick way to get info about one of your Azure resources and even help you troubleshoot something.

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