Azure For weeks Marcel Zehner and I have held four live streams. Covering ‘everything’ related to Infrastructure as code on Azure.
In the series, we covered the following topics, and everything is now available on YouTube
Azure Sign up for our next livestream; How to deploy resources using CI/CD
In our Infrastructure as code live stream series, Marcel Zehner and I covered a new feature in the Azure IAC space. Namely deployment scripts. With deployment scripts for Azure, you can run PowerShell or Bash (CLI) scripts within your ARM templates.
You may have heard of Custom script extension for Azure Windows VMs, this is sort of the same thing. Making you able to call external systems during deployment, or perform the last-mile configuration to your infrastructure.
You can find all our recordings on youtube and all code examples on github
Azure Together with MVP and Regional Director, Marcel Zehner we are running four live streams on Azure Resource Manager deployments using ARM templates. Recording from our first live stream, Complex ARM templates is available now.
In this session, we covered how you should use parameters, functions, and dependencies to create more reusable code, and how to control the result of your user’s input.
You can find the recording on YouTube, and the script examples on GitHub
We have three more ARM template live streams planned- hopefully we will see you there:
Nested & linked ARM templates
Date & Time: October 12, 2020, 5PM CEST
Registration: https://lnkd.in/deW4xXJ
Attendee Link: https://lnkd.in/dz_WgyW
Deployment scripts
Date & Time: October 19, 2020, 5PM CEST
Registration: https://lnkd.in/dhEYeMr
Code release using pipelines
Date & Time: October 26, 2020, 5PM CEST
Registration: https://lnkd.in/d_JuDuv
Conferences Microsoft Build is Microsoft prime developer conference, where Microsoft Ignite is the conference for your traditional IT pros. However, the traditional IT pro role has changed significantly in recent years, and Build is therefore interesting to us, and a lot of great “infrastructure” announcements were released at Build this year. Below I have picked out a few announcements I find most interesting.
Azure resource manager templates are very powerful. However, one of its Achilles heels is its verbosity. At build we got a small sneak peek on how Microsoft is looking in to improve ARM template language. Sign up here to get more information.
I have deployed a lot of templates in recent years. And when I first saw a preview of the new what-if command I was thrilled. The ability to check what impact your template would make is a very important feature that is now available.
I’m not sure I like this one- the ability to actually write PowerShell or CLI scripts within ARM templates via Deployment Script is now in Public Preview.
ARM templates tend to be very complex already. And while this feature will solve a lot of issues, I am pretty sure we can manage to create a lot of new ones as well. I suggest a very humble approach to this feature.
Azure Peering service generally available. Providing the fastest route from on-premises to your Azure resources. At first this looks like a new name for Express Route, but Azure Peering is not private. Instead it uses the largest ISPs around the world to quickly get you on Microsofts backbone.
Azure Arc was introduced at Microsoft Ignite in 2019. At build, Microsoft announced Arc for kubernetes in preview. With Arc for Kubernetes, we are able to use management tools in Azure like Azure policy and Azure monitor. For clusters running on-premises or in another cloud, public or private. For companies using for example RedHat OpenShift on-premises, and AKS in Azure. You can have a unified experience for both environments.
Read more about Azure Arc for kubernetes here
Azure AD now has a feature called ‘external identities’ in public preview. I’m not sure about all the news. But it seems to be a revamped Azure AD B2c. I will look more in to it later.
Azure Security Center is updated with a secure score API. To me this is great as integration to internal portals will be much easier. In other news, the ability to suppress alerts is now publicly available!
More Azure AD news can be found here
I will continue to update this list throughout Build and hopefully test drive some of the new features. In the meantime, you can find the complete list of Build 2020 announcements in the book of news
Azure Environments in Azure are often separated into multiple subscriptions, in some cases multiple tenants. This sectioning can also result in multiple user accounts, and managing multiple Azure credentials can be challenging. Luckily, Azure PowerShell has this capability called context.
Although the documentation is solid on the topic. It doesn’t necessarily provide the backdrop for when you will need to use this feature.
A few weeks ago I had to move a set of APIs from one instance of Azure API management to another. With PowerShell contexts, I could download the API from the origin and import it to the new instance.
To hold credential information, like user and subscription. PowerShell uses context objects. By using AzContext comandlets You can have multiple Powershell Azure contexts available in the same PowerShell session. This allows for easy switching between multiple environments and profiles. Including different tenants.
Below is an example of how you can connect to multiple tenants and switch between the credentials and contexts. I recommend using friendly names which will make them easier to identify.