Integrating your Apps with Azure
In the latest episode of the Azure Essentials training series you`ll learn how you can use Azure as an integration platform, leveraging core services like Service Bus, Event Grid and Logic Apps as well as API Management. In this video Matt McSpirit will also show you how Azure can be used be to connect back to your local business apps in your datacenter using virtual networks or the On-premises Data Gateway. Let us know how you`re integrating your Apps with Azure in the comments bellow
How to Learn Microsoft Azure in 2020
How to Learn Microsoft Azure in 2020 :party_popper:☁🎓 The year 2019 is almost over, and usually, we take the time to look back at the year and also to find some New Year’s resolutions for the new year. Why not take all that energy and prepare for the cloud computing era and advance your career by learning Microsoft Azure. In this post, I try to give you a quick look at how you can get started to learn Microsoft Azure in 2020. You can read more here: https://www.thomasmaurer.ch/2019/12/how-to-learn-microsoft-azure-in-2020/Tips how to Prepare and Pass a Microsoft Azure Exam
There are many good reasons to become Microsoft Azure Certified and take the Microsoft Azure exams. If you are reading this blog post, you might already have decided that you want to take a Microsoft Azure exam and get a certification. Since I passed a couple of the Azure exams, I would like to share how I prepared for these exams and passed. Hopefully, this will make it easier for you to pass them as well. Check out my blog here: https://www.thomasmaurer.ch/2019/09/how-to-prepare-and-pass-a-microsoft-azure-exam/Microsoft Azure CloudShell for Management tasks
https://shell.azure.com Azure Cloud Shell is an interactive, browser-accessible shell for managing Azure resources. It provides the flexibility of choosing the shell experience that best suits the way you work. Linux users can opt for a Bash experience, while Windows users can opt for PowerShell. In this quick overview you will see the possibilities of Microsoft Azure Cloudshell functionalities and tools. Azure Cloudshell Editor Azure Cloud Shell includes an integrated file editor built from the open-source Monaco Editor. The Cloud Shell editor supports features such as language highlighting, the command palette, and a file explorer. This can be handy with JSON and YAML files. When you have your App YAML file for your Azure Kubernetes Cluster on your Cloud drive, you can edit the file online with your browser and save it in the Azure Cloud. I like this editor in the Cloudshell, especially when you are not behind your own laptop or pc and you have to make a quick change. I have a Kubernetes Cluster installed on Azure and with this editor I can explore my Azure logs, Cache, and config files for the information I need to work with in Bash, Powershell to do my CLI commands for example 😉 For the Powershell Gurus Azure PowerShell provides a set of cmdlets that use the Azure Resource Manager model for managing your Azure resources. Learn here more about Azure Powershell Azure Kubernetes CLI Kubectl Kubectl is a command line interface for running commands against Kubernetes clusters. kubectl looks for a file named config in the $HOME/.kube directory. You can specify other kubeconfig files by setting the KUBECONFIG environment variable or by setting the –kubeconfig flag. Read here more about Kubectl Terraform CLI is Available What is Terraform? Terraform is a tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently. Terraform can manage existing and popular service providers as well as custom in-house solutions. Configuration files describe to Terraform the components needed to run a single application or your entire datacenter. Terraform generates an execution plan describing what it will do to reach the desired state, and then executes it to build the described infrastructure. As the configuration changes, Terraform is able to determine what changed and create incremental execution plans which can be applied. The infrastructure Terraform can manage includes low-level components such as compute instances, storage, and networking, as well as high-level components such as DNS entries, SaaS features, etc. The key features of Terraform are: Infrastructure as Code Infrastructure is described using a high-level configuration syntax. This allows a blueprint of your datacenter to be versioned and treated as you would any other code. Additionally, infrastructure can be shared and re-used. Execution Plans Terraform has a “planning” step where it generates an execution plan. The execution plan shows what Terraform will do when you call apply. This lets you avoid any surprises when Terraform manipulates infrastructure. Resource Graph Terraform builds a graph of all your resources, and parallelizes the creation and modification of any non-dependent resources. Because of this, Terraform builds infrastructure as efficiently as possible, and operators get insight into dependencies in their infrastructure. Change Automation Complex changesets can be applied to your infrastructure with minimal human interaction. With the previously mentioned execution plan and resource graph, you know exactly what Terraform will change and in what order, avoiding many possible human errors. More information on Terraform It’s really easy to Upload or Download your Files. AzCopy is a command-line utility designed for copying data to/from Microsoft Azure Blob, File, and Table storage, using simple commands designed for optimal performance. You can copy data between a file system and a storage account, or between storage accounts. More information about Features & tools for Azure Cloud Shell here Conclusion : Microsoft Azure Cloudshell is very powerful to work with, creating your infrastructure from the Command Line Interface (CLI) or with JSON / YAML scripts. Some features or commands are not available in the Azure portal and that’s where Azure Cloudshell can help you out. Try the different Azure Cloudshell Tools and look what you like most to use for your work. From here you can work on any device with a browser and do your work. #MVPBuzz @Jamesvandenberg
Azure automation feature, improvements and bugs
This is by no means meant as critic as i love the Azure Automation Account product and its current features but these are thing that i would love to see as an offering/fixed for the future. Source Control (I can only speak for Github as that is what i use): Bugs: Tags being overwritten / removed by source controll both on full sync but also on incremential syncs (Already reported in case #2508010040002105) Features: Runbooks in source control is not being deleted in automation account when they have been deleted in source control. Support for diffrent sync types other than PowerShell 5.1 (Personally we will not consider upgrading to a newer version before there is source control implemented) Support for syncing the full repository instead of only a specific folder. So recursive source control for easier organisation in repositories I know we can setup multiple source control in azure automation but that seems a bit redundant and more maintance as the source control integration expires after 1 year does not matter if your PAT token is set to never expires Add support for syncing synopsis / description for at least PowerShell scripts so it grabs it directly from the given script and inputs it into the description field. Just the output of get-help .\ScriptName.ps1 Logging: Bugs: From time to time we see that logs is being displayed twice after each other so lets say you get the first result of logs. For this example lets say the first 10 entries in the All log page and scroll down further then the same 10 entries are repeated again and again and again this can also be seen by the time stamp of the log entry. (No new network requests for logs is being made so i believe this might be a bug in a javascript without being 100% certain) The most often time we see this bug is when a runbook is still running so it might be the log output stream that messes this up. And just to provide a picture for refrence without exposing anything sensitive the bug can be seen based on timestamps here: PowerShell 7 and above log outputs seems to contain some non escaped ASCI characters which makes the logs harder to read and also makes a log object being split into multiple log entries in Azure automation Log outputs Seems to have been fixed since i last tested Features: Searching for a specific job id in the general job list. Currently there is a work arround by going into a specific runbook - go to jobs - Press "Find job" and then you can lookup a jobid globally but the UI is not being updated correctly as displayed here: Would love to see a button here or be able to search for a jobid Formatting log outputs so you can do multi line output in a single log output entry E.G. "Write-output "New´r´nLine" So the output entry contains multiple lines for easier human readable log outputs Runbook page: Bugs: Searching for runbook names seems a bit buggy as far as i have seen there is 3 diffrent results for the end user Base image intialy looking at all runbooks One option is that it is not able to find a runbook with that name I have not been able to replicate it to get a picture of it. Another is that it displays a list of runbooks none of which matches what you searched for Third is that when you have searched for something and remove your search it does not return the original view Features: Ability to go to a previous job and re-run it/restart it with the same parameters. Think a bit like the way you can restart a github action run Scheduling: Features: More of a feature request but adding the schedule for a runbook directly in the code is awesome. (This is something we currently do by adding a parameter that contains the scheduling information then we have a runbook going over all our runbooks every hour and looking for this parameter and then constructing a schedule if it does not exist and links the runbook to the schedule and finally we also add a tag mentioning If the schedule name is enabled or not (*back to the issue in source control removing the tag*)) Hybrid workers: Features: I personally would love the ability to pause a hybrid worker in a hybrid worker group - Why? - Well we currently have 4 hybrid workers all running windows and have monthly patch windows and if a job hits a hybrid worker that is in patch then the jobs would go into a suspended state and not be picked up again Now we could remove the hybrid worker from the group but that would also remove the extension which would be reinstalled when added and then we would hit this https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/automation/troubleshoot/extension-based-hybrid-runbook-worker#scenario-runbooks-go-into-a-suspended-state-on-a-hybrid-runbook-worker-when-using-a-custom-account-on-a-server-with-user-account-control-uac-enabled This is an issue we originally started experiencing when we migrated from agent-based hybrid workers to extension based due to the discontinuation of agent-based. Another great reason is when needing to troubleshoot something on a specific hybrid worker or even when needing to update modules on a specific hybrid worker as this can not be done while the hybrid worker is still running jobs unless you use force or hit a time that it is not running or by manually stopping the service and then again end up with suspended jobs that is not being picked up again. Additional features that i personally would love to see as an offering: A front end for azure automation for end users (Think self-service portal) as some kind of add-on feature allowing a specific group of people to start a given runbook but supplying a more user friendly front end for it while also including some more limitations for end user groupings. I know there is already third party solutions for this and tbh I almost created one my self on my last maternity leave but my company chose not to pursue it further as the statement is we have 1 self service platform being servicenow can be viewed https://github.com/Mynster9361/Self-Service-Frontend-Azure-Automation just to give some inspiration if needed RBAC permissions for individual runbooks (as far as i remember this can already be done through cli) A General overview management blade for managing webhooks and the associated runbooks Currently there is no way to know which runbooks has an active / inactive webhook assigned to them as the only way to see this is by going to a runbook go to the webhooks blade and look if there is one or not. Personally i would love to see a blade on the general overview called "Webhooks" that looks similar to this table maybe: RunbookNameExpirationLast triggeredStatusRunbook1 (Clickable to get directly to the runbook)Custom_name_for_this webhook02/01/2022 16:00 EnabledRunbook2webhook211/11/2026 16:00TodayDisabledRunbook3webhook311/11/2027 16:00TodayEnabled Instead of webhook being a gentleman agreemnet on when you can enable and when you shouldn't enable and naming and such you have 1 general overview of all webhooks which would give value in regards to security and easier management of webhooks The things i see as most critical or highest on my wish list: To list 2 things i would like to see sooner rather than later Source control definitely needs to be updated/revamped so it both supports other languages/versions and also does not remove tags. Another thing that would be nice to have is to force it to follow source control so if i delete something that is in source control it is also deleted in azure automation Hybrid workers in maintenance mode so it completes running jobs and you are able to work on the hybrid worker whether it be bugs or just regular updates.Microsoft Azure and Vmworld 2018
Yes! You read that correctly. Microsoft will have a booth at VMworld this year. ( that's a couple of days away). It will be the first time in several years that we will have a booth at the Solutions Expo and both teams are very excited. What can you expect from Microsoft at Vmworld? Besides @exchangegoddess there??? ...Come hear about the cool things and integrations we are doing with VMware such as Horizon Cloud, NSX Cloud, IoT and vRealize Automation. I will be there along with Lior Kamrat (@LiorKamrat), Sr Program Manager and Jeramiah Dooley (@jdooley), Sr Cloud Ops Advocate. You can find us at the booth from from time to time or the vCommunity village. You could even bump into us at one the sessions. The conference is going to be super busy with lots to see and learn. If you want to know about Azure, the stuff we are doing with VMware, want to talk about VCDX or just have a cool conversation, don’t be shy and reach out to say hello. We'd love to talk to you! We may even have some cool stickers too. This year we will have a couple of VMworld sessions with Microsoft employees on stage so If you're building out your schedule check them out: What’s New with Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure [WIN3048BU] Speakers: Shikha Mittal, Director, Product Management, VMware Lior Kamrat, Sr. Program Manager, Microsoft Wednesday, Aug 29, 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Deploy, Manage, and Get Value from IOT with Microsoft, Dell and VMware [IOT3680BU] Speakers: Ravishankar Chamarajnagar, Sr. Director, R&D, IoT, VMware Kevin Saye, IoT Architect, Microsoft Wednesday, Aug 29, 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. In addition, there are some other Microsoft Azure-related sessions that we highly recommend for learning more about Azure + VMware: VMware NSX Cloud – Getting Started [SPL-1922-01-NET_U] Life in a Multi-Cloud World: Choosing the Right Cloud Desktop Solution [WIN3489BU] Horizon Cloud on Azure: Technical Deep Dive [WIN3483BU] Horizon Cloud on Azure with expert Shikha Mittal [MTE5143U] How to Deploy a Desktop Solution in One Hour with Horizon Cloud on Azure [WIN1824QU] NSX Cloud Native public cloud (AWS and Azure) Networking and Security with Amol Tipnis [MTE5151U] Deploying Windows 10 VDI on Horizon Cloud with Lakshmana Prakash [MTE5147U] Introduction to NSX Cloud [NET1516BU] Automate IT – Hybrid Cloud [SPL-1906-03-CMP_U] VMware NSX Cloud – Getting Started [SPL-1922-01-NET_U] Hope to see you there! @ExchangeGoddessCan’t-miss OMS Operations Management Suite Sessions at Ignite
Discover how Accenture and Time Warner manage hybrid environments today: This 45-minute session will allow you to hear from Accenture and Time Warner in their own words about how they are shifting their management strategies to make the most of cloud resources and security solutions. Learn lessons and notes from the field – Operations Management Suite Site Recovery and Backup: We heard you loud and clear! This session shares lessons learned and the best practices from implementing backup and disaster recovery solutions with real world customers. Manage your Azure Resources at scale with Operations Management Suite: This level-200 session will focus on how you can use OMS to manage your critical workloads, applications and data at scale in Azure. Monitor Linux in any cloud with Operations Management Suite: In this level-200 session, Microsoft experts will show you how Operations Management Suite can integrate with your existing Linux tools and provide an easy way to monitor your Linux applications and infrastructure. Protect every app: transform disaster recovery with Operations Management Suite: Take a deep dive into learning how Microsoft Operations Management Suite and Site Recovery makes disaster recovery accessible to every single enterprise application. To receive an even better understanding of the Operations Management Suite, visit our Experience Center to test our Insight & Analytics, Automation & Control, Security & Compliance and Protection & Recovery solutions.
