In a previous post I went through how to deploy an ARM template to Azure through Visual Studio Team Services – Continuous Integration and deployment, using the VSTS Build engine and Release management features. Now I’m going to cover deployment of an ASP.net Core web app to Azure app services, including some more details around parameterisation, tying resources together with… Read more »
Azure VMSS (Virtual Machine Scale Sets) A VMSS is an ARM based resource, and can be thought of as a container for building a scalable set of similar machines from a common image. In this post I’m going to show how to build an ARM template to reference and deploy your own custom VM image into a new VMSS. The… Read more »
I thought it worth sharing this post, because as well as giving you the right information for calling the DocumentDB APIs from Powershell, it also gives a basis for being able to call any RESTful web API from a Powershell script – which is particularly useful for things like creating custom VSTS Build and Release tasks. The task I wanted… Read more »
The VSTS vNext Build and Release systems are a huge improvement in terms of usability and maintainability on the previous XAML based system. In a previous post I’ve covered a walkthrough that shows how to use the Build and Release systems to create a continuous delivery process to deploy Azure resource groups using the built in tasks. In this post,… Read more »
Overview With ARM comes the ability to define your infrastructure as code, in a JSON template file. This means that your environment can effectively be source controlled and release managed, and can become a standard part of your application lifecycle, just as source code and applications are. Put simply, you can enable continuous deployment of your dev/test environments, ensuring they’re… Read more »
A step by step guide to setting up your Azure environment to support Automation for Resource Manager Powershell scripts, using Service Principal authentication. Getting set up so that you can run Azure Resource Manager Powershell scripts in your Automation account isn’t quite as easy as perhaps it should be. I thought it was worthwhile documenting the steps you need to… Read more »
The Azure Podcast I was lucky enough to be a guest on the Azure podcast last week while in Seattle attending an internal Microsoft conference. If you’re not aware of the podcast, go and check it out – it’s a weekly half hour of Azure update, usually with 10-15 minutes of “whats new in Azure” and then a deep dive on… Read more »
In the two previous posts, I introduced PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) and the kinds of use cases that its suited to. Post #2 covered setup and configuration of the DSC Server and how target nodes retrieve their configuration. This post will now cover the nuts and bolts of the actual Powershell configuration file (script) that defines the Desired State…. Read more »
Authoring, Configuring and deploying PowerShell DSC DSC: Desired State Configuration In the previous post, I introduced PowerShell DSC at a high level and explained how it works, what it can be used for, and the options for setting up servers. In this post I’m going to cover the first part of implementation, which includes setting up the environment for… Read more »
What is PowerShell DSC, and what can I use it for? DSC: Desired State Configuration DSC is a Powershell technology that enables a set of server’s configuration states to be described in a Powershell configuration object. Each part of the configuration for a server (or Node) is described using a Powershell DSC Resource. There are some “built in” resources, such… Read more »