Recently Microsoft announced they have 13 million daily users in Teams outpacing Slack. You can read about this announcement here: https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/11/20689143/microsoft-teams-active-daily-users-stats-slack-competition. There are many reasons Microsoft Teams has seen tremendous growth since its launch. I use Teams daily across all of my projects. In this post, I am going to write about one that has been exciting and useful for me. In this post, I am going to explore the integration with Microsoft Teams and Azure DevOps.
Are you working on Azure? If so, you are
probably working with ARM Templates for Infrastructure as Code (IaC). Azure
DevOps can help you centralize DevOps teams IaC ARM Templates. In addition, you
will want to use VS Code and Microsoft Teams. There are many extensions in VS
Code for ARM Templates. With Teams, you can integrate with Azure DevOps to
track commits, pull requests, and even 2-way integration with Kanban boards.
Within Microsoft Teams you can add what is called “Apps”. These Apps are how you extend Teams and or integrate with other systems. This is how you integrate with Azure DevOps. Before we dive into this there are two important prereqs to note.
#1 You can only
integrate a Teams channel with Azure DevOps when they both exist in the same
Azure Active Directory tenant organization.
#2 Your Teams needs to
be a part of an Office 365 account. The free version of Teams does have an
Azure Pipelines app but does not have the Azure DevOps app that gives you full
2-way integration. The Azure Pipelines app is for notifications while the Azure
DevOps app is for full collaboration.
Here are the high-level steps to integrate a
Teams channel with the Azure DevOps App.
In your Teams channel go to Manage Team and
then click on Apps.
Click on More Apps.
Search for Azure DevOps and click on it.
Input your Teams channel in the field next to
Add to a team and then click on Install. This will load the Azure DevOps app
into your teams’ channel. Note this needs to be done for each teams’ channel if
you want this integration across multiple channels.
Next click the Set up button next to the
feature you want to configure and use. The following screenshot shows the 3
features available.
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:
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:
For anyone working with Azure sooner or later, you will end up authoring Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Templates. Working with ARM templates, in the beginning, can seem painful but once you get the hang of them it is a great way to build out and deploy your Azure as code. In this blog post, I am not going to go into detail on authoring ARM Templates. In this blog post, I am going to list out the extensions that I use in VS Code to enhance the ARM Template authoring experience. Recently whenever I am demoing or showing others my ARM Templates in VS Code they ask me how they can also make their VS Code look like mine when working with ARM Templates. I figured it makes sense to write up a blog about how I have my VS Code configured for ARM Templates.
If you are not using VS code, you should change that and start using it today! I use it pretty much for any scripting such as PowerShell, coding, any time I need a text editor and more. I even use it to work directly with Azure via cloud shell and to work with Docker containers and Kubernetes clusters. Here is a quick snapshot of what VS Code is for anyone not familiar with it. VS Code is an open source – code editor developed by Microsoft that is cross-platform able to run on Windows, Linux and macOS. At a high level here is what VS Code includes:
Has support for hundreds of languages.
Has Integrated Terminal.
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 systems such as Azure DevOps, Bitbucket and more.
Large Extension Marketplace of third-party extensions.
As you
can see there is a ton of stuff you can do with VS Code. VS Code is a must have
for anyone doing CloudOps work with Azure and more. Now let’s look at the VS
Code extensions I use for ARM Templates. I am including the link for each
extension I will talk about. You can also simply load these right in VS Code.
The Azure Resource Manager Tools extension provides language support for ARM Templates and language expressions. It can be used to create and edit Azure Resource Manager templates. High-level features include:
ARM Template Outline.
IntelliSense.
Support for built-in ARM functions, Parameter references, Variable references, resourceGroup() properties, subscription() properties, and more.
Bracket matching, Errors/Warnings and more.
VS Code
natively supports JSON. Azure Resource Manager Tools makes VS Code ARM Template
aware. One of the biggest benefits it gives me is the ARM Template Outline
making it much easier and faster to navigate the sections of an ARM Template.
Here is what it looks like.
Next up is two
extensions that both should be added. It is Material Theme and Material Theme
Icons.
This
extension gives you some very cool themes and works in combination with the
Azure Resource Manager Tools extension to give you the new color coding of your
ARM Template code. The color coding highlights different parts of the ARM
Template code such as parameters, variables, functions and more making it much
easier to read through all of the code in ARM templates. Here is an example:
This extension adds
a nice set of icons to your VS code. This extends beyond just ARM Templates.
Again this makes it visually easier when navigating around VS code and ARM
Templates. I typically use a PowerShell deployment script to deploy ARM
Templates from VS Code into Azure. This icon them makes it easy to see ARM
Template files and PowerShell files.
Here is a what it
looks like without and with the Materials Icon Theme.
The final extension I want to cover is ARM Snippets. This extension was developed by Sam Cogan (@samcogan) a fellow Microsoft MVP. In addition to the aforementioned marketplace link for this extension, you can find Sam’s Github repo for it here https://github.com/sam-cogan/arm-snippets-vscode.
This extension adds
snippets to VS Code for creating Azure Resource Manager Templates. This is
helpful when you are working in VS Code and need to add something to your
template for example a parameter, resource etc. You simply type arm and a menu
appears with a list of the available snippets. For example if you want to add a
virtual machine you could type arm-vm and a list of Windows and Linux VM
resources snippets will appear. Click on the one you want and it will add the
code block for you. This makes authroing templates much-much faster. This is
shown in the following screenshot:
The
snippets include:
Skeleton ARM Template (Note: This will load a skeleton for a fresh new ARM Template.)
Windows and Linux Virtual Machines
Azure Web Apps
Azure Functions
Azure SQL
Virtual Networks, Subnets and NSG’s
Keyvault
Network Interfaces and IP’s
Redis
Application Insights
DNS
Virtual Machines
And more……
Note that the ARM Snippets extension is derived from the Cross Platform Tooling Samples. The Cross Platform Tooling Samples are a set of templates, snippets, and scripts for creating and deploying Azure Resource Management Templates in cross-platform environments. It sounds like this is updated more often and worth looking into loading. It does not have a friendly installer though like the ARM Snippets extension does though. Here is the link to the Cross Platform Tooling Samples Github repo: https://github.com/Azure/azure-xplat-arm-tooling
End
Result:
Below is
a screenshot of what your ARM Templates will look like after loading all of the
extensions mentioned in this blog post into your VS Code.
That wraps up this
blog post. I hope this is helpful to those out there working with ARM Templates
in VS Code. If you have any additional tips to share please add a comment.
Happy authoring!
I recently read a Career Advice for IT professionals in 2019 article and was reminded again by a friend and fellow MVP’s on his blog that “Change is always constant in IT.
Part of being an IT professional is keeping an eye on and ramping up on new technology. Change in IT is constant and it is critical to explore new technology so you can bring innovation to your organization and ensure you are ready if the business decides they want to use a specific technology to gain an edge in the market.
With all the excitement around Blockchain, I decided to spend time ramping up on Azure’s Blockchain technology specifically Azure Blockchain Workbench. Azure Blockchain Workbench is a way for developers and IT pros to get A blockchain network up and running quickly.
Once Azure Blockchain Workbench is up and running IT pros can administrator the network and developers can dive right into building blockchain apps. Most people that have heard of blockchain are familiar with cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin. Most people don’t know of or associate blockchain with smart contracts. Azure Blockchain Workbench powers smart contract technology. A smart contract is a self-executing contract between two or more parties involved in a transaction. Getting started with Blockchain can seem intimidating but with Azure Blockchain Workbench it is not hard to get started. I wrote a white paper that you can use to get started and takes you beyond cryptocurrency into the world of smart contracts using Azure Blockchain Workbench.
The white paper covers the following:
Explorers blockchain beyond cryptocurrency
Has an in-depth overview of Ethereum and smart contracts
Helps identify when and what to use blockchain for?
The Azure Blockchain Workbench architecture
How to deploy Azure Blockchain Workbench
How to deploy a blockchain application
The Azure Blockchain white paper titled “Blockchain beyond cryptocurrency – A white paper on Azure Blockchain Workbench” can be downloaded here:
Almost every day when you go to a news website, a news program on the radio or news on the TV you can expect to hear some mention of Cryptocurrency and increasingly something about Blockchain. Blockchain has a strong buzz and yet it is still misunderstood by many. It is an exciting time for technology … Read more
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:
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.
This year’s summit
was one of the best MVP summits I have been to since being a Microsoft MVP! I
focused on Azure, Azure Stack, containers, and orchestration platforms. That’s
about all I can say about the summit. Everything else is NDA!
On top of all the
learning at the summit it was great connecting with other MVP’s and the
Microsoft teams. This I can share. Here are some highlights from the summit in
pictures:
It was full of cool
stickers starting off with one for the 2019 MVP Summit.
Here are a some of
the core CDM MVPs in front of building 92 including Bob Cornelissen, John
Joyner, Janaka Rangama, Jakob Svendsen, Sam Erskine, Cameron Fuller, Robert
Hedblom, Dieter Wijckmans, and others.
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.
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:
Name
Type
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:
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:
In the Azure Portal, from within the resource group click on the Rancher Host VM.
On the Overview page click on Connect.
Copy “ssh ranchuser@rancherhost.centralus.cloudapp.azure.com” from the Connect to virtual machine pop up screen.
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.
Azure Policy can be used to enforce rules and effects on resources in your Azure subscriptions. It is a part of the Azure Governance and management toolbox native to Azure. I actually wrote a blog post all about Azure Policy here as a part of my native cloud management in azure blog series.
In this blog post I
want to dig into Requiring Tags on Resource Groups via Azure Policy. There is a
sample policy ARM Template to accomplish this here:
"Environment": {
"type": "String",
"metadata": {
"description": "Provides information on what the resource group is used for (useful for maintenance, policy enforcement, chargeback, etc.) Tag value: Dev, QA, Stage, Test, Prod. Example: Prod"
}
},
Be sure you add a parameter for every rule. Also in the example I gave I removed the “equals”: “[parameters(‘tagValue’)]” from the rules because I did not want to populate the tag value. I simply needed to require the tag and leave the value open for the person creating the resource to fill in. Here is the full example Policy ARM Template here:
{
"mode": "all",
"policyRule": {
"if": {
"allOf": [
{
"field": "type",
"equals": "Microsoft.Resources/subscriptions/resourceGroups"
},
{
"not": {
"field": "[concat('tags[',parameters('BillTo'), ']')]",
"exists": "true"
}
},
{
"not": {
"field": "[concat('tags[',parameters('Functional Area'), ']')]",
"exists": "true"
}
},
{
"not": {
"field": "[concat('tags[',parameters('Environment'), ']')]",
"exists": "true"
}
},
{
"not": {
"field": "[concat('tags[',parameters('AppOwner'), ']')]",
"exists": "true"
}
}
]
},
"then": {
"effect": "deny"
}
},
"parameters": {
"BillTo": {
"type": "String",
"metadata": {
"description": "Provides a charge code or cost center to attribute the bill for the resources too. Tag value: Cost Center. Example: team@domain.com"
}
},
"Functional Area": {
"type": "String",
"metadata": {
"description": "Provides information on department or team is responsible for administering/supporting the application. Tag value: Team name/email. Example: 1506548"
}
},
"Environment": {
"type": "String",
"metadata": {
"description": "Provides information on what the resource group is used for (useful for maintenance, policy enforcement, chargeback, etc.) Tag value: Dev, QA, Stage, Test, Prod. Example: Prod"
}
},
"AppOwner": {
"type": "String",
"metadata": {
"description": "The Business app owner to contact. Tag value: Business App owners’ email. Example: name@domain.com"
}
}
}
}
After you create the Policy definition using the ARM template it will look like this:
When you assign the policy you will need to complete the parameters:
The next time someone deploys a resource group without the required tags in the subscription this policy is assigned to it will fail.
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.
