So I've been working with an internal customer on leveraging Azure Active Directory B2C. I noticed that the demo code is a bit dated so I thought I would put together some updated guidance. It's been a while since I worked with UWP apps so I thought I would reboot that as well and get … Continue reading AAD B2C with UWP WinUI 3 SDK
Setting up Site-to-Site VPN on Azure with Terraform
At home, I use Ubiquiti network equipment. My main router / firewall is a DreamMachine Pro. It's relatively inexpensive, feature rich and easy to use. I wanted to connect my local network to my Azure environment so that I didn't have to open up my Azure environment with too many PIPs so I thought I … Continue reading Setting up Site-to-Site VPN on Azure with Terraform
Setting up Key Vault secured Pipelines with Azure DevOps
One of the first things you need to do when setting up a new Azure DevOps pipeline is to pull secrets from Azure Key Vault into a Variable Group. Variable Groups can be used by your project to setup how things like Terraform in your pipelines will authenticate themselves with Azure, AWS, or GCP. By … Continue reading Setting up Key Vault secured Pipelines with Azure DevOps
Improving CosmosDB Test Automation Reliability with Retry Logic
You will find that CosmosDB Emulator will fail, randomly, for no apparent reason doing simple things like get an instance of a container or create the database. In the world of cloud, it’s important to handle Transient Faults, or errors that are not repeatable or consistent in when the appear. They might look like this: … Continue reading Improving CosmosDB Test Automation Reliability with Retry Logic
Cosmos DB Emulator on Azure DevOps
The cosmos DB Emulator is a custom action available on the Azure DevOps portal, however, that doesn't exactly make it turnkey to use. The custom task will spin up a container running Cosmos DB, however it does so with a specific local DNS / port that you need to pipe into your test running. There … Continue reading Cosmos DB Emulator on Azure DevOps
Azure Functions + EventGrid Subscriptions With Terraform
I think I figured it out. I have been working with Serverless Microservices Architecture on Azure for quite some time. I’ve been trying to leverage Terraform to effectively manage the extensive configuration of PaaS services on Azure. Due to immaturity of the Terraform AzureRM provider I’ve encountered well-documented challenges. This is the last major hurdle … Continue reading Azure Functions + EventGrid Subscriptions With Terraform
Using Terraform to Provision Microservices with Azure API Management Backed by Azure Functions
So I’ve talked about the fact that the Azure Function resource in the AzureRM provider does not support the exporting of the Key necessary to integrate Azure Functions with Azure API Management. However, I have recently employed a work around, whereby you are able to export the Azure Function Key using the Resource Group Template … Continue reading Using Terraform to Provision Microservices with Azure API Management Backed by Azure Functions
Azure API Management Backend Management with PowerShell
If you are using API Management you Might have noticed that there is no Azure Portal Access to view the Backends that are created automatically when you import you API from wherever. You might have also noticed it takes a ridiculously long time to provision and API Management resource. Therefore, destroying it completely and re-creating … Continue reading Azure API Management Backend Management with PowerShell
Terraform + Azure DevOps Environment Variable Piping Tips
When establishing good security processes around your software release pipeline it’s important to ensure that secrets are handled with care. As a best practice, I always ensure secrets that need to be used in a CI / CD pipeline are stored in Key Vault and imported into an Azure DevOps Variable Group. This allows the … Continue reading Terraform + Azure DevOps Environment Variable Piping Tips
Azure Serverless Architecture Automation with Terraform Explained
Here is a higher level view of the architecture and all the things that Terraform is provisioning. Based on my previous post, we know that certain things still require manual intervention but Terraform can provision a lot of stuff: Resource Group Event Grid Topics (but no Topics Subscriptions due to Function Access Key limitation) CosmosDB … Continue reading Azure Serverless Architecture Automation with Terraform Explained