Showing all posts tagged: 'Azure'

A 66-post collection

Query Profiling on Azure SQL

[Azure SQL](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/sql-database/?v=16.50" target="_blank) is one of the most valuable Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings on Azure, second only to Web Apps. It's incredibly cost effective and fully featured. It supports a number of database versions and can be deployed in seconds. The other day I was looking to test something with EF Core and I needed a database to run queries against. I went to the Azure portal, I created a database with prepopulated data using the AdventureWorks (Datawarehouse Workload - DW) and I was ready …[read more]

Azure Functions, Node.js and Environment Variables

Another fun project (yes another one) using 2 of my favourite frameworks: serverless with [Azure Functions](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/functions-reference-node" target="_blank) and Node.js. I'm developing locally using the [Azure Functions Core Tools](https://www.npmjs.com/package/azure-functions-core-tools" target="_blank) (former CLI) and [Visual Studio Code](https://code.visualstudio.com/" target="_blank). It's a match made in heaven as I get to be super productive using the CLI and at the same time feel like a proper developer debugging issues in VS Code. I can attest that I …[read more]

Deploy your ASP.NET Core app to Azure Service Fabric

[Service Fabric](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/" target="_blank) is Azure's highly scalable, multi-node, always-on solution that's designed to make deployment and running of distributed micro-services (and not only) a breeze. It provides a lot of features and functionality out of the box, allowing you to focus on the business value of your solution instead of the architectural and design decisions that could delay your path to production/market. There's great, impartial set of articles on micro-services published by Microsoft, along many, so if you want a crash course introduction, then I would urge you to have …[read more]

Visual Studio Code integration with Azure Application Insights

I don't know how I've missed this but today I found out that [Visual Studio Code](https://code.visualstudio.com/" target="_blank) (VS Code) provides excellent integration with [Application Insights (AI)](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/application-insights/" target="_blank). If you're not using AI for monitoring your apps (any app, any code) then you're missing out big time. Regardless of whether you're running on the cloud or on-premises, AI can light up your application in many interesting ways and give you a unique insight on areas such as: Exceptions Events User actions Custom events and …[read more]

Secure Azure ARM templates with Key Vault and VSTS

Azure ARM templates are the recommended way for standardising and automating resource deployments to Azure. The resource manager engine that drives the current portal and is also responsible for managing your infrastructure, where everything is a resource (VMs, WebApps, CosmosDB etc). ARM templates are JSON files that describe what your infrastructure looks like and comes with some great benefits: Infrastructure as Code Idempotent Source Control Tool flexibility Tighter security and control For this post, I would like to focus a bit on security and show you how to leverage some of the built-in Azure features to improve your overall Azure …[read more]

Securing Azure Storage Tables with SAS authentication and CORS in .NET

I'm currently working on a side project as an excuse to try some of the latest code features and functionality in [.NET Core](https://www.microsoft.com/net/download/core" target="_blank). It's a small project with a couple of models and basic CRUD. The project is going to touch everything new such as ASP.NET Core 2.0 Preview, .NET Standard 2.0 Preview, [Azure Storage SDK for .NET Core](https://www.nuget.org/packages/WindowsAzure.Storage" target="_blank)etc. It was a conscious decision as I wanted to see how the latest tooling and …[read more]

Introduction to Azure Functions Deployment Slots

Deployment slots have been an invaluable feature for Azure Web Apps for a long time. To find out how to create slots for Azure Web Apps, you can visit the official documentation [here](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service-web/web-sites-staged-publishing" target="_blank). So what makes deployment slots so useful? I summarize some of the benefits below but this is by no means the exhaustive list: [Testing in Production - A/B Testing](GHOST_URL/azure-websites-testing-in-production/" target="_blank) Hot deployments that allow deployment to production with no downtime UAT testing targeting a near live environment Easy …[read more]

DDD South West Retrospect

This is going to be a short post since I only managed to experience only part of the overall conference. Life and work commitments meant that I had to fly to Bristol later in the day, missing out on the speakers dinner. The dinner is way more than just food. In fact, I've noticed that I rarely pay any attention to the, otherwise tasty, food. That's because the speaker's dinner is an excellent opportunity to meet up with new speakers and catch up with old friends. These dinners also tend to run late in the night with the conversation moved …[read more]