Over the last few years, adoption of Docker and Kubernetes has grown in leaps and bounds. Vast majority of developers is developing microservices and deploying them into containers. One of the most important aspect that people do not realize is that, the containers needs to be lightweight in nature. Also, while building containers, one needs to account for certain aspects like reducing build time while doing incremental builds, produce images in consistent ways, performing clean builds, maintain them properly, etc. To achieve all this, one needs to follow certain practices while writing Dockerfiles.
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Working with Azure DevOps Pipelines using Command line
One of the new exciting features introduced in Azure DevOps updates is the introduction of ‘az pipelines’ command group. Microsoft has been putting some efforts in writing YAML based pipelines over the last few months and has also recently introduced the ability to do Continuous Integration or Release or define both in one single pipeline. Since Azure Pipelines can now be managed at the command line, you can use it to further introduce the automation that you have created for your organization. In this blog post, we’ll learn how to use ‘az pipelines’ commands to define, initiate and manage Azure pipelines at the command line.
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Write Verbose Output in PowerShell using Write-Verbose
It is good practice to use the various -Verbose, -Debug and other about_CommonParameters when writing functions because it helps one to write the clean code in a very integrated way with the PowerShell. This blog post focuses on the usage of Verbose command to provide detailed tracking information and status. One of the main benefits about using Write-Verbose command is that you can control, if you need extra detailed information. By default, the verbose message stream is not displayed, but you can display it by changing the value of the $VerbosePreference variable or using the Verbose common parameter in any command. Also, Write-Verbose writes to the verbose output stream and you can capture it separately.
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Schedule Azure DevOps Pipelines using Cron Syntax
Azure DevOps has always provided the facility of defining Scheduled pipelines using UI Editor. With the push of Sprint 137, this functionality is now moved to the Cron Syntax. (And not Cron-like Syntax :)) Not only the cron syntax is more prominent in the Software world, it also provides more granularity than the UI editor. Also, you can define multiple schedules simultaneously for a single pipelines, allowing you even more flexibility. Not to mention, you can also manage and track build schedules as part of the code. In this blog post, we’ll learn about the same.
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Setup and Configure Azure Bastion to Securely connect to Azure Virtual Machines
Last week, Microsoft Azure Team has calmly announced the preview release of one of the exciting features known as Azure Bastion. The concept of using an Bastion Host is nothing new, where one would configure one of the Virtual Machines as Bastion or HopBox and then connect to other private virtual machines configured in the virtual network. This would help providing some security as instead of securely managing all of the virtual machines in an given network, you would need to securely connect and manage only Bastion Host, which is having Public IP address assigned for the connections. However, the onus of configuring all the required networking setup, installing and configuring ssh and rdp protocols, timely patching and hardening of the Bastion Host still lies with the Azure/AWS Administrator. Continue reading “Setup and Configure Azure Bastion to Securely connect to Azure Virtual Machines”
