If you are a Developer/Architect using Visual Studio as IDE for your development activities, this blog post will be of your interest. During the Ignite 2021 conference, Microsoft released Visual Studio 2019 v16.9 and v16.10 Preview 1. As part of version 16.10 Preview 1, one of the cool features they introduced is to "Remove Unused References..." for any Projects and Nuget packages that are not in use. At the time of writing this blog post, we have Visual Studio Version 16.10.0 (official release) which includes this new feature.  As part of development, we generally get carried away and in ..read more

Azure Resource Locking feature helps to prevent deletion and modification of Azure Resources on which the lock is been applied. Now you might be wondering how it's different and advantages compared to Azure RBAC (Role-Based Access Control)? RBAC is used as the first line of defense against restricting access to Azure Resources. Using RBAC you can restrict access to resources and resource actions. RBAC alone will not be sufficient across all environments especially from the Test environment onwards. RBAC and Resource lock doesn't conflict with each other rather they complement and should be ap ..read more

In this blog post, let's see how to recover an accidentally deleted Azure App Service (Web App). If you hear someone saying they have accidentally deleted any Azure service and want to restore it, it gives an indication they are lacking best practices and patterns in their cloud environment. One such pattern is described in my previous blog post named Resource Lock and if you haven't still read it, highly recommend having a look at it.  Within your Azure App Service, you will have multiple hosting capabilities like Web API, Static website, Front end application, Container-based solution ..read more

In Microsoft Ignite (March) 2021 there were several new announcements made by different product teams (e.g. Data, AI, etc.) within Azure. As part of today's blog post, I am going to cover one such announcement made by the CosmosDB team - Continuous backup with the point in time restore capability which is in public preview now.   Prior to this new feature announcement now you might be wondering what was the option for CosmosDB backup? Until this new announcement made the option we had was Periodic backup mode where the backup is taken at a periodic interval which will be defined by t ..read more

In this blog post, we will see one of the ways to secure your Azure Functions using API keys. Security plays a key role as part of SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) doesn't matter whether it's exposed to the client/public or even if it's internal. There are multiple ways to secure your Azure Functions like API Keys, Certificate,  API Mgmt, App Service Authentication, etc. If you are new to the Cloud and Azure Functions but want to make a start with minimal effort and less setup of Infrastructure, then API Keys is the ideal choice. Azure Functions allows you to secure HTTP-triggered ..read more

In this blog post, we will see if you have an existing or new Kubernetes cluster with Ingress resources how do we auto-renew the certificates. If it's not auto-renewed things need to be manually done e.g. every three months you have to renew certificates, delete the expired certificate and secret, update with new certificate secrets accordingly.  Manual is always tedious and not an ideal solution especially for your Test & Production environment.  Pre-requisites Install and setup kubectl Install and setup Helm Kubernetes cluster already provisioned with Ingress resources. Note ..read more

Azure App Configuration is a cloud-based managed service that helps developers and infrastructure team members to centralize and manage application configurations and feature flags. Using Azure App Configuration helps to separate application configuration from code. One of the Twelve-Factor App principles states strict separation of config from code with Azure App configuration this can be easily achieved. Azure App Configuration is now generally available as a free or paid service based on the pricing tier you choose as part of provisioning the service.&nbs ..read more

In this blog post, we will see how to send logs and metrics for the Azure Key Vault which can be used for auditing. Azure Key Vault OverviewAzure Key Vault provides a way to store securely keys, secrets, and certificates in a centralized location. Key Vault greatly reduces the chances of secrets being accidentally leaked, by simplified administration of application secrets. Azure Key Vault solution is not just for Cloud Solutions it can be integrated with on-premise as well. Integration with other Azure services is simplified with a managed identity. Azure Key Vault is not just only for Applic ..read more

In this blog post, we will see how to purge container images from Azure Container Registry (ACR). Till recent time most of them would have written custom PowerShell or bash script and run it to clean (purge) ACR container images. Recently Microsoft introduced a new preview feature to automatically purge images based on filters, duration, and untagged manifests. Additionally, this new preview feature supports to run on-demand or on a schedule using CRON expression. In my current project, our delivery team is committing code several times a day. This automatically triggers a CI pipeline from ..read more

Azure Blob Storage provides scalable, cost-efficient storage in the cloud. In general, Blob Storage holds organization data like back-ups, unstructured data, files, etc. With the Immutable Storage feature, it allows storing business-related information in the WORM (Write-Once-Read-Many) state. Immutable storage feature is available in all Azure public regions. Immutable storage feature is set at the container level through an Access policy. Policies apply to all the blobs in the container, can be applied either for the new or existing container and supports all blob tiers (hot, cold, and archi ..read more