We can use matrix in GitHub Actions to use a single defnition of job to create multiple jobs as described here in the documentation. Let's say we input the list of application names we want to build, as an input parameter to the action workflow, and need to have the ability to remove the items from the app list at the time of triggering it manually (run workflow). For example, we have 4 apps by default. However, when we need we should be able to build only one or two out of them using the same action workflow without having to change, the workflow defintion. In this post let's explore ho ..read more

 Consider a situation where we want to perform same set of steps in a pipeline, multiple times. A good example would be building or deloying multiple apps, using same set of steps. Let's explore this example to understand how we can loop through set of pipeline steps, to build multiple apps using a list of app names provided as a parameter in the pipeline. The app name list can be provided as a parameter as shown below. parameters:   - name: apps     displayName: 'Apps to deploy'     type: object    ..read more

We can set a variable value in Azure piplines using task.setvariable. This will only set a variable in the pipeline but not in a variable group. If we want to set a variable in a library variable group in Azure DevOps, we have to use command line azure-devops extension  for Azure CLI. Let's explore how to update a library variable group variable value using Azure pipeline step. We can use a task similar to below to update an existing variable in a variable group. - task: PowerShell@2 name: setup_blue_green_controls_vars displayName: 'Setup blue-green control ..read more

 We have discussed how to deploy KEDA using helm in the post "Setting Up Kubernetes Event Drivern Autoscaling (KEDA) in AKS with Workload Identity" .  Instead of deploying KEDA manually it is better to automate the deployment. Let's look at the steps to get KEDA deployed using Azure pipelines. As the first step we need to have kubectl and helm installed in the pipeline agent.       - task: KubectlInstaller@0         displayName: 'Install Kubectl latest'             - task: HelmInstaller@0         d ..read more

 In previous posts we discussed "Setting Up Kubernetes Event Drivern Autoscaling (KEDA) in AKS with Workload Identity" and how to "Set Up (KEDA) Authentication Trigger for Azure Storage Queue/Service Bus in AKS". With that now we can proceed to setup kubernetes scaled job in AKS to run a pod when the Azure service bus queue received a message. Using scaled job we are going to start a job (pod) once a messsage is received in the queue and then receive the massage in the pod container app, process and complete the message and complete the job execution with a pod complete. So, there will be ..read more

We have discussed setting up Kubernetes Event Drivern Autoscaling (KEDA) with AKS workload identity in the post, "Setting Up Kubernetes Event Drivern Autoscaling (KEDA) in AKS with Workload Identity". Purpose of KEDA is to once we receive messages in a queue, such as Azure storage queue or Azure service bus queue we have to scale a scaledjob/deployment in kubernetes. To setup authentication for the KEDA to communicate and monitor such a queue to scale a job or deployment, it should authentication to access the queue. We can set up the required authentication using using connnection string ..read more

 We have discuss setting up workload identity in AKS to be used with application containers we deploy to AKS in the post "Setting Up Azure Workload Identity for Containers in Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) Using Terra- Improved Security for Contianers in AKS". Kubernetes Event Drivern Autoscaling (KEDA) is the mechanism we need to use when we want to scale our deployments, or specially kubernetes jobs (A pod that runs for completion). In this post let's look at how to setup KEDA with workload identity, so that we can use KEDA in a later posts to run a Kubernets job, autoscaled based ..read more

 Using DefaultAzureCredential with most of the Azure resources is straight forward and simple with most of the Azure resources with relevant Azure .NET SDKs (We can use nuget packages Azure.Storage.Blobs and Azure.Identity). For example, with storage blob we can easily use DefaultAzureCredential as shown in below code.     private static BlobServiceClient GetBlobServiceClient(string accountName)     {         return new(new Uri($"https://{accountName}.blob.core.windows.net"),             new De ..read more

 Azure Workload Identity allows your containers in AKS touse amanaged identity to access Azure resources securely without having to depend on connection strings, passwords, access keys or secrets. In other works you can just use DefaultAzureCredential in your containers running in AKS, which will be using workload identity assigned to the container, to get access to the required Azure resource. The roale based access permissions will be in effect and the user assigned managed identity (we can use AD app registration as well bu user assigned managed identity is recommended) used to se ..read more

 Kubernetes applications can be deployed easily with helm. Meny useful tools such as KEDA (Kubernetes Event Driven Autoscaler) deployments can be done with helm, using few simple steps. In this post let's look at how to setup helm in WSL so that we can use it to setup applications using helm charts. As the first step of setting up helm in WSL we have to run the below command. curl https://baltocdn.com/helm/signing.asc | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/helm.gpg > /dev/null Next run command below. sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https --yes Run below command as the n ..read more