Backups, Disaster Recovery, and ensuring continuity of business data and operations, are arguably one of the most important aspects for anyone working in the IT industry. Our technically connected and data-driven world revolves around our ability to ensure our data is safe, secure, and protected from a range of issues that could prevail. In the Azure Infrastructure as Code (IAC) […]
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Overview With the rapid development of AI Services in recent times, it’s clear that adoption and growth of these services is only going to continue – and see wider adoption across a range of organisations. Continuing the Azure AI Infrastructure as Code Learning Journey, is therefore likely to be a key activity for many within 2024 and beyond. With Azure […]
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Overview Recently I have been using Azure Lab Services to prepare Lab Environments for testing and training scenarios, and also using various tools to help create and customise these environments as I need. Azure Lab Services provides on-demand or scheduled access to virtual machines to support various scenarios. A summary of the key points is below: Provide access to Virtual […]
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A recent topic of conversation with colleagues, friends in the technical community, and customers I work with, has been how I manage and deploy lab environments. I have to regularly deploy lab environments both for my own use (learning, training, etc.), and for customer demos – and often need to spin up/down these environments with little notice, relying on as […]
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As you may know, I maintain a range of Terraform environments for Azure, which can be used for Demos, Labs, Learning and Testing. These are maintained within my GitHub Repo, and I have occasionally also blogged about updates to these environments: https://jakewalsh.co.uk/updates-to-my-terraform-azure-base-lab-environments/. ✅ Just want the Code or Module? Click here: Code / Module Overview: I’ve recently been updating one […]
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Recently I had the pleasure of presenting a CUGC User Share Webinar on an Introduction to Terraform. I specifically chose to focus on using Terraform with Azure (as this is an area I regularly work within). ✅ https://mycugc.org/events/details/cugc-global-presents-user-share-an-introduction-to-terraform/ Within this webinar I covered off the following areas: What is Terraform? How Terraform works What is Infrastructure as Code? Why use Infrastructure […]
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Using a programmatic approach to creating images is a great way to ensure consistency and standardise your approach. By using a tool like Packer, we can do this reliably, and integrate the build process into existing DevOps Pipelines and deployments. At the current time, there are two Packer Azure Builders; azure-arm and azure-chroot – for this post, we will use […]
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Overview Recently I have been working with Azure Virtual WAN to provide connectivity between Azure Regions, Branch Offices, and Remote Users. Azure Virtual WAN is a networking service that brings many of the commonly found connectivity services into a single area, providing simplified connectivity and management. These services include: Branch connectivity. Site-to-site VPN connectivity. Remote user VPN connectivity (point-to-site). Private […]
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Security scanning of code, before, during, and after deployment is a great way to enhance the security of any project. Knowing that your code is being analysed for issues before deployment, during the build phase, and then after deployment when you are in the support/run phase, can really help to improve the security posture of an environment, with minimal effort […]
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For the next post in this series around using Azure DevOps and WVD, I wanted continue focusing on Azure NetApp Files. Continuing on from Part 1 in this series, I will be covering the setup of Azure NetApp Files (ANF) within an Azure DevOps Pipeline, but this time using Terraform to deploy ANF. In Part 1, Azure CLI was used […]
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For the next post in this series around using Azure DevOps and WVD, I wanted to focus on Azure NetApp Files. Azure NetApp Files (ANF) is often used for hosting both application and profile data, and in particular is used when rapid access and high IO throughput are required. This is often the case with User Profiles in a VDI […]
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Recently I’ve been using Packer to create images for use with Citrix Cloud and Windows Virtual Desktop, and building this into a DevOps Pipeline, to automate creation of images based on a JSON template. Within Azure DevOps this is a really simple process – and great for creating VM images within your Pipelines, or for Lab/Testing environments too. I use […]
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