Pumping Code

Microsoft Build 2021: Developer and Cloud Native Highlights

Microsoft's yearly Build Conference took place last week and brought us a bunch of new announcements around Microsoft Azure. Here are my highlights from a cloud-native and developer perspective.

Develop against a remote instance of Ory Kratos from localhost

Ory Kratos uses secure cookies, which cannot travel across domains. This can become a problem when testing an app on localhost against a remote instance of Ory Kratos. Here is, what you can do.

github

Deploy Pull Requests for Review into Kubernetes with GitHub Actions

To review a Pull Request, it can be helpful to deploy it temporarily. The infrastructure and the application must be prepared for this.

github

Create your own GitHub Action with .NET

When using GitHub Actions as your CI / CD solution, you might come to the point where your own custom Action would become handy. Here is how to create one with your .NET skills.

Give teams access to specific APIs in Azure API Management with custom roles

Whenever multiple teams contribute to the same central instance of Azure API Management, you need to think about a governance concept around that instance. In case teams should be able to control their own but only view other APIs, you will need to create a custom Azure API Management role.

Useful Developer Tools

Useful Developer Tools #14: OAuth 2.0 Debugger and Open ID Connect Debugger

I recently watched a fantastic talk by Nate Barbettini about OAuth 2.0 and Open ID Connect on YouTube. Besides explaining what these protocols are, Nate also showed two useful tools he built for Debugging OAuth 2.0 and Open ID Connect. The OAuth 2.0 Debugger and the Open

Useful Developer Tools

Useful Developer Tools #13: unDraw

A collection of hundreds of beautiful handcrafted illustrations from Katerina Limpitsouni for your next website or app. All illustrations are free to use in any kind of project and are hosted under an Open Source license. You can set a custom primary color and download each illustration in multiple formats.

Useful Developer Tools

Useful Developer Tools #12: One Word Domains

Looking for a nice domain for your product or even a product name, that a fancy one word domain is still available for? One Word Domains is a collection of more than 700.000 free domains that consist of only one word. One Word Domains - Database of all available

Setup your Raspberry Pi for Docker and Docker-Compose

Personally, I like to use Docker containers on my Raspberry Pis as they come with a great layer of abstraction and portability. Here is how to get your Raspberry Pi ready for Docker and Docker-Compose. 1. Setup your Raspberry Pi with Raspbian, Wifi and SSH accessIf your Raspberry Pi is

Azure Functions

Instrumenting Azure Functions in Containers with Application Insights

Application Insights with Azure Functions in containers is tricky. Here is how to set the Cloud Role Name and Instrumentation Key

aks

Modify Terraform's AKS Default Node Pool without re-creating the cluster

In Terraform, changing the AKS default node pool forces the cluster to be re-created. Here is a workaround without modifying the Terraform state.

azuredevops

Deploy Pull Requests to Kubernetes for Review with Azure DevOps

Try out Pull Request changes by optionally deploying them to a dedicated Kubernetes namespace with Azure DevOps.

docker

How to run a SonarCloud scan during Docker builds for .NET Core

How to kick-off a SonarCloud scan during a build of a .NET Core Docker container.

Kubernetes

Find a new home for your Prometheus metrics and Grafana Dashboards outside your Kubernetes cluster in Azure Monitor

Replace your self-hosted Prometheus and Grafana with Azure Monitor, a fully-managed and centralized logging, metrics and dashboard solution without vendor lock-in.

Kubernetes

Use Kubernetes Service Accounts in Terraform for AKS clusters with AAD integration

Use Service Accounts in AKS clusters with AAD integration to not gain admin credentials to Terraform and DevOps pipelines.

Lessons learned: Running a multi-day customer meeting fully remote

Here is, what we learned from running a two-day customer meeting completely remote instead of in-person.

Best backgrounds for Video Conference Calls with Teams or Zoom

As more and more tools like Microsoft Teams or Zoom support custom background images for video chat, here are my personal favorites.

azuredevops

Run an Azure Pipelines Job only, if source code has changed

When using DevOps pipelines like Azure Pipelines, you might want to skip certain stages or jobs, if your source code has not changed since the last run.

Kubernetes

Backup, restore and migrate Kubernetes resources including state to another AKS cluster with Velero

Velero is a backup and restore solution for Kubernetes, that can be used to take backups and restore them in case of loss but also for migrating to other clusters.

Kubernetes

Using SignalR and other WebSockets in Kubernetes behind an NGINX Ingress Controller

When using Ingress in Kubernetes, the NGINX Ingress Controller presents a default options for many. When you application is using WebSocket and frameworks like SignalR, the NGINX should be adjusted for that use-case.

Useful Developer Tools

Manage all your installed software at one place with Homebrew Bundle

In software development, you often manage all your dependencies through a package manager like NPM or NuGet. When it comes to software on our operating systems, we often break with this concept and install software from all various places. Homebrew Bundle takes back control.

Useful Developer Tools

Useful Developer Tools #11: Port Manager

We've all been there: You fire up a project in your terminal and are interrupted by an obnoxious "EADDRINUSE" message. Well, no more! Port Manager will spare you countless minutes of pointless frustration. Port Manager is a tiny tool for macOS, which lists all currently opened ports and shows the

Angular

Dynamically set Angular Environment Variables in Docker

Angular's environment variables are baked into the application on every build and not meant to be changed afterwards by default. This requires a separate build for every environment. In the world of containers it is common, to configure the app via environment variables. Here is how to achieve that.

announcements

Microsoft Ignite 2019: Cloud Native Highlights

Microsoft's yearly Ignite Conference took place last week and brought us a bunch of new announcements around Microsoft Azure. Here are my highlights from a cloud-native perspective summarized together with a list of session recording recommendations!

Kubernetes

Restart a node in AKS

Sometimes, single nodes in your AKS clusters might behave in a strange way. Usually, the self-healing capabilities of Kubernetes should detect that and replace the node. From time to time, you might decide to restart a single node manually.