When Software Attacks!

Accessing a local Hyper-V environment from the Android emulator

Not every project can host services in the cloud. If you have a local environment running on virtual machines, connecting to that from the Android emulator running on the same host can be tricky. This post details the solution I use and the tools needed to enable it. Detailing the problem At Black Marble we don’t just build solutions for our customers that run in the cloud. Sometimes things still need to be hosted on-premises.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Saturday, February 17, 2024

Importing bicep lint output as test results in Azure DevOps pipelines

Bicep is a great improvement over ARM Templates but doesn’t remove the need to validate our code at build time. I could continue to use the ARM-TTK and validate the generated template, but bicep has it’s own built in rules. Getting build errors in a way that can provide meaningful information in my CI/CD tooling is an interesting challenge. A quick problem description We are using Azure DevOps for build and release automation.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, February 5, 2024

Calling Application Insights API using Powershell

If you have an application, instrumenting it with something like Application Insights to emit useful data is something I cannot espouse the benefits of enough. As a service, however, Application Insights can offer other benefits, such as Availability Tests to tell you if the application is accessible to your users. The default approach to availability tests is to create cloud-based probes that regularly call your application from different regions of the globe to make sure it responds and assess how long those responses take.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Saturday, August 6, 2022

Configuring BizTalk 2020 Application Insights telemetry behind a firewall

BizTalk 2020 allows you to connect it to an Application Insights instance, where it will send tracking data as customEvents so you see what’s going on. However, getting it working in an environment where security is important and the network team want to open the fewest paths through the firewall as possible is an exercise in patience. This blog post is as much aide memoire for me as an information post for you.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Saturday, August 6, 2022

Deploying the ASDK for effective development use

Microsoft Azure Stack is a truly unique beast in terms of the capabilities it can bring to an organisation, and the efficiencies it can bring to a project that spans Public Cloud and on-premises infrastructure through it’s consistency with public Azure. We’ve been using Stack in anger for a customer project for a year now and have learned several things about development and testing, and how to configure the ASDK to be an effective tool to support the project.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Saturday, September 22, 2018