Recently I have been helping a number of organisations automate the deployment of their applications to Azure and came across a couple of scenarios that were not documented: Deploying an App Services web site with slots and SQL connection string settings, and the creation of a SQL Elastic Pool. Of those, the SQL Elastic Pool I found to be written up already by Vincent-Philipe Lauzon and all credit to him - my template draws on his excellent article.
Notes from the field: Using Hyper-V Nat Switch in Windows 10
The new NAT virtual switch that can be created on Windows 10 for Hyper-V virtual machines is a wonderful thing if you’re an on-the-go evangelist like myself. For more information on how to create one, see Thomas Maurer’s post on the subject.
This post is not about creating a new NAT switch. It is, however, about _re_creating one and the pitfalls that occur, and how I now run my virtual environment with some hack PowerShell and a useful DHCP server utility.
Net Writer: A great UWP blog editor
I came across Net Writer some months ago, when it’s creator, Ed Anderson blogged about how he’d taken the newly-released Open Live Writer code and used it in his just-started Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app for Windows 10. In January it only supported blogger accounts, which meant that I was unable to use it. However, I checked again this weekend and discovered that it now supports a wide range of blog software including BlogEngine.net that powers blogs.blackmarble.co.uk.
My Resource Templates from demos are now on GitHub
I’ve had a number of people ask me if I can share the templates I use in my Resource Template sessions at conferences. It’s taken me a while to find the time, but I have created a repo on GitHub and there is a new Visual Studio solution and deployment project with my code.
One very nice feature that this has enabled me to provide is the same ‘Deploy to Azure’ button as you’ll find in the Azure Quickstart Templates. This meant a few changes to the templates – it turns out that Github is case sensitive for file requests, for example, whilst Azure Storage isn’t. The end result is that you can try out my templates in your own subscription directly from Github!
