When Software Attacks!

Creating Website Slots and SQL Elastic Pools using Azure Resource Templates

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.

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.

Convert new VM’s dynamic IP address to static with Azure Resource Templates

Over the past few posts on this blog I’ve been documenting the templates I have been working on for Black Marble. In a previous sequence I showed how you can use nested deployments to keep your templates simple and still push out complex environments. The problem with those examples is that they are very fixed in what they do. The templates create a number of virtual machines on a virtual network, with static IP addresses for each machine.

Optimising IaaS deployments in Azure Resource Templates

Unlike most of my recent posts this one won’t have code in it. Instead I want to talk about concepts and how you should look long and hard at your templates to optimise deployment. In my previous articles I’ve talked about how nested deployments can help apply sensible structure to your deployments. I’ve also talked about things I’ve learned around what will successfully deploy and what will give errors. Nested deployments are still key, but the continuous cycle of improvements in Azure means I can change my information somewhat around what works well and what is likely to fail.

Useful links from The ART of Modern Azure Deployments

Within a few days of each other I spoke about Azure Resource Templates at both DDDNorth 2015 and Integration Mondays run by the Integration User Group. I’d like to thank all of you who attended both and have been very kind in your feedback afterwards. As promised, this post contains the useful links from my final slide. I’ve already written posts on much of the content covered in my talk. However, since I’m currently sat on a transatlantic flight you can expect a series of posts to follow this on topics such as objects in templates, outputs and references.