When Software Attacks!

Complex Azure Template Odyssey Part Three: ADFS Server

Part One of this series covered the project itself and the overall template structure. Part Two went through how I deploy the Domain Controller in depth. This post will focus on the next server in the chain: The ADFS server that is required to enable authentication in the application which will eventually be installed on this environment. The Template The nested deployment template for the ADFS server differs little from my DC template.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, August 30, 2015

An Introduction To Azure Resource Templates

I have spent a good deal of time over the last month or two building an Azure Resource Template to deploy a relatively complicated IaaS environment. In doing so I’ve hit a variety of problems along the way and I though that a number of blog posts were in order to share what I’ve learned. I will write a detailed post on certain specific servers within the environment shortly. This post will describe Azure Resource Template basics, problems I hit and some decisions I made to overcome issues.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, August 23, 2015

Complex Azure Template Odyssey Part One: The Environment

Part Two | Part Three | Part Four Over the past month or two I’ve been creating an Azure Resource Template to deploy and environment which, previously, we’d created old-style PowerShell scripts to deploy. In theory, the Resource Template approach would make the deployment quicker, easier to trigger from tooling like Release Manager and make the code easier to read. The aim is to deploy a number of servers that will host an application we are developing.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, August 23, 2015

Speaking at CloudBurst in September

I’ve never been to Sweden, so I’m really looking forward to September, when I’ll be speaking at CloudBurst. Organised by the Swedish Azure User Group (SWAG – love it!), this conference is also streamed and recorded and the sessions will be available on Channel 9. The list of speakers and topics promise some high-quality and interesting sessions and I urge you to attend if you can, and tune in to the live stream if you can’t.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, August 23, 2015

Using the customScriptExtension in Azure Resource Templates

Documentation for using the customScriptExtension for Virtual Machines in Azure through Resource Templates is pretty much non-existent at time of writing, and the articles on using it through PowerShell are just plain wrong when it comes to templates. This post is accurate at time of writing and will show you how to deploy PowerShell scripts and resources to an Azure Virtual Machine through a Resource Template. The code snippet below shows a customScriptExtension pulled from one of my templates.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, August 23, 2015