Category: Azure

AzureDevelopment

Azure Tools Extension for Visual Studio Code

on January 22, 2017

Came across an awesome Visual Studio Code extension called “Azure Tools for Visual Studio Code” by Brady Gaster. Check it out!

This extension for Visual Studio Code gives Azure developers some convenient commands for creating or accessing resources directly in the editor.

Features

  • Search the Azure QuickStart Templates GitHub repository
  • Download Azure Resource Manager (ARM) template and parameter files to workspace
  • Uses the Azure Resource Manager Tools extension to simplify the template-editing experience
  • ARM template deployment to live Azure subscription
  • Login with Microsoft Account (@hotmail.com, @live.com, etc.)
  • Login with Azure Active Directory (or "Organizational") account
  • Create App Service Web Apps
  • Create App Service Function Apps
  • Create Storage Accounts
  • Get Storage Account connection string
  • Browse to resource in portal
  • Browse to resource group in portal
  • Support for multiple Azure subscriptions
  • Supports all Azure data centers

Each of these commands is visible directly from commands visible in the command palette.

Installation

Azure Tools Extension for Visual Studio Code can be installed from the built-in extension tab in Visual Studio Code. Just search for “Azure Tools” and it will be the first result. Click on the extension and then click on the green “Install” button.

image

This extension is available as an open-source project and can be found in the GitHub repository https://github.com/bradygaster/azure-tools-vscode.

Enjoy!

References

Announcing the Azure Tools Extension for Visual Studio Code

AzureDevelopment

Azure Bot Service (Preview)

on November 20, 2016

dev_botframework

Last week at Microsoft’s Developer Connect(); // 2016 event, a new public cloud bot service powered by Microsoft Bot Framework is now available on Azure called the Azure Bot Service.

The Azure Bot Service will allow you to:

  • Use the Bot Framework with Azure serverless platform to run and scale your bots while only paying for your usage
  • Get started quickly with out of the box templates for .NET and Node.js. These templates allow you to create a basic bot, a language understanding bot (LUIS), a form bot or a proactive bot:

image

  • Write code for your bot directly in the browser within Azure. You will also be able to test your bot with the included Web Chat control:

image

  • Configure conversation channels
  • Take advantage of integrated continuous deployment (DevOps)

Now more than ever it’s so easy to get started with creating your bots and having them run on Azure.

Enjoy!

References

Azure Bot Service

LUIS: Language Understanding Intelligent Service

AzureDatabase

Azure SQL Database DTU Calculator

on October 20, 2016

When considering an Azure SQL instance, one of the decisions you need to make is the pricing level (Basic, Standard or Premium) and then for the selected level the number of DTU’s you need. Now you might be asking, "which service tier and performance level should I use and how many database throughput units (DTUs) am I using now?" 

First lets look at explaining what a DTU is and then we can look at how the DTU Calculator will help.

What are Database Transaction Units (DTUs)?

“A DTU is a unit of measure of the resources that are guaranteed to be available to a standalone Azure SQL database at a specific performance level within a standalone database service tier. A DTU is a blended measure of CPU, memory, and data I/O and transaction log I/O in a ratio determined by an OLTP benchmark workload designed to be typical of real-world OLTP workloads. Doubling the DTUs by increasing the performance level of a database equates to doubling the set of resource available to that database.”

How can I determine the number of DTUs needed by my workload?

If you are looking to migrate an existing on-premises or SQL Server virtual machine workload to Azure SQL Database, you can use the DTU Calculator to approximate the number of DTUs needed.

Following the instructions for the DTU Calculator, download either the Command Line Utility or PowerShell Script and run it to measure your server resource utilization. You want to get an hour worth of data.

Once the script completes, go to the DTU Calculator website and enter in the number of cores for your server and then upload the CSV file that was generated. Then click on the “calculate” button as show below.

image

After the DTU Calculator measures your server resource utilization, it will provide you the best recommendation for the number of DTU’s you should be using in Azure SQL.

Resources

AzureDevelopment

Real World Usage for Azure Functions

on October 17, 2016

Came across an excellent blog post from @TroyHunt on using Azure Functions to track abusive IP addresses to a website and log them to an Azure storage account and then have another Azure Function on a timer to validate those IP addresses and block them if necessary.

https://www.troyhunt.com/azure-functions-in-practice/

Enjoy!

AzureCloud

Azure Monitor

on September 28, 2016

This week saw the announcement of the public preview of Azure Monitor. Azure Monitor allows you to manage and explore all common tasks from a single view. Azure Monitor provides the following types of data – Activity Log, Metrics and Diagnostics Logs.

You can access the Azure Portal by clicking on the Monitor tab in the Azure Portal.

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Enjoy!

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