While architecting cloud native applications, you need to ensure that your system is highly available, performant, scalable, fault tolerant, and has the capability to recover from a disaster scenario. In this article, Samir Behara discusses the options available when designing the database architecture to achieve scalability.… Read more
With Amazon RDS, it’s easy to have a SQL Server running in minutes. There are some limitations, though. Seth Delconte explains a workaround to overcome one of the limitations: the inability to restore a second copy of a database to recover missing data.… Read more
Azure Event Grid (in preview) is a new event routing service that works with Azure Logic Apps and Azure Functions. It’s one more solution that enables developers to focus on business value, not on infrastructure. Christos Matskas explains how this new feature works and walks you through a simple example. … Read more
Azure App Service has got more versatile because it can now run Linux. Not only can you run Web App for Containers, and publish Docker containers to Azure, but there is built-in support for ASP.NET Core, Node.js, PHP and Ruby on Linux. This allows you to host microservicess on a fully-managed platform. Christos Matskas explains.… Read more
Azure provides an ideal platform for hosting microservices because it offers a number of managed services that allow developers to create microservices that can run reliably and at scale. The problem is in understanding how these managed services can help and which is most suitable for the task. Christos Matskas provides a useful summary for anyone developing cloud-based applications.… Read more
So you've decided to use Azure SQL Database. You head for the portal and are suddenly faced with a number of questions. Sure, the choices you make have a number of repercussions, but what are they? You need a simple guide to get started.… Read more
Windows Server 2016 features support for containers. These are not Linux-based, but containers that run on Windows and run Windows on the inside.
These conform to the Open Container Initiative (OCI). They allow you to run applications insulated from the rest of the system, within portable containers that include everything an application needs to be fully functional. As they did with Linux, containers will change the nature of the software supply chain for Windows users.… Read more
What are your options for connecting to an Azure VM? Sure, a Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) connection will get you started but you'll soon need a full secure VPN connection. Azure can provide three different options for doing this: Point-to-Site (P2S), Site-to-Site (S2S), and ExpressRoute, but what are their relative advantages, and which one is right for the way you need to use Azure? … Read more
Some of the most intractable problems of application design are concerned with how to store credentials for accessing sensitive application data, keys and, configuration settings in code. With Azure Key Vault you don't have to. You can, instead just authorise an application to access and use a Key Vault and perform operations that require authentication against a KeyVault. Christos Matskas shows how an application can interact with the service, using a node.JS application as an example.… Read more
No longer do developers need to store sensitive application data, keys and, configuration settings in code - Azure Key Vault can store them for our applications on the cloud. Christos Matskas shows how to provision a new Key Vault in Azure using the Azure PowerShell cmdlets, and how to authorise an application to access and use a Key Vault.… Read more
The name 'Azure Key Vault' hides a valuable Azure service that allows us to easily protect our Cloud data by putting sound cryptography in Cloud applications without having to store or manage the keys or secrets. This makes it far easier to manage cloud data in applications in a way that that complies with industry-standards for sensitive data.… Read more
Once you've built your BizTalk solution, you will need to deploy and monitor it. Matt Milner shows that, while there are several ways to monitor your solution, and manual deployment via Visual Studio, the automated deployment of BizTalk solutions is probably best served by Azure IaaS with BizTalk Server virtual machines.… Read more
Docker technology is Linux-based. Although the concept of a container isn't new, the common toolset, packaging model and deployment mechanism of Docker has made the use of containers far simpler. As a quick introduction to the technology for Windows users, Krishna shows, step by step, how to set up, and configure a Docker Daemon in Azure within a VM, and install a MySQL image in a container from the Docker Repository.… Read more
By moving applications to Azure, you can't always avoid the requirement for accessing data from applications that are based within your intranet. You have a wide range of choices for doing this. Matt Milner explains that there are several technologies that can achieve this for BizTalk, but that will apply more generally.… Read more
The Electronic Data Interchange has been around a long time. Azure BizTalk Services supports this important protocol for transmitting business transactions, and it is reasonably easy to set up, as Matt Milner explains… Read more
There are a lot of ways to move Azure Blobs around. Robin wraps up her series on Azure Blobs with Import/Export services and the AZCopy tool.… Read more
A Pragmatic Introduction to Building IoT Solutions on the Azure Platform by Rick Garibay. Rick starts his series with an introduction to the Internet of Things.… Read more
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