by Florin Loghiade | Apr 7, 2017
For the 5th year in a row, ITCamp Community is organising Global Azure Boot Camp (https://global.azurebootcamp.net/).
This is a global event that takes place in over 159 locations around the world. Like last year, Cluj-Napoca is hosting a GABC and appears on the Azure map.
On April 22nd, you are invited to join this event which will have three 90 minute workshops which will be part theoretical and part practical, so we advise you to bring a laptop 🙂
I will be speaking at the event, and my workshop is about ARM templates 🙂
The event will start at 9:00 AM and will finish at around 2:00 PM.
Here are the event workshops:
Azure Functions (Radu Vunvulea)
What are Azure Functions? AWS Lambda from Azure. This is the fastest way how we can present Azure Functions. During this workshop, we will have a challenge to create a system that can process and analyze data without VMs or other computation units. We will use only Azure Functions for it. Sounds interesting, then let’s meet from 09:30 and find out how you can do this.
Machine learning for mere mortals with Azure ML (Silviu Niculita)
Machine learning has been leveraged to radically change many industry verticals. The problem is the learning curve has always been very steep. Exotic languages, complex tools, little or no documentation.But innovative cloud-based ML platforms are changing that and democratizing access. During this session, you will learn the basics of machine learning, and you will see a demo of how you can build a prediction model using real-world data, evaluate several different algorithms and modeling strategies, then deploy the finished model as a scalable RESTful API within minutes.
ARM Templates, how to create them, and use them in your CD pipeline (Florin Loghiade)
Azure has an excellent API that permits the user to automate the creation of every complex environment, using one single JSON document. Those documents are called ARM Templates, and they can be used to create, manage and even refresh any type of resource available in Azure. Using ARM templates and PowerShell combined with a CI/CD tool like VSTS, TeamCity, Jenkins, you can automate the build and deployment of the most complex application out there. In this hands-on lab, you will learn about the benefits of using Azure Resource Manager templates, when and how to use PowerShell in the CI/CD pipeline, and what it takes to create ARM Templates.
Here is the meetup link and I hope to see you at the next Global Azure BootCamp!
Global Azure Bootcamp 2017 powered by ITCamp
Saturday, Apr 22, 2017, 9:00 AM
Endava Office (ISDC)
Avram Iancu 506-508 407280 | Florești Cluj-Napoca, RO
13 ITCamp-ers Went
Acesta este al cincilea an când ITCamp community organizează Global Azure Boot Camp. Acesta este un eveniment la nivel global care are loc în peste 159 de locaÈ›ii. Ca È™i anul trecut, Clujul nu se lasă mai prejos È™i apare pe harta Azure. Pe data de 22 Aprilie vă invităm pe toÈ›i la acest eveniment din Cluj-Napoca, care va conÈ›ine 3 workshop-uri.Part…
Check out this Meetup →
by Florin Loghiade | Mar 19, 2017
In an earlier blog post, I talked about what is a managed disk and why you should use it and in this post, we will cover how easy is to move your existing virtual machines from the storage account model to managed disk model.
The first thing that you need to do is to plan for failure. Yes, you heard that right. You need to be prepared for things to go wrong so you can have a plan to recover.
Planning and taking action, in this case, is simple. You need to have a recent backup of the VM and to plan for downtime. The conversion process from regular storage disks to managed disks is not an online operation so your VMs need a reboot. If you have VMs in availability sets then this is quite simple as you’re going to take them down one at a time.
Another thing that you need to check, is that if you have any extensions, then all of them should have a success status otherwise this will fail.
After you have a plan to recover in case of a failure, it’s time to convert the VMs.
The VM I have created for this example is pretty simple. It’s a single VM which has an OS Disk and a Data Disk in a Storage Account.
The conversion process.
In order to convert the VM, you will need to turn to PowerShell so you can run some Azure cmdlets.
The first thing you need to make sure is that you have the latest version of the AzureRM PowerShell cmdlets otherwise this will not work.
| ##Install AzureRM Install-Module AzureRM -Verbose -Force ##Update AzureRM Update-Module AzureRm -verbose -Force |
Once your AzureRM cmdlets are installed/updated, login to your Azure Subscription
Use the following PowerShell block to convert your VM.
| $ResourceGroupName = "Convert-VM" $VMName = "convert-vm" $SubscriptionID = "123456-123456-123456-123456" Select-AzureRmSubscription -SubscriptionId $SubscriptionID Stop-AzureRmVM -ResourceGroupName $ResourceGroupName -Name $VMName -Force ConvertTo-AzureRmVMManagedDisk -ResourceGroupName $ResourceGroupName -VMName $VMName |
Let’s see what does the code block from above do:
Select-AzureRmSubscription – This selects the subscription you’re going to perform the conversion process
Stop-AzureRmVM – This as the name says will stop the VM (Remember the planning phase)
ConverTo-AzureRmVmManagedDisk – This cmdlet will convert the VM from normal storage to Managed Disks and will start it up after you
If you have multiple VMs in an availability set then the first thing you need to do is to convert the Availability Set to support Managed Disks. You can do that with the code down below.
| $ResourceGroupName = "Convert-VM" $AVSetName = "Convert-AVS" $AVSetName = Get-AzureRmAvailabilitySet -ResourceGroupName $ResourceGroupName -Name $AVSetName Update-AzureRmAvailabilitySet -AvailabilitySet $AVSetName -Sku Aligned |
Update-AzureRmAvailabilitySet – This command will convert the Availability Set to support managed disks. It will not disrupt available VMs in that availability set, so you can run it without issues.
Once the conversion process is done, the VMs boot up and you’re golden. Just verify if everything is OK and delete the storage account.
That’s the whole process. If you encounter any errors during the conversion phase, just run the cmdlet again to unblock the process. This can happen due to a transient error on Azure’s side and all it needs is a re-run.
Have a good one!
by Florin Loghiade | Nov 20, 2016
Virtual network peering is a new mechanism in Azure Resource Manager that allows two virtual networks from the same region to be connected through the Azure backbone network. From a connectivity standpoint, this mechanism allows virtual machines in separate virtual networks to communicate with each other using private IP addresses. In this post, I will talk about what Virtual Network Peering is and how we can use it.
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by Florin Loghiade | Nov 5, 2016
In a previous post I was talking and demonstrating how to create Custom Role Based Access Controls which could be tailored comply with a company’s requirements. Another company requirement is compliance regarding data governance. Say you have one or multiple Azure Subscriptions and one of the company policies is that nobody should be able to create Azure resources outside a specific region. Some / all of the company’s contracts have a mandatory clause that all the data they produce and keep in the cloud should only reside in a specific geographical region. Microsoft has gone to great lengths to ensure that their cloud services (Azure or Office 365) comply with national, regional, and industry-specific requirements governing the collection and use of individual’s data.
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by Florin Loghiade | Oct 22, 2016
I’ve received an e-mail two weeks ago from a frequent reader of this blog that he started a PowerShell User Group here in Bucharest and I’m pleased to announce that I will be attending this meeting and I will be presenting a session about building your datacenter with PowerShell DSC.
The event will take place on the 25th October 18:30 at Cegeka Academy (Location). So if you’re interested, you can join the meetup group PSUG Bucharest Romania and come join us for some PowerShell 🙂
Here are the details of the event:
This is going to be the first meeting of (what I hope) is going to be a great sequel of great meetings for all PowerShell enthusiasts.
We are going to debate on the agenda for our next meetings, based on the input of our members, but this will definitely include: DSC, JIT/JEA, Pester, PowerShell for GUIs, crazy PowerShell (creating all kinds of applications with our favorite tool).
We’ll also have the pleasure of welcoming in our midst a great presenter, Florin Loghiade (https://www.florinloghiade.ro/about), who will help us discover the world of DSC with his (introductory) talk “Building and Managing your Virtual Datacenter with PowerShell DSC”.
No cost to attend the meetings! Please join and have an amazing time!
Please look for us also in the calendar of the very popular powershell.org site: Events on powershell.org
See you there!
