Installing #Azure Service Fabric Cluster on Windows Server 2019 Insiders #Containers #Winserv

Microsoft Azure Service Fabric Cluster

Azure Service Fabric is a distributed systems platform that makes it easy to package, deploy, and manage scalable and reliable microservices and containers. Service Fabric also addresses the significant challenges in developing and managing cloud native applications. Developers and administrators can avoid complex infrastructure problems and focus on implementing mission-critical, demanding workloads that are scalable, reliable, and manageable. Service Fabric represents the next-generation platform for building and managing these enterprise-class, tier-1, cloud-scale applications running in containers.

In the following Step-by-Step Guide I created a Standalone Microsoft Azure Service Fabric Cluster
on Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview for DevOps testing :

First I downloaded the Contents of Service Fabric Standalone package for Windows Server here

Several sample cluster configuration files are installed with the setup package. ClusterConfig.Unsecure.DevCluster.json is the simplest cluster configuration: an unsecure, three-node cluster running on a single computer. Other config files describe single or multi-machine clusters secured with X.509 certificates or Windows security. You don’t need to modify any of the default config settings for this tutorial, but look through the config file and get familiar with the settings.

I made the Unsecure three-node Cluster running on Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview in my MVPLAB.

 

Open Powershell in Administrator modus and run the Script :

.\CreateServiceFabricCluster.ps1 -ClusterConfigFilePath .\ClusterConfig.Unsecure.DevCluster.json -AcceptEULA

Connect-ServiceFabricCluster

 

Service Fabric Explorer (SFX) is an open-source tool for inspecting and managing Azure Service Fabric clusters. Service Fabric Explorer is a desktop application for Windows, macOS and Linux.

I Installed Azure Service Fabric Explorer to visualize the Cluster.

Here we got Azure Service Fabric 3-Node Cluster running on Windows Server 2019 Insiders

Azure Service Fabric CLI

The Azure Service Fabric command-line interface (CLI) is a command-line utility for interacting with and managing Service Fabric entities. The Service Fabric CLI can be used with either Windows or Linux clusters. The Service Fabric CLI runs on any platform where Python is supported.

Prior to installation, make sure your environment has both Python and pip installed.
The CLI supports Python versions 2.7, 3.5, 3.6, and 3.7. Python 3.x is the recommended version, since Python 2.7 will reach end of support soon.

You can download the latest Python version here

Check the Python version and the Pip version by typing :

python –version
Pip –version

The Pip version which is delivered via Python has to be updated with the following command :

python -m pip install –upgrade pip

We now have pip version 18.0 instead of 10.0.1

Installing Service Fabric CLI by command :

pip install -I sfctl

Done ! Service Fabric CLI is installed on my Windows 10 Surface.

sfctl -h 

Now we have installed Microsoft Azure Service Fabric Cluster on Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview and the Service Fabric CLI on Windows 10, we now can connect to the 3-node Fabric Cluster via CLI.
Because we are working under Windows 10 and not on the host itself we have to set an endpoint connection :

sfctl cluster select –endpoint http://192.168.2.15:19080

sfctl cluster health

sfctl node list

Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise and Service Fabric SDK

As a Developer or DevOps you like to work from Microsoft Visual Studio to deploy your Apps, Microservices or Containers to the Azure Service Fabric Cluster.

You need to install the Service Fabric SDK in Visual Studio before you can deploy :

Select Service Fabric Application at New Project

Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise : Service Fabric SDK must be installed

Installing Microsoft Azure Service Fabric SDK

Done.

Now you can make your Service Fabric Container.

Happy Developing 😉

More information on Microsoft Azure Service Fabric Cluster :

Service Fabric on GitHub

Add or remove nodes to a standalone Service Fabric cluster running on Windows Server :

Scaling your Azure Service Fabric Cluster

More info :

Microsoft Azure Service Fabric documentation

Microsoft Azure Service Fabric Cluster Learning Path

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#Azure Cloud Shell editor with Visual Studio Code inside (Project Monaco) #VSC #IaC

Azure Cloud Shell is an interactive, browser-accessible shell for managing Azure resources. It provides the flexibility of choosing the shell experience that best suits the way you work. Linux users can opt for a Bash experience, while Windows users can opt for PowerShell. But now with Project Monaco my favorite tool Visual Studio Code is integrated in Microsoft Azure Cloud Shell 🙂 Awesome for Infrastructure as Code (IaC) like I did with Terraform 

Just type Code . in Azure Cloud Shell

Command Palette VSC in Azure Cloud Shell

Just Cool in https://shell.azure.com

More information about Microsoft Azure Cloud Shell :

Azure Cloud Shell Overview docs

Here you find more information about the Monaco Editor

Your Microsoft-managed admin machine in Azure, for Azure

#Build your Own Azure DevOps Project Pipeline #Cloud #Azure #DevOps #Pipeline

Microsoft Azure DevOps Projects

The Azure DevOps Project automates the setup of an entire Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) pipeline to Azure. You can start with your existing code or use one of the provided sample applications, and then quickly deploy that application to various Azure services such as Virtual Machines, App Service, Azure Container Service, Azure SQL Database, and Azure Service Fabric.
The Azure DevOps project does all the work for the initial configuration of a DevOps pipeline including everything from setting up the initial Git repository, configuring the CI/CD pipeline, creating an Application Insights resource for monitoring, and providing a single view of the entire solution with the creation of an Azure DevOps Project dashboard on the Azure portal.

Learn how to use the Azure DevOps Project to create VSTS Release pipelines :

1. Bring your own code with GitHub
2. Deploy your ASP.NET App to Azure Virtual Machines
3. Deploy your ASP.NET App and Azure SQL Database
4. Deploy your App to Azure Container Service and Kubernetes
5. Deploy your App to Azure Service Fabric

Microsoft Azure CI/CD Pipeline integrated with VSTS

Get started today with your Own Azure DevOps Project here

#Microsoft Azure DevOps Projects and Infrastructure as Code #Azure #IaC #DevOps

Microsoft Azure DevOps Project for CI/CD

The Azure DevOps Project presents a simplified experience where you bring your existing code and Git repository, or choose from one of the sample applications to create a continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) pipeline to Azure. The DevOps project automatically creates Azure resources such as a new Azure virtual machine, creates and configures a release pipeline in VSTS that includes a build definition for CI, sets up a release definition for CD, and then creates an Azure Application Insights resource for monitoring.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) gives you benefits like :

• Consistency in naming conventions of Azure components
• Working together in the same way with your company policies
• Reusability of Templates
• Automatic documentation and CMDB of deployments in your repository
• Rapid deployments
• Flexibility and Scalability in code for Azure Deployments

As an Large Enterprise Company you don’t want to Click and Type in the Azure Portal with lot of employees to get the job done in a consistent way. The changes and deployments will be different in time because people can make mistakes. For Developers it’s important to make your building process before you publish your application, so why not for DevOps and ITpro to do the same thing for Infrastructure.

In the following step-by-step guide you will learn how to make a Microsoft Azure DevOps Project and make a CI/CD Pipeline deploying a virtual machine with your ASP.net Application.

Prerequisites :
An Azure subscription. You can get one free through Visual Studio Dev Essentials.
Access to a GitHub or external Git repository that contains .NET, Java, PHP, Node, Python, or static web code.

Here you find the GitHub for Developer Guide

When you have your prerequisites in place you can start with the following steps :

Search for DevOps at All Services in the Azure Portal

Select .NET and Click on Next

You can see where you are in the flow of creating your CI/CD Pipeline, when you need a Azure SQL Database for your ASP.net application you can select Add a Database (Option). This will provide you Azure SQL as a Service (PaaS).

Database-as-a-Service
(I didn’t Choose for SQL)

In this step select Virtual Machine and click Next

From here you can create a VSTS account or your Existing account of Visual Studio Team Services. After selecting VSTS you can manage your Azure settings and by clicking on Change you can select the Azure options.

 

Select the Virtual Machine you need for your Application.

Here you see the Deployment Running

Important for Infrastructure as Code (IaC), the Deployment template can be saved into the library and / or you can download it for reusability or make your own policies into the template.

When you save it into the Azure Library you get the release notes and who’s the publisher

In the Microsoft Azure DevOps Project main Dashboard you will see the status of your CI/CD Pipeline and that release is in progress or not. On the right-side of the Dashboard you see the Azure resources like the Application endpoint, the Virtual Machine and Application Insights for monitoring. When the CI/CD Pipeline deployment is succeeded you can browse to your ASP.net Application.

Your Application.

Your Virtual Machine Running and in the Monitoring.

The Microsoft Azure DevOps Project CI/CD Pipeline is Completed.

Application Insights is an extensible Application Performance Management (APM) service for web developers on multiple platforms. Use it to monitor your live web application. It will automatically detect performance anomalies. It includes powerful analytics tools to help you diagnose issues and to understand what users actually do with your app. It’s designed to help you continuously improve performance and usability. It works for apps on a wide variety of platforms including .NET, Node.js and J2EE, hosted on-premises or in the cloud. It integrates with your DevOps process, and has connection points to a variety of development tools. It can monitor and analyze telemetry from mobile apps by integrating with Visual Studio App Center and HockeyApp.

You can drill down into the error to see what is happening.

Azure Application Insights topology

Application Insights is aimed at the development team, to help you understand how your app is performing and how it’s being used. It monitors:
Request rates, response times, and failure rates – Find out which pages are most popular, at what times of day, and where your users are. See which pages perform best. If your response times and failure rates go high when there are more requests, then perhaps you have a resourcing problem.
Dependency rates, response times, and failure rates – Find out whether external services are slowing you down.
Exceptions – Analyse the aggregated statistics, or pick specific instances and drill into the stack trace and related requests. Both server and browser exceptions are reported.
Page views and load performance – reported by your users’ browsers.
AJAX calls from web pages – rates, response times, and failure rates.
User and session counts.
Performance counters from your Windows or Linux server machines, such as CPU, memory, and network usage.
Host diagnostics from Docker or Azure.
Diagnostic trace logs from your app – so that you can correlate trace events with requests.
Custom events and metrics that you write yourself in the client or server code, to track business events such as items sold or games won.

You can also drill down into Microsoft Azure Log Analytics and run your analytics queries to get the right information you want for troubleshooting. More information on Azure Log Analytics and queries is on MSFT docs.

From App Insight we see it was an Exception error

Because the Azure DevOps Project is connected with VSTS you can follow the Build and Release here to and you got your documentation of the CI/CD Pipeline.

From here you can work with your Developers and DevOps and manage the User and Groups security in de CI/CD Pipeline for the next Build. Working together to build innovative apps via VSTS from one Dashboard :

VSTS Dashboard

Next day you see it was one time error and the Pipeline is running Fine 😉

For more information about all the possibilities with Microsoft Azure DevOps Project go to MSFT Docs

DevOps and Microsoft :

DevOps is the union of people, process, and products to enable continuous delivery of value to our end users.

To Learn DevOps please visit this Microsoft DevOps Site

Conclusion : 

Invest in your CI/CD Pipeline and make your own environment is important before you deploy into Azure production for your business. Make your ARM Templates and Code in repositories like Git or VSTS. When you have this all in place your are more in control of your consistent Deployments and Changes in the Azure Cloud. I hope this blogpost is useful for you and your Company. Start today with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and get the benefits 😉

I Love #Microsoft Azure CloudShell in Visual Studio Code #VSC #Azure #Cloud

Azure Cloud Shell in VSC

Azure Cloud Shell is an interactive, browser-accessible shell for managing Azure resources. It provides the flexibility of choosing the shell experience that best suits the way you work. Linux users can opt for a Bash experience, while Windows users can opt for PowerShell

Here you find the Installation of Azure Cloud Shell in Visual Studio Code

As Easy as this 😉

More Technical information about Azure Cloud Shell on Microsoft Docs

#Microsoft Build 2018 Sessions and Content Overview #Azure #AzureStack #MSBuild2018

Microsoft Build 2018 – Technology Keynote: Microsoft Azure

With Scott Guthrie @scottgu

Inside Azure Datacenter Architecture

with Mark Russinovich @markrussinovich

Architecting and Building Hybrid Cloud Apps for Azure and Azure Stack.
With Filippo Seracini @pipposera and Ricardo Mendes @rifmendes from the AzureStack Team

Container DevOps in Azure
With Jessica Deen @jldeen and Steven Murawski @stevenmurawski

Best Practices with Azure & Kubernetes

Follow @rimmanehme

Microsoft Azure CosmosDB @ Build 2018 The Catalyst for next Generation Apps

From Zero to Azure with Python & VSC

Secure the intelligent edge with Azure Sphere

Satya Nadella – Vision Keynote

Here you can find all the Microsoft Build 2018 Sessions and content.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) with Microsoft #Azure #Cloud #AzureStack #HybridCloud

Break down video of the essentials needed to plan and implement your solutions on Microsoft Azure IaaS. This 7-minute intro covers compute, virtual machines, containers, networking, storage and management options in Microsoft Azure.

When you transform your datacenter on-premises to Microsoft Azure Cloud Service, these Architecture references can help you
to make the right chooses for your business needs. The Azure Architecture Center contains guidance for building end-to-end solutions on Microsoft Azure. Here you will find reference architectures, best practices, design patterns, scenario guides, and reference implementations.

Start here for your Microsoft Azure Architecture designs

Microsoft Azure Architecture Center

On the left site of this page you can download the complete content of Microsoft Azure Architecture Center into a PDF file 😉
Looks like this :

When your transition and your Architecture is done on Paper you can move save to Microsoft Azure Cloud Services.

Accelerate your digital transformation:
Now is the time to move to Azure and reap the rewards of cloud technology, including the ability to scale up or down quickly, pay only for what you use, and save on compute power. Whether you are deploying new virtual machines, moving a few workloads, or migrating your datacenters as part of your hybrid cloud strategy, the Azure Hybrid Benefit provides big savings as you move to the cloud.

Have a look at the Microsoft Azure Hybrid Use Benefit

Here you find some handy links to Microsoft Azure Cloud Services :

Microsoft Azure Products Technical docs

Microsoft Azure SDK and Tools

Getting started with Microsoft Azure products

Microsoft Azure Resources

Here you find the Whitepaper of Azure Virtual Datacenter Lift and Shift Guide but also an E-book of Azure Virtual Datacenter from the Azure CAT Guidance Team which can help you to start your transition of your datacenter to the Microsoft Azure Cloud.

 

Microsoft Mechanics all Azure

When you have workloads in your on-premises Datacenter which may not run in any public Cloud or via Internet, you can run Microsoft Azure in your Datacenter via Microsoft Azure Stack.

Build modern applications across hybrid cloud environments

Azure Stack is an extension of Azure, bringing the agility and fast-paced innovation of cloud computing to on-premises environments. Only Azure Stack lets you deliver Azure services from your organization’s datacenter, while balancing the right amount of flexibility and control—for truly-consistent hybrid cloud deployments.

Microsoft Azure Stack Overview

Hope this blogpost will help you out with your journey to the Microsoft Azure Cloud.