Windows Admin Center and The Container Extension #WAC #Containers #Winserv

Windows Admin Center

Windows Admin Center is a locally deployed, browser-based app for managing Windows servers, clusters, hyper-converged infrastructure, as well as Windows 10 PCs. It comes at no additional cost beyond Windows and is ready to use in production. If you want to work more secure with Windows Server Core images without the GUI or with Microsoft Azure Stack HCI operating system then Windows Admin Center is the tool for the Administrator to manage your workloads on-premises or in the Cloud. You have one web based interface for all your Server consoles (MMC) to manage your Hybrid Datacenter.
Here you can read more about Microsoft Windows Admin Center and download the free software.

Get the best with Windows Admin Center Extensions

Windows Admin Center and the Container Extension

When you have installed Microsoft Windows Admin Center you can configure the settings and extensions for your environment. When you want the benefits of the Microsoft azure Cloud Services you can configure your Azure subscription and add the extensions to your Windows Admin Center. There are also Third Party extensions like Dell, DataOn, Fujitsu and more.
Here you find more information about how extensions work.

Container Extension

In the following step-by-step guide we will work with the Container Extension of Windows Admin Center on a Windows Server 2019. You have already added the server in WAC and installed the Container extension. In my MVPLAB.CLOUD is that Windows Server 2019 datacenter Starship01.mvplab.cloud. When you open the server you will come in the Overview of the Windows Server:

Click on Containers.

Click on Install for the Docker installation on Starship01.mvplab.cloud.

This will install Docker on the Windows Server 2019 and reboot when it’s ready to use for Containers. From this moment you can work with Windows Containers on the host via Windows Admin Center.

Remote Desktop in Windows Admin Center, the docker host is installed with the Windows Filter by default.

When you want to use Docker Linux Containers with Windows Server 2019 host, you have to configure the Linux kit LCOW with a distro on the host. More info here

Containers on Starship01.mvplab.cloud

To start with containers you can create your own, or pull an image from Docker Hub with Windows Admin Center. In my case I pull Windows Server 2019 ltsc with IIS image.

mcr.microsoft.com/windows/servercore/iis  (Image)

windowsservercore-ltsc2019 (Tag)

Click then on Pull.

Select your image and click on Run.
Give your Container a name and set your settings.

Click on Run.

Click on Containers tab and you will see your running Container

More details you see the IP-Address of the Container.

IIS is running on Windows Server 2019 ltsc in a Docker Windows Container.
That was easy right 😉

Making your Own Docker file with Windows Admin Center Container Extension

When you have your own Github repository with your software, you can make your own docker file and make a docker image on your host for deployment. To show this I have used this sample on Microsoft docs, but you can clone also a github repository and copy the dockerfile on the host.

I copied the dockerfile on the host C:\BuildImage.

—————

# Sample Dockerfile

# Indicates that the windowsservercore image will be used as the base image.
FROM mcr.microsoft.com/windows/servercore:ltsc2019

# Metadata indicating an image maintainer.
LABEL maintainer=”jshelton@contoso.com”

# Uses dism.exe to install the IIS role.
RUN dism.exe /online /enable-feature /all /featurename:iis-webserver /NoRestart

# Creates an HTML file and adds content to this file.
RUN echo “Hello World – Dockerfile” > c:\inetpub\wwwroot\index.html

# Sets a command or process that will run each time a container is run from the new image.
CMD [ “cmd” ]

---

Here is the Microsoft docs website

Image Creation in progress

New Image Created with Windows Admin Center

Running your Own Container image

Container “Hello World – Dockerfile” running

Conclusion :

In Windows Admin Center comes ITpro world and DevOps world Together in One web based console like with the Container extension. Microsoft is developing really fast in Windows Admin Center to get all the right Feature for ITPro, DevOps and SecOps Administrators in one place. Awesome are the Windows Admin Center Extensions, developers makes these better and better to do the job for Administrators 🚀
Windows Server 2019 Core and Azure Stack HCI are Operating systems without a GUI, and with Windows Admin Center they are really good to manage, update and keeping in control of security.
I like Windows Admin Center a lot and it Rocks for managing your hybrid Datacenter 😉

Send your comments and feedback via Microsoft GitHub repo by opening a new issue for the Container Extension. Follow @vrapolinario on Twitter

 

You can Follow Windows Admin Center here on Twitter : @servermgmt

Start your DevOps pipeline in the Azure Cloud

This blogpost can support your DevOps journey to make your Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI CD) for companies and or customers.

What is DevOps?

People, Process, and Technology to continually provide value to customers.

While adopting DevOps practices automates and optimizes processes through technology, it all starts with the culture inside the organization—and the people who play a part in it. The challenge of cultivating a DevOps culture requires deep changes in the way people work and collaborate. But when organizations commit to a DevOps culture, they can create the environment for high-performing teams to develop.

My name is James van den Berg and I’m a MVP in Cloud and Datacenter Management on my DevOps journey as an IT Infrastructure Guy managing datacenters on-prem and in the Microsoft Azure Cloud. Today It’s not only a Virtual Machine or a Website to deploy for your customers, it’s much more then that like :

• Time to market, deploy your solution fast without waiting on dependencies because you automated your process with a CI CD Pipeline.
• Security and Monitoring to keep you in Controle.
• Working together with different Teams who are each responsible for a part of the solution.
• The complete DevOps Pipeline must be Compliant

Here you can start with Azure DevOps on Microsoft Learn platform.

Read More on the Microsoft Tech Community about the step-by-step guide, you will see how easy it can be to Build your own first pipeline!

#Microsoft Build 2020 Virtual Event May 19-20-21 Build your Schedule Now! #MSBuild #MVPBuzz

Microsoft Build 2020

Choose from 48 hours of continuous content to create your own digital event experience. Registration is free and is required to get full, interactive access to the digital event. Here you can register for Microsoft Build 2020 Virtual Event

The Session Catalog is Live ! Build your own Schedule here 

With 30+ Community talks, learning sessions, and skill-building activities exploring Minecraft, MakeCode, Visual Studio, AI, Azure, and more, there is something here for every student and every level of experience!

Check out the full list here or search by keyword to add lessons to your schedule.

Don’t miss this Awesome Event 👍😎🚀

Deploy a 10 – Node Azure Service Fabric Standalone Cluster #microservices #Containers

Azure Service Fabric Standalone Cluster

Earlier I wrote a blogpost about Microsoft Azure Service Fabric Standalone Cluster for Dev testing.
This was 5 – Node Azure Service Fabric Cluster locally installed, but now I like to have a bigger ASF Cluster on my
Windows Server 2019 for testing with Visual Studio.

When you have downloaded the Microsoft Azure Service Fabric SDK into a directory

Here you see the JSON Cluster config files

I used the same JSON template for deploying a Azure Service Fabric Standalone Cluster :

Creating Cluster but with a Changed JSON Template.

Here you find the 10 – Node Azure Service Fabric Cluster Config file on Github

10 – Node Microsoft Azure Service Fabric Standalone Cluster for Dev Testing

Important : Use this Azure Service Fabric Standalone Cluster only for Learning and testing and not for production!

Here you find more information and documentation about Azure Service Fabric for Production.

Microsoft Azure Service Fabric Standalone Cluster for Testing #microservices #Containers #Apps

Microsoft Azure Service Fabric standalone

Azure Service Fabric is a distributed systems platform that makes it easy to package, deploy, and manage scalable and reliable microservices and containers.

To build and run Azure Service Fabric applications on your Windows development machine, install the Service Fabric runtime, SDK, and tools. You also need to enable execution of the Windows PowerShell scripts included in the SDK.

I have installed the latest version :

• Service Fabric SDK and Tools 4.1.409
• Service Fabric runtime 7.1.409

here you find more information about installing Azure Service Fabric Standalone version for testing
I have installed the Azure Service Fabric Cluster on my Windows10 Machine for testing only.

When you want to great your own Azure Service Fabric Cluster for Production, you have to prepare your self and making a plan before you build.

When you have your Azure Service Fabric Standalone Cluster running, you want to deploy your microservices, apps or containers on it and test your solution. In the following steps I deploy with Visual Studio a Web App to Azure Service Fabric Cluster Standalone version 7.1.409

Here is a Github Sample for Azure Service Fabric.

git clone https://github.com/Azure-Samples/service-fabric-dotnet-quickstart

Here you have your Clone from Github.

To deploy this App to the Azure Service Fabric Cluster we use Microsoft Visual Studio

Once the application is downloaded, you can deploy it to a cluster directly from Visual Studio.

1. Open Visual Studio
2. Select File > Open
3. Navigate to the folder you cloned the git repository to, and select Voting.sln
4. Right-click on the Voting application project in the Solution Explorer and choose Publish

Click on Publish.

Select connection Endpoint Local Cluster and click on Publish.

The Web App is Published to the Azure Service Fabric Standalone Cluster.

When you open the Azure Service Fabric Explorer you will see your App Running

This sample is for testing only and is not secure for production, just to learn how it works 😉

Of course you can also deploy Containers with Visual Studio to your Azure Service Fabric Standalone Cluster.

Deploying Service Fabric Container via Visual Studio.

More Azure Service Fabric information

Here you find the Azure Service Fabric documentation

Here you find the Microsoft Azure Service Fabric website

Here you find the Azure Service Fabric Tech Community Blog

Happy Testing your Apps, microservices, and Containers.

Join the Containers in the Cloud LinkedIn Community Group

 

Microsoft Azure Monitor Overview #Cloud #Analytics #Hybrid #AzOps #Azure

Microsoft Azure Monitor

Monitor, diagnose, and gain insight into the performance and availability of your applications and services with Azure Monitor. In this video, you’ll learn how to use Azure Monitor to collect, analyze and act on telemetry from your cloud and on-premises environments.

Learn how to create time series charts of platform and resource metrics for visualization and analysis with Azure Monitor. Start in Azure Monitor to view metrics across multiple resources or start directly from individual resource blades. You will also learn how to add metrics charts to dashboards in the Azure portal for real-time monitoring and shared access across teams.

In this video, learn about action rules and how you can use them to configure actions and notifications for multiple alerts at scale across a subscription, resource group, and target resource.

In this video, learn how alerts enable you to proactively identify and address issues before it impacts the users of your system. Alerts are created on performance and availability data and can be associated with user-defined actions and notification mechanisms.

In this video, learn how to use source map support in Azure Monitor Application Insights to improve the diagnosis of client-side JavaScript errors. Source maps can be used to unminify call stacks found on the Application Insights end to end transaction details page.

Here you find more information about Microsoft Azure Monitor:

Microsoft Azure Monitor Documentation 

 

Get Started with Microsoft Azure Monitor

Follow Azure Monitor on Twitter 

Microsoft Azure Monitor & Security for Hybrid IT Community Group on LinkedIn

Keep in control of IT with Microsoft Azure Monitor

Docker Linux Container running on Windows Server 2019 #Winserv #Docker #Containers

In the following steps we install Docker for Windows enterprise on a Windows Server 2019 which is running on a hypervisor platform in this case VMware to run a Linux container in the Datacenter.

When you are on a virtualization platform like Hyper-V or VMware and you have installed de Virtual machine with Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Standard edition, you must make the virtual processors ready for virtualization.
(Nested Virtualization) otherwise you can’t install Hyper-V on VMware.

This is the error you get.

Enable this feature for virtualization to the guest OS for VMware.

When you run Microsoft Hyper-V you have to activate nested virtualization

It’s like this in PowerShell : Set-VMProcessor -VMName <VMName> -ExposeVirtualizationExtensions $true

Before you install Docker enterprise for Windows Server you have to install the Hyper-V Role and the Container Feature:

Hyper-V Role Installed

Containers Feature installed.

via Powershell is like this :

Install-WindowsFeature -Name Hyper-V,Containers -IncludeAllSubFeature -IncludeManagementTools

Now we have all the prerequisites installed on Microsoft Windows Server 2019, we can begin with Docker for Windows Enterprise via Powershell in Administrators modus :

Command: Install-Module DockerMSFTProvider

Then you type the following commands:

Import-Module -Name DockerMSFTProvider -Force

Import-Packageprovider -Name DockerMSFTProvider -Force

Command: Install-Package -Name Docker -Source DockerDefault

Now we have Docker EE version 19.03.5 installed for Windows Server 2019.

It’s ready for Windows Containers.

But we want to run linux containers,

Now that we have Docker installed, we need to make some changes to the default configuration to enable support for Linux Containers. This involves setting an Environment variable and creating a docker daemon configuration file.

—————————————————-

# Set LCOW_SUPPORTED Variable to 1 for enabled

[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable(“LCOW_SUPPORTED”, “1”, “Machine”)

 # Enable Experimental Features in Docker daemon.conf

$configfile = @”

{

    “experimental”: true

}

“@

$configfile|Out-File -FilePath C:\ProgramData\docker\config\daemon.json -Encoding ascii -Force

——————————————————

Because Linux Containers still need a Linux kernel, we need to deploy LCOW for it to run :

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri “https://github.com/linuxkit/lcow/releases/download/v4.14.35-v0.3.9/release.zip&#8221; -UseBasicParsing -OutFile release.zip

Expand-Archive release.zip -DestinationPath “$Env:ProgramFiles\Linux Containers\.”

Now you have to reboot the Server.

Ready for running Linux Containers.

To make Linux containers the Default you can set this environment setting :

[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable(“LCOW_API_PLATFORM_IF_OMITTED”, “linux”, “Machine”)

Here you can read how to Pull docker Linux images to your Docker Host on Windows Server 2019

What is handy to use is Microsoft Visual Studio Code with the Docker Extension.

Wish you all the Best with Deploying Containers.

Microsoft #Azure Private Link to your #Cloud Services

Azure Private Link provides the following benefits:

• Privately access services on the Azure platform: Connect your virtual network to services in Azure without a public IP address at the source or destination. Service providers can render their services in their own virtual network and consumers can access those services in their local virtual network. The Private Link platform will handle the connectivity between the consumer and services over the Azure backbone network.
• On-premises and peered networks: Access services running in Azure from on-premises over ExpressRoute private peering, VPN tunnels, and peered virtual networks using private endpoints. There’s no need to set up public peering or traverse the internet to reach the service. Private Link provides a secure way to migrate workloads to Azure.
• Protection against data leakage: A private endpoint is mapped to an instance of a PaaS resource instead of the entire service. Consumers can only connect to the specific resource. Access to any other resource in the service is blocked. This mechanism provides protection against data leakage risks.
• Global reach: Connect privately to services running in other regions. The consumer’s virtual network could be in region A and it can connect to services behind Private Link in region B.
• Extend to your own services: Enable the same experience and functionality to render your service privately to consumers in Azure. By placing your service behind a standard Azure Load Balancer, you can enable it for Private Link. The consumer can then connect directly to your service using a private endpoint in their own virtual network. You can manage the connection requests using an approval call flow. Azure Private Link works for consumers and services belonging to different Azure Active Directory tenants.

Learn how to secure your Azure PaaS resources with Azure Private Link today at The Azure Academy :

Here you find more Information about Azure Private Link

Upgrading and Monitoring Azure AKS Kubernetes Cluster #Azure #AKS #ContainerInsights

Microsoft Azure AKS Kubernetes Cluster

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) makes it simple to deploy a managed Kubernetes cluster in Azure. AKS reduces the complexity and operational overhead of managing Kubernetes by offloading much of that responsibility to Azure. As a hosted Kubernetes service, Azure handles critical tasks like health monitoring and maintenance for you. The Kubernetes masters are managed by Azure. You only manage and maintain the agent nodes.

Azure AKS Kubernetes Services in Resource Group.

When you go to settings of your Azure AKS Kubernetes Cluster and then to Upgrade, there you can see your version of Kubernetes and the New versions of Azure AKS Services. Before you upgrade :

• Important : Never skip an Upgrade version of Azure AKS Kubernetes.

Here you find all the information about Azure AKS Kubernetes Change Log on GitHub 

You can Upgrade from here by clicking on version 1.15.5 and click on Save at the top.

Azure Activity log.

When the first upgrade is succeeded you can do the next version upgrade.

With Azure Monitoring Insights you can view the live data and see what’s going on.

Azure Monitoring Container Insights.

When the upgrade is completed, you want to see if your new Azure AKS Cluster Services is Healthy.
This Health (Preview) feature is handy to see if all Services are running good.

Azure Monitoring Insights Health of the AKS Kubernetes Services.

The Upgrades are of course also possible via Microsoft Azure Cloud Shell with Azure CLI

Azure CloudShell

To Upgrade your AKS Services via Microsoft Azure CLI

As a DevOps person you like to work with Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Deploying and managing your Azure AKS Kubernetes Cluster services from there with the right extensions.

Here you see also that the KubeProxyVersion is v1.15.7

The extension for developers building applications to run in Kubernetes clusters and for DevOps staff troubleshooting Kubernetes applications.

Features include:

• View your clusters in an explorer tree view, and drill into workloads, services, pods and nodes.
• Browse Helm repos and install charts into your Kubernetes cluster.
• Intellisense for Kubernetes resources and Helm charts and templates.
• Edit Kubernetes resource manifests and apply them to your cluster.
• Build and run containers in your cluster from Dockerfiles in your project.
• View diffs of a resource’s current state against the resource manifest in your Git repo
• Easily check out the Git commit corresponding to a deployed application.
• Run commands or start a shell within your application’s pods.
• Get or follow logs and events from your clusters.
• Forward local ports to your application’s pods.
• Create Helm charts using scaffolding and snippets.
• Bootstrap applications using Draft, and rapidly deploy and debug them to speed up the development loop.

Upgrade Azure AKS Kubernetes Services is Done 😉

When you manage and monitor your Azure AKS Kubernetes Cluster Services, have also a look at Microsoft Azure Advisor for new features and security issues :

Azure Advisor recommendations for Kubernetes services.

The cool thing is that Microsoft also give you the solution to solve a high risk :

Remediation steps.

Conclusion :

Microsoft Azure AKS Kubernetes is a managed services and made upgrading for customers really easy to do. You can monitor the upgrades and see the Health status of the Azure AKS Kubernetes services. You get free advise to improve the Services and this all keeps you in control and your business running.

Getting Started with Azure Stack HCI and Windows Admin Center #AzureStack #HCI #WAC

Microsoft Azure Stack HCI

Microsoft Azure Stack is a family of products and solutions that extend Azure to your datacenter or the edge. Includes Azure Stack Hub, Azure Stack HCI, and Azure Stack Edge.

Here you find all the information you need about the Microsoft Azure Stack Family

Here you find the Azure Stack HCI Overview

The Power of Hybrid IT Management is awesome with Azure Hybrid Services for your Servers with Microsoft Windows Admin Center. While you can set up most Azure hybrid services by downloading an app and doing some manual configuration, many are integrated directly into Windows Admin Center to provide a simplified setup experience and a server-centric view of the services. Windows Admin Center also provides convenient intelligent hyperlinks to the Azure portal to see connected Azure resources as well as a centralized view of your hybrid environment.

Hybrid IT Management with Azure Family and Windows Admin Center.

See here the Differences between global Azure, Azure Stack, and Azure Stack HCI