Check for security issues in your ARM templates using AzSk

Utkarsh Shigihalli on Aug 15, 2018

Secure DevOps Kit for Azure (AzSK) is packed with great set of tools, scripts and tasks to help you scan your Azure resources for security issues. At my client we have scheduled this as part of CICD to scan resources and generate report. The extension also includes a task to scan your ARM templates for security issues - The benefit is that you can STOP security issues even before they get deployed to Azure, ensuring you always do secured resource deployment. In this post we will see how easy it is to include this task in your CICD pipeline to scan for issues in your ARM templates.

Why enable accelerated Networking in Azure VMs? Perf Test Results...

Tarun Arora on Aug 11, 2018

Accelerated Networking is a feature that significantly enhances the performance you get out of a virtual machine. The feature is free but is only available in selective VM sizes. The feature is disabled by default and isn’t available to enable via the Azure Portal so doesn’t get a lot of attention either. If you are a nerd like me, you’ll freak out with the difference in the virtual machine performance with accelerated networking enabled. You gotta see it to believe it!… So, in this blog post i’ll walk through the difference in throughput and latency with and without accelerated networking….

Using Azure Shell with VSTS Git Repositories and VS Code

Tarun Arora on Aug 7, 2018

If you are using Azure Shell, you’ll be pleased to know that it is now possible to use VSTS based git repositories right from within the Azure shell. In this short post I’ll run through cloning a VSTS git repository with in the Azure Shell, modifying one of the scripts and pushing the updates back to the server…

Dump all VSTS variables in Windows or Linux based agents with one line of code

Utkarsh Shigihalli on Aug 6, 2018

Ever wanted to dump all the VSTS variables during CI or CD pipeline in VSTS? Also want it to work in both Linux and Windows MS hosted agents? I know on windows machines, you can do write few lines in PowerShell to get the exact same thing. But this involves few lines of code and also does not work in Linux machines. In this blog post I will show you simple way to quickly dump all the VSTS variables with just one line of code. Yes! just one line of code.

30 days of Azure OMS - Going from zero to hero on operations insights

Tarun Arora on Aug 3, 2018

Welcome to my blog series on ‘30 days of Azure OMS - Going from zero to hero on operations insights’…

Running enterprise applications in the cloud is no less than an adventure. This is especially true for applications that haven’t been designed for the cloud.

Solved: SQL Server Key Vault Connector: Error code 2058

Tarun Arora on Jul 30, 2018

Today I spend all afternoon trying to troubleshoot why the SQL Azure KeyVault Connector fails to connect with my SQL 2016 instance hosted in Azure IaaS only to realise that there is a known bug in the february release of the SQL Azure KeyVault connector… If this is what you are seeing, read on for the fix…

Msg 33049, Level 16, State 2, Line 4
Key with name 'xxx' does not exist in the provider or access is denied. Provider error code: 2058.  (Provider Error - No explanation is available, consult EKM Provider for details)

Integrate ServiceNow with VSTS RM pipelines using PowerShell

Tarun Arora on Jul 21, 2018

Service Now is deeply routed in enterprises for change management. While development teams mostly live out of Visual Studio Team Services. Both the platforms are great for the purpose they serve, however the disparity starts to create a silo within the organization. Thanks to the solid foundation of API’s in both platforms, integrating the two is fairly easy… Follow along to see how easy it is to integrate service now with VSTS to trigger release pipelines in VSTS on the back of new service tickets in service now.

• Invoke ServiceNow API using PowerShell
• Trigger a release pipeline with dynamic parameters
• Update results in ServiceNow

Back to basics: Building static website using Jekyll in VSTS

Utkarsh Shigihalli on Jul 16, 2018

We host this blog as a static website using Jekyll. This allows us to write our blog posts in markdown syntax and we get to version control our files.

Jekyll is a popular static site generator and from the day we have implemented it, we have thoroughly enjoyed maintaining it. In this blog post I will show you how to build a simple Jekyll website using VSTS.

Back to basics: Building .NET Core app in VSTS

Utkarsh Shigihalli on Jul 9, 2018

My current client, just started to use .NET core as their main development platform. I felt this is the right time to revisit the build steps and document them. So in this blog post we will see how easy it us to build and publish a .NET Core app within VSTS.

HOWTO: Show notifications inside Visual Studio

Utkarsh Shigihalli on Mar 29, 2018

Wondering how Visual Studio displays important notifications on top of editor? Do you want to integrate notifications in your extension? In this blog post we will see how we can show notifications on top of the Visual Studio editor in Visual Studio 2017 using Visual Studio SDK. Not only we will create the notification using InfoBar, but we will also see how to add actions so that user’s can click and take action.