Books on Azure Readiness starts here...

Packt Book Review - Azure for Developers

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this post, I want to share my review of Azure for Developers (Third Edition) by Kamil MrzygÅ‚Ã³d, published by Packt Publishing and available on Amazon as well as other e-book subscription platforms.

This definitive guide focuses on creating secure, scalable Azure apps with GenAI, serverless, and DevOps pipelines, making it an essential resource for developers looking to build modern cloud-native applications on Azure with the latest technologies.

About the book (from the cover)

Supercharge your development career by mastering Azure’s evolving GenAI, container, and serverless capabilities to build scalable, secure applications with confidence. This third edition of Azure for Developers transforms complex cloud concepts into practical skills, guiding you through the design, deployment, and management of cloud-native solutions while eliminating infrastructure headaches.

Fully updated with Azure’s latest features, this hands-on guide helps you automate DevOps pipelines with GitHub Actions, deploy microservices using containers, and integrate generative AI via Azure OpenAI to modernize your development workflows. You will learn how to set up your environment, streamline app deployment, and implement robust service integrations using real-world best practices.

The final section is a game-changer for developers who want to stay ahead of the curve. It shows you how to leverage Azure’s AI and machine learning services to automate tasks, fine-tune models, and build intelligent assistants and next-generation workflows. By the end, you will have the confidence and capabilities to deliver production-grade cloud solutions that meet real-world demands and position yourself at the forefront of modern cloud development.

What this book covers

The book has 20 chapters, about 584 pages in total, organized in 5 different Parts:

Part I - Setting Up Your Environment This opening section gets you started with Azure. It covers creating an Azure account and selecting the right IDE for your development needs. The section then dives into Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell, helping you choose between these powerful command-line tools and understand how to enable plugins and extensions for enhanced productivity.

Part II - Web Applications and Workflows in Microsoft Azure This part focuses on hosting and building web solutions. It starts with Azure App Service for hosting applications, followed by Static Web Applications for developing and deploying modern web apps. The section then covers Azure Functions for serverless computing, Azure Key Vault for managing secrets and configuration securely, Logic Apps for integrating services with low-code workflows, and Durable Functions for building complex, stateful workflows.

Part III - Containers in Microsoft Azure This section is dedicated to containerization strategies. It begins with Azure Container Registry for storing and managing container images, followed by Azure Container Instances for ad hoc workloads. The section then explores Azure Container Apps for developing microservices and concludes with hosting containers using Azure App Service, providing multiple deployment options for containerized applications.

Part IV - Storage, Messaging, and Monitoring This comprehensive section covers the data and observability layers. It starts with Azure Storage (Tables, Queues, Files, and Blobs), followed by a deep dive into queuing mechanisms across Azure services. The section covers relational databases in Azure, and wraps up with Application Insights for monitoring your applications with embedded SDK telemetry and diagnostics.

Part V - AI, ML, and DevOps The game-changing final section covers the cutting-edge technologies. It begins with integrating Azure OpenAI Service to add generative AI capabilities to your applications. The section then covers Azure Machine Learning for automating ML tasks and model training. The DevOps portion includes GitHub Actions for building and deploying applications to Azure with CI/CD automation, and concludes with developing, testing, and deploying Azure Logic Apps in a production environment.

My Personal Feedback and observations

This book is exceptionally well-suited for its target audience: developers who want to build applications on Azure. Unlike most architecture-focused books, this one takes a very hands-on, practical approach with code samples, step-by-step instructions, and real-world scenarios.

What impressed me most is the developer-centric perspective. Kamil doesn’t just explain what services do â€“ he shows you how to implement them, with practical code examples in the context of building actual applications. The book includes numerous code samples available on GitHub, making it easy to follow along and experiment.

The third edition aspect is crucial here â€“ Azure evolves rapidly, and this latest edition reflects the most current best practices and cutting-edge service offerings. The addition of GenAI integration with Azure OpenAI Service is particularly timely, showing developers how to build intelligent applications with generative AI. The coverage of serverless, container, and DevOps patterns with GitHub Actions is particularly strong, which aligns perfectly with modern cloud-native development approaches.

I appreciate that the book covers the full development lifecycle â€“ from setting up your environment and local development tools, through building with Azure Functions and container services, to implementing CI/CD with GitHub Actions, monitoring with Application Insights, and integrating AI capabilities. This holistic view helps developers understand not just how to build features, but how to build production-ready, intelligent applications.

The section on Azure OpenAI Service and Machine Learning deserves special mention â€“ it’s incredibly timely and practical, showing developers how to integrate generative AI and automated ML into their applications. The coverage of container deployment options (Container Apps, Container Instances, and App Service for containers) helps clarify which service to use for different scenarios â€“ a common point of confusion. The DevOps automation with GitHub Actions chapter is also excellent, providing practical CI/CD patterns for Azure deployments.

If I were to identify the target personas, this book is perfect for:

Developers preparing for the AZ-204 (Azure Developer Associate) certification â€“ though not explicitly an exam prep book, it covers most exam topics with practical depth
Full-stack developers moving to Azure who want to understand PaaS services
DevOps engineers who need to understand how applications use Azure services
Anyone building cloud-native applications on Azure

The review questions at the end of chapters and further reading links add significant value, allowing readers to self-assess and dive deeper into topics of interest.

Summary

“Azure for Developers” (Third Edition) is an excellent practical guide for developers who want to leverage Azure’s latest services effectively. With its focused coverage of 584 pages, hands-on approach, and developer-focused perspective, it serves both as a learning resource and a desk reference.

The book strikes a great balance between breadth and depth â€“ covering essential Azure services while providing enough detail to actually implement them. The emphasis on cutting-edge technologies (GenAI, serverless, containers, DevOps automation) makes it particularly relevant for building contemporary cloud applications that leverage AI and modern deployment practices.

Whether you’re preparing for the AZ-204 certification, migrating applications to Azure, or starting a new cloud-native project, this book provides the practical knowledge you need. The code samples, step-by-step guides, and real-world scenarios make it much more than just a reference â€“ it’s a hands-on learning experience.

Highly recommended for developers at all levels who want to build robust, scalable applications on Azure!

Ping me if you should have any additional questions.

Cheers!!

/Peter

Innovation at Microsoft - Book Review

Sun, 09 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Insiderâ€™s Guide to Innovation at Microsoft, written by Dean Carignan and JoAnn Garbin, and published by PostHillPress publishers, explores the innovation strategies and practices at Microsoft over the past 50 years.

When I heard about this book, I ordered myself a copy during pre-order, and got excited from the day I got it in the mail. This was honestly one of the few books I read cover to finish in just a weekend.

Here is my review.

Overview

The book is divided into two main sections: seven detailed case studies on different teams/products within Microsoft, and an analysis of four key innovation patterns, which were very inspiring to read.

The case studies cover various products and initiatives, including the Xbox, Visual Studio Code, Microsoft Office, Cognitive Services, Microsoft Research, Bing, and Responsible Innovation. Each case study provides insights into different aspects of innovation within Microsoft, highlighting both successes and failures.

The book aims to distill innovation practices that transcend specific technologies and time periods, making it a valuable resource for innovators across various industries. It emphasizes the importance of continuous improvement, collaboration, and adaptation in the innovation process.

Case Studies

Xbox Revolution: This case study explores how Microsoft entered the gaming industry and successfully launched the Xbox. It highlights the challenges faced, such as competition from established players like Sony and Nintendo, and the innovative strategies that led to Xbox’s success. For this case study specifically, it was interesting to read how the team lost the spark of innovation at some point, benefitting from the great name of the brand and the fact it was successful. Until it wasn’t anymore. Which lead to more innovation, with the Game Pass as one of the biggest successes within the team, and the whole Gaming industry.

Visual Studio Code: This section covers the development of Visual Studio Code, a free source-code editor. It emphasizes the importance of community feedback and open-source collaboration in creating a product that meets the needs of developers worldwide. What struck me for this case study, is the fact that it not only had to be innovative as a product and development tool, but also internal competition with the big sister, Visual Studio, which was the go-to development editor, and a big money machine for years. The goal was not being a competitor, but rather an enabler for the ‘born on the web’ developer generation. Who are not typically thinking about using Visual Studio. Knowing your target audience seemed to be the key factor for success for the team.

Microsoft Office: The evolution of Microsoft Office is examined, showcasing how continuous improvement and adaptation to user needs have kept it relevant and widely used over the decades. Apart from Windows, the Office brand and product suite, feels the best-known product that Microsoft released to business users, in my opinion. I honestly never thought about how innovation was key to the continuing success of the product. Also great to read that it was already integrating Artifical Intelligence in a lot of the product for years. Long before it became a hype at the end of 2023.

Cognitive Services: This case study focuses on Microsoft’s AI and machine learning initiatives, particularly Cognitive Services. It discusses the integration of AI into various products and the ethical considerations involved. Working with Azure AI Services myself more and more, by delivering training on it out of my role as Technical Trainer, but also as a fan-boy, by thinking about how to integrate AI in some of my demo apps, was interesting to understand more about the crucial steps the team had to take. I also loved hearing about the interaction across other teams within Microsoft to make this product successful.

Microsoft Research: The role of Microsoft Research in driving innovation is highlighted, showing how fundamental research can lead to groundbreaking products and technologies. Knowing only a little bit what this team is doing, I remember their overview from 2024, which shared a lot of detail about their global work and impact across almost anything that Microsoft is doing. Microsoft Research has made substantial contributions to AI and machine learning, including the development of large language models and smaller, task-specific models. These advancements have improved natural language processing, computer vision, and other AI capabilities. Microsoft Research has used AI to enable earlier detection and treatment of diseases like esophageal cancer, potentially improving survival rates. They have also accelerated drug discovery processes for infectious diseases. The creation of a large-scale atmospheric model has transformed weather forecasting and our ability to predict and mitigate the effects of extreme weather events. This innovation is crucial for addressing climate change and enhancing environmental sustainability.

And while not touched on in the book itself, as it was not announced publicly yet, is most probably the work they did and are doing around **Majorana 1 - The worlds first quantum processor

Bing: The unexpected rise of Bing in the AI space is explored, detailing the strategies that helped it become a significant player despite initial setbacks. This case study was so interesting to learn about, on different levels. First, the long and dedicated journey the team took, to grab market share, quarter by quarter, for (over) a decade. Second, that the competition actually lead to the start of innovation. As literally mentioned in the book: without Google, there wouldn’t be Bing, and it would still just be a internet search option within the Microsoft Network pages.

Responsible Innovation: This section addresses the importance of ethical considerations in innovation, particularly in areas like AI and data privacy. I never thought of linking innovation to responsible technology. To me, it feels more like an outcome, an aspect of product design and realization. Great to understand that responsibility is often the key driver of innovation, especially nowadays with AI, and the dangers it brings to the world when misusing it.

Innovation Patterns

The book identifies four key innovation patterns that have been crucial to Microsoft’s success:

Continuous Improvement: This pattern emphasizes the importance of ongoing refinement and enhancement of products and services. Microsoft has consistently focused on iterating and improving its offerings based on user feedback and technological advancements. This approach ensures that their products remain relevant and competitive over time. For example, the evolution of Microsoft Office showcases how continuous updates and feature enhancements have kept it a staple in productivity software.

Collaboration: Collaboration is highlighted as a critical factor in driving innovation at Microsoft. This involves teamwork within the company as well as partnerships with external organizations, developers, and the broader tech community. The development of Visual Studio Code is a prime example, where open-source collaboration and community feedback played a significant role in shaping the product to meet the needs of developers worldwide

Adaptation: The ability to pivot and adapt to changing market conditions and user needs is another key innovation pattern. Microsoft has demonstrated this through various initiatives, such as entering the gaming industry with the Xbox and adapting its strategies to compete with established players like Sony and Nintendo. This flexibility allows Microsoft to explore new opportunities and stay ahead in a rapidly evolving tech landscape

Persistence: Persistence is about the determination to overcome challenges and setbacks in the pursuit of innovation. Microsoftâ€™s journey with Bing is a testament to this pattern. Despite initial setbacks and strong competition from other search engines, Microsoft persisted and eventually found success by leveraging AI and machine learning to enhance Bingâ€™s capabilities.

This was one of the rare times where I took a lot of notes on the side, as I discovered several interesting ideas (which should not be the 1st phase of innovation - find more by reading the book yourself what I mean by this :-) ), how I could start incorporating some of these patterns in the work I do at Microsoft.

Conclusion

“The Insiderâ€™s Guide to Innovation at Microsoft” provides valuable insights into the company’s approach to innovation, offering lessons that can be applied across various industries. It emphasizes the importance of a structured yet flexible process of value creation through continuous improvement, collaboration, and adaptation.

While I think the title had the goal to draw attention to the innovative aspect of what Microsoft products are about, to me, it was also interesting to read about the history of how several of the key products I work with every day, got invented, developed, and are continuously being re-invented, using a customer-centric approach.

As mentioned at the start of the article, I truly enjoyed reading this book. It gave me insights into the history of Microsoft and several of its key products, as well as helped me understand how challenging it is to develop these products. And especially the 2nd part of the book, which detailed the innovation patterns, felt useful to me, as - apart from the Technical Trainer role - I am regularly brainstorming and thinking about other ways to keep the trainer role exciting. Not just for myself, but also for my learners. And if there is one other thing I will remember from reading this book, is that your ideas and realizations of them always have to be customer-focused, no matter if they are external customers, partners, other teams within Microsoft or colleagues within your own team.

I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I did!

Cheers!!

/Peter

Packt Book Review - Data Science in .NET with Polyglot Notebooks

Sat, 07 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In this post, I want to share my review of my next technical book I read recently, Data Science in .NET with Polyglot Notebooks this time from Matt Eland, (https://bsky.app/profile/matteland.dev) published by Packt Publishing and available on Amazon as well as other e-book subscription platforms.

If you have been following me for a while, you know I’m gradually learning more about coding and developing applications, especially using the .NET framework. More recently, I also started using Jupyter Notebooks to animate my Azure AI workshops - specifically Semantic Kernel demos - a bit more, by running .NET Interactive mode, which allows me to show snippets of .NET code running from the Notebook, instead of the (boring) Terminal window.

Seeing Matt’s post on Twitter regarding his upcoming book, immediately got my attention, given the technology he was about to cover. (Honestly, the Data Science part initially didn’t do it for me, LOL)

Book Review

“Data Science in .NET with Polyglot Notebooks” is an insightful guide aimed at experienced .NET developers (which is not me…) who are eager to delve into the realms of data science, machine learning, and AI. This book stands out for its practical approach, leveraging the familiar .NET ecosystem to introduce complex data science concepts through interactive experiments. Reason I call out experienced .NET developers here, is because the book provides a wealth of code examples and data science specific. While I understand more and more about .NET and am able to build sample (demo) apps, in a lot of chapters, the data science piece was way above my head. But that doesn’t mean anything, and definitely shouldn’t stop YOU from going through the book if you are in the Data Science space.

Matt’s journey from ‘just being a .NET developer = his words’ to a developer-data scientist is reflected in the structure and content of the book. He effectively bridges the gap between traditional software development and modern data science, making it accessible for those already proficient in .NET technologies. The book covers a wide range of topics, including data analysis, data visualization, machine learning with ML.NET, and AI orchestration using tools like OpenAI and Semantic Kernel.

One of the book’s biggest strengths is its hands-on approach. Each chapter is designed to be interactive, encouraging readers to experiment with code in VS Code or GitHub Codespaces. (With the code being available on GitHub, other IDE development environments can obviously be used as well if that’s more in your wheelhouse…) This method not only reinforces learning but also helps developers (even juniors like myself) to see the immediate application of their skills in new domains. Which for me was the Semantic Kernel topic primarily.

The book is well-organized, starting with the basics of what Jupyter Notebooks are, a good overview of .NET developing framework, followed by data science and gradually moving towards more advanced topics.

From the list below, the bold highlighted were most relevant to the knowledge I wanted to gain:

Chapter 1: Data Science, notebooks, and kernels
Chapter 2: Exploring Polyglot Notebooks
Chapter 3: Getting Data & Code into Your Notebooks
Chapter 4: Working with Tabular Data & DataFrames
Chapter 5: Visualizing Data
Chapter 6: Visualizing Variable Relationships
Chapter 7: Classification Experiments with ML.NET AutoML
Chapter 8: Regression Experiments with ML.NET AutoML
Chapter 9: Beyond AutoML: Pipelines, Trainers, & Transforms
Chapter 10: Deploying machine learning models
Chapter 11: Generative AI in Polyglot Notebooks
Chapter 12: AI Orchestration with Semantic Kernel
Chapter 13: Enriching documentation with Mermaid diagrams
Chapter 14: Extending Polyglot Notebooks
Chapter 15: Adopting and deploying Polyglot Notebooks

The most interesting - but again, harder chapters for me because of being new to the Data Scientist craft - were the chapters on working with tabular data, visualizing data, and performing classification and regression experiments with ML.NET AutoML are particularly noteworthy. Additionally, Matt doesn’t hold back from delving into the deployment of machine learning models and the integration of generative AI, providing a comprehensive overview of the current capabilities of .NET in the data science space. From which I learned most by reading through this book to be honest.

Matt’s writing is clear and engaging, making complex topics approachable. His personal anecdotes and practical tips add a relatable touch, making the book not just a technical manual but also a narrative of his own learning journey. Which is also something I always try to add to my own technical books. Sure, you want to get the tech stuff, but hey, writing tech books is done by a human being with a certain set of experience. You want the tech stuff, you get the human being view for free…

Summary

In conclusion, “Data Science in .NET with Polyglot Notebooks” is a valuable resource for .NET developers looking to expand their skill set into data science and AI. It offers a blend of theoretical knowledge and practical application, making it a must-read for anyone interested in the intersection of .NET and data science.

If you’re still looking for a Christmas stocking stuffer, an overall little Holidays present for yourself or your acquintances, let this be a great recommendation.

If you got access to the book and reading it, or have read it already, don’t hesitate reaching out and providing your feedback.

To Matt… thanks man, this is a great work of art! Thanks for inspiring me to continue expanding my skillset on .NET, AI, Semantic Kernel, by throwing Notebooks at me, and teasing my brain with Data Science…

Cheers!!

/Peter

Packt Book Review - Azure Architecture Explained

Sun, 10 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In this post, I want to share my review of another Azure book I read recently, Azure Architecture Explained this time from Brett Hargreaves and David Rendon published by Packt Publishing and available on Amazon as well as other e-book subscription platforms.

Apart from the great content, it was nice to see one of my own Microsoft Technical Trainer Team colleagues, Sarah Kong, providing the foreword.

About the book (from the cover)

This book provides you with a clear path to designing optimal cloud-based solutions in Azure, by delving into the platform’s intricacies.

Youâ€™ll begin by understanding the effective and efficient security management and operation techniques in Azure to implement the appropriate configurations in Microsoft Entra ID. Next, youâ€™ll explore how to modernize your applications for the cloud, examining the different computation and storage options, as well as using Azure data solutions to help migrate and monitor workloads. Youâ€™ll also find out how to build your solutions, including containers, networking components, security principles, governance, and advanced observability. With practical examples and step-by-step instructions, youâ€™ll be empowered to work on infrastructure-as-code to effectively deploy and manage resources in your environment.

By the end of this book, youâ€™ll be well-equipped to navigate the world of cloud computing confidently.

What this book covers

The book has 14 chapters, about 400 pages in total (!!!), organized in 3 different ‘Parts":

Part I - â€“ Effective and Efficient Security Management and Operations in Azure This first section lays out the Identity Foundation for hybrid cloud, touching on Azure Active Directory and Microsoft Entra. I guess Dave and Brett were in the middle of the writing process, when Microsoft decided on the name-change of the Azure Identity platform from AAD to Entra ID, which is totally acceptable and not bothering me while reading through the content. It got emphasized several times (now Entra ID), and after page 3, you’re used to the new name. The mixed use of Azure Active Directory and Entra ID remains in chapter 2, which provides a more deep-dive on the typical administrative and architectural side of what it takes to get started with Entra ID from scratch, as well as how to deal with hybrid Identity when running an on-premises Active Directory scenario.
After going through Chapters 1 and 2, this first part is closing with the positioning of Microsoft Sentinel, with a focus on mitigating lateral movement, which also looks at a possible security breach scenario with suscpicious Office 365 user sign-ins. Which I think is a great scenario, since most Azure customers are probably Office 365 customers as well - or the other way around.

Part II - Architecting Compute and Network Solutions Part II is the biggest chunk of the book, and covers A LOT. Starting with Data Solutions, it provides insights on Azure Storage Accounts, Azure SQL and Azure Cosmos DB. From there, it switched to Virtual Machine migration, as well as App Services, and how to migrate data.

There is a - somewhat short in my personal opinion - topic on Azure Monitor, followed by a good portion of Azure Containers, covering both Azure Container Instance and Container Apps. (interesting enough, no details on Azure Kubernetes Services, which makes me believe the authors may have used the Az-305 Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions Study Guide as a guideline for what this book should cover, and what not…)

The biggest chapter in this section is - understandable - Azure Networking, stretching over 60 pages, and not leaving any topic out of the context of Virtual Networking, Hybrid Networking using VPN and Azure WAN, covering Load Balancing scenarios, as well as Azure Firewall for protection. The protection/security focus moves over into Chapter 9, which expands on how to secure your applications, using Azure Front Door, Azure Application Gateway as well as VNET integration for App Services.

Part III - Making the Most of Infrastructure-as-Code for Azure Shifts from Azure Solution architecting to Governance and DevOps, using Infrastructure as Code with Bicep, as well as pipeline-based deployments using Azure DevOps.

The last chapter, wraps up the content of the book, by sharing more Tips from the Field on governance, monitoring, Identity protection, networking and containers.

My Personal Feedback and observations

As said earlier, this book covered a lot!! Which I think is its biggest benefit. I might be a bit biased having been an co-author of a similar Azure Architect-oriented book, as well as teaching the AZ-305 course for multiple years now. The content is great, but doesn’t specifically target Cloud Architects, since it also has several exercises/tasks in there. Which is OK for administrators, developers and devops teams, but not (always) something you expect a cloud Architect to still work on. Often, it turns into a hands-on how-to-do-something in Azure. This is fine, as it will help those personas who are wearing multiple heads at their organization (aren’t we all??), and often clarifies what got explained in the text, with additional how-to-guidance.

What works best when going through this book, is approaching each topic as a stand-alone deep-dive on the subject. It covers the cloud-architectural design level up to a great detail, and brings it back to the administrative level.

Maybe Packt (or the authors) should have chosen a different title, something like “Azure Resources Explained”, as I’m left a bit in the dark on the pure cloud architect questions, which typically cover business, non-technical and technical challenges when moving workloads to cloud, or deploying new ones as cloud-native. Which leaves me no other way to think of this as the publishing team was using the Azure AZ-305 exam as a lead for the majority of the content. And since that exam and certification is targeted towards cloud infrastructure architects, it is one of the best books I could recommend in helping with the preparation of studying and passing that exam. Even more so, if you are thinking of studying for the AZ-104 exam (Azure Administrator Associate), this book will also be more than a valid resource. And since AZ-104 is a prerequisite for the AZ-305 Architect credential, having all content crammed in a single book, is a double-win if you ask me!

Summary

I don’t see myself as the target audience for this book, since I live in Azure every day, yet still enjoyed reading the book page-by-page. The fact that it is this complete, stretching over a lot of the Azure resources and services, combining both Architect-like as well as Administrator-like content, makes this a great book to have on your shelf.

Ping me if you should have any additional questions.

Cheers!!

/Peter

Packt Book Review - Azure for Business Decision Makers

Sun, 22 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In this post, I want to share my review of another Azure book I read recently, Azure for Decision Makers this time from Jack Lee, Jason Milgram and David Rendon published by Packt Publishing and available on Amazon as well as other e-book subscription platforms.

About the book

Azure for Decision Makers provides a comprehensive overview of the latest updates in cloud security, hybrid cloud and multi-cloud solutions, and cloud migration in Azure. This book is a must-have introduction to the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, demonstrating the substantial scope of digital transformation and innovation that can be achieved with Azure’s capabilities.

The first set of chapters will get you up to speed with Microsoft Azure’s evolution before showing you how to integrate it into your existing IT infrastructure. Next, youâ€™ll gain practical insights into application migration and modernization, focusing mainly on migration planning, implementation, and best practices. Throughout the book, youâ€™ll get the information you need to spearhead a smooth migration and modernization process, detailing Azure infrastructure as a service (IaaS) deployment, infrastructure management, and key application architectures.

The concluding chapters will help you to identify and incorporate best practices for cost optimization and management, Azure DevOps, and Azure automation. By the end of this book, youâ€™ll have learned how to lead end-to-end Azure operations for your organization and effectively cost-optimize your processes â”€ from the planning and cloud migration stage through to troubleshooting.

Chapter Overview

The book is light to read, and well-structured in 6 different chapters:

Chapter 1, Introduction, covers the reasons an organization might engage with cloud computing, and why Microsoft Azure in particular is a compelling choice. It goes on to discuss the various types of cloud environments and crucial security and governance considerations when migrating to the cloud.

Chapter 2, Modernizing with Hybrid, Multicloud, and Edge Computing, covers how these modernizing approaches can drive significant efficiency, agility, and innovation improvements for any organization. It also covers the set of tools Microsoft Azure provides for a modern, flexible, and secure infrastructure transition.

Chapter 3, Migration and Modernization, describes how the benefits of the cloud can help businesses stay ahead of the curve and drive innovation in their industry, as well as how an organization can accelerate its cloud adoption journey.

Chapter 4, Maximizing Azure Security Benefits for Your Organization, covers best practices for securing workloads on Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Sentinel as a tool for intelligent security analytics, and Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Identity, Endpoint, and Cloud Apps, each of which can help identify suspicious activity and prevent advanced attacks.

Chapter 5, Automation and Governance in Azure, explains the importance of automation and governance, discussing the two native Microsoft Infrastructure as Code (IaC) frameworks: Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates and Bicep. Governance is a critical aspect of managing resources on Azure, and the tools and services available to facilitate this are also covered.

Chapter 6, Maximizing Efficiency and Cost Savings in Azure, discusses the impact of cost optimization in the cloud, and its place as one of the five pillars of the Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework. It goes on to explain the different ways that Azure Advisor can help organizations optimize Azure resources based on usage patterns, as part of a comprehensive cost optimization strategy.

Summary

Azure for Decision Makers covers why and how an organization can achieve a successful migration to the cloud. This book discusses different kinds of cloud solutions and describes how to make the best decisions when modernizing your organization by migrating to the cloud. Azure for Decision Makers ensures that you can make the most of the cost optimization, efficiency, automation, and security that a cloud solution with Microsoft Azure provides.

Cheers!!

/Peter

Book review - Building Blazor WebAssembly Applications with gRPC

Sat, 17 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In this post, I want to share my review of another Blazor book I read recently, Building Blazor WebAssembly Applications with gRPC this time from Vaclav Perakek, published by Packt Publishing and available on Amazon as well as other e-book subscription platforms.

If you have been following me for a while, you know I’m gradually learning more about coding and developing applications, especially using the Blazor .NET framework.

What intrigued me even more with this book, is the gRPC integration. While I heard about before, from far away honestly, I never really looked into it. So besides learning more about Blazor itself, seeing how other much more advanced developers are using the framework, as well as learning on how they write code, I also learned more about what gRPC is all about.

What is gRPC

gRPC has been developed by Google, and described as a high performance Remote Procedure Call RPC framework. (I remember ’traditional’ RPC from my long gone Exchange Server consultant days…). using gRPC, a client application can directly call a method on a foreign server back-end, as if it were a local object to the client, making it a perfect choice for distributed applications and services-oriented architecture. As with any similar RPC-based system - such as in my Exchange Server past - the concept starts from defining a service, specifying the methods that can be called remotely, together with defining the parameters and return types. On the server side, that’s where the service interface is running, and the gRPC server component handles the requests.

gRPC is supported across all popular development languages, such as Java, Ruby, Go, Python,… and now also in Blazor .NET.

If you want to learn more about gRPC, head over to the gRPC official docs.

What is Blazor WebAssembly

Blazor is a high-performance web development framework, created by Microsoft, and part of the broader .NET language family. It allows developers write applications using the familiar C# language. The applications are supported in all modern web browsers using the WebAssembly technology. Where developers would look into JavaScript before, they can now build the same Single Page Applications (SPA) using C-sharp dotnet language. Blazor exists in both WebAssembly (browser-only) runtime, as well as Blazor Server, where it runs on an ASP.NET Server back-end.

If you want to learn more about Blazor, you might have a look at some of my former blog posts on how to get started:

/post/efficiently-handling-secrets-as-a-blazor-.net-developer/
/post/deploying-blazor-apps-using-dotnet-commandline/
/post/coding-apps-in-blazor-from-a-non-developer/
/post/coding-apps-in-blazor-from-a-non-developer-part-2/

Book Review

With that out of the way, let’s have a look at what the book has to offer.

I loved going through the book, as it is hands-on from the start. Kicking off the project, starting from the Blazor WASM template in Visual Studio / VSCode, and actually heavily cleaning it up, so you are almost starting from a blank canvas, you learn how to build a web application front-end, which connects to a SQL Server back-end. Without gRPC, this would probably be relying on a REST API call, so that was a nice differentiator for me to learn about.

Already in the first chapter, Vaclav is jumping into code snippets, clearly explaining how it works, but also often explaining the reasoning behind it. So instead of just copy/pasting code into your own applications, you can almost look into his brain and way of thinking, which helped me understanding the concepts much better.

Chapter 2 is where you create your first Blazor Web Assembly Application, starting from a template, but heavily customizing to a workable application example. Chapter 3 describes Entity Framework as a process to create a database back-end, and how to interact with it.

Chapter 4 brings the two worlds together, using REST API calls, allowing for CRUD operations from the web application towards the database. This was really helpful for me, as I haven’t done much around interacting with an actual database to create, update or delete information. While the sample app we’re building is around movies and viewers, the concept is valid for about any database-type you could think off (online webshop, HR application with employee data, overall customer information management, etc…)

Chapter 5 is where the gRPC integration becomes important. You learn how to build the gRPC services on the server-side, as well as how to consume them from the web app client-side. This was mind-blowing to me, as it was something totally new in my knowledge spectrum. While functionally you are doing the same as with REST, this somewhat felt easier to develop, and the performance seemed better (as in pulling up data from the database…). While my recordset was quite small, I can see a big performance increase here for real-life applications with thousands or tens of thousands of records to work with continuously.

Having arrived at this point, I think you could say you should have learned enough to continue your own journey On how to build more complete, powerful WebAssembly-based client applications, connecting to a database server back-end. The possibilities are unlimited.

However, Vaclav didn’t stop here, but continued the book with a chapter on Source Generators. As he explains, this technology allows for generating source code automatically, so basically helping developers adding more functionality into applications, without needing to write all the code yourself.

In the last Chapter 7, Vaclav shares some best practices on how to use gRPC together with C#.

Summary

While this book wasn’t the largest (about 165 pages), it allowed me to learn more new things about what it takes to build WebAssembly-based web applications, using gRPC instead of the more traditional REST API method. I’m still not an experienced developer, but it teased me to look into more capabilities of Blazor, as well as how to build more services-oriented applications.

I would recommend this book to developers who are new to Blazor like myself, but it is definitely also a good read for more experienced developers who want to learn more about gRPC-based communication between client/server.

I’m off now, providing my 5-star review on Amazon for this book.

See you later folks!!

Cheers!!

/Peter

Using Packt Publishing Credits for free books

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hey readers,

This is actually a less technical post, although it can lead to a lot of technical resources. I honestly wrote this blog for myself this time, as I struggled in finding a way to get free books in my Packt Publishing subscription. I had credits, but I always forget how to claim them :). So I guess I’m not the only one having that problem.

What are Packt Credits, and how to get them

Packt allows for one-time paying for a book, getting a monthly paid subscription, a 12-month or 18-month one. It’s with these last 2 you get a Credit added to your account once per month, as well as earning an additional credit each month, upon completing 40 sections of learning. So easy said, the more sections (chapter units) you read monthly, the more credits you get as a bonus.

Even if you are on a monthly subscription, while you don’t get a credit automatically, you can still get bonus credits for every 40 sections of learning completed.

OK, you got credits, but how to use them

This was the part where I struggled, and every few months when trying to use them. I know I can use them, but the steps aren’t stamped to my brain. (one can wonder if that’s something wrong with my brain, or with the process ;)

Log on to Packt Subscription. From the upper right corner, select My Library, followed by selecting credits

This shows the number of credits you have available.

From the “search…” field, find any topic of book of your interest, and select it from the list of search results. This opens the detailed view of the book’s chapters, author details, price, etc.

From the navigation pane to the right, select the first chapter title.

This redirects you to another details section of the selected book, but showing a link to use credits this time.

Confirm the popup message, asking if you want to use a credit for buying the book.

This worked :). To access the actual book, go back to the My Library menu in the upper right corner, and select $ Owned

Select the book you just bought from the list of available books you own

Besides reading online, you can now also download the book in its available format of choice (typically PDF and/or EPUB). From the reading view, navigate to the menu bar shown to the right, and select download

That’s it!! While going through these steps, it isn’t all too hard to buy the book using the credits you have. To me though, it would make more sense to have the “buy using credits” option already showing up on the home page of the book summary table, instead of needing to click through multiple times before finding it.

If you liked this article, feel free to mention me in a Tweet or Toot, and you might win yourself a free Packt e-book from one of my credits.

Cheers!!

/Peter

The Art of Realizing SRE on Azure - Book Review

Sat, 29 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

As most of you know already, I enjoy writing technical (Azure related) books. So if you are wondering why it’s been quiet lately, there is a good reason for it.

Actually, I was writing on my 9th book, making it 9 books in 9 years straight, but something got in-between the writing process and publishing. It’s called US Visa regulations :). Beginning this year, January 5th actually, I relocated from Belgium to Redmond, WA for Microsoft Corp. The work Visa I’m on allows me to only work for Microsoft, which obviously makes sense. But that meant I had to stop my side-activity as a book author with Apress.

Knowing I was already halfway in the actual writing process, so spent about 6 months from ideation to realization, I didn’t just want to scrap the chapters I already had. My MTT colleague and good friend Unai Huete Beloki, fellow-Azure DevOps trainer in my former EMEA team at Microsoft, was willing to step in and take over the writing process.

He did an amazing job, actually revamping some of the chapters I already had, moving the outline (=chapter order) around a little bit, and added a huge amount of his own views and experiences into the material. Honestly, only about 20% of my original writing was left. So it really became HIS book, with just a little bit of me left in. Obviously, I still offered to do Technical Reviewing (which gets paid with a free printed copy of the book).

Let’s check out what the book is about…

In short, based on the title, it covers a lot of the best practices on how to architect, build and run Azure workloads, but adding a lot of DevOps automation into doing this. Which summarizes what Site Reliability Engineering is about. As an SRE engineer, you spend about 50% of your time on developing, and 50% on doing engineering work. Which could involve designing new workload architectures, monitoring and observing actual-running workloads, automating the deployments using template-based Infrastructure as Code, as well as DevOps CI/CD Pipelines.

By the end of this book, you’ll have gained the confidence to design high-available and reliable Azure solutions, based on Microsoft Azure Reference Architectures, Azure DevOps and GitHub guidelines, and understanding more about the role of Site Reliability Engineering and designing for reliability and resiliency.

Chapter 1: The Foundation of Site Reliability Engineering
Chapter 2: Service-Level Management Definitions and Acronyms
Chapter 3: Azure Well-Architected Framework (WAF)
Chapter 4: Architecting Resilient Solutions in Azure
Chapter 5: Automation to Enable SRE with GitHub Actions/Azure DevOps/Azure Automation
Chapter 6: Monitoring As the Key to Knowledge
Chapter 7: Efficiently Handle Incident Response and Blameless Postmortems
Chapter 8: Azure Chaos Studio (Preview) and Azure Load Testing (Preview)

Good for +250 pages of deep-technical content on Azure, DevOps and SRE practices!

Feel free to reach out if you got any more questions on this book or its content. Unfortunately I don’t have access to discount codes or free copies, if that would be your first ask :). The book is available on Amazon as printed copy, downloadable PDF/Epub and on Kindle as well as on Apress/Springer own catalog.

I hope you enjoy reading this work, learn from it, and become better in your role as DevOps/SRE engineer.

Cheers!!

/Peter

Another Tech Reviewing done: Azure Strategy and Implementation Guide - 4th edition

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

As most of you know, I enjoy writing technical (Azure related) books, but over the last year, I didn’t focus that much on writing myself, but supporting other authors in their writing-journey as well as performing technical reviewing of the book they are writing.

The one I want to highlight in this post, has an interesting back-story. Mid 2019, I got approached by Packt, to write an update to their best-seller title “Azure Strategy and Implementation Guide”, in sponsorship with Microsoft. That was the third edition, which got released Oct 2019. About a year later, I got asked to write another update. As I was a Microsoft employee in meantime, and the book got sponsored by Microsoft, it could be a bit tricky :), so I decided to pull out of the writing process, avoiding conflicts of interest.

Instead, I referred the editor to a few other Azure experts and authors I knew, but still offering my technical skills in a reviewing process.

So here it is, the “Azure Strategy and Implementation Guide”, 4th edition

Don’t let the reference to “fourth edition” fool you, there has been a massive rewrite of several chapters, with fresh new content, more technical information and new chapters were added as well.

As technical reviewer, I mainly took on the responsibility of making sure the content was technically accurate. This involved not only the textual paragraphs and descriptions, but also the reference to any hands-on step-by-step guidance as well. While this book is targeted to cloud architects or cloud solution engineers - who are exploring the cloud transformation for their organization or their customers - , it is not just covering the high-level capability of several Azure services, but also takes the reader onto a journey about different use cases, how different services relate to each other and more.

About the book

By reading through this cookbook, you will be able to:

Understand core Azure infrastructure technologies and solutions
Carry out detailed planning for migrating applications to the cloud with Azure
Deploy and run Azure infrastructure services
Define roles and responsibilities in DevOps
Get a firm grip on security fundamentals
Carry out cost optimization in Azure

This book is designed to benefit Azure architects, cloud solution architects, Azure developers, Azure administrators, and anyone who wants to develop expertise in operating and administering the Azure cloud. Basic familiarity with operating systems and databases will help you grasp the concepts covered in this book.

Microsoft Azure is a powerful cloud computing platform that offers a multitude of services and capabilities for organizations of any size pursuing a cloud strategy. This fourth edition discusses the latest updates on security fundamentals, hybrid cloud, cloud migration, Microsoft Azure Active Directory, and Windows Virtual Desktop. It encapsulates the entire spectrum of measures involved in Azure deployment, including understanding Azure fundamentals, choosing a suitable cloud architecture, building on design principles, becoming familiar with Azure DevOps, and learning best practices for optimization and management. The book begins by introducing you to the Azure cloud platform and demonstrating the substantial scope of digital transformation and innovation that can be achieved with Azure’s capabilities. It then provides practical insights on application modernization, Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) deployment, infrastructure management, key application architectures, best practices of Azure DevOps, and Azure automation. By the end of the book, you will have acquired the essential skills to drive Azure operations from the planning and cloud migration stage to cost management and troubleshooting.

Introduction
- what is Azure, Public, Private, Hybrid Cloud
Automation and Governance
- How Infrastructure as Code and DevOps help optimizing your deployments
Modernizing with Hybrid Cloud and Multi-Cloud
- What makes multi-cloud a (successful) strategy
- Azure Stack on-premises
Cloud Migration Planning
- Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF)
- Azure Well-Architected Framework (WAF)
Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD)
- Cloud-running desktops with cloud power
Cloud Security Fundamentals to fight cybercrime
- Azure Security Operations & Monitoring
- Azure Security Center & Azure Sentinel SIEM
Cost Optimization
- Cost models and forecasting

200 pages of concise, to-the-point, guidance and best-practices content!

My feedback

I have to be honest, doing technical reviewing of this book was an interesting ride for me. Being an author myself, especially on the same book only a year ago felt weird at first. Since it was an update, parts of the 3rd edition got re-used. So it’s funny to have comments on your own paragraphs and content, but at the same time it’s very rewarding to see how the baseline I set out, helped in making this fourth edition even better.

The authors did a really good job on focusing on the updated content, highlighting the changes happened in Azure in only a year’s time, and showing several of the upcoming changes around WVD and security as prime topics.

Feel free to reach out if you got any more questions on this book or its content. Grab your free (Microsoft sponsored) copy from the Azure web site:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/azure-strategy-and-implementation-guide-fourth-edition/

and happy reading!

Don’t hesitate reaching out in case you should have any questions on this book or Azure in general. peter@pdtit.be or @pdtit on Twitter

Stay safe and healthy you all!

If you enjoyed reading this article or any other post here, feel free to share your appreciation

/Peter

Another Tech Reviewing done: Azure For Architects - 3rd edition

Sun, 02 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

As most of you know, I enjoy writing technical (Azure related) books, but every now and then I am not writing myself, but rather do technical reviewing. A few weeks ago, I was approached by Packt, asking me to review their Azure for Architects - third edition

Don’t let the reference to “third edition” fool you, there has been a massive rewrite of several chapters, with fresh new content, more technical information and new chapters were added as well.

As technical reviewer, I mainly take on the responsibility of making sure the content is technically accurate. This involves not only the textual paragraphs and descriptions, but also the reference to any hands-on step-by-step guidance as well. While this book is targeted to cloud architects, it is not just covering the high-level capability of several Azure services, but also takes the reader onto a journey about different use cases, how different services relate to each other and more. While not specifically written for it, I can tell you this work is a decent preparation for the Azure Solutions Architect Expert exams

About the book

Thanks to its support for high availability, scalability, security, performance, and disaster recovery, Azure has been widely adopted to create and deploy different types of application with ease. Updated for the latest developments, this third edition of Azure for Architects helps you get to grips with the core concepts of designing serverless architecture, including containers, Kubernetes deployments, and big data solutions.

You’ll learn how to architect solutions such as serverless functions, you’ll discover deployment patterns for containers and Kubernetes, and you’ll explore large-scale big data processing using Spark and Databricks. As you advance, you’ll implement DevOps using Azure DevOps, work with intelligent solutions using Azure Cognitive Services, and integrate security, high availability, and scalability into each solution. Finally, you’ll delve into Azure security concepts such as OAuth, OpenConnect, and managed identities.

By the end of this book, you’ll have gained the confidence to design intelligent Azure solutions based on containers and serverless functions.

Getting started with Azure
Azure solution availability, scalability, and monitoring
Design patternâ€“ Networks, storage, messaging, and events
Automating architecture on Azure
Designing policies, locks, and tags for Azure deployments
Cost Management for Azure solutions
Azure OLTP solutions
Architecting secure applications on Azure
Azure Big Data solutions
Serverless in Azure â€“ Working with Azure Functions
Azure solutions using Azure Logic Apps, Event Grid, and Functions
Azure Big Data eventing solutions
Integrating Azure DevOps
Architecting Azure Kubernetes solutions
Cross-subscription deployments using ARM templates
ARM template modular design and implementation
Designing IoT Solutions
Azure Synapse Analytics for architects
Architecting intelligent solutions

Good for almost 700 pages of deep-technical content!

My feedback

I have to be honest, doing technical reviewing of this book was hard for me. Being an author myself, and mainly on the exact same topics, I had to get over the fact that I was not the one writing the book. While this seems easy, it actually was harder than I initially thought. Each author has a certain writing style, starting already from the outline. (In this case, it means I might have switched the chapters in a slightly different order).

Knowing that each module is stand-alone, you can easily mix and match the order to your relevance. Whether you want to learn about a specific topic, maybe grab several chapters to get a clear idea about a broader solution (like containers and Kubernetes), or want to go through the book from beginning to end page after page, anyone interested in learning about Azure will find what he/she is looking for.

Another thing I noticed, after going through most of the chapters, was the extensive background in data solutions the author(ing team) had - really, those chapters were super detailed and I learned a lot from them myself - especially on the newer data topics from Azure Synapse (Chapter 18). This was quite nice to go through, since it’s still rather new.

If you want to get a more clear view on serverless, I can definitely recommend chapters 10 and 11, both from a technical perspective as well as the promised architect overview.

While there is nothing wrong with a 700 page book, and again, each chapter is somehow a stand-alone one, I sometimes wonder if anyone is actually capable of going through this huge amount of information. I have been “living in Azure” for almost 7 years full-time now, and at moments, it even felt heavy to me. Let alone if you are less familiar with a lot of the services. But on the other hand, this also means it could become the “go to” reference for Azure content. and knowing this is the third edition, I hope the Packt editor team also keeps this in mind, making sure the book is getting refreshed and updated frequently, like at least once a year (like it happened up till now already)

Last, I also like the fact a lot of code snippets are publicly available on GitHub, especially useful for finding the PowerShell Scripts, Azure Resource Manager templates or Azure CLI used throughout the book. Even if after some time the Azure Portal might change, capabilities and features of the described services might (and guaranteed they will!) change, I hope the authors are also keeping this repo up-to-date.

Feel free to reach out if you got any more questions on this book or its content. Unfortunately I don’t have access to discount codes or free copies, if that would be your first ask :). However, knowing this “Azure bible” is listed for $34,99 (ebook) and $49,99 (printed+ebook), this is really a lot of value for your money if you ask me.

Stay safe and healthy you all!

/Peter

New book published: Azure Strategy and Implementation Guide, 3rd edition

Mon, 03 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

You might get amazed, finding out I managed to publish yet another book, where the previous one Efficiently Migrating your workloads to Azure only got published around Christmas.

However, this new one was a “longer work in progress”, and not something I could spew out in just a few weeks.

Several months ago, I got approached by Packt Publishing, asking me to “write a quick note on how I look at Azure strategic implementation and migration”. Which was initially sized at max. 20 pages. However, it became clear, this quick writing gig would end up becoming a lot larger, and eventually involve multiple authors, to cover the full Azure platform spectrum.

As the core question they started from is my core playground, it honestly didn’t take me that long to write down my vision. However, after I sent in my first draft, that’s where the real work came in (as well as the decision to make this a larger project). Based on the fast pace of Azure services and overall updates coming out, I wanted to make sure they were captured in the book as well. As - after all - , this guide was written towards technical decision makers, IT managers, cloud architects,… helping them in making a strategic decision to start moving workloads to Azure. So it better was complete…

Jumping a few months further in 2019, and literally having lost tracks on the amount of updates I worked on, also based on the tremendous input from technical reviewer , MCT, MVP and overall cloud enthusiast and solution architect Steve Buchanan (@bucatech), I’m honored and proud to see this work published on the Microsoft website:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/azure-strategy-and-implementation-guide-third-edition/

summarized as follows:

Get a step by step introduction to using Azure for your cloud infrastructure with this Packt e-book. Read the latest edition of the Azure Strategy and Implementation Guide for detailed information on how to start taking advantage of Azure cloud capabilities. Download this e-book to:

Get an overview of Azure benefits and best practices for planning your migration.
Make cloud architecture and design choices that best fit your organization.
Learn how to manage and optimize your new cloud environment.

As always, I hope this book maps with your interests and helps in your journey to Azure. Do not hesitate reaching out or sharing your feedback,

/Peter

Happy to announce my newest Azure book got (self) published

Fri, 03 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I’m excited about this next project that finally got live, thanks to a bit of quiet time during the Holidays. While it is not up to the full 100% of what I had in mind, I didn’t want to hold back the content any longer, since Azure is moving already that fast…

The original idea of this material was based on a workshop I created for Microsoft Internal (Azure Developer Series) in Sept 2018 as a contractor, which was a combination of slides, videos and lab guides. The workshop existed in both in-person and virtual delivery format. At that time, the sample application was rather basic. Early July 2019, I got asked to work on an update of the content, and extend it with Azure DevOps, which was well-adopted in the market already, but still unknown to a lot. Instead of just working on “updates”, I decided to start from scratch, and work towards a more “business ready” application, using SimplCommerce, an Open Sourced E-commerce platform application, built in .NET / .NET Core, and supporting different database back-ends.

Flipping the presentations and lab guides into a book seemed like an interesting idea at that time.

Talking to several people about this, it became clear that – given the focus on the technical side of the Azure platform, together with the focus on the hands-on aspect of the workshop, most vouched for a hands-on guide, and leaving the ‘speaker notes’ behind. Next, me moving to Microsoft as a full-time employee mid September 2019, was another good reason to shorten the format of this book. It would still take me another 3 months (Christmas Holidays aka slower pace…) to go through all labs again myself, guaranteeing the book was ready for usage, even without having a trainer available to ask questions.

This is the first book I’m doing in self-publishing, and my 6th book overall (see /publications) for more details on the other material I wrote along the years.

The benefit for you as a reader is that you will get continuous updates. Whether these are bug-fixes, additional chapters/lab steps or major updates to existing labs, you will get notified about it. The advantage for me as the author, is that it is probably one of the best ways to publish content on a topic that is as fast moving as Azure.

As always, I hope this book maps with your interests and helps in your journey to Azure. Do not hesitate reaching out or sharing your feedback,

Here is some more info about the actual book contents:

Hands-On-Lab Scenario

You are part of an organization that is running a dotnetcore e-commerce platform application, using Windows Server infrastructure on-premises today, comprising a WebVM running Windows Server 2012 R2 with Internet Information Server (IIS) and a 2nd SQLVM running Windows Server 2012 R2 and SQL Server 2014.

The business has approved a migration of this business-critical workload to Azure, and you are nominated as the cloud solution architect for this project. No decision has been made yet on what the final architecture should or will look like. Your first task is building a Proof-of-Concept in your Azure environment, to test out the different architectures possible:

Infrastructure as a Service (IAAS)
Platform as a Service (PAAS)
Containers as a Service (CaaS)

At the same time, your CIO wants to make use of this project to switch from a more traditional mode of operations, with barriers between IT sysadmin teams and Developer teams, to a DevOps way of working. Therefore, you are tasked to explore Azure DevOps and determine where CI/CD Pipelines can assist in optimizing the deployment and running operations of this e-commerce platform, especially when deploying updates to the application.

As you are new to the continuous changes in Azure, you want to make sure this process goes as smooth as possible, starting from the assessment to migration to day-to-day operations.

Abstract and Learning Objectives

This workshop enables anyone to learn, understand and build a Proof of Concept, in performing a multi-tiered .Net Core web application (SimplCommerce Open Source http://www.simplcommerce.com) using Microsoft SQL Server database, platform migration to Azure public cloud, leveraging on different Azure Infrastructure as a Service, Azure Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Azure Container offerings like Azure Container Instance (ACI) and Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS).

Immediately in lab 1, students get introduced to the basics of automating Azure resources deployments using Visual Studio and Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates. Next, readers learn about the importance of performing proper assessments, and what tools Microsoft offers to help in this migration preparation phase. Once the application has been deployed on Azure Virtual Machines, students learn about Microsoft SQL database migration to SQL Azure PaaS, as well as deploying and migrating web applications to Azure Web Apps.

After these foundational platform components, the next exercises will totally focus on the core concepts and advantages of using containers for running business workloads, based on Docker, Azure Container Registry (ACR), Azure Container Instance (ACI) and WebApps for Containers, as well as how to enable container orchestration and cloud-scale using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

In the last part of the workshop, readers get introduced to Azure DevOps, the new Microsoft Application Lifecycle environment, helping in building a CI/CD Pipeline to publish workloads using the DevOps principals and concepts, showing the integration with the rest of the already touched on Azure services like Azure Web Apps and Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS), closing the workshop with a module on overall Azure monitoring and operations and what tools Azure has available to assist your IT teams in this challenge.

The focus of the material is having a Hands-On-only Lab experience, by going through the following exercises and tasks:

· Deploying a 2-tier Azure Virtual Machine (Webserver and SQL database Server) using ARM-template automation with Visual Studio 2019;

· Publishing a .NET Core e-commerce application to an Azure Web Virtual Machine and SQL DB Virtual Machine;

· Performing a proper assessment of the as-is Web and SQL infrastructure using Microsoft Assessment Tools;

· Migrating a SQL 2014 database to Azure SQL PaaS (Lift & Shift);

· Migrating a .NET Core web application to Azure Web Apps (Lift & Shift);

· Containerizing a .NET Core web application using Docker, and pushing to Azure Container Registry (ACR);

· Running Azure Container Instance (ACI) and WebApp for Containers;

· Deploy and run Azure Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS);

· Deploying Azure DevOps and building a CI/CD Pipeline for the subject e-commerce application;

· Managing and Monitoring Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS);

At last…,

I also want to thank Amita Thukral, a far-away friend from India, with whom I had the pleasure to work along the years when doing Azure virtual workshop deliveries, where she was moderating the questions from the audience, and overall a very nice and professional person to work with. She did a tremendous job in screening the scenario, going through all lab steps, to make sure it all made sense. Even for less Azure-experienced folks.

If this got your attention, head over to Leanpub, and grab yourself a copy of the book. And start learning Azure :).

Looking forward to your feedback,

best regards, Peter /Peter

Books on Azure Readiness starts here...

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Packt Book Review - Azure for Business Decision Makers

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Book review - Building Blazor WebAssembly Applications with gRPC

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Another Tech Reviewing done: Azure Strategy and Implementation Guide - 4th edition

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Another Tech Reviewing done: Azure For Architects - 3rd edition

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New book published: Azure Strategy and Implementation Guide, 3rd edition

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Abstract and Learning Objectives

At last…,