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This demo blog post is about deploying WordPress CMS with creating a docker image from scratch, using Microsoft Azure Container register for privately storing the dockerized image. Also, use Managed K8s, Azure Kubernetes to deploy this image on AKS Cluster and worker nodes.

Approach

1. Build the docker image for WordPress
2. Use Azure container registry to store the dockerized image
3. Create Azure Database for MySQL
4. Create AKS Cluster and deploy the image
5. Create Kubernetes manifest file with the desired state for WordPress CMS.

Prerequisites

1. Microsoft Azure Account – free trial works.
2. Azure CLI
3. Kubernetes – Link here
4. Docker Desktop for MacOS
5. A link to wordpress to download and build docker image

Build Docker Image

Grab a free version of the latest WordPress version. Create new directory WordPress for your project and use this simple folder structure

Open the compressed file to view the contents for the package.

Rename wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php

This screenshot below to read the database host, username and password from the Kubernetes manifest file.

Before creating the docker file, just need to restructure the folder structure as below

Create a blank Dockerfile

Create a new Dockerfile and copy code snippet from below screenshot. This below file is setting up Apache web server with PHP and enabling mysqli extension.

Before executing the docker build command, need to ensure the docker desktop is installed and also running successfully.

docker build --tag myblog:latest

It’ll take sometime to build the image with tags. Once its completed, we can open up docker desktop and view the latest image added on the our machine disk. myblog with tag latest is added here.

Use ACR – Azure Container Registry to store the dockerized image

az acr create --resource-group wordpress-project \
  --name wpAzureContainerRegistry2020 --sku Basic

Login to ACR which is recently created

Tag and Push the dockerized image to this ACR.

Docker tag 7eb3872a0449 wpazurecontainerregistry2020.azurecr.io/7eb3872a0449:latest

Docker push wpazurecontainerregistry2020.azurecr.io/7eb3872a0449:latest

Create AKS cluster

az aks create --resource-group wordpress-project --name wordpresscluster--node-count 1 --generate-ssh-keys

Also update the ACR registry, with this same AKS Cluster.

az aks update -n myAKSCluster -g wordpress-project
 --attach-acr wpazurecontainerregistry2020.azurecr.io

Installing the az aks install-cli package for executing kubectl commands.

kubectl get nodes 

Once the nodes are setup, need to ensure Azure Database for MySQL is all up and running.

Post successfully creating the Azure Database for MySQL, back to VSCode.

kubectl get service

It would take some time to get all the pods all setup and running successfully.

Need to use the same external ip [20.53.109.149] from the above screenshot and it just works. It loads up the WordPress admin installation page.

That’s It. 

That’s all, one more demo post done with the K8s bits, Happy kubectl K8s!

This post is about deploying multiple docker container to Azure container registry.The below demo customer manager application and micro services will be containerised using docker and then pushed over to Azure as a private container registry.

The application uses below tech stack which is forked from https://github.com/DanWahlin/Angular-Docker-Microservices

Prerequities

• Homebrew on Mac
• Git version control
• npm installed v14.2.0s
• Install Docker Community Edition – https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-mac/install/
• Have an account in Microsoft Azure to create a container registry using the Azure portal.

Build the source code on local

Clone the source code onto your local working directory.

Check for Git to be installed and clone the GitHub repository on your local machine working folder.

git clone https://github.com/varunmaggo/Angular-Docker-Microservices

Once the git clone is completed, the local folder will have the required files. I use VSCode for Editing the configuration files.

In order to build the solution on local, we install the local packages/dependencies. Execute the below commands, it takes a few minutes to install required packages/dependencies.

1. Install Angular CLI: npm install @angular/cli -g
2. Run npm install at the root of the project
3. Run npm install in ./microservices/node

Once the packages are done, just execute the command ng build

Dockerize the Application/Micro-services

Now we will need to add and configure docker-compose.yml file, since we have multiple services so need to have multiple ports being configured as well.

Before building via docker, adding Docker Compose support to the project, along with multiple docker files which are as follows:-

• container_name: nginx: .docker/nginx.dockerfile
• container_name: nodeapp: .docker/node.development.dockerfile
• container_name: ‘aspnetcoreapp’: .docker/aspnetcore.development.dockerfile

Build the solution via Docker commands.

Run docker-compose build

Once the solution builds successfully, all the images are visible. Also check for tagging which are very crucial for later on docker images to be pushed. I had tried this demo yesterday, so my images created are of yesterday.

Run docker images

Run docker-compose up

It builds, (re)creates, starts, and attaches to containers for a service.

Now the application has started and can be accessible on localhost.

Also, we can see the docker dashboard, for their available ports and services availability.

Create Azure Container Registry to push dockerized application/micro-services

Open the Microsoft Azure portal, to create Azure Container Registry. https://portal.azure.com

We create a new azure container registry – MiniCRM.

minicrmdemo.azurecr.io

docker login minicrmdemo.azurecr.io

Before pushing an image to ACR registry, we must tag it with the fully qualified name of ACR login server. In this case, minicrmdemo.azurecr.io

docker tag nginx minicrmdemo.azurecr.io/angular-docker-microservices:latest 

Similar docker tag commands can be executed for multiple images. Next step is to push the docker container to ACR.

docker push minicrmdemo.azurecr.io/angular-docker-microservices:latest

Next Demo

To use this docker image from container, we can launch web app in Azure, that will be a separate post in itself.

G’day, this blog post is about adding OWASP dependency check to Azure Build pipeline and universal packages being used for containing all the build output. SonarQube plugin will be MsBuild.exe and will perform the quality of the continuous integration.

OWASP Dependency Check – The purpose of dependency check it to check your dependencies for known vulnerabilities. It works cross-platform and Integrates well with SonarQube. Works both in Azure DevOps (online) and Server (on premise)

This plugin can be downloaded here – https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=InfoSupport.infosupport-owasp-dependecy-checker

For this demo project, we create a new project in AzureDevOps, LegacyToVogue. And, its scope to the build pipeline for the continuous integration part.

We have an empty Azure Repository over here, we will quickly import the code from github.

After importing the source code from github, we have all the required files from github now.

Once the source code is available we will create the Azure Build Pipeline, and later on we will add the required plugins. Also please move over to the azure marketplace and download the required plugins.

For Universal packages – According to Microsoft definition, Universal Packages store one or more files together in a single unit that has a name and version. You can publish Universal Packages from the command line by using the Azure CLI. In simple terms, we will keep it to hold the build output and later use it for Release pipeline.

Lets create an artefacts feed, we will use this for storing build output.

Lets move over to our Azure Build Pipeline, and add a new task for OWASP Dependency Check.

Lets also add Universal package task, to ensure we are storing the build output will all the required dependencies to be used for release pipeline. Please have the destination feed ready in Azure Artifacts.

Once the tasks are done, and YAML tasks code matches as above, we will trigger the build and we will see the outcome.

G’Day, this blog post is about using using custom domain names in Azure. I have recently bought a TLD – domain from Godaddy and would like to hook up my website to redirect to the same.

So this blog post will walk through how to go about it.

Prerequisites:-

• Have an Azure web application ready.
• Buy a domain name and have access to the DNS registry for your domain provider
• have patience for 24 hours, because nameservers do take their propagation time to reflect changes.

Get Started

To map a custom DNS name to a web based application, your App Service plan must be a paid tier In this step, you make sure that the App Service app is in the supported pricing tier.

Login to your Azure Portal – portal.azure.com and find out the tier with which your application is deployed.

This application is fairly light,a blog site.

Map Domain –

We can use either a CNAME record or an A record to map a custom DNS name to App Service. Preference should be to use CNAME records for all custom DNS names except root domains (use A records).

• An A record to map to the app’s IP address.
• A TXT record to map to the app’s default domain name <app_name>.azurewebsites.net. App Service uses this record only at configuration time, to verify that you own the custom domain. This can be deleted later on.

Sign in to the website of your domain provider, I have used Godaddy, domain registrar.

Every domain provider has its own DNS records interface, so consult the provider’s documentation. Look for areas of the site labeled Domain Name, DNS Configuration. Often, on that page and you can look for a link that is named something like Zone file, DNS Records, or Advanced configuration.

Also, lets add a TXT record.

End of post

Please be aware that depending on your DNS provider it can take up to 48 hours for the DNS entry changes to propagate. You can verify that the DNS propagation is working as expected by using http://digwebinterface.com/. Learn more

This post is about using serverless Azure function for running a batch job
or cron job. There are many instances where in, we can execute the cron job using Azure Function using time trigger.

Serverless Azure Function allows us to schedule a custom block of code to execute on time the client wanted and gain immediate visibility of logging in the Azure portal. Since this is serverless, we need not bother about setting up infrastructure. This does not need to have Virtual machines to setup or IIS to be configured in order to host any service.

We will create a demo project which is going to run as a batch job and fetch the BBC news rss feed for asia region. And we are going to send an email using SMTP settings for gmail. So every 6 hours this cron job is going to sniff bbc news reader rss feed and email me the top headings to my gmail inbox.

Before we start creating new project and proceed, please ensure you have installed the Azure Development workload for visual studio 2017.

Azure function gives us multiple triggers types, which we can use as a template and use.

1.HTTPTrigger – To Trigger the execution of your code by using an HTTP request.
2. TimerTrigger – To Execute cleanup or other batch tasks on a predefined schedule.
3. CosmosDBTrigger – To Process Azure Cosmos DB documents when they are added or updated in collections in a NoSQL database.
4. BlobTrigger – To Process Azure Storage blobs when they are added to containers. You might use this function for image resizing.
5. QueueTrigger – To Respond to messages as they arrive in an Azure Storage queue.

We need to Add System.ServiceModel in references for using SyndicationFeed and it will fetch and read rss feeds.

PM> Install-Package System.ServiceModel.Syndication

We would like to run this Azure function in every 6 hours, so 4 times in a day. We would select time trigger as Azure function type.

For testing we will change the time trigger to 20 seconds, in the below image we see the the cron job is being executed every 20 seconds.

Publish Azure Function to Azure Cloud

We will publish the azure function to cloud. We need to created a new profile in Azure for us to publish this Azure Time Trigger function.

We will name our Azure function as RSSFeedSniffer

After being successful published, it shall be redirected to
https://rssfeedsniffer.azurewebsites.net/

It can also be seen in Azure portal dashboard.

This article shows how to set up AzureDevOps CI/CD pipelines to be set for a full stack application. Here I use a multilayered solution set up which show the tasks based on users. Below is the technology stack which is used.

• Frontend UI – Angular 5
• Middleware APIs- ASP.NET WebAPI
• RDBMS – SQL Server 2012
• Dependency Injection – Unity
• ORM – EntityFramework
• Framework – .NET Core

I have code hosted on github as public repo.

Our projects in the solution would look like below:-

First, create an AzureDevOps account by going to azure web portal. https://dev.azure.com

As for pricing, Azure DevOps is free for open source projects and small projects (up to five users).

I have created Tracker as a private project, which I will be using for my Azure CI/CD pipeline.

Once you create a project there will be an option on the left-hand side, which gives us a submenu to show files and its metadata.

After I click files, I would not see any files. Since I am using git version control and the source is hosted on GitHub. I will fire these two commands in the command prompt to push my latest changes.

git remote add origin https://github.com/varunmaggo/Tracker.gith
git push -u origin --all 

Now the code is pushed and the next step is to create AzureDevOps pipeline, on the left-hand side, there is an option. We would need to create Build and Release pipelines separately.

Again goto build option, we would see an option, where we need to create a build agent with multiple configurations.

• Install node package manager,
• Install angular cli
• Build packages for angular,
• Nuget restore to install packages for WebApi’s solution.
• run unit tests,
• And finally, publish artefacts.

Once we are set with these build pipelines, we would need to proceed for Release Pipeline.

In order to make it simple, I would use the staging environment. In real-world scenarios, we can have dev, stage and prod separately.

In the image below, we select the build source type, which is our build pipeline, and we would like to

This post is about using FITBIT API’s and access them using C#.NET. FitBit documentation is a detailed one and easy to pick up. In order to call FitBit apis, you need to register yourself on their development platform and do a handshake with token-based authentication. FitBit uses token-based authentication for the webbased application. So I am using asp.net MVC application as the web client.

First register yourself and get Client ID and Client secret key

https://dev.fitbit.com

Once you have registered yourself and created the application on fitbit dev environment, you will see your application below :-

As a developer, we need client ID, Client secret and callback url. We will save this information in config files. We prepare the user to redirect to Fitbit.com to prompt them to authorize this app, on successful authentication we will call the required apis from FitBit and get the data.

More info on webapi calls with request and response on FitBit website — https://dev.fitbit.com/build/reference/web-api/basics/

Once we run out webapp, we need to go to its login page. This login page is going to FitBit api, does a handshake.

We are passing same clientid and client secret for authentication.

On successful handshake, we will see our profile data from fitbit. FitBit also gives, user activity like daily steps, weekly steps, heart rate data. But that will be there for another post.