25 articles published in 2023.
TL;DR A return to blogging in 2023 brought 21 posts, talks at three conferences and one community event, and four Microsoft newsletter features. Azure API Center, Container Apps workload profiles and Cloud for Sovereignty led readership, closing a rewarding year of sharing with the Azure community.
TL;DR Azure Container Apps service discovery resiliency adds retries, timeouts, circuit breakers and connection pools without application code changes or explicit sidecars. A two-service demo tests retry and circuit breaker policies, configured on the called app and used through ACA service discovery.
TL;DR The Karpenter provider for AKS provisions nodes sized to pending pod requirements instead of relying on fixed VM scale set configurations. A preview walkthrough tests dynamic scale-out and consolidation, showing how workload-aware node selection can improve efficiency and cost control.
TL;DR Radius models applications and their dependencies in Bicep, using Kubernetes environments and operator-defined recipes to hide infrastructure details. A first deployment explores its developer experience, portability promise and open questions around maturity, governance and GitOps.
TL;DR Testing Microsoft Defender for APIs with 300 million mirrored requests reveals alerts for traffic spikes, suspicious IPs, unusual payloads and parameter anomalies. The post explains APIM onboarding, learned traffic baselines and data retention considerations for security teams.
TL;DR Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty helps governments adopt public cloud with a Sovereign Landing Zone, policy guardrails and confidential workload templates. A preview walkthrough covers platform deployment, compliance, remediation and exemptions, emphasizing careful governance.
TL;DR Azure Container Apps workload profiles combine Consumption and dedicated compute in one environment, adding sizing, cost and networking flexibility. Practical tests explore subnet capacity, replica placement and why revision changes need spare resources to avoid degraded deployments.
TL;DR Run scheduled tasks on Azure Container Apps using native Jobs or a continuously running app with a Dapr cron binding. Native Jobs are the simpler, more resource-efficient choice, with built-in execution history, while Dapr requires an active replica and custom log queries.
TL;DR OpenTelemetry standardizes traces, metrics and logs so you can instrument once and send telemetry to multiple backends. A .NET and Azure Service Bus demo shows context propagation and Collector pipelines, decoupling application instrumentation from observability tools.
TL;DR Azure Deployment Stacks group resources across scopes, enforce protection and control deletion or detachment through lifecycle policies. A hands-on walkthrough covers creating, updating and deleting stacks, plus naming and output changes when migrating from deployments.
TL;DR Azure API Center brings API inventory and custom metadata to enterprise governance. An early preview explores dependency tracking with Cosmos DB graphs, API design workflow integration and stakeholder needs, highlighting opportunities for built-in visualization and automation.
TL;DR A hands-on comparison finds no universal winner: Logic Apps offers rapid visual development, rich connectors and mature operations, while Dapr workflows offer code-based flexibility, portability and replay. Choose based on integration scope, skills and operational needs; Dapr was still alpha.
TL;DR Clarifying where Logic Apps Consumption, Standard, Azure Functions, Durable Functions and Dapr fit in integration scenarios. Logic Apps Standard adds networking and extensibility options, but its custom .NET Framework code feature requires a wrapper and Windows hosting.
TL;DR Kubernetes 1.25 introduces cgroup v2, which can cause memory pressure and OOM kills in older .NET and Java applications. Updating frameworks is the lasting fix; reverting AKS nodes to cgroup v1 buys time, but node reimaging during upgrades reinstates v2.
TL;DR Design landing zone monitoring around collection, visualization and alerting requirements. Azure Monitor baseline alerts use policy initiatives to deploy consistent alert rules at scale; existing resources need remediation, and ongoing policy compliance monitoring is essential.
TL;DR Join my Azure Day 2023 Rome livestream session on June 23 at 16:30 CET to learn how Data API Builder, Azure Container Apps and API Management work together to build and secure serverless APIs.
TL;DR The managed Istio add-on lowers the barrier to service mesh adoption on AKS. This walkthrough enables the add-on, configures ingress routing, injects sidecars through namespace labels and adds Zipkin tracing, while noting configuration and upgrade tradeoffs.
TL;DR Build Azure landing zones with Bicep orchestrators, reusable solution modules and Microsoft-maintained CARML building blocks. Bicep registries simplify sharing, but choosing public, customer-owned or partner-managed registries requires balancing security, versioning and maintenance.
TL;DR Run Traefik on Azure Container Apps as an alternative to the APIM self-hosted gateway. Mount static and dynamic configuration from Azure file shares, configure backend routing and chain middleware such as rate limiting to control traffic across containerized APIs.
TL;DR Choose AKS for Kubernetes flexibility, portability and advanced workloads; choose Azure Container Apps for simpler deployment and less infrastructure management. Weigh complexity, scale, operational skills, feature constraints and vendor lock-in against your application needs.
TL;DR Deploy Data API Builder on Azure Container Apps to turn database objects into serverless APIs. Store dab-config.json in an Azure file share, mount it into the DAB container and use Bicep to configure the image, volume mounts and startup arguments.
TL;DR Join my Techorama Belgium session on May 16, 2023 at 13:15 in room 12 to learn how to build and secure serverless APIs with Data API Builder, Azure Container Apps and API Management.
TL;DR Data API Builder turns database objects into REST and GraphQL APIs without code. This walkthrough exposes a SQL table, tests CRUD and filtering, and outlines security controls. Directly exposing a database model creates coupling and security risks, so choose what to expose carefully.
TL;DR Azure Kubernetes Service provides managed Kubernetes on Azure to help teams deploy and manage containerized applications. This visual overview introduces reasons to consider AKS as a container orchestration platform.
TL;DR Containers package an application and its dependencies into a single portable unit, simplifying deployment and management while enabling consistent execution across developer machines, on-premises infrastructure and cloud environments.