A colleague of mine was trying to figure out a cheap and simple way to store log files from their application and have the functionality to search through it. The first thing that came to mind was using an Azure® monitor to read the logs, but another option that most people forget is the Azure Linux Diagnostic Extension. This extension can collect metrics from the virtual machine (VM), read log events from the syslog, customize collected data metrics, collect specific log files that you can store in a storage table, and send metrics and log events to EventHub endpoints. The Azure portal lets the end-user configure all the preceding settings except collecting specific log files. Let me show you the steps required and a gotcha that sent me on a troubleshooting mission.

You can easily create multiple virtual machines (VMs) on Azure® by using Hashicorp® Terraform® with the help of Visual Studio® Code (VS Code).

If you have been using Azure® Key Vault FlexVolume for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), it is time to switch over to the new provider. Azure deprecated the FlexVolume solution in favor of the Azure Key Vault Provider for Secret Store CSI Driver. The Azure Key Vault provider for the Secret Store CSI driver has a simple configuration that makes deployment and governance around keys, secrets, and certificates feel like any other Azure resources talking to the key vault. Let’s take a look at a complete example from provisioning an AKS cluster to reading in a secret as an environmental variable.

This post describes how to easily configure and use Visual Studio® Code (VS Code) for Azure® DevOps, Hashicorp® Terraform®, and Git repositories.

This post explores how to monitor Microsoft® Azure® server backups and, if the backups run long, use Log Analytics to trigger an alert on the servers.

Teaser: The post unveils new features of Azure Backup Report and Azure Monitor and offers some fancy Kusto Query Language (KQL) operations.

I hardly ever see the Azure® proximity placement groups feature implemented for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solutions. Do folks not know that this feature exists, or is it just one of the many components people forget when architecting? For those that do not know what a proximity placement group is, it is a logical grouping that tries to keep your virtual machines (VMs) physically close to each other to reduce network latency between those VMs.

Azure® Private Endpoint provides private IP address access by using a network interface controller (NIC) attached to a virtual network subnet for an Azure web app, allowing access from an on-premise VPN or ExpressRoute. Implementing an endpoint effectively blocks the public inbound access. This technology is very similar to an internal App Service Environment (ASE) but much cheaper.

Rackspace just released a minor enhancement to Rackspace Application Services for SAP to help our SAP® on Microsoft® Azure® customers migrate to SAP S/4HANA.

Rackspace offers predefined design patterns from which clients can select for business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) purposes.

Most release pipelines have some automation to do after configuration to a virtual machine (VM) to prepare it for use. Looking at SQL Server®, you can configure a lot of options to make it production-ready. What most people do not know is that a resource provider within Microsoft® Azure® configures basic SQL Server settings without the need for any post-configuration scripts.