Cloud Solution Architect

Azure 101: Networking Part 1

Welcome back to the Azure 101 series. In the previous blog posts, I covered two of the most commonly...

Date: 10/05/2018

Azure 101: Monitoring & Logging Part 1

Originally I was going to have my next Azure 101 post be about Networking as that is another set of...

Date: 09/04/2018

A Serverless ToDo List

The code referenced in this article can be found here: https://github.com/ssemyan/TodoServerless...

Date: 09/03/2018

Azure 101: Governance

UPDATE: Added additional resource at bottom I have worked with a lot of different customers over the...

Date: 08/14/2018

Best Practices: Collaborative Approach to ChatBot Design using Bot Framework Tools

There are already many articles and documents that have been created on how to develop a ChatBot...

Date: 07/30/2018

Terraform for the ARM Template Developer

The files used in this article can be found here:...

Date: 06/27/2018

Understanding RPO and RTO considerations of Azure Solutions

Traditional on prem Disaster Recovery (DR) discussions almost always include requirements around RPO...

Date: 05/02/2018

Changing the License Type for an existing Virtual Machine Scale Set to use the Azure Hybrid Use Benefit

If you are an enterprise customer that has existing Windows Server licenses that you want to use in...

Date: 03/20/2018

Query ASR Replicated Item Status using Powershell

In this short blog post, I am going to show how to query the status of replicated items in an Azure...

Date: 03/01/2018

Cost Optimization on Azure

Cost is always a concern with customers when it comes to the cloud. I've had a number of...

Date: 02/23/2018

Azure Administrator Account Security

In this short post I wanted to share a couple of recommendations that I give to customers to ensure...

Date: 01/17/2018

Using Managed Service Identities in Functions to Access Key Vault

In my previous blog post I walked through a scenario leveraging Azure Functions and Event Grid to...

Date: 12/22/2017

Storage Account Replication with Functions and Event Grid

In this blog post we're going to take a look at how we can create a serverless solution to enable a...

Date: 11/21/2017

Just enough Azure for Hadoop - Part 4

This blog is part 4 of a series that covers relevant Azure fundamentals - concepts/terminology you...

Date: 11/01/2017

Staying Current With Azure Updates

One of the frequent questions I get from customers is how to stay up to date on all the latest and...

Date: 10/31/2017

Just enough Azure for Hadoop - Part 1

Motivation for this blog... On my last day at my former workplace, where I mostly worked on customer...

Date: 10/26/2017

Azure Storage Account Security

There have been a number of recent high profile data exposures related to storage of data within...

Date: 09/19/2017

Understanding Idempotence and Scope in Azure Resource Manager Templates

Azure resources can be provisioned and modified a multitude of ways, through the portal, via...

Date: 08/09/2017

Azure IaaS Audit Solution

I have been working with a customer for the last two years that has their eCommerce platform...

Date: 08/08/2017

Building Blockchain DApp's on Service Fabric

This post is first in its series to give high level overview of building an end-to-end DApp on...

Date: 07/29/2017

Azure Automation Graphical Editor from a Coder's Perspective

I have been coding since I was 9 years old and I have always loved coding, but have never made it a...

Date: 06/13/2017

Deploying a Suspicious Activity Bot in Azure Commercial or Azure Government

Having spent many years in the Public Sector space, I have made a lot of friends on both the...

Date: 05/17/2017

End to End SSL with Azure Application Gateway

<Updated Service Note> Please note that this capability has now been integrated into...

Date: 05/05/2017

Programmatically adding elements to an Azure ARM template using PowerShell

One of the great features of Azure ARM templates is that you can do template linking so that you can...

Date: 04/05/2017

Uploading Azure NSG Flow Logs to OMS

** Edit 6/6/2017 ** The upload script has now been updated to allow for SAS token authentication in...

Date: 04/03/2017

Getting Started with Azure - Backing Up VMs

In my last post, I provided you with some simple steps on how to "Get Started" with the Azure Backup...

Date: 01/13/2017

Getting Started with Azure - Backup Vaults & Policies

One of the biggest questions that we have been getting from either customers that are new to Azure...

Date: 01/05/2017

Install SQL Server onto an Azure VM using PowerShell DSC

The Azure marketplace has quite a few prebuilt virtual machines with SQL Server already in them from...

Date: 01/04/2017

Move the Azure temporary disk to a different drive letter on Windows Server

On occasion you may have a need to move the Azure temporary drive to a different drive letter. Azure...

Date: 01/03/2017

Performing Application Upgrades on Azure VM Scale Sets

Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS) are an awesome solution available on Azure, providing autoscale...

Date: 12/29/2016

Deploy Java 8 Spring Boot API to Azure App Service

Spring is a popular framework for Java based application development.  Spring Boot makes Spring...

Date: 11/23/2016

Creating Azure Resources with ARM Templates Step by Step

The files used in this article can be found in GitHub here:...

Date: 11/11/2016

Blue/Green Deployments in Service Fabric

The technique of Blue/Green deployments has been around for a long time. The goal is to reduce...

Date: 10/17/2016

Distributed Tracing in Service Fabric using Application Insights

Logs are critical to any system for monitoring and diagnostics. In the world of microservices, the...

Date: 10/06/2016

Create an SSL enabled Web server farm with VM Scale Sets

(from Christoph Schittko) This template illustrates secure deployment of SSL certificates to a VM...

Date: 10/04/2016

Trying out Docker for Azure (Beta)

Docker for Azure lets you quickly setup and configure a working Docker 1.12.1 swarm-mode install on...

Date: 09/16/2016

Use Azure DNS Service (preview) from Azure VMs

Azure DNS service (preview) is a hosted service for DNS domains, providing name resolution using...

Date: 09/08/2016

ARM template enforcing script execution order and timing in a loop

In a recent project we were trying to setup an active-active MariaDB cluster with custom script...

Date: 08/25/2016

Generating SSH keys for Azure Linux VMs

When creating new Azure Linux virtual machines, it is recommended you use SSH keys to connect to the...

Date: 08/24/2016

Handling Azure Resource Manager Deployment Limits

For many of those who know me, they know that I am very much a proponent of the Azure Resource...

Date: 08/22/2016

Replace your Cron/Batch servers with Azure Functions

In my last blog post, I talked about a solution that I built for one of my customers that leveraged...

Date: 08/15/2016

Creating FTP data movement activity for Azure Data Factory Pipeline

Recently I participated in a hackathon with one of my customers to help them get up to speed on...

Date: 07/02/2016

Using the Azure REST APIs to Retrieve Event Hub Metrics

Azure Event Hubs are a great way to ingest data in Azure for consumption by other services. They are...

Date: 05/25/2016

Step by Step: how to resize a Linux VM OS disk in Azure (ARM)

Update 06/18/2018: This article has been superseded by this one from Azure support:...

Date: 05/24/2016

Azure Storage Account Replication - Azure Automation Runbook & Azure Functions

One of my customers recently asked me to help them solve what sounded like a pretty simple problem...

Date: 05/09/2016

Configuring Startup and Logon scripts for Azure RemoteApp

Azure RemoteApp (ARA) is an Azure service that enables companies to deploy their business...

Date: 04/08/2016

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