Creating a Custom Build & Release Agent for Visual Studio Team Services

August 11, 2017
Previously in another blog post, I laid out a quick summary of Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) in Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS). Today we’re going to expand a bit on those DevOps processes to better suit your (or your clients’!) needs.

With CI and CD, a build agent is required—that is, a place where your code is sent to be compiled and then subsequently deployed. By default, VSTS gives you the option to use a hosted agent. This is an entirely a cloud solution; you can just choose one of the hosted agents to build and deploy your code and you’re all set. But there are a couple of drawbacks with this…

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Building & Deploying Java Applications Using Visual Studio Team Services

April 11, 2017

In a previous blog post, we discussed a quick overview of Continuous Integration and Deployment of .NET applications using Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS). This involved building and deploying regular old .NET applications with VSTS—something that we would definitely expect a Microsoft service to handle. However, there is some lesser-known support that VSTS has for other frameworks, including Java. The Microsoft VSTS website even has a portal page proclaiming their Java support: “Love Java? So do we!”

VSTS support for Java build frameworks such as Maven and Ant came in handy for AIS recently, as we were tasked with developing some new features for an older Java desktop application for a federal client. And I will have to say that all of the VSTS tools for Java applications worked flawlessly. We were able to easily add the Java project source code to a Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC) repository hosted online in VSTS. Oracle even has an extension for integrating with a TFVC workspace—allowing us to check in changes right from the JDeveloper IDE. Read More…

Continuous Integration & Release Management with Visual Studio Team Services

February 7, 2017
Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) – formerly known as Visual Studio Online – is a SaaS offering of Visual Studio on Microsoft’s Azure platform. At its heart, the service is the cloud implementation of Team Foundation Services. Two of the service’s features, Continuous Integration and Release Management, were leveraged by AIS for a large federal client as part of a broader push for more streamlined DevOps practices.

Continuous Integration (CI) is a development practice where developers can integrate their changes into a shared code repository, which in turn triggers an automated build. This allows the development team to be quickly notified of any problems or errors caused by the checked-in change. VSTS’s Release Management Service allows developers to automate their deployment pipelines across any environment and platform – more than just .NET applications. For our federal client, the goal was to automate the entire continuous integration and release process for an ASP.NET Web API hosted in an Azure Web App. Since the client already had a subscription to VSTS, it was very straightforward for us to implement the entire solution within that one service. Read More…

Automating Infrastructure in Azure Government

November 1, 2016
msgovcloudThis is an overview of a solution built by AIS with Microsoft for a federal client in the DC area. The client’s goal was to be able to automate the setup and takedown of virtual machine sandboxes on the fly. These sandboxes are used by the client’s developers to do security testing of their applications.

Goals

The first step of this project was to help the federal client provision their own Azure Government subscription, with some assistance from Microsoft. We then wanted to document the client’s on-premises environment so that it could be accurately replicated within Azure. The next step was to actually build and deploy the Azure services and scripts in the cloud environment. Lastly, we wanted to be able to define and implement automation use cases, such as the provisioning of an entire sandbox, or just specific machines within that sandbox. Read More…

Say Hello to Azure Stream Analytics

September 6, 2016

Microsoft’s Cortana Intelligence Suite provides a seamless transition from raw data to intelligence: Real, meaningful data for real, meaningful business decisions. 

With the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), the need for real-time processing and data analytics has become paramount. As a part of the Cortana Intelligence Suite, Microsoft offers Azure Stream Analytics (ASA) as a fully-managed cloud service for analyzing complex event and data streams at near real time. Read More…