Challenges with Public Cloud One of the oldest problems facing cloud infrastructure services has been access control. Ensuring that resources can be accessed by users and services that need to access them and not by anything else has been problematic when those services are delivered through the public internet. Even as late as last year, cybersecurity data firm BinaryEdge.io listed over 35,000 publicly accessible and unsecured databases, most of which were cloud-hosted. That’s over 35,000 data breaches that have likely […]
What is Puppet? Puppet is a configuration management and automation solution for the servers’ deployment, configuration, and management. In addition, it performs the following subsequent functions. For every single host, there will be a different configuration file which is defined by Puppet. It monitors and checks continuously if the configuration of the file is not changed. If it finds any changes in the file, it reverts to its original configuration on the host. Dynamic scaling-up of machines. It is a […]
About the Podcast I had the pleasure to once again be a guest on the .NET Rocks! podcast last month. This year marked my 11th time on the show! Carl, Richard, and I talked about how the cloud has changed data analytics. We discussed the latest data work at AIS and bringing a developer’s view to the approach. The cloud has changed bringing disparate data sources together for analytics. With the cloud’s compute-on-demand, you don’t need to do many transformations […]
As your organization continues the digital transformation journey, Microsoft offers a highly beneficial service for protecting and containerizing corporate data and assets for the remote workforce, such as employees, consultants, or contractors: Desktop-as-a-Service. In brief, Desktop-as-a-Service provides a virtual desktop infrastructure, eliminating the need to manage the actual infrastructure! Specifically, the customer is responsible for app deployments, custom images, virtual machine sizing and deployment, directory services integration, and data center network connectivity (e.g., site-to-site VPN, SD-WAN, ExpressRoute, etc.). Today, Microsoft […]
I recently had the opportunity to perform a lift-and-shift migration of a SharePoint 2016 environment to cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) in Amazon Web Services (AWS). To support the long-term goals of the client, Okta would be implemented for authentication. Additionally, the client had several product integrations, including SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) (Integrated Mode), Office Online Server (OOS), Gimmal, and Nintex. One of the first problems that I ran into was very little knowledge or lessons learned available. Okta does provide an Integration […]
In early October of 2021, our team was honored to be present as our own Brigadier General Stephen Iacovelli stepped down as Commanding General of the 94th Training Division after admirably leading the division for 38-months. Stephen enlisted in the Army as a Private in 1984 and was later named a distinguished graduate from his AIT class at Fort Lee, Virginia. He was later commissioned as an Engineer Officer through the Army ROTC Program and later became Psychological Operations qualified […]
Point-to-Site Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections are helpful when you want to connect to your VNet from a remote location. This helps us securely connect individual clients running Windows, Linux, or macOS to an Azure VNet. This blog will outline steps to create and test a Point to Site VPN while using an Azure Certificate Authentication method. Create a VNet Sign in to the Azure portal. In Search, type Virtual Network. Select Virtual Network from the Marketplace results. Once you […]
For those new to Kubernetes, it’s a portable, extensible, open-source platform for managing containerized workloads and services facilitating configuration and automation. This blog will cover a high-level overview of Kubernetes architecture and components. The image below outlines the various components that we will walk through in this guide. The master node controls and manages a set of worker nodes and contains the Kubernetes cluster. We can talk to the master node via CLI, GUI, or API, and more than one […]
What is Ansible? It is the most trusted DevOps tool for many users, which can be used in platforms like Unix, Linux, and Windows Azure. It’s an open-source tool used to automate cloud provisioning, configuration management, and App deployments. In addition, it helps provision virtual machines, networks, containers, and complete cloud infrastructures. How is Ansible Used? It’s been used in the form of a playbook file written in YAML format like AKS to define a configuration or process model. A […]
Creating Self Documenting Azure Functions with C# and OpenAPI: Part Three When migrating existing business services to Azure PaaS as part of an App Modernization project, you may find yourself seriously considering serverless computing using Azure Functions, especially if your target architecture includes MicroServices. Azure Functions let you focus on what counts — your requirements, your time, and your code — and less about boilerplate code, infrastructure, and processes. When creating new APIs in any technology, one thing is essential: […]