Archive

2019

Azure Policy - Using the Append Effect as a More Gentle Deny

Azure Policy is a powerful service within Azure to enforce different rules and effects over your resources, so those resources stay compliant with your corporate standards and service level agreements. In this post I discuss why you should consider using the append effect as a more gentle version of deny.

Posted on Tuesday, August 13, 2019

Aggregating output values from linked ARM templates in copy operation

Azure Resource Manager templates are a powerful way to describe and automate the creation of Azure services and they're getting more powerful with each subsequent release. I was recently confronted with the challenge of aggregating output values of linked templates deployed in a copy operation so the values could be used in the creation of services later in the template. This post presents a recipe for how you can do the same should you be confronted with this situation - I hope you'll join me.

Posted on Sunday, February 17, 2019

Hand-drawn Icons

Something you should know about me is that I like to draw the actual Azure service icons when I'm whiteboarding a solution. I find my brain recognizes those glyphs more readily than your standard square or circle. Well, having spent some time revamping my blog I was feeling a bit creative and I thought it might be fun to hand draw some icons I can work into architectural diagrams while writing blog posts.

Posted on Wednesday, January 23, 2019

2017

Goodbye Ghost, Hello Wyam

So it seems as if no matter how committed I am, blogging is just one of those things that unfortunately always gets bumped to the bottom the priority list and utlimately never happens. Because of this, it became difficult for me to justify spending ~$50/mo ($600/yr) running Ghost Blog on Azure and therefore I began searching for lower cost alternatives.

Posted on Sunday, May 21, 2017

2016

Automatically tweet new blog posts using Microsoft Flow

If you're a developer or a technically savvy individual, chances are you've heard of or actually utilize If This Then That (IFTTT) to help automate portions of your life. Given that we recently released an IFTTT-like service called Microsoft Flow, I wanted to setup automatic Tweeting using this new service.

Posted on Monday, July 4, 2016

More to come...

After several false starts throughout my life, I'm finally starting and following through with writing a blog. I know, I know, it's easy to say in my first post, but this has been something I've wanted to do for a very long time and I've finally realized that in order to improve myself and my craft, I need to put myself out there.

Posted on Monday, June 27, 2016