Automate deploying Azure Functions with VSTS

In the past couple of years the software industry has come a long way in professionalizing the development environment. One of the things which has improved significantly is automating the builds and being able to continuously deploy software. Having a continuous integration and -deployment environment is the norm nowadays, which means I (and probably you as a reader also) want to have this when creating Azure Functions also! There are dozens of build servers and deployment tools available, but because Azure Functions are highly likely being deployed in Microsoft Azure, it makes sense to use Visual Studio Team Services with Release Management. Read more →

Working with Azure Key Vault in Azure Functions

As with almost every application there is a point where you have to work with some kind of secret, like for example a connection string to a database. There are multiple ways to retrieve these secrets and this isn’t any different with Azure Functions. If you have set up a continuous deployment build within Visual Studio Release Management you can just substitute the values in your build, which makes it easy, transparent and consistent to add and change the values. Read more →

Starting with Azure Functions

Lately, I’ve been busy learning more about creating serverless solutions. Because my main interest lies within the Microsoft Azure stack I surely had to check out the Azure Functions offering. Azure Functions enable you to create a serverless solutions which are completely event-based. As it’s located within the Azure space, you can integrate easily with all of the other Azure services, like for example the service bus, Cosmos DB, storage, but also external services like SendGrid and GitHub! Read more →