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 →

Designing a microservices architecture

There are dozens of blog posts, articles and books talking about microservices. Some of them talk about the design, other on how to implement and even others talk about why and when to use them. This post will be a combination of them all. I won’t claim to be the all-time-expert on the matter, but I have read quite a bit on the subject, attended some talks and have had the honor to design (and implement) such a solution a couple of years ago. Read more →

Setting up your site with SSL and Let’s Encrypt on Azure App Services

It has become increasingly important to have your site secured via some kind of certificate. Even your Google ranking is affected by it. The main problem with SSL/TLS certificates is the fact most of them cost money. Now, I don’t have any problem with paying some money for something like a certificate, but it will cost quite a lot if I want to set this up for all of my sites & domains. Read more →

Custom deployment steps for an Azure App Service

I’ve just started setting up some continuous deployment for my personal websites. All of the sites are hosted within Azure App Services and the sources are located on either GitHub or BitBucket. By having the source code located on a public accessible repository (be it private or public), it’s rather easy to connect Azure to these locations. On my day-job I come across a lot of web- and desktop applications which also need continuous integration and deployment steps in order for them to go live. Read more →