The last two posts had me writing about how logging can be implemented in your Azure Functions and how you can reuse class libraries using a different logging library, like log4net. You probably already have some logging- and monitoring system in place, but if you’re starting to use Azure Functions (or any other Azure service for that matter), the best tooling to use is Application Insights, in my opinion. You don’t even have to use Azure services in order to use Application Insights.
Read more →
As I mentioned in my earlier post, there are 2 options available to you out of the box for logging. You can either use the TraceWriter or the ILogger. While this is fine when you are doing some small projects or Functions, it can become a problem if you want your Azure Functions to reuse earlier developed logic or modules used in different projects, a Web API for example.
In these shared class libraries you are probably leveraging the power of a ‘full-blown’ logging library.
Read more →
Creating a solution with multiple small services is great of course. It provides you with a lot of flexibility and scalability.
There are however a couple of things you have to think about when designing and developing a solution with multiple services. One of the things you need to figure out is how to implement proper logging. For an actual production system you need to have this in place in order to monitor and debug the overall solution.
Read more →
So you might remember me posting about using the Let’s Encrypt site extension for Azure App Services, called Azure Let’s Encrypt, created by SJKP.
This has quite well for over a year now and even works for Function Apps.
However, last month I got notified my SSL certificate was expired on one of my sites. Strange, as an automated job should just handle this for me. I thought the job probably didn’t execute because of some glitch in the matrix.
Read more →
In a couple of weeks, on the 22nd of February, I’ll be talking at a free event organized by 4DotNet and SnelStart called Move Up with Azure. I’m not the only one who will be speaking over there, there’s also a great session by Henry Been (SnelStart) and an awesome talk from Christos Matskas (Microsoft).
I myself will be talking on how to create a serverless solution using Azure Functions. This of course is a very broad subject and I’d like to know what you think I should focus on or what you would like to see covered in this session?
Read more →
Warming up your web applications and websites is something which we have been doing for quite some time now and will probably be doing for the next couple of years also. This warmup is necessary to ‘spin up’ your services, like the just-in-time compiler, your database context, caches, etc.
I’ve worked in several teams where we had solved the warming up of a web application in different ways. Running smoke-tests, pinging some endpoint on a regular basis, making sure the IIS application recycle timeout is set to infinite and some more creative solutions.
Read more →
Using certificates to secure, sign and validate information has become a common practice in the past couple of years. Therefore, it makes sense to use them in combination with Azure Functions as well.
As Azure Functions are hosted on top of an Azure App Service this is quite possible, but you do have to configure something before you can start using certificates.
Adding your certificate to the Function App Let’s just start at the beginning, in case you are wondering on how to add these certificates to your Function App.
Read more →
You might remember me writing a post on how you can set up your site with SSL while using Let’s Encrypt and Azure App Services.
Well, as it goes, the same post applies for Azure Functions. You just have to do some extra work for it, but it’s not very hard.
Simon Pedersen, the author of the Azure Let’s Encrypt site extension, has done some work in explaining the steps on his GitHub wiki page.
Read more →
(Almost) No one likes writing code meant to store data to a repository, queues, blobs. Let alone triggering your code when some event occurs in one of those areas. Luckily for us the Azure Functions team has decided to use bindings for this.
By leveraging the power of bindings, you don’t have to write your own logic to store or retrieve data. Azure Functions provides all of this functionality out of the box!
Read more →
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 →
