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Six Common Myths about Microsoft Azure

You may be interested in moving your infrastructure to public cloud storage and services such as Microsoft Azure. This form of storage is becoming increasingly popular for its perceived ability to enhance efficiency and simplify your digital operation. Part of what has made Azure such a renowned option is the familiarity of the software – with a setup in common with other Microsoft products.But there is a great deal of misinformation on Microsoft Azure and this has led to the establishment of common half-truths or misapprehensions about the services. Whether you are interested in simple public cloud hosting or a more advanced personalized solution, Azure has the services to suit you.Here we take a look at six common myths about Microsoft Azure, examine the truths behind them – and why you should consider choosing Microsoft Azure.Myth 1: Azure is too complicated for my businessSome organizations are concerned that switching to Microsoft Azure would be too complicated and they lack the technical expertise to make it work. However, one of the major benefits of Azure is that if you are familiar with other Microsoft and Windows products you will find it actually relatively easy to use. The service has been designed to be suitable for businesses of all sizes, so there is no reason to assume you will be overwhelmed.Of course, not every company has the technical knowledge and it can leave owners worried that they will not feel in full control of their infrastructure. Thankfully, however, it is possible to work with specialists who can offer managed Azure hosting services. So, whether you need just a little help with Azure deployments or a fully managed package, there is something out there to suit your business.Myth 2:  It’s a security riskWith rules and regulations such as the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) coming into force, it has never been more important to have powerful cybersecurity in place. This means that many businesses worry that their data is put at risk if they use services like Microsoft Azure. However, if this is a concern for you, it’s worth knowing that Azure holds the most comprehensive list of compliance certifications of any cloud provider.Microsoft is an industry leader in privacy protection with unique residency guarantees to protect data at all times. The system is designed to give customers complete confidence in their security. So ultimately you can have complete peace of mind that working with Azure can keep your business entirely secure and private.                                                                                                 Source: Home SecurityMyth 3: The costs are prohibitiveIn some cases, businesses are put off the idea of switching to Microsoft Azure because they believe either that the cost of changing the infrastructure and working practice will be too high, or the actual ongoing costs are too expensive. Of course, it is natural to be want to be in complete control of finances but it can often be the case that businesses that are not willing to invest in infrastructure get overtaken by competitors who do.Clearly, this will depend on your business, but it should be noted that a switch to Azure can see excellent improvements in efficiency and productivity. Additionally, Azure is engaged in a pricing battle with other services - which ensure that the costs of bandwidth and storage are kept to a minimum.Myth 4: Efficiency is the only reason to switch to public cloud storageYes, there is no doubt that increased efficiency is a major benefit of using public cloud storage services with Microsoft Azure, but it is far from the only reason to consider making the change. One of the best reasons to choose public cloud storage is the increased innovation it allows – this might even top reason. It allows your developers to spend their time actually developing, rather than simply on the time-consuming maintenance and management. Azure actually handles many of the complex tasks for you, taking that burden away from developers and freeing them up. This could give them time to work on anything from machine learning or business-critical enhancements to your website. Myth 5: It’s incompatible with the open source software It is sometimes assumed that Azure is completely incompatible with popular open source software, which could make it difficult to implement alongside your existing infrastructure. If this was true it could make it potentially extremely challenging for those businesses that currently utilize open source software as it would mean not only changing over their system to Microsoft Azure but also changing many internal systems.Myth 6: Using the cloud effectively means ONLY using the cloudPerhaps you are concerned that if you make the move to Azure you are committing the whole of your business to the cloud. Some businesses do not fully understand how the cloud works and it can put them in a position where they never consider services such as Azure because they don’t think it would be appropriate for them. However, this does not need to be the case at all as Azure supports hybrid functionality, allowing you to keep on-premises infrastructure in place and simply work with Azure to offer additional capacity. The solutions can be completely bespoke and based around the needs of your company, so there is no reason to assume that you have to stick with a one-size-fits-all package. If you are still concerned about whether Microsoft Azure is right for you, it’s a good idea to speak to specialists, who have experience working with businesses like yours. Whether you would benefit from a hybrid system or hosting based entirely on the cloud, they will be able to advise you as to whether it is a good idea to make the switch.
Six Common Myths about Microsoft Azure
Annie
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Six Common Myths about Microsoft Azure

You may be interested in moving your infrastructure to public cloud storage and services such as Microsoft Azure. This form of storage is becoming increasingly popular for its perceived ability to enhance efficiency and simplify your digital operation. Part of what has made Azure such a renowned option is the familiarity of the software – with a setup in common with other Microsoft products.But there is a great deal of misinformation on Microsoft Azure and this has led to the establishment of common half-truths or misapprehensions about the services. Whether you are interested in simple public cloud hosting or a more advanced personalized solution, Azure has the services to suit you.Here we take a look at six common myths about Microsoft Azure, examine the truths behind them – and why you should consider choosing Microsoft Azure.Myth 1: Azure is too complicated for my businessSome organizations are concerned that switching to Microsoft Azure would be too complicated and they lack the technical expertise to make it work. However, one of the major benefits of Azure is that if you are familiar with other Microsoft and Windows products you will find it actually relatively easy to use. The service has been designed to be suitable for businesses of all sizes, so there is no reason to assume you will be overwhelmed.Of course, not every company has the technical knowledge and it can leave owners worried that they will not feel in full control of their infrastructure. Thankfully, however, it is possible to work with specialists who can offer managed Azure hosting services. So, whether you need just a little help with Azure deployments or a fully managed package, there is something out there to suit your business.Myth 2:  It’s a security riskWith rules and regulations such as the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) coming into force, it has never been more important to have powerful cybersecurity in place. This means that many businesses worry that their data is put at risk if they use services like Microsoft Azure. However, if this is a concern for you, it’s worth knowing that Azure holds the most comprehensive list of compliance certifications of any cloud provider.Microsoft is an industry leader in privacy protection with unique residency guarantees to protect data at all times. The system is designed to give customers complete confidence in their security. So ultimately you can have complete peace of mind that working with Azure can keep your business entirely secure and private.                                                                                                 Source: Home SecurityMyth 3: The costs are prohibitiveIn some cases, businesses are put off the idea of switching to Microsoft Azure because they believe either that the cost of changing the infrastructure and working practice will be too high, or the actual ongoing costs are too expensive. Of course, it is natural to be want to be in complete control of finances but it can often be the case that businesses that are not willing to invest in infrastructure get overtaken by competitors who do.Clearly, this will depend on your business, but it should be noted that a switch to Azure can see excellent improvements in efficiency and productivity. Additionally, Azure is engaged in a pricing battle with other services - which ensure that the costs of bandwidth and storage are kept to a minimum.Myth 4: Efficiency is the only reason to switch to public cloud storageYes, there is no doubt that increased efficiency is a major benefit of using public cloud storage services with Microsoft Azure, but it is far from the only reason to consider making the change. One of the best reasons to choose public cloud storage is the increased innovation it allows – this might even top reason. It allows your developers to spend their time actually developing, rather than simply on the time-consuming maintenance and management. Azure actually handles many of the complex tasks for you, taking that burden away from developers and freeing them up. This could give them time to work on anything from machine learning or business-critical enhancements to your website. Myth 5: It’s incompatible with the open source software It is sometimes assumed that Azure is completely incompatible with popular open source software, which could make it difficult to implement alongside your existing infrastructure. If this was true it could make it potentially extremely challenging for those businesses that currently utilize open source software as it would mean not only changing over their system to Microsoft Azure but also changing many internal systems.Myth 6: Using the cloud effectively means ONLY using the cloudPerhaps you are concerned that if you make the move to Azure you are committing the whole of your business to the cloud. Some businesses do not fully understand how the cloud works and it can put them in a position where they never consider services such as Azure because they don’t think it would be appropriate for them. However, this does not need to be the case at all as Azure supports hybrid functionality, allowing you to keep on-premises infrastructure in place and simply work with Azure to offer additional capacity. The solutions can be completely bespoke and based around the needs of your company, so there is no reason to assume that you have to stick with a one-size-fits-all package. If you are still concerned about whether Microsoft Azure is right for you, it’s a good idea to speak to specialists, who have experience working with businesses like yours. Whether you would benefit from a hybrid system or hosting based entirely on the cloud, they will be able to advise you as to whether it is a good idea to make the switch.
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Six Common Myths about Microsoft Azure
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How To Configure Jenkins With BITBUCKET - Cloud Computing

PURPOSE:This article will provide you a complete detailed knowledge of configuring Jenkins with Bitbucket repository which will help in automating the deployment process and will help to set the path for the interaction of Jenkins continuous integration tool with bitbucket repository.INTRODUCTION:As a part of the continuous integration and deployment process, it is a requirement that the code repository should have an interaction with the build automation and continuous integration tool. In this article, we are working with bitbucket and Jenkins to achieve the same, but this could be similar to the other tools that are available in the market. Let’s see the steps to integrate a Bitbucket with the Jenkins.Ways for Enabling Jenkins with Bitbucket:STEP 1: Login to your Jenkins and then select Manage Jenkins->Plugin Manager and on the tab available select the option bitbucket plugin and click on install without restart. In my case, this is installed already hence it’s showing under the Installed section.Step 2: Once the installation is done, configure a sample project and in build triggers section during the creation of a new project select build when a change is pushed to bitbucket and click apply and save to enable trigger Jenkins with bitbucket:Step 3: Now, visit Bitbucket URL: https://bitbucket.org/ and create your own repository, if you haven’t created yet else visit your own bitbucket repository for the purpose of this course. I have LearnShareKnowledge as the repository-Step 4: Click on the clone and copy the repository URL which you want to configure with Jenkins from bitbucket:Step 5: Go back to Jenkins and click on the project which you have to create and click on configure under the Source Code Management section, select the repository type which you have in your bitbucket repository. In my case, it is git and paste the URL by removing git clone to connect Jenkins with bitbucket. Click on save to reflect the changes:Step 6: Select the credentials if it is not a public repository for configuring the credentials, you can click the Add button on credentials section and proceed with username and password under global credentials domain and click Add.Step 7: Now, again visit the bitbucket repository which you want to configure. For that, click on settings under that repository:Step 8: Under settings, click on webhooks highlighted in the picture:Step 9: Click on add webhook and give the title to that webhook and paste the URL of Jenkins which you have configured with bitbucket and then select active and repository push and save the changes. If you want to make this more secure, then you can verify this with SSL certificate but in my case,  I used a secure key which provides a security to this setup:Now with the Jenkins setup for Bitbucket, we are ready to test the complete configuration. As soon as you do commit to the repository, you will be having an automated build triggered initiating a job inside the Jenkins project which you have configured with the repository.
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How To Configure Jenkins With BITBUCKET - Cloud Computing
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Monitoring AWS Machine using Azure Log Analytics - Cloud Computing

What is Azure Log Analytics?Logs make your life easier and help everyone in the organization understand what you do and what's Actually going on with the software. Ensure that you follow best practices of Azure Log Analytics for monitoring AWS machines effectively.Logs are created by network devices, applications, operating systems, and programmable or smart devices. They comprise several messages that are chronologically arranged and stored on a disk, in files, or in an application like a log collector.Firstly, we will try to understand why we need logs to monitor AWS services.We need logs because, with Azure Log Analytics, you can gather and search log data from all your resources, whether they reside on Azure, on another cloud host, or on-premises. Then you can transform the gathered data into rich analytics with AI-enhanced insights into your environment.  How Log Analytics worksThe log data from Virtual machines and other cloud resources, capture via some Agent which we need to install on VMs and Resource can be named as Connected Sources which further will be gathered in records and sent to OMS repository that is the part of Azure Cloud resource and stored in the Azure cloud.After receiving logs to log analytics it further is available for log search and other activity like Set Alerts, Dashboard View, Power BI View, and Export into Excel and Data files. Data collection in Azure Log AnalyticsData can be collected in azure Log Analytics in different ways –Agents on Windows and Linux virtual machines send telemetry from the guest operating system and applications to Log Analytics according to Data Sources that you configure.Connect a System Center Operations Manager management group to Log Analytics to collect data from its agents.Azure services such as Application Insights and Azure Security Center store their data directly in Log Analytics without any configuration.Write data from PowerShell command line or Azure Automation runbook using Log Analytics cmdlets.If you have custom requirements, then you can use the HTTP Data Collector API to write data to Log Analytics from any REST API client.Azure Monitor                   Data sources for events and performanceVirtual Machines               Data sources for events and performanceOperations Manager         Data from management group agentsApplication Insights           Application requests and exceptionsAzure Security Center       Security eventsPowerShell                        PowerShell command line or runbookData Collector API            Rest API for custom dataIncoming data automatically indexed. Data types and tables automatically created.Log AnalyticsData available through log search and smart analytics to multiple channels.Design and test queries and analyze data         AnalyticsVisualize data in Azure portal                            DashboardsWorkflows consuming Log Analytics data         Logic AppsAutomatically respond critical conditions           AlertsExport for visualization with other sources        Power BIPowerShell command line or runbook               PowerShellRest API for custom application                         Log Search APIWork flow of Log AnalyticsNow let's find out the workflow of log analytics like how it collects data, analyze, visualize and alerts.So first look into Collect part–The logs can be collected via: -Event LogsCustom App LogsIIS LogsCrash DumpsPerformance DataWe can also filter the type of logs by just checking and unchecking the log types.Once the collection has done we need to Analyse the data which can be done by: -Filter based on attributesAnalyze data with Kusto Query languageSort dataExport log data to Excel and Power BIConditional FilteringAfter that, we can Visualize all the logs in an attractive DashboardAlerts can be configured on the basis of event conditions like once the value will be reached greater than or less than the limit threshold it will automatically generate the alerts and take configured actions like sending main, sending a message and start runbook (part of azure automation).Steps to collect Data and log from AWS MachinesAWS VMs could be of Windows and Linux, so we can install the agent which can be download from azure log analytics page by just selecting the type of the OS and the Bit of the VMs.After installing the Agent we need to configure the agent by entering the workspace id and key which will be provided by the azure after configuring. We can get the all the logs within some Hours in the portal.Supported AWS OS and VersionsLet’s discuss the OS and versions of VMs that are supported on AWS Cloud.If you are using Windows, the configuration should be:Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 1 (SP1) or laterWindows 7 SP1 and laterIf you are using Linux, the configuration should be:Amazon Linux 2012.09 to 2015.09 (x86/x64)CentOS Linux 5, 6, and 7 (x86/x64)Oracle Linux 5, 6, and 7 (x86/x64)Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5, 6 and 7 (x86/x64)Debian GNU/Linux 6, 7, and 8 (x86/x64)Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, 14.04 LTS, 16.04 LTS (x86/x64)SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 and 12 (x86/x64)After verifying the supported configuration, we can successfully install the agent and receive the logs.Kusto to query AWS Machine LogsKusto is a log analytics cloud platform optimized for ad-hoc big data queries.Kusto Query Reference Portal: https://docs.loganalytics.ioThe Kusto Query Language is used to query Azure services.OMS (Operational Management Suite)The Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS), previously known as Azure Operational Insights, is a software as a service platform that allows an administrator to manage on-premises and cloud IT assets from one console.Azure OMS provides 4 types of services: -Log Analytics: Monitor and analyze the availability and performance of different resources including physical and virtual machines.Automation: Automate manual processes and enforce configurations for physical and virtual machines.Backup: Backup and restore critical data.Site Recovery: Provide high availability for critical applications.Management SolutionsManagement solutions leverage services in Azure provides additional insight into the operation of a particular application or service.Here, we can manually select the required solution and add to the home page where we can only see the logs of that solution type.ReportsThe final reports of logs can be exported in Excel and Power BI that can be displayed in table and chart format.Conclusion:Azure Log Analytics is a very powerful tool to capture different types of system log. Kusto Query plays a very important role in extracting insights from the log file. Also, custom reports can be prepared using KUSTO Query,which helps the organization in saving many man-hours.Detailed reports and easy to export to excel and power helps to keep the troubleshooting and diagnosis handy.Reports can be embedded in any website with live refresh data and code snipped can be generated within power BI.Choose the right Azure logging service for AWS monitoring and use it to save many man-hours and reduce the time of troubleshooting and diagnosis.
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How To Save Up To 40% On Azure Bill Without Buying Any Cost Management Software

I have seen many projects get shut down because of the Azure usage cost. Being a senior developer, I was asked to look over the azure usage and optimize the usage to reduce cost. In this article, we will discuss various ways for effective Azure cloud architecture cost optimization that can easily save up to 40% on Azure cost without purchasing any Cost Management Software. I'll also share some deep insights, which IT Managers doesn't care about, and which has a huge impact on Azure Bill.Different cost management system:1.CloudynCloudyn is an Azure cost management software that provides features like Report on cost and usage, Categorize by resource tags, Create and manage cost and usage budgets, Create alerts on cost and usage budgets, Eliminate idle cloud resources, Right-size cloud resources, Chargeback features including cost markup, redistribution, and custom charges, Customize recommendation thresholds and Categorize costs with custom meta-tags2. ProXcioProXcio contains features like cost analytics, usage analytics, filtered table views, exec dashboards, best practice reports, tag-based analytics, tag-based budgeting, budget analytics, aggregated reporting, limits data stored, limit range for analytics, CSV data import, EA Account drill down, multi-users support, no credit card required, support, cost forecasting, e-mail alerts, data export, Reports scheduling, API access, azure list price invoicing3. RackNapRackNap contains features like White-Label Marketplace, Subscription Billing, Support Helpdesk, Customer Self-service Portal, CRM, Sales and Marketing, Business Intelligence, Own Catalog Management, Partner Management, Inventory Management, Core Customizations, 3rd Party Integrations, Online Training, Admin Users, Deployment Countries, Deployment Model, Services for Launch.4. Azure CostsAll Azure Plans (incl. EA), Unlimited data retention Includes all Professional Features, Multi-Contract & User Support, Team & Enterprise Support, Subscription Based Permissions, Branding & Customizable Widgets, Azure Active Directory Support, Data Access via RESTful APIPrice Comparison:The table below compares the prices of different Azure cost management software available:Review Azure usage and costsCost Analysis Vs Cost AllocationDrill into various data segments itemized from the billing file using Cost Analysis Reports. The reports enable granular cost navigation across Azure raw billing data.After you create a cost model, Cost Allocation reports are available. It matches the data to the usage and tag data of the Azure Account.Cost Over Time:Cost Over Time report displays spends over time to allow you to observe trends and detect irregularities in your deployment. It includes main cost contributors such including ongoing costs and one-time RI fees are being spent during a selected time frame.Use Actual Cost Over Time to see cost trends over time and find irregularities in costAmortized Cost:Amortized cost is that accumulated portion of the recorded cost of a fixed asset that has been charged to expense through either depreciation or amortization. Amortized Cost Reports shows non-usage-based service fees or one-time payable costs and spread their cost over time evenly during their lifespan. For example, one-time fees might include:Reserved Instances purchase feesAzure Marketplace itemsAnnual security component feesThis report displays the main cost contributors within a specified time range and includes ongoing usage costs and one-time RI fees, amortized over the term of the asset or reservation.Custom Charges:Enterprise and CSP often provide additional services to their customers along with their own cloud consumption. You can define these customs charges for added service and additional discounts if any. The list of customs charges doesn't show the different rates that you may be charging.5 things to consider saving to save costIf you are using a public cloud like Azure, it is crucial to know the ways to save cost as your bill is based on consumption. Below are the 5 tips explained to lower Azure pricing and optimize hosting costs:1. Select Azure Reserved VM instancesWhat is RI (Reserved Instance)?An Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instance (RI) is a virtual machine (VM) on the Microsoft Azure public cloud that has been reserved for dedicated use on a one- or three-year basis.RIs require a one-time, upfront payment and offer customers a discount of up to 72% when compared to Microsoft's standard on-demand, pay-per-use VM pricing model.Azure shows 3 options for Discount -Pay as you go -  You only need to pay for how much you will use.1 year reserved (~29% savings) – 29% discount will be given for reserving VMs for 1-year use.3 years reserved (~43% savings) --43% discount will be given for reserving VMs for 1-year use.2. Compare cost before choosing datacenter regionThe different VM pricing tiers do vary in price from region to region.It combines the pricing data for all VM instance sizes across all Azure regions.Estimate your expected monthly bill using our Pricing Calculator and track your actual account usage and bill at any time using the billing portal. Set up automatic email billing alerts to be notified if your spend goes above an amount you configure.3. Make use of Azure Hybrid BenefitThe most cost-effective cloud for your Windows Server or SQL Server migration which helps you-Save up to 80% on Windows Server with Azure Hybrid Benefit and Reserved InstancesSave up to 55%1 on migrations to Azure SQL Database2 with Azure Hybrid BenefitGo at your own pace - move a few workloads or entire data centers)Maximise your investment in Microsoft Server SoftwareNow is the time to move to Azure and reap the rewards of cloud technology, including the ability to scale up or down quickly, pay only for what you use and save on compute power. Whether you are deploying new virtual machines, moving a few workloads or migrating your data centers as part of your hybrid cloud strategy, the Azure Hybrid Benefit provides big savings as you move to the cloud.4.  Use different load calculator to identify the required loadThere are few additional Database resources whose price cannot be calculated based on days and storage. It needs to specify throughput, DTU, and many additional add-ons.Two types of calculators for databases-1) SQL Database Calculatorhttps://dtucalculator.azurewebsites.net/If you are a developer using SQL Server, you've probably heard of Azure SQL Database and you've probably been thinking about migrating your on-premise or VM-based SQL Server database(s) to Azure SQL Database. If so, you've probably asked yourself, "which service tier and performance level should I use and how many database throughput units (DTUs) am I using now?" This calculator will help you determine the number of DTUs for your existing SQL Server database(s) as well as a recommendation of the minimum performance level and service tier that you need before you migrate to Azure SQL Database. Knowing the minimum service tier will allow you to get the performance you need while minimizing your costs.2) Cosmos Db CalculatorTo help customers fine-tune their Azure Cosmos DB throughput estimations, there is a web-based tool to help estimate the request unit requirements for typical operations, including document creates, reads, and deletes.5. Make use of BYOL (Bring Your Own License)What is BYOLBYOL, or “bring your own license,” is the process you can use to deploy software that you already have a license. When you BYOL, you are responsible for managing your own licenses. You are responsible for managing true-ups and renewals as required under your Volume Licensing agreement. In addition, you must submit a new verification form when you renew your agreement and when you deploy any previously unverified products.How to go for BYOL?As a customer using License Mobility through Software Assurance, you must complete a license verification process. Microsoft will verify the eligible license with active Software Assurance and send a confirmation once the verification process is completed.Azure now have to Bring Your Own License (BYOL) images of Windows Server and Windows 10 directly in the marketplace.This is what you needed to do before:Install Windows 10 or Windows Server on an On-Premise machineSysprep the installationUpload the vhd to a storage accountCreate a VM (by template or script) using the custom imageThis is what you need to do now to achieve the same thing:Create a VM (by template or script) using the new marketplace BYOL imageHope you found this article helpful to reduce and optimize your Azure costs. Understand and manage your Azure spend effectively with the help of above 5 cost optimization strategies for Azure bill.
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How To Save Up To 40% On Azure Bill Without Buying Any Cost Management Software
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Test Drive Your First Istio Deployment using Play with Kubernetes Platform- Cloud Computing

As a full stack Developer, if you have been spending a lot of time in developing apps recently, you already understand a whole new set of challenges related to Microservice architecture. Although there has been a shift from bloated monolithic apps to compact, focused Microservices for faster implementation and improved resiliency but the fact is  developers have to really worry about the challenges in integrating these services in distributed systems which includes accountability for service discovery, load balancing, registration, fault tolerance, monitoring, routing, compliance, and security.Let us understand the challenges faced by the developers and operators with the Microservice Architecture in details. Consider a 1st Generation simple Service Mesh scenario. As shown below, Service (A) communicates to Service (B). Instead of communicating directly, the request gets routed via Nginx. The Nginx finds a route in Consul (A service discovery tool) and automatically retries to form the connection on HTTP 502’s happen.                                                                    Figure: 1.0 – 1st Gen Service Mesh                                                      Figure:1.1 – Cascading Failure demonstrated with the increase in the number of servicesBut, with the advent of microservices architecture, the number is growing ever since. Below are the  listed challenges encountered by both developers as well as operations team:How to make these growing microservices communicate with each other?Enabling the load balancing architectures over these microservices.Providing role-based routing for the microservices.How to implement outgoing traffic on these microservices and test canary deployment?Managing complexity around these growing pieces of microservices.Implementation of fine-grained control for traffic behavior with rich-routing rules.Challenges in implementing Traffic encryption, service-to-service authentication, and strong identity assertions.In a nutshell, although you could enable service discovery and retry logic into application or networking middleware, the fact is that service discovery becomes tricky to make it right.Enter Istio’s Service Mesh“Service Mesh” is one of the hottest buzzwords of 2018. As the name suggests, it’s a configurable infrastructure layer for a microservices app. It lays out the network of microservices that make up applications and enables interactions between them. It makes communication between service instances flexible, reliable, and fast. The mesh provides service discovery, load balancing, encryption, authentication and authorization, support for the circuit breaker pattern, and other capabilities.Istio is completely an open source service mesh that layers transparently onto existing distributed applications. Istio v1.0 got announced last month and is ready for production. It is written completely in Go Language and its a fully grown platform which provides APIs that let it integrate into any logging platform, or telemetry or policy system. This project adds a very tiny overhead to your system. It is being hosted on GitHub. Istio’s diverse feature set lets you successfully, and efficiently, run a distributed microservice architecture, and provides a uniform way to secure, connect, and monitor microservices.Figure-1.2: Istio’s CapabilityThe Istio project adds a very tiny overhead to your system. It is being hosted on GitHub. Last month, Istio 1.0 release went public and ready for production environment.What benefits does Istio bring?Istio lets you connect, secure, control, and observe services.It helps to reduce the complexity of service deployments and eases the strain on your development teams.It provides developers and DevOps fine-grained visibility and control over traffic without requiring any changes to application code.It provides CIOs with the necessary tools needed to help enforce security and compliance requirements across the enterprise.It provides behavioral insights & operational control over the service mesh as a whole.Istio makes it easy to create a network of deployed services with automatic Load Balancing for HTTP, gRPC, Web Socket & TCP Traffic.It provides fine-grained control of traffic behavior with rich routing rules, retries, failovers, and fault injection.It enables a pluggable policy layer and configuration API supporting access controls, rate limits and quotas.Istio provides automatic metrics, logs, and traces for all traffic within a cluster, including cluster ingress and egress.It provides secure service-to-service communication in a cluster with strong identity-based authentication and authorization.If you want to deep-dive into Istio architecture, I highly recommend the official Istio website.It’s Demo Time !!!Under this blog post, I will showcase how Istio can be setup on Play with Kubernetes (PWK) Platform for a free of cost. In case you’re new, Play with Kubernetes rightly aka PWK is a labs site provided by Docker. It is a playground which allows users to run K8s clusters in a matter of seconds. It gives the experience of having a free CentOS LinuxVirtual Machine in the browser. Under the hood Docker-in-Docker (DinD) is used to give the effect of multiple VMs/PCs.Open  to access Kubernetes Playground.Click on the Login button to authenticate with Docker Hub or GitHub ID.Once you start the session, you will have your own lab environment.Adding First Kubernetes NodeClick on “Add New Instance” on the left to build your first Kubernetes Cluster node. It automatically names it as “node1”. Each instance has Docker Community Edition (CE) and Kubeadm already pre-installed. This node will be treated as the master node for our cluster.Bootstrapping the Master NodeYou can bootstrap the Kubernetes cluster by initializing the master (node1) node with the below script. Copy this script content into bootstrap.sh file and make it executable using “chmod +x bootstrap.sh” command.When you execute this script, as part of initialization, the kubeadm write several configuration files needed, setup RBAC and deployed Kubernetes control plane components (like kube-apiserver, kube-dns, kube-proxy, etcd, etc.). Control plane components are deployed as Docker containers.Copy the above kubeadm join token command and save it for the next step. This command will be used to join other nodes to your cluster.Adding Worker NodesClick on “Add New Node” to add a new worker node.Checking the Cluster StatusVerifying the running PodsInstalling Istio 1.0.0Istio is deployed in a separate Kubernetes namespace istio-system. We will verify it later. As of now, you can copy the below content in a file called install_istio.sh and save it. You can make it executable and run it to install Istio and related tools.You should be able to see screen flooding with the below output.As shown above, it will enable the Prometheus, ServiceGraph, Jaeger, Grafana, and Zipkin by default.Please note – While executing this script, it might end up with the below error message –unable to recognize "install/kubernetes/istio-demo.yaml": no matches for admissionregistration.k8s.io/, Kind=MutatingWebhookConfigurationThe error message is expected.As soon as the command gets executed completely, you should be able to see a long list of ports which gets displayed at the top center of the page.Verifying the ServicesExposing the ServicesTo expose Prometheus, Grafana & Servicegraph services, you will need to delete the existing services and then use NodePort instead of ClusterIP so as to access the service using the port displayed on the top of the instance page. (as shown below)You should be able to access Grafana page by clicking on “30004” port and Prometheus page by clicking on “30003”.You can check Prometheus metrics by selecting the necessary option as shown below:Under Grafana Page, you can add “Data Source” for Prometheus and ensure that the dashboard is up and running:Congratulations! You have installed Istio on Kubernetes cluster. Below listed services have been installed on K8s playground:Istio Controllers and related RBAC rulesIstio Custom Resource DefinitionsPrometheus and Grafana for MonitoringJeager for Distributed TracingIstio Sidecar Injector (we'll take a look next section)Installing IstioctlIstioctl is configuration command line utility of Istio. It helps to create, list, modify and delete configuration resources in the Istio system.Deploying the Sample BookInfo ApplicationNow Istio is installed and verified, you can deploy one of the sample applications provided with the installation- BookInfo. This is a simple mock bookstore application made up of four services that provide a web product page, book details, reviews (with several versions of the review service), and ratings - all managed using Istio.Deploying BookInfo ServicesDefining the Ingress Gateway:Verifying BookInfo ApplicationAccessing it via Web URLYou should now be able the BookInfo Sample as shown below:Hope, this Istio deployment Kubernetes tutorial helped you to successfully install Istio on Kubernetes. In the future blog post, I will deep dive into Istio Internal Architecture, traffic management, policies & telemetry in detail.
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Delivering Messages Made Easy With Azure Service Bus

Integrating two different systems is often complicated and comes up with lots of challenges with respect to the availability of both systems, processing speed, scaling and many more. Amongst many recommendations for designing and developing applications for the cloud, enabling asynchronous communication between multiple services plays a vital role in achieving the reliability, scalability and the efficiency of the system.What are Message Queues?Message Queues is the solution to the challenges faced during Integration in distributed systems. It is an efficient way of enabling asynchronous communications between different software services.Following are three most important benefits Queuing solution comes with:1. Decoupling: Messaging queues provide a persistent storage and asynchronous communication and thus the availability of one service does not impact the another. They are eligible to work in a disconnected fashion.2. High reliability: Messaging queues use transactions to manage the message and help to roll back the transaction to recover the message, In case of a failure.3. Granular Scalability – Messaging queues helps to achieve granular scalability where the producer or consumer can scale on their own choice without even impacting the other.Azure Service Bus – A managed Queuing system on Azure CloudAzure Service bus is a highly scalable service that helps to achieve asynchronous messaging and exchanging data among decoupled systems. Moreover, since it is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering from Microsoft, thus, you don’t have to manage the Infrastructure and configuration. Azure cloud manages all this for you.Among all others, the most important feature of Azure Service Bus queue is that it guarantees messages to be delivered in FIFO order, which many other queuing solutions fail to provide, even Azure Storage Queues. This makes service bus the most suitable choice than any other Message Queues, though not the only choice. However, Other features to include high availability, auditing, Geo redundancy etc.Azure Service Bus has 3 offerings:1. Queues2. Topics and Subscriptions3. Relays1. Service Bus Queues:The queue is an optimum choice when we are implementing one-directional messaging and, we want to ensure that only one consumer can fetch the message. This is generally used when both the producer and the consumer are not online at the same point in time. All the messages sent by the producer are stored in the queue until consumed by the consumer or gets expired. Also, each message in the queue is identified by a unique Message-ID.Queues come with the assumption that the message needs to be consumed by only one service. However, in practical scenarios, one message might need to be delivered to multiple consumers on some business decisions or need to be broadcasted. To meet those requirements Service bus does have a different offering, Topics.2. Topics and Subscriptions:Topics also provide one-directional communication. However, it works on the publish-subscribe principle where the same message can be consumed by more than one consumer. A single topic may have multiple subscriptions associated with it. A Subscription is somewhat like Queue. When the topic receives the message, it delivers it to all the relevant subscriptions or distributes based on the subscription filters.3. Relays:Unlike Queues and Topics, Relays provides more sort of bi-directional communication. Relays do not support brokered messaging i.e. they don’t store any messages instead simply passes the message from one service to the other. Therefore, both the publisher and subscriber need to be active at the same point in time in case of relays. Relays are automatically created and deleted in a service bus namespace i.e. they need not be created beforehand and deleted post use by services.Azure Service Bus ArchitectureThe Azure Service Bus architecture is depicted in the figure below:Some Important Limits and QuotasLimit/Quota NameValueQueue/topic size1,2,3,4,or 5 GBIf partitioning is enabled -80 GBNumber of concurrent connectionsNet Messaging:1,000AMQP: 5,000Number of topics/queues per service namespace10,000Number of partitioned topics/queues per service namespaceBasic and standard Tiers- 100Premium- 1,000 {per messaging unit]Message size for a queue/topicKsubscription entityMaximum message size: 256 KB[Standard tier} I 1 MB (Premier tier).Number of subscriptions per topic2,0002,000Advanced Features of Azure Service BusAzure Service Bus also has some advanced features that can help you to solve most complex messaging problems. The key features are listed below:1. Dead LetteringService bus provides dead letter subqueue to store messages that could not be delivered or processed. Dead letter queues can be used to move expired or poisoned messages from the parent queue. Those messages then can be retrieved for further investigations. Dead letter queues need not be created manually but are automatically created with the queue.2. TransactionsService bus provides transactions to group multiple operations together into one execution scope. This ensures that all the operations within a group either succeed or fail together.3. Duplicate detectionEnabling Duplicate detection helps to identify duplicate messages added on the basis of the unique message id. The duplicate message could be added by an application on restart of unexpected failure or exception scenarios not handled. Such messages need not be handled manually by the application because the service bus automatically handles those messages.4. Batch processingBatch processing feature of Azure service bus helps to add and retrieve messages in batch instead of one by one message. This extends help to the systems that have to process bulk messages.5. SessionsSometimes the messages are bigger in size say more than 1 MB (maximum message size capacity of queues). Sessions help in such scenarios by sending the message in parts and allowing the processing of the same only when all the parts are received at the consumer end.SummaryMicrosoft’s PaaS offering, Azure Service Bus is really helpful in developing and implementing highly scalable services without even care about infrastructure. It provides asynchronous communication and ensures greater reliability.Azure also lets you select from different options in service bus - for brokered and one directional message we have Queues and Topics and for non-persistent and bi-directional messages we have Relays.
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Delivering Messages Made Easy With Azure Service B...

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