Azure Resource Manager (ARM) for beginners

(Ce billet en aussi disponible en français: Azure Resource Manager (ARM) pour débutants)

You know that image where you see people pulling a cart with square wheels, a man on the side wants to show them a circle wheel but the group reply they are too busy to care... Well, that was me with Azure Resource Manager (ARM). I knew it was good, but it looks too complicated, so I was waiting. Last weekend, I decided it was enough I needed to learn it! Right after few minutes, you cannot imagine my disappointment! It's so simple, so powerful and also so fast. This post explains how to deploy an ARM template, and how it works.

5 easy steps to deploy our first ARM template

To get started the easiest way possible I decided to use Visual Studio. For this sample let's create simple Windows Virtual Machine (VM). Only five steps are required to do it:

Step #1 - Create an Azure Resource Project

From Visual Studio create a new project of type Azure Resource Group. Be sure to have already installed on your machine the latest version of Azure SDK and Visual Studio updates.

Step #2 - Select the Arm template

This is where we select what we want in our template. Many options are available in VisualStudio and a lot more can be found on Github at: Azure Arm Git Template. In our case, let's select the sample Windows Virtual Machine, and click the Ok button.

Step #3 - Deploy the new template

Visual Studio will now generate multiple files, we will come back to it later, right now we will only deploy our solution. Right-click on the project et select Deploy.

Step #4 - Configure the deployment

Our first deployment is mostly ready, we just need to specify few details like the subscription and the resource group. Once you click Deploy, one last thing will be asked: the adminPassword.

Step #5 (the easiest one) - Enjoy

Voila! After few minutes, the virtual machine will be created, and we should be able to connect remotely to it.

Let's explain the magic

When the project was created, three folders were populated: Script, Template, and Tools. The last one is a bit obvious, it contains AzCopy, a tool to copy files. If you don't know AzCopy, you can learn more in a post I wrote recently.

Open the Deploy-AzureResourceGroup.ps1 contained in the Scripts folder. It's this script that will do all the hard lifting to deploy our rescourceGroup. If we look a bit closer, you will notice some parameters are declared, at the beginning of the file. Two of then should catch our attention.

    [string] $TemplateFile = '..\Templates\WindowsVirtualMachine.json',
    [string] $TemplateParametersFile = '..\Templates\WindowsVirtualMachine.parameters.json',

TemplateFile is the path of our template (the one we selected previously), and the second TemplateParametersFile will contained all the parameters values to fill the blank of our template. This will be especially useful to deploy the same template in a different environment. In fact, this is a really big advantage. You can deploy the exact same schema to your development and production environment just by having two parameters.json file.

Let's have a peek at the template, in this case WindowsVirtualMachine.json. It's a 'json' file, so it's human-friendly, but it can be a bit scary at first. In the image just below, I collapse the collections to be able to emphases the visibility of the three prime elements: parameters, variables, and resources.



We already know parameters, so let's jump the variables. This section contains a list of key pair value like: imagePublisher, vmSize, virtualNetworkName, diagnosticsStorageAccountName, etc. Those can be fixed value or dynamics by using other variables or parameters. Here some example:

    "vmSize": "Standard_A2"
    "vhdStorageName": "[concat('vhdstorage', uniqueString(resourceGroup().id))]"
    "virtualNetworkName": "[parameters('virtualNetworkName')]"

Last section but not least: the resources. This is where everything is put together to build the solution you will deploy. The resources are defined by specifying their type, name, and properties. You can assign any value from a static string, parameter value or a variable value.

Now that we know it works, why should we use it

Explain all the advantages to use ARM template could be a post by itself, and go further of the scope of that post. However, here few reasons:

• A template file is light and easy to keep in a repository.
• It's very simple to have the exact same template deployed in multiple environments.
• ARM templates are really fast to deploy.
• Easy to edit/ customize/ expand.
• Easy to delete.

In Video Please

If you prefer, I also have a video version of this post.

What's Next

This post was voluntary very simple to be easy to understand. Now it's your turn deploy a modest schema or something more complex. Many different templates can be found at various places: Visual Studio, Azure Arm Git Template, and Azure Quickstart Templates. Great tools exist also to help you to visualize or edit these templates: Azure Resource Explorer and Download Azure Resource Manager Tools for VS Code

Resources:

• Azure SDK
• Azure Arm Git Template
• Azure Quickstart Templates
• Download Azure Resource Manager Tools for VS Code
• Azure Resource Explorer

~ Frank

Deploy to Azure Directly From the Repository with GitHub Actions

You hear about that new GitHub Actions. Or maybe you didn't but would like to add a continuous integration, continuous deployment (CI-CD) to your web application. In this post, I will show you how to add a CI-CD to deploy automatically to Azure using the GitHub Actions.

What are GitHub Actions

GitHub Actions are automated workflows to do things. One of these could be a CI-CD. Using a workflow you could decide to compile and execute some unit tests at every push or pull request (PR). Another workflow could be that you deploy that application.

In this article, I will deploy a .Net Core application in Azure. However, you can use any languages you would like and deploy anywhere you like... I just needed to pick one :)

Now, let's get started.

Step 1 - The Code.

We need some code in a GitHub repo. Create a GitHub repo, clone it locally. And your app in it. I created mine with dotnet new blazorserver -n cloud5minsdemo -o src. Then commit and push.

Step 2 - Define the workflow

We got the code, now it's time to define our workflow. I will be providing all the code snippets required for the scenario cover in this post, but there is tons of template ready to be used available directly from your GitHub repository! Let's have a look. From your repository click on the Action tab, and voila!

When I wrote this post, a lot of available templates assumed the Azure resources already existed and you and adding a CI-CD to the mixt to automated your deployment. It's great but in my case, I was building a brand new web site so those didn't fit my needs. This is why I created my own template. The workflow I created was inspired by Azure/webapps-deploy. And there a lot of information also available on Deploy to App Service using GitHub Actions.

Let's add our template to our solution. GitHub will look in the folder .github/workflows/ from the root of the repository. Then create a file with the extension .yml

Here the code for my dotnet.yml, as any YAML file the secret is in the indentation as it is whitespace sensitive:

on: [push,pull_request]

env:
  AZURE_WEBAPP_NAME: cloud5minsdemo   # set this to your application's name
  AZURE_GROUP_NAME: cloud5mins2

jobs:
  build-and-deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:

    # checkout the repo
    - uses: actions/checkout@master
    
    - name: Setup .NET Core
      uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v1
      with:
        dotnet-version:  3.0.101


    # dotnet build and publish
    - name: Build with dotnet
      run: dotnet build ./src --configuration Release
    - name: dotnet publish 
      run: |
        dotnet publish ./src -c Release -o myapp 

    - uses: azure/login@v1
      with:
        creds: ${{ secrets.AZURE_CREDENTIALS }}

    - run: |
        az group create -n ${{ env.AZURE_GROUP_NAME }} -l eastus 
        az group deployment create -n ghaction -g ${{ env.AZURE_GROUP_NAME }} --template-file deployment/azuredepoy.json


    # deploy web app using Azure credentials
    - name: 'Azure webapp deploy'
      uses: azure/webapps-deploy@v1
      with:
        app-name: ${{ env.AZURE_WEBAPP_NAME }}
        package: './myapp' 

    # Azure logout 
    - name: logout
      run: |
        az logout

The Agent

There is a lot in there let's start by the first line. The on: is to define the trigger, in this case, the workflow will be trigger at every push or PR.

The env: is where you can declare variables. It's totally optional, but I think it will help then templates are more complex or simply to reuse them easily.

Then comes the jobs: definition. In this case, we will use the latest version of Ubuntu as our build agent. Of course, in a production environment, you should be more specify and select the OS that matches your needs. This job will have multiples steps defined in the, you guess it, steps: section/

We specify a branch to work with and set up our agent by:

uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v1
with:
  dotnet-version: 3.0.101

This is because I have a .Net Core project. For Node.js project, it would be

uses: actions/setup-node@v1
with:
  node-version: 10.x

And it would be a better idea to set the version as an environment variable to be able to change it quickly.

The next two instructions are really .Net Core focus as they will build and package the application into a folder myapp. Of course, in the "section" you could execute some unit test or any other validation that you may find useful.

The next section may be less obvious.

- uses: azure/login@v1
  with:
    creds: ${{ secrets.AZURE_CREDENTIALS }}

Access and Secrets

To have our GitHub Action to be able to create resources and deploy the code it needs to have access. The azure/login@v1 will let the Action login, using a Service Principal. In other words, we will create an authentication in the Azure Active Directory, with enough permission to do what we need.

Let's examine the following Azure CLI command:

`az ad sp create-for-rbac --name "c5m-Frankdemo" --role contributor --scopes /subscriptions/{subscription-id} --sdk-auth`

This will create a Service Principal named "c5m-Frankdemo" with the role "contributor" on the subscription specified. The role contributor can do mostly anything except granting permission.

Because no resources already existed the GitHub Action will require more permission. If you create the Resource Group outside of the CI-CD, you could limit the access only to this specific resource group. Using this command instead:

`az ad sp create-for-rbac --name "c5m-Frankdemo" --role contributor --scopes /subscriptions/{subscription-id}/resourceGroups/{resource-group} --sdk-auth`

The Azure CLI command will return a JSON. We will copy-paste this JSON into a GitHub secret. GitHub secrets encrypted secrets and allow you to store sensitive information, such as access tokens, in your repository. To access them go in the Settings of the repository and select Secrets from the left menu.

Click the Add a new secret button, and type AZURE_CREDENTIALS as the name. It could be anything, as long as you use that value in the YAML file describing the workflow. Put the JSON including the curly brackets in the Value textbox and click the save button.

Provisioning the Azure Resources

Now that the workflow has access we could execute some Azure CLI commands, but let's see what missing:

- run: |
    az group create -n ${{ env.AZURE_GROUP_NAME }} -l eastus 
    az group deployment create -n ghaction -g ${{ env.AZURE_GROUP_NAME }} --template-file deployment/azuredepoy.json --parameters myWebAppName=${{ env.AZURE_WEBAPP_NAME }}

The first command will create an Azure Resource Group, where all the resources will be created. The second one will deploy the website using an Azure Resource Manager (ARM) template. The --template-file deployment/azuredepoy.json tells us the template is a file named azuredeploy.json located in the folder deployment. Notice that the application name is passed to a parameter myWebAppName, using the environment variable.

An ARM template is simply a flat file that a lot like a JSON document. Use can use any text editor, I like doing mine with Visual Studio Code and two extensions: Azure Resource Manager Snippets, and Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Tools With those tools I can build ARM template very efficiently. For this template, we need a service plane and a web App. Here what the template looks like.

{
    "$schema": "https://schema.management.azure.com/schemas/2015-01-01/deploymentTemplate.json#",
    "contentVersion": "1.0.0.0",
    "parameters": {
        "myWebAppName": {
           "type": "string",
           "metadata": {
                "description": "WebAppName"
            }
        }
    },
    "variables": {},
    "resources": [
        {
            "name": "[parameters('myWebAppName')]",
            "type": "Microsoft.Web/sites",
            "apiVersion": "2016-08-01",
            "location": "[resourceGroup().location]",
            "tags": {
                "[concat('hidden-related:', resourceGroup().id, '/providers/Microsoft.Web/serverfarms/frankdemoplan')]": "Resource",
                "displayName": "[parameters('myWebAppName')]"
            },
            "dependsOn": [
                "[resourceId('Microsoft.Web/serverfarms', 'frankdemoplan')]"
            ],
            "properties": {
                "name": "[parameters('myWebAppName')]",
                "serverFarmId": "[resourceId('Microsoft.Web/serverfarms', 'frankdemoplan')]"
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "frankdemoplan",
            "type": "Microsoft.Web/serverfarms",
            "apiVersion": "2018-02-01",
            "location": "[resourceGroup().location]",
            "sku": {
                "name": "F1",
                "capacity": 1
            },
            "tags": {
                "displayName": "frankdemoplan"
            },
            "properties": {
                "name": "frankdemoplan"
            }
        }
    ],
    "outputs": {},
    "functions": []
}

This template is simple, it only contains the two required resources: a service plan, and a web app. To learn more about the ARM Template you can read my other post or check out this excellent introduction in the documentation.

Once the template is created and saved in its folder.

The deployment

There are only two last steps to the YAML file: the deployment and logout. Let's have a quick look at the deployment.

# deploy web app using Azure credentials
- name: 'Azure webapp deploy'
  uses: azure/webapps-deploy@v1
  with:
    app-name: ${{ env.AZURE_WEBAPP_NAME }}
    package: './myapp' 

Now that we are sure the resources exist in Azure we can deploy the code. This will be done with azure/webapps-deploy@v1 that will take the package generated by dotnet into myapp. Since we are already authenticated there is no need to specify anything at this point.

Everything is ready for the deployment. You just need to commit and push (into master) and the GitHub Action will be triggered. You can follow the deployment by going into the Actions tab.

After a few minutes, the website should be available in Azure. This post only shows a very simple build and deployment, but you can do so many things with those GitHub Actions, like executing tasks or packaging a container... I would love to know how you use them. Leave a comment or reach out on social media.


If you prefer, I also did a video of this post:



~

How to Deploy your Azure Function Automatically with ARM template (4 different ways)

It's so nice to be able to add some serverless components in our solution to make them better in a snap. But how do we manage them? In this post, I will explain how to create an Azure resource manager (ARM) template to deploy any Azure Function and show how I used this structure to deploy an open-source project I've been working on these days.

Part 1 - The ARM template

An ARM template is a JSON file that describes our architecture. To deploy an Azure Function we need at least three recourses: a functionApp, a service plan, and a storage account.

The FunctionApp is, of course, our function. The service plan could be set as dynamic or describe the type of resource that will be used by your function. The storage account is where is our code.

In the previous image, you can see how those components interact more with each other. Inside the Function, we will have a list of properties. One of those properties will be the Runtime, for example, in the AZUnzipEverything demo, it will be dotnet. Another property will be the connection string to our storage account that is also part of our ARM template. Since that resource doesn't exist yet, we will need to use the dynamic code.

The Function node will contain a sub-resource of type storageAccount. This is where we will specify where is our code, so it cant be clone to Azure.

Building ARM for a Simple Function

Let's see a template for a simple Azure Function that doesn't require any dependency, and we will examine it after.

You can use any text editor to edit your ARM template. However, the bundle VSCode with the extensions Azure Resource Manager Tools and Azure Resource Manager Snippets is particularly efficient.

{
    "$schema": "https://schema.management.azure.com/schemas/2015-01-01/deploymentTemplate.json#",
    "contentVersion": "1.0.0.0",
    "parameters": {},
    "variables": {},
    "resources": [
        {
            "type": "Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts",
            "apiVersion": "2018-07-01",
            "name": "storageFunc",
            "location": "[resourceGroup().location]",
            "tags": {
                "displayName": "storageFunc"
            },
            "sku": {
                "name": "Standard_LRS"
            },
            "kind": "StorageV2"
        },
        {
            "type": "Microsoft.Web/serverfarms",
            "apiVersion": "2018-02-01",
            "name": "servicePlan",
            "location": "[resourceGroup().location]",
            "sku": {
                "name": "Y1",
                "tier": "Dynamic"
            },
            "properties": {
                "name": "servicePlan",
                "computeMode": "Dynamic"
            },
            "tags": {
                "displayName": "servicePlan"
            }
        },
         {
              "apiVersion": "2015-08-01",
              "type": "Microsoft.Web/sites",
              "name": "functionApp",
              "location": "[resourceGroup().location]",
              "kind": "functionapp",
              "dependsOn": [
                "[resourceId('Microsoft.Web/serverfarms', 'servicePlan')]",
                "[resourceId('Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts', 'storageFunc')]"
              ],
              "properties": {
                "serverFarmId": "[resourceId('Microsoft.Web/serverfarms', 'servicePlan')]",
                "siteConfig": {
                  "appSettings": [
                    {
                      "name": "AzureWebJobsDashboard",
                      "value": "[concat('DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=', 'storageFunc', ';AccountKey=', listKeys('storageFunc','2015-05-01-preview').key1)]"
                    },
                    {
                      "name": "AzureWebJobsStorage",
                      "value": "[concat('DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=', 'storageFunc', ';AccountKey=', listKeys('storageFunc','2015-05-01-preview').key1)]"
                    },
                    {
                      "name": "WEBSITE_CONTENTAZUREFILECONNECTIONSTRING",
                      "value": "[concat('DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=', 'storageFunc', ';AccountKey=', listKeys('storageFunc','2015-05-01-preview').key1)]"
                    },
                    {
                      "name": "WEBSITE_CONTENTSHARE",
                      "value": "storageFunc"
                    },
                    {
                      "name": "FUNCTIONS_EXTENSION_VERSION",
                      "value": "~2"
                    },
                    {
                      "name": "FUNCTIONS_WORKER_RUNTIME",
                      "value": "dotnet"
                    }
                  ]
                }
              },
              "resources": [
                  {
                      "apiVersion": "2015-08-01",
                      "name": "web",
                      "type": "sourcecontrols",
                      "dependsOn": [
                        "[resourceId('Microsoft.Web/sites/', 'functionApp')]"
                      ],
                      "properties": {
                          "RepoUrl": "https://github.com/FBoucher/AzUnzipEverything.git",
                          "branch": "master",
                          "publishRunbook": true,
                          "IsManualIntegration": true
                      }
                 }
              ]
            }
        
    ],
    "outputs": {}
}

The Storage Account

The first resources listed in the template is the Account Storage. There nothing specific about it.

The Service Plan

The service plan is the second resource in the list. It's important to notice that to be able to use the SKU Dynamic you will need at least the API version of apiVersion to be "2018-02-01". Then you specify the SKU.

    "sku": {
        "name": "Y1",
        "tier": "Dynamic"
    }

Of course, you can use the other SKU if you prefer.

The Function App

Final resources added to the mixt, and this is where all the pieces are getting together. It's important to notice that the other in which the resources are listed are not considered by Azure while deploying (it's only for us ;) ). To let Azure knows you need to add dependencies.

"dependsOn": [
    "[resourceId('Microsoft.Web/serverfarms', 'servicePlan')]",
    "[resourceId('Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts', 'storageFunc')]"
]

This way the Azure Function will be created after the service plan and the storage account are available. Then in the properties we will be able to build the ConnectionString to the blob storage using a reference.

{
    "name": "AzureWebJobsDashboard",
    "value": "[concat('DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=', 'storageFunc', ';AccountKey=', listKeys('storageFunc','2015-05-01-preview').key1)]"
}

The last piece of the puzzle is the sub-resource sourcecontrol inside the FunctionApp. This will define where Azure should clone the code from and in which branch.

"resources": [
    {
        "apiVersion": "2015-08-01",
        "name": "web",
        "type": "sourcecontrols",
        "dependsOn": [
        "[resourceId('Microsoft.Web/sites/', 'functionApp')]"
        ],
        "properties": {
            "RepoUrl": "https://github.com/FBoucher/AzUnzipEverything.git",
            "branch": "master",
            "publishRunbook": true,
            "IsManualIntegration": true
        }
    }
]

To be sure that everything is fully automatic the properties publishRunbook and IsManualIntegration must be set as true. Otherwise, you will need to do a synchronization between your Git (in this case on GitHub), and the Git in Azure.

There is excellent documentation that explains many deferent scenarios to Automate resource deployment for your function app in Azure Functions

Azure Unzip Everything

To deploy the project AzUnzipEverything available on GitHub, I needed one more Azure Storage with pre-define containers (folders).

Of course, all the source code of both the Azure Function and the ARM template are available on GitHub, but let me highlight how the containers are defined from an ARM template.

"resources": [
    {
        "type": "blobServices/containers",
        "apiVersion": "2018-07-01",
        "name": "[concat('default/', 'input-files')]",
        "dependsOn": [
            "storageFiles"
        ],
        "properties": {
            "publicAccess": "Blob"
        }
    }
]

Just like with sourcecontrol, we will need to add a list of sub-resources to our storage account. The name MUST start by 'default/'.

Part 2 - Four Deployment Options

Now that we have a template that describes our needs we just need to deploy it. There are multiple ways it could be done, but let's see four of them.

Deploy from the Azure Portal

Navigate to the Azure Portal (https://azure.portal.com), from your favorite browser and search for "deploy a custom template" directly in the search bar located at the top of the screen (in the middle). Or go at https://portal.azure.com/#create/Microsoft.Template. One in the Custom deployment page, click on the link Build your own template in the editor. From there, you can copy-paste or upload your ARM template. You need to save it to see the real deployment form.

Deploy with a script

Would it be in PowerShell or in Azure CLI you can easily deploy your template with these two commands.

In Azure CLI

# create resource group
az group create -n AzUnzipEverything -l eastus

# deploy it
az group deployment create -n cloud5mins -g AzUnzipEverything --template-file "deployment\deployAzure.json" --parameters "deployment\deployAzure.parameters.json"  

In PowerShell

# create resource group
New-AzResourceGroup -Name AzUnzipEverything -Location eastus

# deploy it
New-AzResourceGroupDeployment -ResourceGroupName  AzUnzipEverything -TemplateFile deployment\deployAzure.json

Deploy to Azure Button

One of the best way to help people to deploy your solution in their Azure subscription is the Deploy to Azure Button.



You need to create an image link (in HTML or Markdown) to this to a special destination build in two-part.

The first one is a link to the Azure Portal:

https://portal.azure.com/#create/Microsoft.Template/uri/

And the second one is the location of your ARM template:

https%3A%2F%2Fraw.githubusercontent.com%2FFBoucher%2FAzUnzipEverything%2Fmaster%2Fdeployment%2FdeployAzure.json

However, this URL needs to be encoded. There is plenty of encoders online, but you can also do it from the terminal with the following command (A big thanks to @BrettMiller_IT who showed me this trick during one of my live streams).

[System.Web.HttpUtility]::UrlEncode("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/FBoucher/Not-a-Dog-Workshop/master/deployment/deployAzure.json")

Clicking the button will bring the user at the same page on the Azure Portal but in the user subscription.

Azure DevOps Pipeline

From the Azure DevOps portal (https://dev.azure.com), select your project and create a new Release Pipeline. Click on the + Add an artifact button to connect your Git repository.

Once it's added, you need to add a task the current job. Click on the link 1 job, 0 task (4). Now you just need to specify your Azure subscription, the name of the resource group and select the location of your ARM template inside your repository. To make the deployment automatic with each push in the repository, click that little lightning bolt and enable the Continuous deployment trigger.

Wrapping-up

Voila, you know have four different ways to deploy your Azure Function automatically. But don't take my word for it, try it yourself! If you need more details you can visit the project on GitHub or watch this video where I demo the content of this post.

Simplify your deployment with nested Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates

Most solutions, if not all, are composed of multiple parts: backend, frontend, services, APIs, etc. Because all parts could have a different life-cycle it's important to be able to deploy them individually. However, sometimes we would like to deploy everything at once. It's exactly the scenario I had in a project I'm working on where with backend and one frontend.

In this post, I will explain how I use nested Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates and conditions to let the user decide if he wants to deploy only the backend or the backend with a frontend of his choice. All the code will be available in GitHub and if you prefer, a video version is available below.
(This post is also available in French)

The Context

The project used in this post my open-source budget-friendly Azure URL Shortener. Like mentioned previously the project is composed of two parts. The backend leverage Microsoft serverless Azure Functions, it a perfect match in this case because it will only run when someone clicks a link. The second part is a frontend, and it's totally optional. Because the Azure Functions are HTTP triggers they act as an API, therefore, they can be called from anything able to do an HTTP call. Both are very easily deployable using an ARM template by a PowerShell or CLI command or by a one-click button directly from GitHub.

The Goal

At the end of this post, we will be able from one-click to deploy just the Azure Functions or to deploy them with a frontend of our choice (I only have one right now, but more will come). To do this, we will modify the "backend" ARM template using condition and nest the ARM template responsible for the frontend deployment.

The ARM templates are available here in there [initial](https://github.com/FBoucher/AzUrlShortener/tree/master/tutorials/optional-arm/before) and [final](https://github.com/FBoucher/AzUrlShortener/tree/master/tutorials/optional-arm/before/after) versions.

Adding New Inputs

We will nest the ARM templates, this means that our backend template (azureDeploy.json) will call the frontend template (adminBlazorWebsite-deployAzure.json). Therefore we need to add all the required information to azureDeploy.json to make sure it's able to deploy adminBlazorWebsite-deployAzure.json successfully. Looking at the parameter required for the second template, we only two need values AdminEMail and AdminPassword. All the other can be generated or we already have them.

We will need also another parameter the will act as our selection option. So let's add a parameter named frontend and allowed only two values: none and adminBlazorWebsite. If the value is none we only deploy the Azure Function. When the value is adminBlazorWebsite we will deploy the Azure Function, of course, but we will also deploy an admin website to go with it.

Following the best practices, we add clear detail and add those three parameters in the parameters section of the ARM template

"frontend": {
    "type": "string",
    "allowedValues": [
        "none",
        "adminBlazorWebsite"
    ],
    "defaultValue": "adminBlazorWebsite",
    "metadata": {
        "description": "Select the frontend that will be deploy. Select 'none', if you don't want any. Frontend available: adminBlazorWebsite, none. "
    }
},
"frontend-AdminEMail": {
    "type": "string",
    "defaultValue": "",
    "metadata": {
        "description": "(Required only if frontend = adminBlazorWebsite) The EMail use to connect into the admin Blazor Website."
    }
},
"frontend-AdminPassword": {
    "type": "securestring",
    "defaultValue": "",
    "metadata": {
        "description": "(Required only if frontend = adminBlazorWebsite) Password use to connect into the admin Blazor Website."
    }
}

Nested Templates

Let's assume for now that we always deploy the website when we deploy the Azure Function, to keep things simple. What we need now is to used nested ARM template, and that when you deploy an ARM template from inside another ARM template. This is done with a Microsoft.Resources/deployments node. Let's look at the code:

{
    "name": "FrontendDeployment",
    "type": "Microsoft.Resources/deployments",
    "dependsOn": [
        "[resourceId('Microsoft.Web/sites/', variables('funcAppName'))]",
        "[resourceId('Microsoft.Web/sites/sourcecontrols', variables('funcAppName'), 'web')]"
    ],
    "resourceGroup": "[resourceGroup().name]",
    "apiVersion": "2019-10-01",
    "properties": {
        "mode": "Incremental",
        "templateLink": {
            "uri": "[variables('frontendInfo')[parameters('frontend')].armTemplateUrl]"
        },
        "parameters": {
            "basename": {
                "value" : "[concat('adm', parameters('baseName'))]"
            },
            "AdminEMail": {
                "value" : "[parameters('frontend-AdminEMail')]"
            },
            "AdminPassword": {
                "value" : "[parameters('frontend-AdminPassword')]"
            },
            "AzureFunctionUrlListUrl": {
                "value" : "[concat('https://', reference(resourceId('Microsoft.Web/sites/', variables('funcAppName')), '2018-02-01').hostNames[0], '/api/UrlList?code=', listkeys(concat(resourceId('Microsoft.Web/sites/', variables('funcAppName')), '/host/default/'),'2016-08-01').functionKeys.default)]"
            },
            "AzureFunctionUrlShortenerUrl": {
                "value" : "[concat('https://', reference(resourceId('Microsoft.Web/sites/', variables('funcAppName')), '2018-02-01').hostNames[0], '/api/UrlShortener?code=', listkeys(concat(resourceId('Microsoft.Web/sites/', variables('funcAppName')), '/host/default/'),'2016-08-01').functionKeys.default)]"
            },
            "GitHubURL": {
                "value" : "[parameters('GitHubURL')]"
            },
            "GitHubBranch": {
                "value" : "[parameters('GitHubBranch')]"
            },
            "ExpireOn": {
                "value" : "[parameters('ExpireOn')]"
            },
            "OwnerName": {
                "value" : "[parameters('OwnerName')]"
            }

        }
    }
}

If we examine this node, we have the classic: name, type, dependsOn, resourceGroup, apiVersion. Here We really want the Azure Functions to be fully deployed so we need the FunctionApp to be created AND the GitHub sync to be complete, this is why there is also a dependency on Microsoft.Web/sites/sourcecontrols.

In properties we will pass the mode as Incremental as it will leave unchanged resources that exist in the resource group but aren't specified in the template.

Learn more about the Azure Resource Manager deployment modes here as they are very powerful.

The second property is templateLink. This is really important as it's the URL to the other ARM template. That URI must not be a local file or a file that is only available on your local network. You must provide a URI value that downloadable as HTTP or HTTPS. In this case, it's a variable that contains the GitHub URL where the template is available.

Finally, we have the parameters, and this is how we pass the values to the second template. Let's skip those where I just pass the parameter value from the caller to the called, and focus on basename, AzureFunctionUrlListUrl, and AzureFunctionUrlShortenerUrl.

For basename I just add a prefix to the parameter basename received, this way the resource names will be different but we can still see the "connection". That's purely optional, you could have added this value in a parameter to azureDeploy.json, I prefer keeping the parameters a minimum as possible as I think it simplifies the deployment for the users.

Finally for AzureFunctionUrlListUrl, and AzureFunctionUrlShortenerUrl I needed to retrieve the URL of the Azure Function with the security token because they are secured. I do that by concatenating different parts.

Component	Value
Beginning of the URL	'https://'
Reference the Function App, return the value of hostname	reference(resourceId('Microsoft.Web/sites/', variables('funcAppName')), '2018-02-01').hostNames[0]
Specify the Function targeted in this case UrlList. And starting the querystring to pass the code (aka. security token)	'/api/UrlList?code='
Using the new listkeys function to retrieve the default Function key.	listkeys(concat(resourceId('Microsoft.Web/sites/', variables('funcAppName')), '/host/default/'),'2016-08-01').functionKeys.default

Conditional parts

Now that the second ARM template can be deployed, let's add a condition so it gets, indeed, deploy only when we desire. To do this it's very simple, we need to add a property condition.

{
    "name": "FrontendDeployment",
    "type": "Microsoft.Resources/deployments",
    "condition": "[not(equals(parameters('frontend'), 'none'))]",
    "dependsOn": [
        "[resourceId('Microsoft.Web/sites/', variables('funcAppName'))]",
        "[resourceId('Microsoft.Web/sites/sourcecontrols', variables('funcAppName'), 'web')]"
    ]
}

In this case, is the value of the parameter is different then none, the nested template will be deployed. When a condition end-up being "false", the entire resource will be ignored during the deployment. How simple or complex are your conditions... that's your choice!

Happy deployment. :)

How to Deploy a .NET isolated Azure Function using Zip Deploy in One-Click

In this post, I will share a few things that we need our attention when deploying a .NET isolated Azure Function from GitHub to Azure using the Zip Deploy method. This method is great for fast deployment and when your artefacts are zipped in a package.

Note The complete code for this post is available on GitHub

Understanding Zip Push/Zip Deploy

Zip Push allows us to deploy a compressed package, such as a zip file, directly to Azure. It could be part of a continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI-CD) or like in this example it could replace it. This approach is particularly useful when you want to ensure your artifacts remain unchanged across different environments or when aiming for the fastest deployment experience for users.

While CI-CD is excellent for keeping your code up-to-date, zip deployment offers the advantage of speed and consistency. It eliminates the need for compilation, leading to quicker uploads and deployments.

Preparing Your Package

It’s crucial to package with all necessary dependencies the code required. There is no operation to fetch any external packages during the deployment, the zip file will be decompressed and that's it. The best way to ensure you have everything you need is to publish your code, to a folder and then go in that folder and zip all the files.

dotnet publish -c Release -o ./out

Don't zip the folder, it won't work as expected.

You need to go inside the folder and select all the files and zip them to create your deployment artefact.

The next step is to make your artefact available online. There are many ways, but for this post we are using GitHub Realease. From the GitHub repository, create a new release, upload the zipped file created earlier and publish it. Note the URL of zipped files from the release.

Preparing The ARM Template

For this one-click deployment, we need an Azure Resource Manager (ARM) template. This is a document that describes the resources that we want to deploy to Azure. To deploy the zipped file into the Azure Function there are two particularities that required our attention.

Here the sections of the template.

[...]
"resources": [
    {
        "apiVersion": "2022-03-01",
        "name": "[variables('funcAppName')]",
        "type": "Microsoft.Web/sites",
        "kind": "functionapp",
        "location": "[resourceGroup().location]",
        "properties": {
            "name": "[variables('funcAppName')]",
            "siteConfig": {
                "appSettings": [
                    {
                        "name": "FUNCTIONS_WORKER_RUNTIME",
                        "value": "dotnet-isolated"
                    },
                    {
                        "name": "WEBSITE_RUN_FROM_PACKAGE",
                        "value": "1"
                    },
                    [...]

Here we define an Windows Azure Function and the WEBSITE_RUN_FROM_PACKAGE needs to be set to 1. The WEBSITE_RUN_FROM_PACKAGE is the key that tells Azure to use the zip file as the deployment artefact.

Then to specify where the zip file is located we need to add an extension to the Azure Function.

    {
      "type": "Microsoft.Web/sites/extensions",
      "apiVersion": "2021-02-01",
      "name": "[format('{0}/ZipDeploy', variables('funcAppName'))]",
      "properties": {
        "packageUri": "https://github.com/FBoucher/ZipDeploy-AzFunc/releases/download/v1/ZipDeploy-package-v1.zip",
        "appOffline": true
      },
      "dependsOn": [
        "[concat('Microsoft.Web/sites/', variables('funcAppName'))]"
      ]
    }

The packageUri property is the URL of the zipped file from the GitHub release. Note the dependsOn property that ensures the Azure Function is created before the extension is added. The complete ARM template is available in the GitHub repository.

One-click Deployment

When you have your artefact and the ARM template uploaded to your GitHub repository, you can create a one-click deployment button. This button will take the user to the Azure portal and pre-fill the deployment form with the information from the ARM template. Here is an example of the button for markdown.

[![Deploy to Azure](https://aka.ms/deploytoazurebutton)](https://portal.azure.com/#create/Microsoft.Template/uri/https%3A%2F%2Fraw.githubusercontent.com%2FFBoucher%2FZipDeploy-AzFunc%2Fmain%2Fdeployment%2Fazuredeploy.json)

The has three parts, the first is the image that will be displayed on the button, the second is the link to the Azure portal and the third is the URL of the ARM template. The URL of the ARM template is the raw URL of the file in the GitHub repository, and it needs to be URL encoded. The URL encoding can be done using a tool like URL Encode/Decode.

Final Thoughts

Zip deployment is a powerful tool in your Azure arsenal by itself of part of a more complex CI-CD pipeline. It's a great way to make it easier for people to deploy your solution in their Azure subscription without having to clone/ fork the repository.

Video version

If you prefer, there is also have a video version of this post.

References

• Zip deployment for Azure Functions
• MSDeploy VS. ZipDeploy
• Use a deployment button to deploy remote templates

How to Deploy your Azure Functions Faster and Easily with Zip Push

Azure functions are great. I used to do a lot of "csx" version (C# scripted version) but more recently I switched to the compile version, and I definitely loved it! However, I was looking for a way to keep my deployment short and sweet, because sometimes I don't have time to setup a "big" CI/CD or simply because sometimes I'm not the one doing the deployment... In those cases, I need a simple script that will deploy everything! In this post, I will share with you how you can deploy everything with one easy script.

The Context

In this demo, I will deploy a simple C# (full .Net framework) Azure functions. I will create the Azure Function App and storage using an Azure Resource Manager (ARM template) and deploy with a method named Zip push or ZipDeploy. All the code, script, a template is available on my Github.

The Azure Functions Code

The Azure Function doesn't have to be special, and it can be any language supported by Azure Functions. Simply to show you everything, here the code of my function.

namespace AzFunctionZipDeploy
{
    public static class Function1
    {
        [FunctionName("GetTopRunner")]
        public static async Task Run([HttpTrigger(AuthorizationLevel.Function, "get", "post", Route = null)]HttpRequestMessage req, TraceWriter log)
        {
            log.Info("C# HTTP trigger function processed a request.");

            string top = req.GetQueryNameValuePairs()
                .FirstOrDefault(q => string.Compare(q.Key, "top", true) == 0)
                .Value;

            if (top == null)
            {
                dynamic data = await req.Content.ReadAsAsync< object>();
                top = data?.top;
            }

        return top == null
                ? req.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.BadRequest, "Please pass a number to get your top x runner on the query string or in the request body")
                : req.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK, new { message = $"Hello, here is your Top {top} runners", runners = A.ListOf(int.Parse(top)) });
        }
    }

    class Person
    {
        public string FirstName { get; set; }
        public string LastName { get; set; }
        public int Age { get; set; }
    }
}

It's a really simple function that will return a list of Person generated on the fly. The list will contain as many person as the number passed in parameter. I'm using the very useful GenFu library, from my buddies: ASP.NET Monsters.

The only thing we need to do is to create our compress file (Zip or Rar) that contains everything our project required.



In this case, it's the project file (AzFunction-ZipDeploy.csproj), the function's code (Function1.cs) the host (host.json) and local settings of our function (local.settings.json).

The ARM template

For this demo, we need one Azure Function App. I will use a template that is part of the Azure Quickstart Templates. A quick look to the azuredeploy.parameters.json file and we see that the only parameter we really need to set is the name of our application.

{
    "$schema": "https://schema.management.azure.com/schemas/2015-01-01/deploymentParameters.json#",
    "contentVersion": "1.0.0.0",
    "parameters": {
        "appName": {
        "value": "zipdeploydemo"
        }
    }
}

To be able to ZipDeploy, we need to add one Application Setting to let the Kudu interface we need its help to compile our code. To do that let's open the azuredeploy.json and go to the appSettings section. We need to add a new variable named: SCM_DO_BUILD_DURING_DEPLOYMENT and set it to true. After adding the setting it should look like this (see the last one... that's our new one):

"appSettings": [
    {
    "name": "AzureWebJobsDashboard",
    "value": "[concat('DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=', variables('storageAccountName'), ';AccountKey=', listKeys(variables('storageAccountid'),'2015-05-01-preview').key1)]"
    },
    {
    "name": "AzureWebJobsStorage",
    "value": "[concat('DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=', variables('storageAccountName'), ';AccountKey=', listKeys(variables('storageAccountid'),'2015-05-01-preview').key1)]"
    },
    {
    "name": "WEBSITE_CONTENTAZUREFILECONNECTIONSTRING",
    "value": "[concat('DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=', variables('storageAccountName'), ';AccountKey=', listKeys(variables('storageAccountid'),'2015-05-01-preview').key1)]"
    },
    {
    "name": "WEBSITE_CONTENTSHARE",
    "value": "[toLower(variables('functionAppName'))]"
    },
    {
    "name": "FUNCTIONS_EXTENSION_VERSION",
    "value": "~1"
    },
    {
    "name": "WEBSITE_NODE_DEFAULT_VERSION",
    "value": "6.5.0"
    },
    {
    "name": "SCM_DO_BUILD_DURING_DEPLOYMENT",
    "value": true
    }
]

The Deployment Script

Now that all the pieces are ready it's time to put it together one script. In fact, only the two last commands are required; everything else is just stuff to make it easier to re-use it. Check out my previous post 5 Simple Steps to Get a Clean ARM Template, to learn more about the best practices related to ARM template. So let's see that script, it's pretty simple.

    # script to Create an Azure Gramophone-PoC Solution

    resourceGroupName=$1
    resourceGroupLocation=$2

    templateFilePath="./arm/azuredeploy.json"
    parameterFilePath="./arm/azuredeploy.parameters.json"

    dateToken=`date '+%Y%m%d%H%M'`
    deploymentName="FrankDemo"$dateToken

    # az login

    # You can select a specific subscription if you do not want to use the default
    # az account set -s SUBSCRIPTION_ID

    if !( $(az group exists -g  $resourceGroupName) ) then
        echo "---> Creating the Resourcegroup: " $resourceGroupName
        az group create -g $resourceGroupName -l $resourceGroupLocation
    else
        echo "---> Resourcegroup:" $resourceGroupName "already exists."
    fi

    az group deployment create --name $deploymentName --resource-group $resourceGroupName --template-file $templateFilePath --parameters $parameterFilePath --verbose

    echo "---> Deploying Function Code"
    az functionapp deployment source config-zip -g $resourceGroupName -n zipdeploydemo --src "./zip/AzFunction-ZipDeploy.zip"

    echo "---> done <--- code="">

The only "new" thing is the last command functionapp deployment source config-zip. That where we specify to the Azure Function App to look to --src to get our source. Because I'm running it locally, the path is pointing to a local folder. However, you could execute this command also in the CloudShell, and that would become a URI... to an Azure Blob Storage by example.

Deploy and Test

If you didn't notice yet, I did my script in bash and Azure CLI. That because I want my script to be compatible with all platforms. Of course, you could have done it in PowerShell or anything else that would call the REST API.

To deploy, just execute the script passing the ResourceGroup name, and its location.

    ./Deploy-AZ-Gramophone.sh cloud5mins eastus

To get to Function URL, go to the Azure portal (portal.azure.com) and click on the Function App that we just deploy. Click on the function GetTopRunner in this case, and click on the </> Getfunction URL button.



Use that URL in postman and pass another parameter top to see we the deployment ws successful.

In Video Please

If you prefer, I also have a video version of this post.



~Enjoy!

Don't install your software yourself

I don't know for you, but I don't like losing time. This is why a few years ago I started using scripts to install all the software I need on my computer. Got a new laptop? N You just need to execute this script, go grab a coffee and when I'm back all my favorite (and required) softwares are all installed. On Linux, you could use apt-get, and on Windows, my current favorite is Chocolatey. Recently I needed to use more virtual machine (VM) in the cloud and I deceided that I should try using a Chocolatey script during the deployment. This way once the VM is created the softwares, I need is already installed! This post is all about my journey to get there, all scripts, issues and workarounds will be explained.

The Goal

Creating a new VM on premises applying the OS update and installing all the tools you need (like Visual Stutio IDE) will takes hours... This solution should be done under 10 minutes (~7min in my case).
Once the VM is available, it should have Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise, VSCode, Git and Node.Js installed. In fact, I would like to use the same Chocolatey script I use regularly.

# Install Chocolatey
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

# Install Software
choco install visualstudiocode -y
choco install git -y 
choco install nodejs-lts  -y

(Available on gist.github)

The Tools

In this post I will use Azure CLI, because it will works on any environment. However, PowerShell can also be use only a few command will be different. The VM will be deploy with an Azure resource Manager (ARM) template. To create and edit the ARM template I like to use VSCode, you don't need it but it's so much easier with it! I use two extension.
The first one Azure Resource Manager Snippets will help by generating the schema for our needs. In a JSON file you just need to type arm en voila! You ahave a long list of ARM template!



The second is Azure Resource Manager Tools. This extension provides language support for ARM and some validate. Very useful...

Creating the ARM Template

To Get started create a new JSon file. Then type arm and select the first option; to get an empty skeleton. Then add an extra line in resources and type again arm. This time scroll until you see arm-vm-windows.



A multi-cursor will allow you to edit the name of your VM everywhere in the file in one shot. Hit Tab to navigate automatically to the userName, and Tab again to go to the password.


Now we have a functional ARM template that we could deploy. However, let's add a few things first.

Searching the Image SKUs by Code

One of my favorite VM images for a DevBox is the one that includes Visual Studio pre-installed. One thing to know is those images are only deployable in an MSDN subscription. To specify wich image you want to use you need to pass a publisher, offer, and sku.
Here how to do it with Azure CLI commands

# List all the Publishers that contain VisualStudio (It's case sensitive)
az vm image list-publishers --location eastus --output table --query "[?contains(name,'VisualStudio')]"

# List all offers for the Publisher MicrosoftVisualStudio
az vm image list-offers --location eastus --publisher MicrosoftVisualStudio  --output table

# List all availables SKUs for the Publisher MicrosoftVisualStudio with the Offer VisualStudio
az vm image list-skus --location eastus --publisher MicrosoftVisualStudio --offer VisualStudio --output table

Now that all the information is found, search in the ARM template and replace the current values by the one found. In my case, here are the new values.

"imageReference": {
                    "publisher": "MicrosoftVisualStudio",
                    "offer": "VisualStudio",
                    "sku": "VS-2017-Ent-Win10-N",
                    "version": "latest"
                }

Adding our Custom Script

Great now we have a VM with Visual Studio but our applications are still not installed. That will be done by adding the Custom Script Extension for Windows to our template. documentation page, a sample schema is there ready to be use.
The last node of your template is currently another extension. For the purpose of this blog post let's remove it. You should have something like this.



We will copy/ paste the snippet from the documentation page a change a few little things. Change the type (thank to our VSCode Extension for that catch). Update the dependencies to reflet our demo.

To use the extension your script needs to be available online. It could be in a blob storage (with some security) or just publicly available. In this case, the script is publicly available from my gist.github page. I created a variable in the variables section that contains the RAW URL of my script, and a reference to that varaibale is used in the fileUris.

The extension will download the script and then execute a function locally. Change the commandToExecute to call our script with unrestricted execution policy.

You have a timed window of ~30 minutes to execute your script. If it takes longer then that, your deployment will fail.

{
        "apiVersion": "2015-06-15",
        "type": "extensions",
        "name": "config-app",
        "location": "[resourceGroup().location]",
        "dependsOn": [
            "[concat('Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/', 'FrankDevBox')]"
        ],
        "tags": {
            "displayName": "config-app"
        },
        "properties": {
            "publisher": "Microsoft.Compute",
            "type": "CustomScriptExtension",
            "typeHandlerVersion": "1.9",
            "autoUpgradeMinorVersion": true,
            "settings": {
                "fileUris": [
                    "varaiables('scriptURL')]"
                ]
            },
            "protectedSettings": {
                "commandToExecute": "[concat('powershell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -File ', './SimpleDevBox.ps1')]"
            }
        }
    }

`

The ARM Template

It's finally time to deploy our VM.

# First, we need a Resource Group
    az group create --name frankDemo --location eastus

    # ALWAYS, always validate first... you will save a lot of time
    az group deployment validate --resource-group frankDemo --template-file /home/frank/Dev/DevBox/FrankDevBox.json

    #Finally deploy. This script should take between 5 to 10 minutes
    az group deployment create --name FrankDevBoxDemo --resource-group frankDemo --template-file /home/frank/Dev/DevBox/FrankDevBox.json --verbose

What's Next?!

We created one template; you could make it better.

Deploy from anywhere

By moving the computerName, adminUsername, adminPassword, and the script url in the parameters section, you could then put the template in a public place like GitHub. Then with use the one click deploy!

Directly from the Github page or from anywhere you just need to build a URL from those two parts: https://portal.azure.com/#create/Microsoft.Template/uri/ and the HTML Encoded URL to your template.

If my template is available at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/FBoucher/SimpleDevBox/master/azure-deploy.json then the full url become:

https://portal.azure.com/#create/Microsoft.Template/uri/https%3A%2F%2Fraw.githubusercontent.com%2FFBoucher%2FSimpleDevBox%2Fmaster%2Fazure-deploy.json

Clicking that URL will bring you to the Azure Portal (portal.azure.com) in a customized form to deploy your template.



It cannot be easier! You can see mine on GitHub.

Auto shutdown

It's very easy to forget to turn off those VM. And whatever you are paying for them or your using the limited MSDN credit it's a really good practice to turn them down. Why not do that automatically!
That can be very simply done by adding a new resource in the template.

{
        "name": "[concat('autoshutdown-', 'FrankDevBox')]",
        "type": "Microsoft.DevTestLab/schedules",
        "apiVersion": "2017-04-26-preview",
        "location": "[resourceGroup().location]",
        "properties": {
            "status": "Enabled",
            "taskType": "ComputeVmShutdownTask",
            "dailyRecurrence": {
                "time": "19:00"
            },
            "timeZoneId": "UTC",
            "targetResourceId": "[resourceId('Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines', 'FrankDevBox')]",
            "notificationSettings": {
                "status": "Enabled",
                "emailRecipient": "frank@frankysnotes.com",
                "notificationLocale": "en",
                "timeInMinutes": "30"
            }
        },
        "dependsOn": [
            "[concat('Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/', 'FrankDevBox')]"
        ]
    }

In Video Please!

If you prefer, I also have a video version of that post.

How to Create an Azure VM with Chocolatey


~Enjoy!

References:

• Chocolatey
• Azure Resource Manager Tools
• Azure Resource Manager Snippets
• Custom Script Extension for Windows
• All scripts from this post

How I Build a Budget-friendly URL Shortener Easy to Deploy and Customized

Available in French here

I don't know for you but I share links/ URLs very often. And a lot of time it's from videos, so it needs to be short and easy to remember. Something like https://c5m.ca/project is better than a random string (aka. GUID). And this is how I started a project to build a URL Shortener. I wanted to be budget-friendly, easy to deploy and customizable.

In this post, I will share how I build it, how you can use it, and how you can help!

How I build it, with the community

This tool was build during live streams coding sessions on Twitch (all videos are in available in my YouTube archive). It's composed of two parts: a Serverless backend leveraging the Azure Function & Azure Storage, and a frontend of your choice.

The backend is composed of a few Azure Functions that act as an on-demand HTTP API. They only consume when they are called. They are in .Net Core, C# to be specific. When publishing this post, there are four functions:

• UrlShortener: To create a short URL.
• UrlRedirect: That's the one called when a short link is used. An Azure Function Proxy is forwarding all call to the root.
• UrlClickStats: Return the statistic for a specific URL.
• UrlList: Return the list of all URLs created.

All the information like long url, short url, click count are save in an Azure Storage Table.
And that's it. Super light, very cost-efficient. IF you are curious about the price I'll but references in the footnotes

The frontend could be anything that can make HTTP requests. Right now in the project, I explain how to use a tool call Postman, there is also a very simple interface done that you can easily deploy.

This simple interface is of course protected and gives you the options to see all URLs and create new ones.

How YOU can use it

All the code is available into GitHub, and it's deployable with a one-click button!



This will deploy the backend in your Azure subscription in a few minutes. If you don't own an Azure subscription already, you can create your free Azure account today.

Then you will probably want an interface to create your precious URLs. Once more in the GitHub repository, there is a List of available Admin interfaces and ready to be used. The Admin Blazor Website is currently the most friendly and can also be deployed in one-click.

How You can help and participate

Right now, there is really only one interface (and some instructions on how to use Postman to do the HTTP calls). But AzUrlShortener is an open-source project, meaning you can participate. Here some suggestions:

• Build a new interface (in the language of your choice)
• Improve current interface(s) with
  
  • logos
  • designs
  • Better UI 🙂
• Register bugs in GitHub
• Make feature request
• Help with documentation/ translation

What's Next

Definitely come see the GitHub repo https://github.com/FBoucher/AzUrlShortener, click those deploy buttons. On my side, I will continue to add more features and make it better. See you there!

Video version

References

• Azure Function Pricing
• Azure Table Storage pricing
• YouTube Playlist with all the videos building AzUrlShortener

Automating Docker Deployment with Azure Resource Manager

Recently, I had to build a solution where Docker container were appropriate. The idea behind the container is that once there are built you just have to run it. While it's true, my journey was not exactly that, nothing dramatic, only few gotchas that I will explain while sharing my journey.

The Goal

The solution is classic, and this post will focus on a single Virtual Machine (VM). The Linux VM needs a container that automatically runs when the VM starts. Some files first download from a secure location (Azure blob storage) then passed to the container. The solution is deployed using Azure resources manager (ARM). For the simplicity, I will use Nginx container but the same principle applies to any container. Here is the diagram of the solution.

The Solution

I decided to use Azure CLI to deploy since this will be also the command-line used inside the Linux VM, but Azure PowerShell could do the same. We will be deploying an ARM template containing a Linux VM, and two VM-Extension: DockerExtension and CustomScriptForLinux. Once the VM is provisioned, a bash script will be downloaded by CustomScriptForLinux extension from the secure Azure blob storage myprojectsafe, then executed.

How to make your deployments successful every time

You are done with your code and you are ready to deploy it in Azure. You execute the PowerShell or Bash script you have and BOOM! The error message saying that this name is already taken. In this post, I will show you a simple way to look like a boss and make your deployment working all the time.

____ with given name ____ already exists.

The tricks other use

You could try to add a digit at the end of the resource name (ex: demo-app1, demo-app2, demo-app123...), but that’s not really professional. You could create a random string and append it to the name. Yes, that will works, once. If you are trying to redeploy your resources that value will change, therefore it will never be the same.
The solution would be to have a unique string that is constant in our environment.

The solution

The solution is to use the function UniqueString() part of the Azure Resource Manager (ARM) template. If we look in the documentation, UniqueString creates a deterministic hash string based on the values provided as parameters. Let’s see a quick example of an ARM template to deploy a website named demo-app.

{
    "$schema": "https://schema.management.azure.com/schemas/2015-01-01/deploymentTemplate.json#",
    "contentVersion": "1.0.0.0",
    "parameters": {},
    "variables": {
        "webAppName": "demo-app"
    },
    "resources": [
        {
            "type": "Microsoft.Web/sites",
            "apiVersion": "2015-08-01",
            "name": "[variables('webAppName')]",
            "location": "[resourceGroup().location]",
            "tags": {
                "[concat('hidden-related:', resourceGroup().id, '/providers/Microsoft.Web/serverfarms/frankdemo-plan')]": "Resource",
                "displayName": "[variables('webAppName')]"
            },
            "dependsOn": [
                "Microsoft.Web/serverfarms/frankdemo-plan"
            ],
            "properties": {
                "name": "[variables('webAppName')]",
                "serverFarmId": "[resourceId('Microsoft.Web/serverfarms/', 'frankdemo-plan')]"
            }
        },
        {
            "type": "Microsoft.Web/serverfarms",
            "apiVersion": "2016-09-01",
            "name": "frankdemo-plan",
            "location": "[resourceGroup().location]",
            "sku": {
                "name": "F1",
                "capacity": 1
            },
            "tags": {
                "displayName": "frankdemo-plan"
            },
            "properties": {
                "name": "frankdemo-plan"
            }
        }
    ],
    "outputs": {}
}

If you try to deploy this template, you will have an error because the name demo-app is already taken... no surprise here.

Let’s create a new variable suffix and we will use the Resource Group Id and Location as values. Then we just need to append this value to our name using the function concat().

    "variables": {
        "suffix": "[uniqueString(resourceGroup().id, resourceGroup().location)]",
        "webAppName": "[concat('demo-app', variables('suffix'))]"
    }

It’s that simple! Now every time you will deploy a unique string will be added to your resource name. That string will always be the same for a Resource Group-Location deployment.

Because some resource types are more restrictive than others you may need adapt your new name. Maybe the name of your resource plus those thirteen characters hash will be too long... No problem, you can easily make it shorter and all lower case just by using substring() and toLower().

 "parameters": {},
    "variables": {
        "suffix": "[substring(toLower(uniqueString(resourceGroup().id, resourceGroup().location)),0,5)]",
        "webAppName": "[concat('demo-app', variables('suffix'))]"
    }

Voila, and now by using ARM template you can deploy and redeploy without any problem reproducing the same solution you built. To learn move about the ARM template you can jump in the documentation, where you will find samples, step-by-step tutorials and more.

If you have a specific question about ARM templates or if you would like to see more tips like this one, don't hesitate to ask in the comments section or reach out on social media!

In a video, please!

I also have a video of this post if you prefer.




Image by StartupStockPhotos from Pixabay