How To

Enabling Conditional Access for Azure Active Directory Applications

Posted on by nedbellavance

I’m in the process of updating my Managing Identities in Azure Active Directory course on Pluralsight. One of the demos in the course is configuring Conditional Access for an Azure Active Directory integrated application. The idea is that you can set up a Conditional Access policy that restricts users from logging into the application from outside the US. When I went to go record the updated demo, the application I had created in Azure AD was missing. What followed was a journey into the bowels of Azure AD to find what triggers the appearance of an app in Conditional Access.

Continue reading “Enabling Conditional Access for Azure Active Directory Applications” →

Azure Advent Calendar 2019 – AKS and Pod Identity

Posted on by nedbellavance

The Azure Advent Calendar is a fantastic idea from Gregor Suttie and Richard Hooper. Everyday, starting on December 1st and going until Christmas, they are posting three new Azure videos on their YouTube channel. They were originally planning to post a single video each day, but the response was so overwhelming they were able to schedule 75 total videos! I guess they shouldn’t be surprised, this is the Microsoft MVP community we are talking about. When I asked for a few guests on my fledgling Day Two Cloud podcast, the response was similarly overwhelming.

My humble entry is being published today, December 3rd, and the topic is running the Pod Identity solution on Azure Kubernetes Service.

The code for the demo can be found on my GitHub in this repository. As I mentioned in the demo, there is a bug in the azure-identity library for Python that is preventing my Flask application from working properly. I’m submitting a bug report, and if it gets fixed I’ll post an update here.

I’m excited about all the great content that will be published in the run up to Christmas. You can see the complete calendar at their website. Thanks again to Gregor and Richard for inviting me to be a part of this event.

Happy viewing and happy holidays!

-Ned

Ned in the Cloud LLC – Six Month Check-in

Posted on by nedbellavance

Six Month Check-In: Cruisin’

In May of 2018, I decided to start my own company (Ned in the Cloud LLC), quit my lucrative consulting job, and hang my own shingle for content creation, education, and technical writing. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. I actually decided to strike out on my own in September of 2018, it just took me until May of 2019 to do it. I won’t rehash the entire thing now. If you want to hear the whole story, check out my detailed post or this episode of The Full Stack Journey podcast.

So how are things going six months later? In a word. Awesome. That’s all you wanted to know? Sweet, thanks for reading.

.

..

…

OH. You’re still here? Neat! Here’s what’s been going on since my post back in August.

Continue reading “Ned in the Cloud LLC – Six Month Check-in” →

Microsoft Ignite 2019 – The Great Marketing Shift

Posted on by nedbellavance

The Ennui of Success

In 2018, I attended Microsoft Ignite and one of the things I noticed during the keynote was how stale everything seemed. Satya appeared to not only be lacking in excitement, but also clearly overcompensating by trying to be super excited about boring things. It was painful to watch and I thought perhaps we were witnessing the beginning of the end for Satya’s tenure as the CEO of Microsoft. His mission in many ways had been accomplished. The culture at Microsoft had been irrevocably altered, the product direction and priorities shifted to accommodate our service based economy, and their market cap was set to crest $1 trillion. If Satya was planning to leave on a high note, this would definitely qualify.

Continue reading “Microsoft Ignite 2019 – The Great Marketing Shift” →

Using Ultra SSD Storage with Azure Kubernetes Service

Posted on by nedbellavance

In a previous post, I performed a storage performance benchmark of Azure Managed Disks and Azure Files for Azure Kubernetes Service. The testing included the now generally available Ultra SSD class of Managed Disk. The process for using Ultra SSD with AKS was fraught with peril, caveats, and an assist from the AKS product group to get it all working. I thought I would detail how I went about enabling Ultra SSDs with AKS in case someone else was struggling with the same.

Continue reading “Using Ultra SSD Storage with Azure Kubernetes Service” →