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Configure Kubernetes Liveness and Readiness probes for ASP.NET Core 2.2 web application using Health checks

Health checks API is one of the new features of ASP.NET Core 2.2 for application health monitoring. Health checks are exposed by ASP.NET Core 2.2 application as HTTP endpoints which enables liveness and readiness probes.

Health checks are usually used with an external monitoring service or container orchestrator to check the status of an app. In this article, I am going to share steps needed to configure Kubernetes Liveness and Readiness probes for an ASP.NET Core 2.2 web application deployed in Azure Kubernetes Service cluster.

The dev tools used to develop these components are Visual Studio for Mac/Visual Studio 2017 and Visual Studio Code. AKS Dashboard as well as kubectl commands are used to create Kubernetes resources in AKS. The complete source code for this application can be downloaded from GitHub

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Deep dive – Create and configure an Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) cluster to use virtual nodes to scale the cluster

This article provides insights into Virtual Nodes feature (in preview) of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Enabling virtual nodes for AKS cluster allows to deploy or burst out containers to nodes backed by serverless Azure Container Instances beyond the defined cluster size. Also, along with fast provisioning of Pods, you only pay per second for their execution time. AKS virtual nodes currently support Linux container instances only.

Continue reading “Deep dive – Create and configure an Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) cluster to use virtual nodes to scale the cluster”

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Deploy SonarQube to Azure Kubernetes Service cluster and integrate with Azure DevOps build pipeline

This is the next part of the series on developing and deploying

  • Angular, ASP.NET Core Web API and SQL Server to Azure Kubernetes Service
  • Function Apps using Azure Functions 2.0 runtime

In this article, I am going to share steps needed to deploy SonarQube to Azure Kubernetes Service cluster and integrate with Azure DevOps pipeline to setup code analysis for Angular and ASP.NET Core web apps created in previous parts of this series. The previous articles of this series are

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) – Deploying Angular, ASP.NET Core and SQL Server on Linux

ASP.NET Core 2.1 Web API – Load App Configuration from appsettings.json, Dockerfile environment variables, Azure Key Vault Secrets and Kubernetes ConfigMaps/Secrets

Azure Functions 2.0: Create, debug and deploy to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Azure Functions 2.0: Create Function App from Docker Image (Functions triggered by Cosmos DB, Blob storage, Event Hub and SignalR service bindings)

Add real-time web functionality to Angular application using ASP.NET Core SignalR, Azure SignalR service and Azure SignalR Service bindings for Azure Functions 2.0

The tools used to develop these components are Visual Studio for Mac/VS Code/VS 2017, AKS Dashboard, Docker for Desktop and kubectl.

SonarQube

SonarQube provides the capability to not only show health of an application but also to highlight issues newly introduced. I am going to configure SQL Server as backend database for SonarQube.

Continue reading “Deploy SonarQube to Azure Kubernetes Service cluster and integrate with Azure DevOps build pipeline”

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Add real-time web functionality to Angular application using ASP.NET Core SignalR, Azure SignalR service and Azure SignalR Service bindings for Azure Functions 2.0

This is the next part of the series on developing and deploying

  • Angular, ASP.NET Core Web API and SQL Server to Azure Kubernetes Service
  • Function Apps using Azure Functions 2.0 runtime

In this article I am going to go through steps needed to add real-time web functionality to Angular App using ASP.NET Core SignalR and Azure SignalR Service bindings for Azure Functions 2.0. The specific topics which this article is going to cover are

  • Add ASP.NET Core SignalR to ASP.NET Core 2.1 Web API
    • ASP.NET Core SignalR
    • ASP.NET Core SignalR scale out using
      • Azure SignalR Service backplane
      • Redis Cache backplane
  • Publish/Subscribe messages to SignalR Hub from Angular App
  • Publish/Subscribe messages to SignalR Hub using Azure SignalR Service bindings for Azure Functions 2.0 from Angular App
  • Build Docker images and deploy to Azure Kubernetes Service

The previous articles of this series are

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) – Deploying Angular, ASP.NET Core and SQL Server on Linux

ASP.NET Core 2.1 Web API – Load App Configuration from appsettings.json, Dockerfile environment variables, Azure Key Vault Secrets and Kubernetes ConfigMaps/Secrets

Azure Functions 2.0: Create, debug and deploy to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Azure Functions 2.0: Create Function App from Docker Image (Functions triggered by Cosmos DB, Blob storage, Event Hub and SignalR service bindings)

The tools used to develop these components are Visual Studio for Mac/VS Code/VS 2017, AKS Dashboard, Docker for Desktop and kubectl.

Continue reading “Add real-time web functionality to Angular application using ASP.NET Core SignalR, Azure SignalR service and Azure SignalR Service bindings for Azure Functions 2.0”

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Azure Functions 2.0: Create Function App from Docker Image (Functions triggered by Cosmos DB, Blob storage, Event Hub and SignalR service bindings)

This is second part of the series on developing and deploying Azure Functions 2.0 where I will

  • Create a function triggered by Azure Cosmos DB
  • Create Azure SignalR Service bindings for Azure Functions 2.0
  • Publish Docker Image to Docker Hub
  • Create Function App from Docker Image in Azure Portal
  • Deploy functions to Azure Kubernetes Service from VS Code

The first part of the series provides details on creating functions triggered by Azure Blob storage and Event hub in Visual Studio Code along with deploying Azure Functions to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

Azure Functions 2.0: Create, debug and deploy to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Dev tools used to develop these components are Visual Studio Code for macOS and Docker. The complete source code for this article can be downloaded from GitHub.

Continue reading “Azure Functions 2.0: Create Function App from Docker Image (Functions triggered by Cosmos DB, Blob storage, Event Hub and SignalR service bindings)”

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ASP.NET Core 2.1 Web API – Load App Configuration from appsettings.json, Dockerfile environment variables, Azure Key Vault Secrets and Kubernetes ConfigMaps/Secrets

This article is second part of the series on Deploying Angular, ASP.NET Core and SQL Server on Linux to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster. The first part, describes steps needed to deploy these components to AKS. App configuration in ASP.NET Core is based on key-value pairs established by configuration providers. Configuration providers read configuration data into key-value pairs from a variety of configuration sources. In this article I am going to share multiple ways to load App configuration in ASP.net Core Web API

  • Hosting Environment specific appsettings.json
  • Dockerfile Environment Variables
  • Kubernetes
    • Container Environment variables with data from ConfigMap/Secret
    • Populate Volume (Config file) with data stored in a ConfigMap/Secret
  • Azure Key Vault Secrets

The tools used to develop these components are Visual Studio for Mac/VS Code/VS 2017, AKS Dashboard, Docker for Desktop and kubectl. The formatting of code snippets in this article may get distorted (especially yaml), thus please refer to GitHub repository for complete source code for this article.

Continue reading “ASP.NET Core 2.1 Web API – Load App Configuration from appsettings.json, Dockerfile environment variables, Azure Key Vault Secrets and Kubernetes ConfigMaps/Secrets”

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Ingest Azure Redis Cache messages into Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana cluster deployed in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

This is third article on the series on deploying Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana (ELK) in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster. The first article covered deploying non-SSL ELK to AKS and consuming messages from Azure Event Hub. The second article described how to secure communications in ELK and use Azure AD SAML based SSO for Kibana and Elasticsearch. In this article I am going to share steps needed to ingest Azure Redis Cache messages into Elasticsearch using Logstash’s Redis plugin.

Azure Redis Cache is based on the popular open-source Redis cache. It is typically used as a cache to improve the performance and scalability of systems that rely heavily on backend data-stores. Logstash’s Redis plugin will read events from Redis instance. I will create a Logstash event processing pipeline where I will define Redis as input and Elasticsearch as output. The component diagram has been updated to add Azure Redis Cache integration.

The dev tools used to develop these components are Visual Studio for Mac/VS Code, AKS Dashboard, kubectl, bash and openssl. The code snippets in this article are mostly yaml snippets and are included for reference only as formatting may get distorted thus please refer to GitHub repository for formatted resources.

Continue reading “Ingest Azure Redis Cache messages into Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana cluster deployed in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)”