Forem: Konkwo Godwin

How to achieve High Availability in Microsoft Azure

Konkwo Godwin — Sat, 20 May 2023 14:53:17 +0000

Most enterprises run mission- critical applications and services hence require very reliable systems and platforms to host such applications and solutions with minimum tolerance to downtime. Hosting on-premise is an option; however, cloud models offer so many comparative benefits of which high reliability (availability) is a critical one. Azure as one of the three leading cloud providers offers various tools and features that enables it offer high availability of its services and resources to organizations. This article conceptualizes high availability in Azure.

What is high availability
High availability ensures maximum potential uptime by the elimination of all points of failure to enable continious operation of applications even if one of the IT components it depends on fails. This is very critical for systems that cannot tolerate interruption in service and any downtime can result in gross financial losses, for instance network traffic is dependent on stable links but for high availability additional links are required for redundancy. If the main link fails traffic failover to the redundant path. In cloud technology, IT disruptions are mimimized via redundancy,failover and fault tolerance mechanisms.
For a systems to be highly available there must be an assurance of a certain percentage of uptime backed by a Service Level Agreement (SLA) ,for instance a system with 99.99% uptime will still be down 0.01% of the time ; hence no system is perfect.Note that reliability will still depend on the number of components, their configuration settings, and the resources allocated to each component.

Creating a highly available system requires three main characteristics:
Redundancy which ensures that systems critical operational elements have additional redundant components that can take over in case of failure
Monitoring collection of revenant data from a running system to detect when a likely failure will occur so that proactive actions will be taken
Failover switching from active component to a redundant one whenever monitoring indicates failure of the active running component.

Steps required to achieve high availability
Deploying Azure resources in paired regions: Azure region is a set of datacenters, deployed within a latency-defined perimeter and connected through a dedicated regional low-latency network Each region is paired with another in the same geography example Canada Central paired with Canada East to allow for replication of resources across multiple data centers to reduce the effects of natural disasters, outages, or other potential events that would affect a given data center’s ability to make it's services available, hence deploying resources in the two regions that are paired provides high availability should one region fail.

Deploying Azure Resources across multiple Availability zone: Azure offers yet another degree of availability protection via availability zones. Azure availability zones are physically and logically separated datacenters with their own power source, network, and cooling.but connected with an extremely low-latency network,hence they become a building block to delivering high availability applications. There are a minimum of three availability zones per region, although not all regions are availability zone enabled. Deploying Azure resource in multiple availability zones ensures the resource will be available in the event of failure on one of the zones.

Availability Sets

Availability sets as a feature of Azure assist to prevent potential outages caused by hardware and updates issues,
The two elements that enable availability sets are update domains and fault domains.
A fault domain is a logical grouping of hardware that shares a power source and network switch, while an update domain is a logical group of hardwares that undergo maintenance activities or rebooting at the same time.
An availability set distributes virtual machines across multiple fault domains and update domains which assist to prevent outages caused by a power or networking failure in a fault domain and also enables the virtual machines to be updated or maintained within their respective update domains without causing the set as a whole to be unavailable.

A virtual machine scale set
Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets enables you create and manage a group of load balanced virtual machines. A scale set can automatically scale out or scale in to adapt to changes in demand.
Load balancer regulates automatically to ensure that the access to the virtual machines in the set is balanced across virtual machines appropriately as virtual machines are added or removed from the set.hence
scale sets enable high availability for virtual machines,resources and the services that depend on them
.
Monitor and Automate:
For proactive identification and resolution of issues that may impact availability monitoring and automation are critical. Azure provides several monitoring and alerting services such as Azure Monitor, Azure Log Analytics, and Azure Application Insights that facilites collection and analyzing of telemetry data from applications and resources. By setting up automated alerts and notifications based on predefined thresholds or anomalies,detection and response to issues in real-time is made possible. Besides, Routine tasks, such as scaling, backups, and patching are automated using Azure Automation and Azure Logic Apps hence ensuring that your resources are always optimized for high availability.
Utilizing these measures applications hosted in Azure will definitely be highly available.

HOW TO ASSIGN A ROLE TO USER MEMBERS IN AZURE PORTAL AND CONTROL ACCESS TO THE RESOURCES WITHIN IT

Konkwo Godwin — Sun, 14 May 2023 13:18:45 +0000

Role-based access control (RBAC) is an approach to grant users, groups, applications or other azure services permission to Azure resources.
Below are the steps on how to assign role to a user in an Azure
Login into Azure portal and click on the search bar to search for Azure Active Directory to create a user account

Go to user and then add new user

The Images below show that a new user has been created and the details

Next is to assign role through a Resources group

Click on Access control (IAM) to enable us add role assignment

Here you select the role

Next is to select user which role is to be assigned to

Next is to review and assign as shown in the image below

Here the role has been assigned to the user created

I hope this simple steps will serve as guide on how to assign role to new users

HOW TO CREATE KEY VAULT IN AZURE AND STORE SECRET PASSWORD WITHIN THE KEY VAULT

Konkwo Godwin — Sat, 06 May 2023 04:06:06 +0000

Several services and applications use certificates and other secrets for authentication, encryption, data connections etc
For instance, assuming an organization has created a custom service that needs to communicate securely across its environment with other services. It would likely do so using credentials.
Hard-coding credentials in an application puts those credentials at risk for compromise and makes key management difficult at best.

Azure Key Vault enables one to securely store secrets such as tokens, passwords, certificates, cryptographic keys, and API keys.
Using the previous example, instead of storing the credentials in your custom application, you would store the credentials in Azure Key Vault. The application would call Key Vault whenever it needed to use the credentials.

Azure Key Vault also provides a centralized, cloud-based service for creating, storing, and managing keys and certificates. By storing secrets in Key Vault, one gains the capability to easily monitor and audit access and also gain the capability to easily use those secrets among many Azure services.
Steps to take in creating Key vault in Azure and how to store secret password within it are outlined below:

On clicking Create, the wizard page will displace then all the necessary information will be filled and click on Review + Create as shown in the image below:

Then click on create to deploy the resource

Wait for deployment to complete , after successful deployment then click on GO to Resource as shown in the image below

Key vault created. The next step is to add a secret to the key vault which can be done by clicking on secret at right side of the key vault page

Next click on Generate/import and fill the information as shown below

After filling in the necessary information as seen above and put the secret value that you want to keep in the azure key vault then click on create. At this stage, secret password is added.
Note: This password put in your secret value is actually the secret password you stored.

The image you will get below after clicking on create

The version of the secret is shown below:

Secret value highlighted be below:

Successfully a secret has been added to the Key vault.

Creating Resource group and Virtual machine using Command-line interface (CLI) in Azure

Konkwo Godwin — Wed, 03 May 2023 06:33:12 +0000

Definition
Azure command-line interface (Azure CLI) is a different approach of creating Virtual Machine in Azure other than PowerShell. Note that the Azure CLI is a command-driven scripting environment like PowerShell that also uses the Azure REST API to execute management tasks in Azure. Approximately identical to Azure PowerShell in capability and function, running on Windows, Linux, and Mac.
Like Azure PowerShell, you can run the Azure CLI in a web browser through the Azure Cloud Shell, giving one the capability to run the Azure CLI in schemes were running it natively might not be possible or feasible.
Steps to taken when using CLI to create Resource group and Virtual machine in Azure are highlighted below

Write and paste the resource group and virtual machine scripts to create Resource group and virtual machine as shown below

The resource group and virtual machine that are created are shown below

The deployed VM is running

How to use PowerShell to create Resource group and virtual Machine in Azure

Konkwo Godwin — Wed, 03 May 2023 05:52:15 +0000

Firstly go to Azure portal
Then click on the Azure cloud shell in the Azure portal and select PowerShell

Create a storage if you don’t have one. A Resource group script written to create a Resource group

Another script written for virtual machine

Virtual machine deployed

The deployed virtual machine is running

Creating a Virtual Machine within 60 seconds using Quickstart Template in Azure

Konkwo Godwin — Wed, 03 May 2023 04:15:07 +0000

CREATING VIRTUAL MACHINE WITHIN 60 SECONDS USING Quickstart Template IN AZURE

Step 1

Login to Azure portal, search and click on Custom deployment, after that select Linux Virtual Machine and then select Quickstart template

Step 2

Create a resource group, add username and password then leave other information as default, next click on Review+ create; finally click create

Note after deployment a simple Linux Virtual Machine is created

The Linux Virtual Machine is running

Implementing an Azure Function App

Konkwo Godwin — Wed, 03 May 2023 03:13:52 +0000

Definition

Azure Functions is an event driven server less computer platform; with Azure Functions application can be deployed and scaled in the cloud. Note automatic scaling is possible depending on the workload volume. It supports several programming languages like python, Java, JavaScript, C# etc. Azure function apps houses the execution of functions hence allows functions to be grouped for convenience in deployment, management, resource sharing and scaling as a logical unit. Below are steps for creating Function App

Step 1

Login to Azure portal and click create a resource
Find Function App on the search bar in the marketplace and click on Function App
Click on create under the function app plan
Fill in the instance details to create the function app that are the function app name, the method of publishing choose code, runtime stack choose .Net, version and region. Then select windows the operating system and consumption (server less) for the plan type
To enable the Application Insights select yes under monitoring then click Review + Create

Step 2

Click on create which initializes the deployment process
Completion of the deployment provides us with the 'Go to Resource' button to access the service instance we created.
Now the details of the Azure Function are obvious and the URL showcased to explore. The Metrics visualized for memory functions execution count and time duration of the execution unit.

Creating the trigger

Step 3

Under the function in the left menu click on Functions, next click create button. Now we are provided with the Development Environment via the portal, note we are given the choice of the template we want to use options as HTTP trigger, Azure Queue, String Trigger, Azure Event Hub Trigger etc
Select the HTTP trigger then name New function and set the authentication level to function, after setting all click on create

Step 4

The notification is updated about the creation of the function [ new function name] visit the details page of the function to see visualization in details, also note here that status is enabled that is currently running

Function testing

Step 5

Go to developer menu, select Code + Test. Now we have the HTTP trigger code. Click to Get function URL. Set key to default and copy the URL

Step 6

Go to your browser and paste the URL. We can now see the HTTP trigger success message that the HTTP triggered function has been created successfully

then add your name or a name at the end after ==
Hello Okonkwo. This HTTP triggered function executed successfully.

Guide on How to connect a Raspberry Pi Simulator to a device on IoT Hub

Konkwo Godwin — Wed, 03 May 2023 02:18:14 +0000

Internet of Things

Internet of Things( IoT) is a network of devices connected to the internet that are able to exchange real time data with other connected devices and systems over the internet or other networks. Azure IoT Hub is a managed service hosted in the Cloud that acts as a central messaging hub for communication between an IoT application and it's connected devices. In this article, Azure IoT Hub will be created in Azure Portal and connected to IoT device then authenticated with a Raspberry Pi Simulator.

Create an IoT Hub

Step1

Login to Azure Portal search for IoT Hub then select IoT hub under services. On the IoT Hub page select create. On the basics tab create new resource group, enter an IoT hub name, select region leave Tier and Daily message count as default

Step2

Click Review + Create to validate input data then click create to deploy the IoT Hub

Add an IoT device

Step 3

After IoT hub deployment, click on Go to resource
, under Device Management section click devices, then click Add device.

Step 4

Enter a name of your choice for the new IoT device, leave other settings as default and click save.

Step 5

If you don't see the new device click refresh on the IoT device page

Step 6
Click the IoT device you just created and copy the the primary connection string value which is used to authenticate a connection to the Raspberry Pi Simulator.

Testing the device using a Raspberry pi simulator

Step 7
Visit azure-sampled. github. IoT/ raspberry-pi-simulator/#Getstarted to use Raspberry pi simulator device.

Step 8
In the code area locate the line with " const connection String ="

Step 9
Replace ( the IoT hub device connection string) with the connection string copied from Azure Portal

Step 10
Click run on the Raspberry application, the console output should show the sensor data and messages that are sent from the Raspberry Pi Simulator to the Azure IoT Hub. Note that data and messages are sent each time the Raspberry pi LED flashes

Step 11
To check the number of messages from Raspberry Pi simulator go to Azure Portal click overview on the Azure IoT hub page and scroll down, under IoT Hub Usage you will see the number of messages.

Completed!

Creating a Virtual Machine; step by step guide

Konkwo Godwin — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 18:10:42 +0000

The required quick and simple steps to create a Virtual Machine are outlined below.
Note that a virtual machine is emulation of a physical computer made possible by virtualization ( hypervisors).In Azure a virtual machine is an instance of Azure Compute Service. A virtual machine can be created to run on different operating systems and configurations.

Step 1: sign up/login to Azure

Step 2: Create a new virtual machine

[A] Here virtual machine is selected in a variety of ways; one can click on virtual machine on the home page or type in virtual machine on search box or click on ' create a resource' button on portal menu then click on create on Windows Server 2019 Datacenter which is more specific. Since what is being created is a Windows Virtual Machine the basics tabs (Basics, Disk, Management, Advanced, Tags, Review + Create) are completed thus.
Choose subscription then create a resource group followed after this stage give the virtual machine a specific name, select a region and availability zone from the drop down menu.

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Step 3: Choose virtual machine size

From the size options, select the required size based on compute demand such as CPU power and RAM required.

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Step 4: Create username and password

Create a username and password under the administrator account section, both will be used to login to the virtual machine.

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Step 5:Allow inbound ports

Under inbound ports rules allow the default http(80), https (443) and RDP(3389).

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Since the wizard tabs are completed, validate the virtual machine provisioning by clicking on Review + Create . After the validation is successful , click on "create" to deploy the virtual machine.
After the deployment is successfully completed, a virtual machine has been created.

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To connect to the virtual machine, click on Go to resource, next click on connect option on the overview page of virtual machine.
Download the RDP

Next, open the downloaded RDP file and click on connect when

Input the credentials that were created under administrator account section

Great, the created virtual machine has been connected to.

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Now this virtual machine can be used as a computational resource.