DEV Community: Blessing Oseyenum

Deploying Windows 11 VM in Azure

Blessing Oseyenum — Thu, 23 May 2024 23:11:33 +0000

Azure Virtual Machines(vm) are virtualized instances of computer systems that enable users to run applications and services without the need to manage the underlying hardware infrastructure. They provide on-demand, scalable computing resources in the cloud.
Deploying a virtual machine in Azure can be done with a few easy steps. In this post, I'll be deploying a windows 11 vm and connecting to it.
Let's go!

Select + Create.

Give your resource group a name.

Input virtual machine name and select Region.

Select image. I'll be selecting windows 11 pro.

Select size.

-
Enter user name, password and confirm password.

Select inbound port.

Check licensing.

Select Review + Create.

Wait for validation, then select Create.

Wait for deployment to complete. Select Go to Resource.

To connect to the virtual machine. Select connect.

Select Native RDP.

Select Download RDP file.

Open RDP file and select connect.

Enter password and select ok to connect.

Click Accept.

Here is it guys! Our vm is running.

Creating a Storage Account for a Public Website on Azure

Blessing Oseyenum — Wed, 22 May 2024 10:49:00 +0000

In this post, I'll be showing you how to create and configure a storage account for a company's website. The storage account is for product images and videos, documents and so on. Requirements for this are:

Storage account with high availability.
Storage account should have anonymous public access.
Blob storage container for the website images, videos and other documents.
Soft delete so files can be easily restored.
Blob versioning to keep track of the different website product document versions.
So let's get to it

In Azure portal, search for and select Storage accounts.

Select + Create.

Give your resource group a name.

Input storage account name and select Region.

To ensure high availability, for Redundancy select Read access Geo Redundant Storage.

Select Review then Create.

Wait for deployment to complete, then Go to Resource.

To ensure information on public website is accessible go to the Settings section of the storage account, select the Configuration blade.

Ensure the Allow blob anonymous access setting is Enabled.

Save changes.

To create a blob storage container for the content of the website, go to the Data storage section of storage account, select the Containers blade.

Select + Container.

Give container a name and select Create.

Customers should be able to view the images without being authenticated. Configure anonymous read access for the public container blobs.
Select your container.

On the Overview blade, select Change access level. Ensure the Public access level is set to Blob (anonymous read access for blobs only). Select OK.

Test by uploading a file to the public container. It could be an image or a text file. Select Upload.

Browse for files and select a file. Browse to a file of your choice.

Select Upload.

Close the upload window, Refresh the page and ensure your file was uploaded.

Select your uploaded file.

On the Overview tab, copy the URL.

Paste the URL into a new browser tab.

Uploaded image file will display in the browser.

Now, it's time to configure soft delete. This is to ensure that documents can be restored if they’re deleted.
Go to the Overview blade of the storage account. In the Properties section, locate the Blob service section.

Select the Blob soft delete setting.

Ensure the Enable soft delete for blobs is checked and change the Keep deleted blobs for (in days) setting to 21.

Save changes.

Next step is to configure versioning. This is to keep track of the different website product document versions.
Go to the Overview blade of the storage account. In the Properties section, locate the Blob service section. Select the Versioning setting.

Ensure the Enable versioning for blobs checkbox is checked.

Save changes.

Creating Storage Accounts in Azure

Blessing Oseyenum — Tue, 21 May 2024 17:19:36 +0000

Creating a storage acoount can be done easily with just a few simple steps. Today, we will be creating a storage account with simple configuration that can be easily changed and the lowest- cost redundancy option (LRS). Locally Redundant Storage(LRS) is used when content of storage isn’t important enough to be backed up and doesn’t need to be restored if the data is overwritten or removed.

We are going to:

Create a resource group and a storage account.
Configure simple settings in the storage account.

Create resource group and a storage account.

Go to Azure portal, search for and select Resource groups.

Select Create

Give your resource group a name and select a region. For the purpose of this exercise I will be naming our resource group- storagerg, and we will be selecting East US region

Select Review + create
Select Create

Now that resource group is created, move on to create a storage account.

In the Azure portal, search for and select Storage accounts

Select + Create.
On the Basics tab, select your Resource group and give your storage account a name. The storage account name must be unique in Azure, as no two storage accounts have the same name

Set the Performance to Standard and select Locally-redundant storage (LRS) in the Redundancy drop-down.

Select Review + Create to validate and then Create Wait for the storage account to deploy and then Go to resource.

Now configure simple settings in the storage account.

Go to the Settings section, select the Configuration blade.

Ensure Secure transfer required is Enabled, so that the storage account only accept requests from secure connections.
Until the storage is needed again, disable requests to the storage account. Ensure Allow storage account key access is Disabled.

Ensure the Minimal TLS version is set to Version 1.2.

Save changes.

In the Security + networking section, select the Networking blade.

Ensure Public network access is set to Enabled from all networks.

Save changes.

This is it! A storage account has been successfully created.

How to Create Resource Group on Azure

Blessing Oseyenum — Tue, 14 May 2024 21:58:47 +0000

Sign in to Azure portal (portal.azure.com) if you already have an account. If not, sign up for one
Select Resource Groups

OR type in resource group in search bar.

Select Create

Enter the values

Click on drop down to select region

Select Review + Create

Select Create

Select Refresh from the top menu to refresh the resource group list.
Select the newly created resource group to open it.

Key Concepts of Cloud Computing

Blessing Oseyenum — Fri, 10 May 2024 21:02:10 +0000

Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of computing services - such as servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics and intelligence - over the internet. Computer system resources especially data storage and computing power are available on-demand, without direct management by the user. Users, rather than acquiring and managing physical systems, as is with the case on premises, can rent these system resources from cloud service providers, paying for only what is used and hereby saving cost. Cloud service models can be broadly divided into infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), and software-as-a-service (SaaS). Based on deployment model, cloud can also be classified as public, private, and hybrid.

Now let's take a look at some key concepts in cloud computing.

Virtualization

Virtualization is a process that allows a computer to share its hardware resources with multiple digitally separated environments. It is a technology used to create virtual representations of servers, storage, networks and other physical machines.

Virtualization uses software to create an abstraction layer over computer hardware(server), enabling the division of a single computer's hardware components—such as processors, memory and storage—into multiple virtual machines (VMs). Each VM runs its own operating system (OS) and behaves like an independent computer, even though it is running on just a portion of the actual underlying computer hardware.

Scalability

Scalability in cloud computing refers to the ability of a system, application, or service to handle increasing workload demands by dynamically allocating and deallocating computing resources such as processing power, storage, and bandwidth.

Cloud scalability offers a number of key benefits, including improved flexibility, better cost control, increased performance, and enhanced reliability. It allows you to scale your IT resources up or down quickly in response to changing business needs, which can help you optimize your operations, minimize downtime, and improve the overall performance of your IT infrastructure. It enables organizations to efficiently accommodate growth, handle spikes in user traffic, and maintain performance and availability as demand fluctuates.

Scalability could be vertical or horizontal. Vertical scaling (scaling up) involves increasing the capacity of individual resources, such as upgrading to a more powerful server with higher CPU, memory, or storage capacity. Vertical scalability can be achieved more easily through instance resizing or upgrading virtual machine configurations without service interruption. On the other hand, horizontal scaling (or "scaling out") focuses on adding more identical resources in parallel to handle increased demand. Horizontal scalability is commonly achieved through load balancing and auto-scaling mechanisms that distribute incoming traffic across multiple servers or instances and dynamically provision additional resources as needed.

Agility

Agility in cloud computing is the rapid provisioning of computer resources. It is frequently used to describe the capacity to create, test, and launch software applications quickly. Agility provides users with faster access to computing resources. Users are able to rapidly scale up or down resources, add or remove services and make adjustments to configurations without significant delay or disruptions

Agility allows organizations to respond quickly to changing business needs, improve efficiency, enables faster innovation and deployment.

High Availability

High Availability in cloud computing is the ability of a system or application to remain accessible and operational for a long period of time. It specifies a design that aims to minimize the downtime of a system or service. So, the main objective of high availability is to keep these systems and services continuously available.

In a high availability system, critical applications are often distributed across multiple servers, data centers, or even geographical regions.

Availability is expressed as a percentage of uptime in a year. What we generally see is availability measured between 99% to 100%. This means service with 100% uptime will work 24/7 throughout the year and the system will never fail. Now, that is pretty rare. On the other side, anything less than 99% should be a red flag and you should check what is restricting the provider to reach industry standards.

Fault tolerance

Fault tolerance refers to the ability of a system to continue operating without interruption when one or more of its components fail. It involves designing systems with built-in resilience mechanisms to detect, isolate, and recover from failures, ensuring continuous availability and reliability of services.

Fault tolerance is essential for ensuring the reliability, availability, and resilience of cloud-based systems and services. By implementing redundancy, automatic failover, data replication, health monitoring, self-healing mechanisms, and geographic redundancy, organizations can mitigate the impact of failures and maintain uninterrupted operation of critical services.

Global Reach

Global reach in cloud computing refers to the ability of cloud services and resources to be accessible from multiple geographic locations worldwide. This capability is essential for businesses and organizations that operate on a global scale or have users, customers, or offices distributed across different regions.

Major cloud providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) maintain a network of data centers spread across various regions worldwide. These data centers are strategically located in different geographic locations to ensure proximity to users and compliance with local regulations.

Elasticity

Elasticity refers to the ability of a cloud to automatically expand or compress the infrastructural resources on a sudden up and down in the requirement so that the workload can be managed efficiently. This helps to minimize infrastructural costs. It addresses those scenarios where the resource requirements fluctuate up and down suddenly for a specific time interval.

Cloud Scalability vs. Cloud Elasticity

Scalability and elasticity in cloud computing are similar and often work together, though they have different definitions.

Simply put, scalability is the ability to add or subtract computing resources as needed. Elasticity is how fast you can adjust to and use those resources.

Scalability usually refers to the steady, planned addition of resources such as networking, processing power, or data storage capacity, that are needed for steady, sustained growth. On the other hand, elasticity tends to refer to how automatic the process is for adding or removing resources, often to respond to variable demand. For example, adding more processing power or storage capacity automatically to compensate for a spike in traffic, then decreasing it automatically when the spike is over.