DEV Community: Tijani Mojeed

How do you achieve High Availability in Azure

Tijani Mojeed — Wed, 17 May 2023 20:40:26 +0000

Leveraging a cloud computing model offers several benefits, both in financial cost and human resources. One of the reason companies choose cloud computing for their business operations is its High Availability which is the one of the Cloud computing benefits. Let us have some definitions of High Availability.

What is High Availability

High availability: Refers to a set of technologies that minimize IT disruptions by providing business continuity of IT services through redundant, fault-tolerant, or failover-protected components inside the same data center.

High availability: is a quality of computing infrastructure that allows it to continue functioning, even when some of its components fail. This is important for mission-critical systems that cannot tolerate interruption in service, and any downtime can cause damage or result in financial loss.

High availability: describes a system that is available for use without significant outages and that is generally backed by a service level agreement (SLA). For example, if a service has an SLA of 99.9 percent, the service is guaranteed to be available 99.9 percent of the time. Translated to the real world, that means the service can be unavailable no more than 43.2 minutes in a 30-day period to meet the 99.9 percent SLA for that month. A financially backed SLA provides a credit for the time in which the service was unavailable.

The basic elements of high availability
The following three elements are essential to a highly available system:
• Redundancy: ensuring that any elements critical to system operations have an additional, redundant component that can take over in case of failure.
• Monitoring: collecting data from a running system and detecting when a component fails or stops responding.
• Failover: a mechanism that can switch automatically from the currently active component to a redundant component, if monitoring shows a failure of the active component.

Before we talk about the ways on how High Availability can be achieved in Azure, let’s highlight another point which is the A 5-Step Azure High Availability Checklist

Define Availability Requirements. Identify the cloud workloads that require high availability and their usage patterns.
Plan your High Availability Architecture.
Perform End-to-End Testing.
Deploy Applications Consistently.
Monitor Application Health.

After we have known what High Availability is, the basic element and the checklist, Lets quickly go to how we can achieve High Availability in Azure. Bellow are the ways High Availability can be achieved in Azure

Deploying Azure resources in more than one region: Azure region is a grouping of data centers that interact to provide redundancy and availability for the services hosted within that region. For example, West US, Central US, and North Central US are three of many regions in the United States. Each region is paired with another in the same geography 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 serve up the services hosted in that data center.
For example, when you are deploying a Virtual Machine in Azure and want to prevent the Virtual Machine from being fail when there is outage or factors that can cause failure, region pairing is one the ways to prevent this issue to occur.
Deploying Azure Resources such as Virtual Machine across multiple Availability zone: Azure offers another level of availability protection through availability zones. An availability zone is a physically separate zone within a region, each with its own power, network, and cooling. You might think of an availability zone as a data center, although the separation of power, network, and cooling defines the zone, not the physical data center. An availability zone might encompass more than one data center. There are a minimum of three availability zones per region, although not all regions offer availability zones.
For example, assume you need to deploy a set of virtual machines (VMs) to host a line of business service but need to ensure that the service remains available in the event of a failure at one of the data centers hosting the VMs. You deploy VMs to an additional availability zone so that if an incident does occur at one of the data centers, the VMs in the other availability zone will unaffected.
You must use availability zones if you want to achieve certain SLAs. For example, deploying VMs to two or more availability zones results in an SLA of 99.99 percent
Availability Sets: Availability sets are another feature of Azure that help to avoid potential outages caused by hardware issues, updates, or other events.
The are 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, similar to a physical rack in a data center while an update domain is a logical group of hardware that undergoes maintenance activities or reboot events at the same time.
An availability set distributes VMs across multiple fault domains and update domains which helps guard against outages caused by a power or networking event in a fault domain and also enables the VMs to be updated or otherwise maintained within their respective update domains without causing the set as a whole to be unavailable.
Virtual Machine Scale Sets: A virtual machine scale set simplifies creating and managing a group of load-balanced VMs. A scale set can automatically scale out or scale in to adjust to changes in demand.
Load balancing adjusts automatically to ensure that the access to the VMs in the set is balanced across VMs appropriately as VMs are added or removed from the set.
Scale sets therefore enable high availability for your VMs and the services that rely on them.

Choosing Azure Cloud platform for your business guaranteed you a smooth continuous business operation and save you from system downtime.

HOW TO CONNECT RDP AND HTTP TO A WINDOWS VIRTUAL MACHINE AND INSTALL WEB A SERVER USING POWER SHELL AND ADD A DATA DISK

Tijani Mojeed — Thu, 11 May 2023 14:02:45 +0000

In the early days of computing, systems were always physical, meaning that a computer was a discrete collection of hardware that ran an operating system and often used various input and output devices. Imagine a data center where every computer is a separate, physical device. You can also imagine that the requirements for power, cooling, networking, and management would be significant. Virtualization changed that model. Although physical computers are still a major component of many organizations’ IT infrastructure, organizations are increasingly moving toward the use of virtual machines (VMs).
A virtual machine is an emulation of a computer system that provides the functionality of a physical computer.
The first step is to create a windows virtual machine by following the steps below
 Log in to your Azure account at https://portal.azure.com/
 From the Azure Portal dashboard, click on the "Create a resource" button in the upper left-hand corner of the screen.
 Type "Virtual Machine" in the search bar and select "Virtual Machine" from the search results and click on create

 On the "Basics" tab, select the subscription you want to use, and then create a new resource group or select an existing one.

 Give the virtual machine a name and choose the region where you want to create the virtual machine.

 Select the image for the virtual machine. You can choose from a list of pre-configured images provided by Microsoft or use your custom image.

 Choose the size of the virtual machine by selecting the desired number of cores and amount of RAM.

 On the "Settings" tab, configure the desired settings for your virtual machine, such as storage options, network settings, and administrative account details.

 Select inbound port; here you select RDP AND HTTP because we will test the Virtual machine IP address on a web book browser.
 Finally, review all the settings and click on the "Create" button to create the virtual machine.

Next is to click on resources

After that, go the RDP and download file RDP file and click on connect and a Enter your user name and password then click on connect virtual machine displayed as shown in the image below

The next step is to type PowerShell on the search bar of the Virtual Machine you created and install web server in it as shown in the image below

You have successfully Installed Web Server on your Virtual Machine, you can then cope the IP Address and test on a web browser for confirmation.

The next step is to add Data Disk to it and initialize the disk to make it useable. Doing this is by going back to the virtual machine resource and click on disk at the left hand-side of the virtual machine and fill the necessary details and click on save as shown in the image below

Next is to go to your window virtual machine search bar and search for "Create and format hard disk partitions" and click on it and a page will display then select disk 2 and click ok. see below image

Here, The details of the disk you added on virtual machine will display then right click and select "New Simple Volume" and click on it, then click next as shown in the images below

Next is to format it first and that can be done by changing the "new volume" to the name you want and click ok

After that, here you have your data disk added and initialized

Thank you for reading and how hope you can install web server and add data disks to your virtual machine.

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

Tijani Mojeed — Wed, 10 May 2023 08:24:36 +0000

Role-based access control (RBAC) is a primary authorization mechanism in Azure that enables you to define who has access to Azure resources and what they can do with those resources. For example, if yours is a large organization, you likely have a team responsible for networking, another team for managing VMs, another for databases and database servers, and so on.
RBAC enables you to apply that role-based governance to your Azure resources. For example, you could use RBAC to enable the members of your SQL team to:
Manage SQL Server VMs and Azure SQL Databases. Or, you might use RBAC to enable a Linux team to manage your Linux servers but not Windows servers, and vice versa. You can use RBAC in many ways to control Azure management functions, including managing users, resources, VNets, and so on.
Following is a list of some examples of how you might use RBAC:
• Allow your server team to manage VMs in a subscription and your network team to manage the virtual networks.
• Allow your DBA team to manage database VMs and databases in one or more resource groups.
• Allow a user to manage all resources in a particular resource group.
• Allow an application to access specific resources in a resource group.
• Allow a small group of users to manage users in Azure.
To apply RBAC, you first create a role assignment, which consists of three elements that effectively translate to who, what, and where:
• Security principal: Specifies the individual user, group, or managed identity to which the
role assignment will apply.
• Role definition: A collection of permissions that specifies the operations that can be performed, such as read, write, and delete.
• Scope: Specifies the resources to which the role assignment applies.
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

Click on Azure Active Directory and you will a page displayed where you will now click on user. See below image

After clicking on the user, the next is to fill the necessary information in new user page that displayed and click on create as seen below

After clicking on create, your new user would be created in your and you can now click on reset password at the top of the page and reset password, then copy send the user's name and password to the person or team that you want to assign role to and have access to the Resources in your Azure portal. see below image

At this stage, the user's name and Password has been created.
The next step is to assign role to the user by going back to portal Home, then search for Resources Group. After this, you can create new Resources group by clicking on create and fill the information therein OR you can select from the one you have created before as shown in the image below

After selecting, click on the Resources group and click on Access control (IAM) at the right-hand side of the Resource group page. See below image for clarification

After that, click on Add

After clicking on Add, you the below page displayed and type on the search bar what type the Resources you want the user to have access to or the role you want to assign. Select the role and click on next

After clicking on next, the next page is Members where you will the member that you want to give access to selected resource

Select member

Then click on select

After clicking on select, the next you will see is a page that shows the details of the role you assigned, the user's name, the role. Seen the image below

Now I have successfully assigned a role to Alisha and the role assigned to her is Virtual Machine Contributors.

THANK YOU FOR READING AND I HOPE THIS WILL SERVE AS A GUIDE ON HOW TO ASSIGN ROLE IN AZURE.

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

Tijani Mojeed — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 11:47:53 +0000

Many services and applications use certificates and other secrets for authentication, data connections, encryption, and so on.
For example, imagine your organization has created a custom service that needs to communicate securely across your 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 you 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, you gain the capability to easily monitor and audit access and also gain the capability to easily use those secrets among many Azure services.

Below are the steps to take in creating Key vault in Azure and how to store secret password within it.

Go to portal.azure.com and login to your azure account
Then click on the search bar and type key vault
Click on create

After clicking on create, the page will displace where you will fill all the necessary information and click on review and create as shown in the image below

A review page will displace, then click on create to deploy. See the image below

Wait for deployment, after deployment then click on Resource as shown in the image below

And then you have your key vault created. see the image below

The next step is to add a secret to the key vault and this can be done by clicking on Secret at right side of your key vault page and you have this

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

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

See the image you will get below after clicking on create

You have successfully add a secret to your Key vault.

Thank you for reading and I hope you find this useful.

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

Tijani Mojeed — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 12:36:50 +0000

Azure command-line interface (Azure CLI) is another way of creating Virtual Machine in Azure apart from PowerShell. Like Azure PowerShell, the Azure CLI is a command-driven scripting environment that also uses the Azure REST API to execute management tasks in Azure. It is nearly identical to Azure PowerShell in capability and function, running on Windows, Linux, and Mac.
Also, as with Azure PowerShell, you can run the Azure CLI in a web browser through the Azure Cloud Shell, giving you the capability to run the Azure CLI in scenarios were running it natively might not be possible or feasible.
Below are the steps to take when using CLI to create Resource group and Virtual machine in Azure.

After clicking on Bash, then you can paste your resource group script to create your Resource group just as shown below

From the above image, it shows that resource group has been created which “myCoolRg” and this can also be confirm by clicking on Resource group in Azure portal to see if our resource group has been created. See the image below

The next step is to create virtual machine by pasting the script as shown below

Click on the virtual machine name “myVMcli” to see if it has been created and running.
See the image below

Wow! we have our virtual machine running.

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

Tijani Mojeed — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 15:33:44 +0000

The first step is to 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

After creating your storage, you can write you script of what you want to create as shown below in the image and paste it in the PowerShell

From the above image, it shows that your Resource group has been created and that can be confirm by going to Resource group and check the list. My resource group name is myResourceGroup as you can see belowm, Also the script of whatever you want create can be pasted below the created resource as shown in Image

Then you have your virtual machine created using PowerShell in your resource group

Then you have your Virtual Machine running, to confirm if your Virtual machine has been created, go to resource group and click on the resource group you created as shown below

To check the performance of your Virtual Machine, click on Azure Advisor and see recommendation

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

Tijani Mojeed — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 13:25:25 +0000

Go to Azure portal
Search and click on Custom deployment, after that select Linux virtual machine and select Quick Start template as shown in the image below.

Create a resource group
Put your user name and password and then leave the information as default.
Click on create and review

After creating and deployment have completed the click on go to Resource

Then you have your Simple Linux Virtual Machine created

Here you go, you have your Linux virtual Machine running.

Creating a Function App in Azure to provide a Hello message with your name.

Tijani Mojeed — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 14:28:39 +0000

The Azure Functions service enables you to host a single method or function that runs in response to an event such as a queued message, HTTP request, or timer event.
You can use any of several programming languages, such as Python, Java, JavaScript, C#, and PowerShell, to create functions.
Like many other services, the Azure Functions service scales automatically, enabling your function to scale to meet changes in demand without any interaction or configuration by your developers. Perhaps best of all, you pay only for the time and resources needed while a function is running.
Generally, an Azure function is stateless, meaning it does not store its state from execution to execution. Instead, it executes the same every time it responds to an event.
Let me quickly walkthrough on how to create a function App in Azure to provide a Hello message with your name.
Search for function App on Azure portal and click on create

Select your subscription, and fill in the required information as shown in the image below and click on create and review

After that, a page will displace where you click on create as shown in the image below

Next is to click on Go to resource

After that, it will take you to this page where you will click on function at left hand side

After function then click on Create

This will lead you to a page where you have HTTP trigger, New function and Authorization level. Fill in the “New Function” and the click on create

Then you have this

Next is to click on get function url and copy

Then open browser and paste the “function url” you copied and add &name=then put your name, carefully check the image below to understand this part.

For you to know what you will add join to the copied “Function URL” click on code and check. Carefully look at the point circled in the image below

Your likes, comment, addition or subtractions would be highly appreciated.

How to send messages to IoT Hub in Azure

Tijani Mojeed — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 15:29:12 +0000

The Internet of Things (IoT) describes the ability of devices equipped with sensors to collect data and send that data to an endpoint for logging, processing, analysis, and/or other actions.
Consolidating sensor data is just one aspect of IoT. Controlling and managing the distributed devices is another aspect.
The scenarios below are examples of IoT
 Consider an automobile manufacturer that builds sensors into its vehicles to monitor performance and sends that data to Azure for real-time analytics Or
 Imagine a connected house where the refrigerator, oven, microwave, lighting systems, garage door, thermostat, and security system all collect and send data to a central app or service to enable the homeowner to monitor and potentially control the function of all of these systems Or
 Consider a manufacturing floor where sensors track the manufacturing process and send data back to a centralized system that operators and engineers use to monitor and control the manufacturing process.

Azure includes several services that enable organizations to integrate IoT devices quickly and easily and deploy solutions based on IoT.

Azure IoT has 3 components

 Azure IoT Hub Azure IoT Hub: is an Azure-hosted service that functions as a message hub for bi-directional communication between your deployed IoT devices and Azure services.
• IoT Hub supports multiple protocols and open-source software development kits (SDKs), enabling it to integrate most IoT devices.
• IoT Hub is highly scalable, which means it can integrate billions of devices.
• IoT Hub supports multiple communication and control functions.
• IoT Hub can route messages received from devices to other Azure services as needed.
• IoT Hub is the service that integrates your IoT devices and other Azure services. However, IoT Hub does not provide analysis services or dashboards for viewing device state or analyzing data. That is where IoT Central comes in.
Below describes the procedure on how to send messages to IoT Hub in Azure
 Go to Azure portal
 On the search bar, type IoT Hub and search
 Click on create

 Input all necessary details as indicated in the image below and click on review and create

 After the IoT Hub has finished deployed

 Create on Resources and then you have your IoT Hub

Step 2 is adding an IoT device
Click on devices after which a page will displace and click add device

Put name on device ID and click on save then you have the below image, at this stage you have successfully add an IoT device

Step 3 is testing the device using the Raspberry Pi Simulator.
Click on the name you used as your device ID, then you have your ID details as shown in the image below

Next is to click and copy the primary connection String and paste it on your downloaded Raspberry Pi simulator on number 15 that is, replace what you have in the raspberry pi with the Primary connection string you copied then click on run

Next is to go back to your Azure portal and check for messages sent to your IoT Hub

From the above image you can see messages has been sent to the IoT Hub.

How to Create a Windows Virtual Machine in Azure

Tijani Mojeed — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 22:43:58 +0000

Virtualization changed that model. Although physical computers are still a major component of many organizations’ IT infrastructure, organizations are increasingly moving toward the use of virtual machines (VMs).
A virtual machine is an emulation of a computer system that provides the functionality of a physical computer.

Below is a step by step on how to create a windows virtual machine in Azure

Log in to your Azure account at https://portal.azure.com
From the Azure Portal dashboard, click on the "Create a resource" button in the upper left-hand corner of the screen.
Type "Virtual Machine" in the search bar and select "Virtual Machine" from the search results.
On the "Basics" tab, select the subscription you want to use, and then create a new resource group or select an existing one.
Give the virtual machine a name and choose the region where you want to create the virtual machine.
Select the image for the virtual machine. You can choose from a list of pre-configured images provided by Microsoft or use your custom image.
Choose the size of the virtual machine by selecting the desired number of cores and amount of RAM.
On the "Settings" tab, configure the desired settings for your virtual machine, such as storage options, network settings, and administrative account details.
Customize any additional settings, such as extensions or boot diagnostics.
Finally, review all the settings and click on the "Create" button to create the virtual machine.
You have now created a virtual machine in the Azure Portal. You can now access your virtual machine via Remote Desktop, SSH or Azure PowerShell, depending on your desired configuration.

The image below illustrate a windows virtual machine created in Azure.

fig. 1.1 shows the illustration on how windows virtual machine in Azure is being created.

fig1.2 shows a virtual machine created in Azure which is ready for use.