DEV Community: Olusegun Solomon

Configuring Ping URL Tests/Health Checks with Azure Monitor Application Insights

Olusegun Solomon — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 18:00:21 +0000

What is Azure Monitor Application Insight
As a deep dive, Application Insights serves as your application's health guardian. It offers insights into how your applications are performing and being utilized. Gain valuable data on performance metrics, user engagement, and retention.

Application Insight also tracks essential details like request and failure rates, response times, popular pages, and user demographics. With features like an application dependency map and performance insights, Application Insights equips you with the tools to master your application's well-being and performance.
Availability Alerts
Application Insights availability sends web requests to your application at regular intervals from points around the world. You can receive alerts if your application isn't responding or if it responds too slowly.

For this demo, we focused on availability. We're3 going to configure a URL ping test to check our availability and this will send an HTTP request to our Web App URL to see if there's a response. and then we're going to configure an alert based on the results of that test. Lets get started!
STEPS

Create web app using the app service on the azure portal copy the url is similar to htpps:solowebapp.azurewebsites.net

2.Go to azure portal search for azure monitor

3.click application under insight

4.click create

5 fill the reaquired information and and click go to resource

6 locate Availability under investigate.

7 click add classic test

fill the required classic test information such as name=as desired sku=ping url= https//:(url for the web app) test frequency: 5min Test location; select our desired location Success criteria: Htpp response Time out: 120 min Status code: 200 Alert Status: enabled Click create. 9.Click refresh to see your location.

HOW TO CONFIGURE ALERT
a.Click on the elispes>>...<<

b. click open rules

c. Locate alert rule configuration and select action group

d. Select create action group

e. Fill the required intance details
action group name :
Display name:
Click next to notification

f.Select notification type
Select email/sms/push/voice
Name: Use desired name

g. Click review and create

h. Click create

HOW TO STOP MONITORING A WEB APP
k. open your web app in azure app service

m.Click Stop

n. Go Back to your azure home page,search for monitor, navigate to availability.Check for errors in the didplayed info.

n. Similarly when you input your url to google. It will also display error 403.

HOW TO CREATE FILE SHARE

Olusegun Solomon — Sat, 25 May 2024 09:55:25 +0000

Your company(Hagital Consulting) needs to ensure that backups are in place for all Azure file shares. This is because it’s Staffs often modifyfiles within the file share, file versioning is also important. To test functionality, you are tasked with taking a snapshot of a file share and restoring it to your Windows machine.

SOLUTION STEPS

• Create a Storage Account and File Share

• Storage account name: Enter in a globally unique name
• Location: Set to the same location as the existing resource group
• Performance: Standard
• Click Review + create and then Create.
• Once the storage account has been deployed successfully, click Go to resource.

• Click on File shares in the left side menu.

• Click on + File share.

• Name the fileshare.

• Click on Review + create and then Create.

• Connect to your VM

• Once connected, minimize any open windows, click on the magnifying glass to search for Windows Firewall and open Windows Firewall.

• In the Windows Firewall window, click on Turn Windows Firewall on or off.

• Turn the Firewall state to Off. Click Apply and then Ok.

• Search for Windows PowerShell on your windows VM. Right-click on it, and click on Run as administrator.

• Back in the Azure portal, open your storage account and then click on File shares on the left menu.
• Select your file share, and click Connect.

• In the side window that opens, click on Show Script and copy the PowerShell script to your clipboard.

• Paste the PowerShell script in the Windows VM PowerShell session to connect the file share.
• After a moment, you should get a message that the credential was added successfully.

Take a Snapshot and Restore Data
• Click in File Explorer at the bottom of the Windows VM.
• Click on This PC and open your fileshare.
• Right-click in the fileshare window and click on New > Text Document. Name this document.
• Open the newly created document and type any words in there
• Click on File > Save.
• Return to the Azure Portal and close the Connect side window.
• Click on Browse in the left side menu and verify that you can see the test.txt file.
Add Snapshots.

• Click on Add Snapshot and give it a name in the Comment Window before clicking OK.
• In the Windows VM, add some random text to the test document that you created. Click on File > Save.
• Return to the Azure Portal.
• Locate the Snapshot and select to open in up.
• Select the ellipsis on the right-hand side of the test.txt file.
• Select Restore
• Click on Overwrite original file and then OK.
• Open the test.txt file and you should see that it has reverted to its original text.

HOW TO CREATE A WINDOW SERVER WITH IIS,FIREWALL,AND ASG INSTALLED

Olusegun Solomon — Sat, 25 May 2024 09:54:01 +0000

sTEP 1. Create a vm
YOu can click on the link below on how to create a Vm
https://dev.to/shaloversal123/how-to-create-window-11-pro-virtual-machine-2h2e
Select Webserver as Image.

Select RDP in the inbound port

Allow your resource group to load under Vm network page before proceeding.

NExt managemnet
Next Monitoring
Next Advance
Click review and create

HOW TO CONNECT YOUR Vm
Click on connect on the webserver created

Download RDP protocol

Input the Password Then
Click Connect

Click Add role and features

Next to server selection

Under server role click on webserver IIS

Click add features
NExt to Role Service
Click IIS 6management

Next to INstall
NB; Installation takes few minutes.
HOW TO CREATE APPLICATION SECUTRITY GROUP

Search for ASG on the azure portal

click create on the top page

Fill your information
Give suitable name to the ASG
NB:Ensure that you should thesame region for your work when creating it

Review and Create
Click create a successful Validation passed.

HOW TO ADD INBOUND RULE
Go your resource group
Click to open the default nsg

Click +Add at the top of the network page
Select Inbound security group
click add to add rule

Tick the following
Source -any
Destination Application security group-Select ASG that you created
Destination Port ranges: Input 80,443
Protocol-Any
Action-Allow
Priority-100
Select Add group

HOW TO ATTACHE NEW RULE TO THE SERVER
click on the VM
click to open the server using the Downladed RDP and Password
click Application Security group
Click Add ASG
Once done Success page will show up

HOW TO CREATE AND INSTALL FIREWALL TO THE WEBSERVER
Go to the marketplace
search for firewall
click create
select subcription/Resource group
Select PRemium For SKU
Create a suitable firewall policy
Create a new public IP for your Firewall
Create VNet-Subnet
NB: ALLOW deployment to complete.
steps to attach the Firewall to the server
Go to vm
Click server
IN server page click virtual network
Click firewall to see if its attached successfully.

AZURE ACTIVE DIRECTORY(microsoft entra) ROLE ASSIGNMENT

Olusegun Solomon — Tue, 07 May 2024 22:36:55 +0000

QUESTION 1:Explain the difference between Azure AD Roles and Azure Roles
Azure AD Roles are used to manage access to Azure Active Directory resources and can include roles like Global Administrator, User Administrator, etc.
Azure Roles, are used to manage access to Azure resources (such as virtual machines, databases, etc.) and are assigned within Azure itself, rather than Azure Active Directory

QUESTION 2: Create the Admin Department and add two users to it

-Select group

-Select New Group

Select Security for the group type and Enter group name as Administrative Department. Finally select create.

** Steps to Add 2 new Members to the Group**

Navigate to azure home page/portal. Select miscrosoft entra 2.Select users 3.Select create new Users 4.In the user principal name (Upn) and display name put your desired name as user A (Sollomex) 5.Fill job and contact information correctly.Click next assignment

6.Add member to group

7.Select Administrative Group

8.Select add role.

9.Choose Global Administrator

10.Select review and create

Select create

QUESTION 3: Assign the Global Administrator Role to User A
ROLE HAS ALREADY BEEN ASSIGNED TO USER A (sOLLOMEX)IN THE ABOVE.
Method B
Navigate to Azure Active Directory > Roles and administrators > Add assignment.

Select "Global Administrator" role and choose User A (sollomex) as the member.

QUESTION 4: Show all the steps it took the Global Admin to Log in into the Azure Portal with his new credentials

User A (sollomex) should receive an email notification about the role assignment.
User A (sollomex) logs in to the Azure portal using their credentials.
Upon successful login, User A (sollomex) will have access to the Azure portal with Global Administrator privileges.

** QUESTION 5: Let the Global Administrator create/onboard a new member to the Admin Department**

User A (sollomex) navigates to overview page of the miscroft entra. Select group sElect Administrative Department
User A(sollomex) selects "Add member" and adds the new member to the Administrative Department group.

HOW TO CREATE VIRTUAL MACHINE SCALE SET

Olusegun Solomon — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 20:54:34 +0000

A Azure Virtual Machine Scale makes it easier for creating and managing a group of load balanced Virtual machines. The number of Virtual machines instances can automatically increase or decrease in response to demand or a defined schedule.
BENEFITS OF VIRTUAL MACHINE SCALE SET

Easy to create and manage multiple VMs
Provides high availability and application resiliency by distributing VMs across availability zones or fault domains
Allows your application to automatically scale as resource demand changes STEPS TO CREATING A HEALTHY VIRTUAL MACHIONE SCALE SET On the azure portal

HOW TO CREATE VIRTUAL MACHINE SCALE SET

Olusegun Solomon — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 11:25:03 +0000

Azure virtual scale set is used for creating and managing a group of load balanced VMs.
Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets provide the management capabilities for application that run across many VMs, automatic scaling of resources, and load balancing of traffic.
BENEFITS OF VM SCALE SET
1.Easy to create and manage multiple VMs.
2.Provides high availability and application resiliency.
3.Allows your application to automatically scale as resource
demand changes.
4.It makes it easier to work with large scale of virtual
machines.
HOW TO DEPLOY A VIRTUAL MACHINE SCALE SET.
a. Login to azure portal using the link below.
Click on create in the link page
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machine-scale-sets/quick-create-portal?source=recommendations#log-in-to-azure

b.In the Basics tab, under Project details, for resource group click create and add a suitable name for your resource group and virtual machine to be created

c.In Region, select a region that is close to your area or any suitable one of your choice

d.In Cloud computing, orchestration technologies integrate automated tasks and processes into a workflow to perform specific business functions.
There are two types of orchestration mode

Flexible orchestration mode
Uniform orchestration mode

Under Orchestration, ensure the Uniform option is selected for Orchestration mode.

e. Select autoscaling for scaling mode.

f.Select the number of instances that you want for your virtual machine.
NB; for uniform mode minimum is 2 and max is 20 while for flexible ochestration mode the minimum is 2 and maximum is 1000 or more

g. Select image based on your choice. In this example, we have chosen Ubuntu Server

h.Enter your desired username, and select which authentication type you prefer.If you select a Linux OS disk image, you can instead choose SSH public key.for this,a public key is selected

.
i.Select Nextleave spot page as default

j. Leave Disks page as default.click next

k.Leave networking as default and click next

l.In Load balancing options, select create.

In Select a load balancer, select and create
a. Give name to the load balancer.
b. Under type select public and internal. Leave port as 80 and then
click create.

m. Select Next *management *

for upgrade policy select automatic

n. select next Health

click enable health monitoring and automatic repair
o. Select next Advanced

p. Select next Tags and click review and create
It will display validation passed.

q. Select create.

r. You can check your virtual machines by

Selecting go to resource

Select instances. It will display the total number of instances that is running on your vm at the moment

HOW TO CREATE DATA DISK FOR VIRTUAL MACHINE

Olusegun Solomon — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 23:47:43 +0000

There are three main disk rule in azure. They are
i) the data disk
ii) OS disk( operating system disk)
iii) the temporary disk
The Data Disk: This is a storage device or a managed disk that is attached to a virtual machine to store application data, or other data that one might need to save for future use.
OS Disk (Operating System Disk): This is a storage device that is created along side with the virtual machine(VM).It has a preinstalled Os Image. It has a boost volume i.e. a place where Os stores its system files.
Temporary Disk:: The temporary disk provides short-term storage for applications and processes, and is intended to only store data such as page files, swap files, or SQL Server. Data on the temporary disk may be lost during a maintenance event, when you redeploy a VM, or when you stop the VM.
HOW TO CREATE DATA DISK FOR A VM
a. open window virtual page on azure portal locate and click on disk

b. In the data disk click on create and attach a new disk

c. Fill the required information such as disk name, size, etc then apply.

d. Allow the disk to be created and attached.Once its done,you will successfully created disk message on the right top corner.

HOW TO INITIALIZE THE DISK TO THE VIRTUAL MACHINE
a. Open the window virtual machine page in azure

b. Right click on any part of window and click disk management

c. Right click on Disk 2 and click simple volume

d. A welcome to the simple volume page will showed up. Click next

e. Click next

f. click next

g.Click Next

h. Click finished. The code of the disk will change immediately to F:

*HOW TO CHECK FOR THE ATTACHED DATA DISK ON THE WINDOW VIRTUAL MACHINE *
a. open the window page and click on the file folder icons

b. On the left corner of the page click on *This PC *

c. Wait for the data storage page to load

HOW TO CREATE A LINUX MACHINE WITH SSH PUBLIC KEY

Olusegun Solomon — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 22:47:20 +0000

A Linux virtual machine (VM) is an additive process that starts with selecting a Linux distribution and obtaining Linux kernel and RAM disk images, and ends with instantiating and running the Linux VM on the user's computer.It basically involved the use of command line to achieve one desired purpose.
STEPS TO CREATE A LINUX VIRTUAL MACHINE
a.Click on virtual machine on azure portal

b. Select your subscription and create a suitable resource group name to the linux virtual machine by clicking create

c Give suitable name for your linux virtual machine
d. select a region for the machine
e. Pick a desired availability zone for the linux virtual machine

f. For Image, Select Unbuntu server
NB: the type of image you select will determine kind of virtual machine that will be created for you in azure.

g. size will be selected for the machine by default. This can be change if needed.
Administrator Account
h. For Authentication type click connect with ssh public key

i. Input the the username you which to use to connect the machine
j. Under ssh public key source: click Generate new key pair.

k. click next to select the disk size

l. click next will you reach review and create
click on review and create
A page will showed up requesting you to generate new key pair
click downloads private key and go to resource

NB; A deployment page will be initiated for you until it become successful.
HOW TO CONNECT THE LINUX VIRTUAL MACHINE
a. Go to resource on the virtual machine page
b. click on connect

c. Copy the Username and IP to a save place such as notepad.

d. Open window Powershell

e. Enter the command below into your powershell

f. You will be asked if you want to connect click yes then enter

HOW TO CREATE WINDOW 11 PRO VIRTUAL MACHINE no

Olusegun Solomon — Sun, 07 Apr 2024 20:36:22 +0000

****What is a Virtual Machine?
A virtual machine is the virtualization or emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide the functionality of a physical computer.
However, you can follow the steps below to create a functioning window 11 pro virtual machine.
SIGN IN TO AZURE
create a free azure account or used pay as you go for easy subscription sign in using the link below
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/
How to create a Virtual machine

Type virtual machine in the search box in your azure portal page
click on *virtual machine * __
You will be directed to the basic page. Project Details This consist of subscription and resource group 1.Azure will input your subscription name by default in the case of multiple subcription you will given the chance to click on the subscription to use for the Virtual machine.
Click on create and input the your choice name for the resource group

Instant details
a) Give a choice name to the Virtual machine
b) Under region, select the location for the machine
c) In the availability option select the availability zone for the machine
NB: We have Zone 1, Zone 2 and Zone 3 in azure. You can select one or more zone to run your machine depending on your choice.

Security Type
Under security type select trusted launch virtual machine

Image
Under the image select window 11 PRO
Size
Select suitable size for the storage and RAM with cost implication being considered
VM Architecture
Leave as Default.
Run with Azure Spot
Leave as Default.

Administrator Account
Provide a username and password. Also, confirm the password to ensure it aligns.
Keep this information in a safe place

Inbound Port Rules
On the inbound port rules section, select "Allow selected ports" and then select RDP (3389).
Under licensing click on the invincible window
Click on "Next: Disks>" to direct you to the Disk page

Disk
In this page click on the OS disk type then select Premium Standard or any disk type of your choice.

Networking
Leave as default
Management **
Leave as default
*Monitoring *
Leave as default
**Advanced pages
Leave as default
Tag
Leave as default
Review
This gives the short summary of the information and configuration of your expected virtual machine. You can click on back button to make adequate correction where necessary.
and click on the "Create" button to begin the deployment process.
when completed, it will read deployment succeeded.

YOU HAVE CREATED A VIRTUAL MACHINE

HOW TO RUN THE VITUAL MACHINE

Click on go to resource

2.Click on download RDP file

Open the downloaded RDP file and click connect

Input your username and password

5.click on next for privacy setting and then accept
You are now connected to your virtual machine with window11 PRO