DEV Community: Tolu Iyoriobhe

Implementing an Azure IoT Hub

Tolu Iyoriobhe — Sun, 22 May 2022 15:17:01 +0000

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of physical devices that connect to and exchange data with other devices and services over the internet or other network.

Azure IoT Hub is a managed service hosted in the cloud that acts as a central message hub for communication between an IoT application and its attached devices.

Here, we will be configuring an Azure IoT Hub in Azure portal and authenticating a connection to an IoT device using online Raspberry Pi device simulator. If you have time, you can read more about the Raspberry Pi simulator.

- Creating an IoT Hub

Sign in to Azure portal
From the search box, type IoT Hub and select IoT Hub under Services
On the IoT hub page, select + Create
On the Basics tab of the IoT hub, fill in the with the following details
Go to the Management tab and use the dropdown to set the Pricing and scale tier to S1:Standard tier
Click the Review + Create button and select the Create button when validation passes to begin creating your new Azure IoT Hub instance
Wait until the Azure IoT Hub instance is deployed

- Add an IoT device

When deployment is completed, Click Go to resource from the deployment blade
To add a new IoT device, scroll down to the Device Management section and select Devices. Then Click + Add device
Provide a name for your new IoT device, myRaspberryPi, and click Save. This will create a new IoT device identity in your Azure IoT Hub
If you do not see the new device, Refresh the IoT devices page.
Select myRaspberryPi and copy the Primary Connection String value. The key will be needed to authenticate a connection to the Raspberry Pi simulator.

- Testing the device using a Raspberry Pi Sumulator

Open a new tab in the web browser and type or copy this shortcut link https://aka.ms/RaspPi. It will take you to a Raspberry Pi Simulator site. When done select 'X' to close the pop-up window.

In the code area on the right side, locate the line with 'const connectionString ='
Replace it with the connection string copied from the Azure portal. Note that the connection sting includes the DeviceId (myRaspberryPi) and SharedAccessKey entries.
Click Run to run the application. The console output should show the sensor data and messages that are sent from the Raspberry Pi simulator to the Azure IoT Hub. Data and messages are sent each time the Raspberry Pi simulator LED flashes.
Select Stop to stop sending data and return to the Azure portal
Switch to the IoT Hub Overview blade and scroll down to the IoT Hub Usage information to view usage. Change your timeframe in the show data for last to see data in the last hour

Awesome! We just set up Azure IoT Hub to collect sensor data from an IoT device.

Note: To avoid additional costs, you can optionally remove the resource group. Search for resource groups in the search box, select your resource group and click Delete resource group.

Azure Key Vault

Tolu Iyoriobhe — Thu, 12 May 2022 22:39:20 +0000

Azure Key Vault is a cloud service for securing and accessing secrets, keys and certificates. Azure key vault can be use to centralize application secrets, securely store secrets and keys, monitor access and use, simplifies administration of application secrets and integrate with other azure services.

In this walkthrough, we will create an Azure Key Vault and create a password secret within the key vault.

- Create an Azure Key Vault

Sign in to the Azure portal
From the search box, type key vaults and select Key Vaults under Services
Select + Create
Configure the key vaults with the following and leave the defaults for the remaining. The key vault name must be a globally unique name Select Review + Create and select Create once validation has passed
Once deployment is completed, select Go to resource
Select Overview tab and take note of the Vault URI. Applications that use your vault through the REST APIs will need the URI Note: Your Azure account is the only one authorized to perform operations on this new vault. You can modify this if you wish in the Settings and then the Access policies section.

- Add a secret to the Key Vault

Under Settings, select Secrets and click + Generate/Import
Configure the secret with the following and leave the others at their defaults Note: You can also set an activation and expiration and also disable the secret
Select Create
Once the secret has been successfully created, click on the secret name mytestpassword and note that it has a status Enabled
select the secret created and note the Secret Identifier. This is the url value that you can now use with applications. It provides a centrally managed and securely stored password.
Select the Show Secret Value to display the password you specified earlier

Following this steps, you can try to generate keys and certificate at your own free time.

Note: To avoid additional costs, you can remove the resource groups. Search for resource groups at the search box, select the resource group and click Delete resource group.

Manage resource locks

Tolu Iyoriobhe — Thu, 12 May 2022 21:24:55 +0000

As an administrator, you can lock a subscription, resource group, or individual resource to prevent other users in the organisation from accidentally deleting or modifying resources. A lock overrides any permissions the user might have.

In this walkthrough, we will add a lock to a resource group and test deleting the resource group. A resource group is a container to manage and aggregate resources in a single unit. You group related resources such as virtual machines, storage accounts and virtual networks.

- Adding a Lock to the resource group and test deletion

Sign in to the the Azure portal
In the Azure portal, type in resource group in the search bar and select Resource groups under Services This would list out the names of the resource groups created and available
Select any of the resource groups available for this task
In the Settings section, click Locks and then select + Add
Configure the new lock with the following and select OK when you are done You would notice the lock has two types, **the Read-only and Delete. Read only means authorised users can read a resource, but they can not delete or update the resource, while the Delete means authorised users can read and modify a resource, but they can not delete the resource.
Select Overview and click Delete resource group. Type the name of the resource group and click OK
You will receive an error message stating the resource group is locked and can not be deleted

- Test deleting a member of the resource group

We will test if the resource lock protects a storage account in the resource group. Read more about storage account here.

From the search box, type storage accounts and select Storage accounts under Services
On the Storage accounts page, click +Create and fill in the following information. The storage account name must be a globally unique name.
Select Review + Create to review your storage account settings and allow the configuration to be validated.
Once validated, click Create and wait for the notification that the storage account was successfully created.
Access your new storage by selecting Go to resource. From the Overview pane, click Delete
You will receive an error message stating the resource or its parent has a delete lock. Note: We did not create a lock specifically for the storage account but we did create a lock at the resource group level which contains the storage account. As such, the parent level lock prevents us from deleting the resource and the storage accounts inherits the lock from the parent.

- Remove the resource lock

Return to the resource group 'myAZLocks' and in the Settings section, select Locks
Select Delete of 'Azlock'
Return to the storage account page and confirm you can now delete the resource

Congratulations! We just added a lock to a resource group and tested deletion, tested deleting a resource in the resource group and removed the resource lock.

Azure storage account

Tolu Iyoriobhe — Fri, 06 May 2022 18:47:52 +0000

Azure storage provides cloud storage that is highly available, secure, durable, and scalable. Azure storage includes Azure Blobs (objects), Azure Data Lake storage Gen2, Azure Files, Azure Queues, and Azure Tables.

In this post, I will be using a Blob storage. Azure Blob storage is Microsoft's object storage solution for the cloud. Blob storage is designed for serving images or documents directly to a browser, storing files for distributed access, streaming video and audio and storing data.

- Creating a storage account

Sign in to Azure portal
From the All services blade, search for and select Storage accounts, and then select Create
On the Basics tab of the Create storage account blade, fill in the following information (replace xxxx in the name of the storage account with letters and digits such that the name is globally unique). Leave the defaults for everything else.
Select Review + Create to review your storage account settings and allow Azure to validate the configuration.
Once validation passes, select Create. Wait for the notification that the account was successfully created.
From the Home page, search for and select Storage accounts and ensure your new storage account is listed

- Working with Blob storage
In here, we will be creating a Blob container and also be uploading a blob file
Select the name of the new storage account, scroll to the Data storage section in the left menu, and then select Containers
Click + Container and complete the information. When done click Create.
Open a new browser window and search for an image of a flower. Right click on the image and save it to your desktop.
Back in the Portal, click on container1 , and then select Upload.
Browse for the image file you just saved on your desktop. Select it and then select upload.
Click the Advanced arrow, leave the default values but review the available options, and then click Upload.

Note: You can upload as many blobs as you like in this way. New blobs will be listed within the container.

Once the file is uploaded, right-click on the file and notice the options including View/edit, Download, Properties, and Delete.

- Monitor the storage account

Return to the storage account blade and click Diagnose and solve problems
Explore some of the most common storage problems
On the storage account blade, scroll down to the Monitoring section and click Insights. Notice there is information on Failures, Performance, Availability, and Capacity.

Great! We just created a storage account, and also worked with storage blobs.

Note: To avoid additional costs, you can optionally remove this resource group. Search for resource groups, click your resource group, and then select Delete resource group. Verify the name of the resource group and then click Delete.

What's the Azure TCO calculator

Tolu Iyoriobhe — Fri, 06 May 2022 15:18:28 +0000

TCO - Total Cost of Ownership

The TCO calculator helps to estimate the cost savings of operating a system on Azure over time compared to operating in an on-premises datacentre.
The TCO calculator works in 3 steps:

Defining your workloads
Adjust assumptions, and
View report

Let's see how we can compare an on-premise sample workload costs versus Azure using the TCO calculator

- Define your workloads

In a browser, go to TCO Calculator page
Under Define your workloads, select Add server workload to add details of your on-premises server infrastructure
Under Servers, set the value for each listed below
Select Add server workload to make a row for a new servers workload definition
Under Storage, select Add storage and specify the below settings
Under Networking, set Outbound bandwidth to 15TB
Select Next

- Adjust assumptions
Explore the options and make any adjustments that you require to match your on-premises environment but here we would only specify the currency and leave the remaining fields at their default values
At the top of the page, select your currency

- Review the report
Update the timeframe and region with the settings below

To modify any information provided, scroll to the bottom of the page and select Back

As you scroll to the bottom of the page, you will see a comparison of running your workloads in the datacentre versus on Azure.
To save or print a PDF copy of the report, select Download.

If you need to make adjustments, you can revisit the TCO Calculator to generate a fresh report

How to create a VM with PowerShell using Azure

Tolu Iyoriobhe — Sun, 24 Apr 2022 15:59:15 +0000

For everyone who is looking for how to create a Windows Virtual Machine (VM) with PowerShell using Azure. This walkthrough will show how one can create a VM using PowerShell.

Sign in to the Azure Portal
From the Portal, open the Azure Cloud Shell by clicking on the icon just after the search box
When prompted to select either Bash or PowerShell, select PowerShell
On the You have no storage mounted screen, click on show advance settings
Create new for Resource Group, Storage account and File share and proceed to create storage
Verify your new resource group by running the following command in the POwerShell window. Press Enter on your keyboard to run the command below
Get-AzResourceGroup | Format-Table
Create a virtual machine by pasting the following command into the terminal window
New-AzVm -ResourceGroupName "mytrial"
-Name "myVMPS" -Location "West Europe"
-VirtualNetworkName "myVnetPS" -SubnetName "mySubnetPS"
-SecurityGroupName "myNSGPS" `
-PublicIpAddressName "myPublicIpPS"

Note - The resource group name should be the one created before as seen in above picture(mytrial) and the location should be one on the cloud shell region (West Europe)
After entering the command, you will be prompted to provide a username (azureuser) and Password (Pa$$w0rd1234).
Also note that the result of the command can come back by indicating the location for the virtual machine you are about to create is not available.
The way to rectify this is to create a new resource group (without closing the PowerShell window) by typing resource group in the search box and select create

Create a new resource group and change the region to the one that is available

Hint: you will be able to know what location is available through the virtual machine page. Search for virtual machine in the search box and go straight to region, pick a region and make sure the region as a size available (under size). Once its available, choose it as your new location when creating the new resource group. Make sure you do not create the virtual machine, this is just for you to know what location and size is available.
If there is a new resource group and location, make sure the command above is edited with the new resource group and location.

Once the VM is created, close the PowerShell session Cloud Shell pane.
In the search box, search for virtual machines and verify that (myVMPS - the virtual machine name) is running.

Access the new virtual machine and review the Overview and Networking settings to verify your information was successfully deployed.

Creating an Azure Linux virtual machine and connecting to it using SSH

Tolu Iyoriobhe — Mon, 18 Apr 2022 19:35:31 +0000

Hi there,

I would like to walk you through on how you can create an Azure Linux Virtual Machine and connecting to it using SSH.

A Virtual machine (VM) is a software computer used as emulation of an actual physical computer. It includes virtual processor, memory, storage and networking. VMs are known for their flexibility and portability and provides many benefits, such as: cost savings, agility and speed, lowered downtime, scalability and security benefits.

For creating Azure VM, you will need to have a valid Azure account. If you do not have one, create using Azure Portal for free.

From the search box, type in virtual machines. Under Services, select Virtual machines.
Select create shown on the upper left side and then Virtual machine. The Create a Virtual machine page opens.
On the basics tab, fill in the following See below on how I filled out the details
Leave the remaining defaults and select the Review + Create
Click on create once validation is passed.
Once you click on create, you would be prompted to download private key and create resource. Select and wait for it to download. Make sure you know where the file was downloaded, you will need the path to it in the next step.
After downloading, it will immediately submit the deployment template for the resource group. Once deployment is complete, select Go to resource Connect to Virtual Machine
On the overview page of the Virtual machine, select the Pubic IP address
Change the IP address assignment from dynamic to static and click on save afterwards
Connect to the VM using SSH
Copy out the highlighted command in 4 and paste it in your notepad Note the following
Go to your notepad where you pasted the command highlighted in yellow above
Also, go to your downloads on your PC and right click the key PEM file download and select properties
Copy out the key and the location name separately to the note pad opened earlier
Merge the key and location name into one with a backlash
Copy the above to the on the command pasted before

Open Windows PowerShell and copy and paste the SSH keypair above.

To run a command as administrator 'root user', type sudo su. To confirm it is an Ubuntu type of Linux, run the command apt update.

Let me know if this was helpful. I love feedback😊

Azure Architectural Components

Tolu Iyoriobhe — Sun, 10 Apr 2022 12:37:33 +0000

The Core Azure architectural components for cloud computing includes Azure regions, region pairs, availability zones, resources, resource groups, Azure resource manager, subscriptions and management groups.

Regions

. They are made up of one or more datacentres in close proximity
. There are over 60 regions available to choose
. Azure offers the best possible high availability performance and security

Region Pairs

. It consists of two regions within the same geographic
. Each Azure region within a pair is physically located at least 300 miles apart
. Continuous updates are performed to minimise downtime

Availability Zones

. Availability zones are physically separate locations within each Azure regions
. Each zones is equipped with its own power, cooling systems and networking
. Data is being shared in 3 different availability zones
. Provides protection against downtime due to datacentre failures

Resources

. Includes component such as virtual machines, storage accounts, virtual networks, application services, functions, etc
. They are available to build cloud solutions

Resource Group

. Is a container that manage resources in a single unit
. Resources can exist in only one resource group
. Multiple resource group can be utilized

Azure Resource Manager

. Is the deployment and management service for Azure
. Provides a management layer that enables one to create, update and delete resources

Subscriptions

. Provides authorized access to Azure accounts
. Separate billing reports and invoices are generated for each subscription

Management groups

. Manage your subscriptions
. Management groups can include multiple azure subscriptions
.10,000 management groups can be supported in a single directory