Cloud Decoded - Lets Understand Cloud Better

Docker container runtime transition to containerd runtime – Fix Sitecore containers

May 5, 2023 No Comments

Microsoft recently announced retirement of Docker container runtime from their Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) platform. If you have been managing any such AKS, you might have received such a notification from Microsoft. On 1 May 2023, Docker container runtime will be retired. Please transition to containerd by that date. After docker container runtime is retired, you may remain on existing deployed instances but scaling operations will fail, node pool creation will fail, and you will be out of support. I know this article seems a bit delayed, but some of you might still be struggling to fix your Sitecore containers after […]

Azure, Azure DevOps

Use Azure Devops Pipelines to Deploy Applications within Closed Networks

October 21, 2022 No Comments

A couple of years ago, I wrote an article about a similar topic, which explored how can we use Azure Devops pipelines to deploy solutions to any server which is not exposed to internet directly. That article was based on using classic release pipeline to configure the deployment steps. With YAML based pipelines being more powerful and recommended now, when I got a similar requirement, I explored how can we achieve this using the same. There was surely some good learnings along the way. Problem Statement In this case, the requirement was a bit different than the similar implementation I […]

Sitecore

Sitecore Production Environment on Azure Kubernetes Services – Part 4 (Putting everything together with Azure Devops)

March 21, 2022 No Comments

Finally I found sometime to write the last article of this series – Sitecore Production Environment on Azure Kubernetes Services – Series, in which I will cover combining everything together to automate most of the deployment part with Azure Devops Pipelines. Till now, we have prepared the Azure Components (check out the Part 1 of this series), External Data Sources (check out Part 2 of this series) and Sitecore installation (check out Part 3 of this series). Now, we’ll create various Azure pipelines to put all these steps together. Problem Statement As you can see in pervious articles, there are quite a […]

Office 365

Automate Office 365 Health Status Monitoring with Power Automate Using Service Communications Graph API

January 20, 2022 17 Comments

I wrote an article on the same topic a couple of weeks ago that explains how to monitor Office 365 Health Status with PowerShell using the new Graph API. I know, like me, there are a lot of other Power Automate/Flow enthusiasts who would prefer to achieve the same without writing any lines of scripts. So, here is it. Before you get started, ensure that the account you are using with Power Automate/Flow at least has a “Flow per user” license assigned, since we’ll be using HTTP Action, which is a premium connector now. If you don’t have a Per […]

Office 365

AUTOMATE OFFICE 365 HEALTH STATUS MONITORING USING OFFICE 365 SERVICE COMMUNICATIONS GRAPH API

January 17, 2022 6 Comments

I wrote an article on how to Automate Office 365 Health Status Monitoring using Office 365 Service Communications API a couple of years ago, which was found very useful for many Office 365 Admins. It was based on the API “https://manage.office.com/api/v1.0/$TenantId/ServiceComms/Messages”, which has now been discontinued by Microsoft. I have put an update on that article about this, so that you can save your time by NOT attempting to try n make that work anymore. Instead Microsoft released Office 365 Service Communications API in Microsoft Graph, which not only provides additional endpoints to work with Service Communications with ever expanding Microsoft Graph ecosystem. […]

Sitecore

Sitecore Production Environment on Azure Kubernetes Services – Part 3 (Sitecore Setup on AKS)

January 3, 2022 No Comments

This is the third article of the series Sitecore Production Environment on Azure Kubernetes Services – Series in which I intend to explain the Sitecore installation and configuration on Azure Kubernetes Services. If you want to know more about other Azure Components, check out the Part 1 of this series or about External Data Sources, check out Part 2 of this series. Problem Statement If you have followed this series so far, then we already have details about setting up all Azure required components and external data sources for Sitecore by now. It’s time to focus on actual installation and configuration of Sitecore itself. Installation Guide […]

Sitecore

Sitecore Production Environment on Azure Kubernetes Services – Part 2 (External Data Sources)

October 26, 2021 No Comments

This is the second article of the series Sitecore Production Environment on Azure Kubernetes Services – Series in which I intend to explain the External Data Sources Setup related to Sitecore deployment on Azure Kubernetes Services. If you want to know more about other Azure Components, check out the Part 1 of this series. Problem Statement In this article, lets focus on all the External Data Sources that are relevant for a production environment of Sitecore on AKS. Of course your environment may look like a bit different based on your target design, but even in that case, most of these […]

Sitecore

Sitecore Production Environment on Azure Kubernetes Services – Part 1 (Azure Infrastructure Setup)

October 15, 2021 3 Comments

This is the first article of the series Sitecore Production Environment on Azure Kubernetes Services – Series in which I intend to explain the Azure Infrastructure Setup related to Sitecore deployment on Azure Kubernetes Services. Problem Statement In this article, lets focus on all the Azure infra components that are relevant for a production environment of Sitecore on AKS. Of course your environment may look like a bit different based on your target design, but even in that case, most of these components will still be relevant. We’ll focus on the components, what do they do in our solution and how […]

Sitecore

Sitecore Production Environment on Azure Kubernetes Services – Series

September 29, 2021 No Comments

Recently I got a chance to setup multiple Sitecore environments for a customer. Initially the idea was to setup Sitecore on Azure Web Apps, but over course of multiple discussions, it became apparent that Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) was the way to go to be future proof. It was a difficult few weeks during which the technical implementation team had to overcome a number of technical challenges along with a lot of learnings, but at the end it was great to see how everything came together to have those environments up and running as expected. Problem Statement So, we setup […]

Azure, Kubernetes

Using Image Pull Secrets with Azure Container Registry

August 22, 2021 1 Comment

This topic may seem a bit outdated as there are better (and more recommended) ways now to work with Azure Container Registry (ACR). However, there are still many popular products in market, Sitecore in my case, which still use Image Pull Secret as the primary way to pull images from ACR. With Sitecore now supporting Container based installations, many organizations are choosing to go that way to be future proof. Sitecore has been busy updating their documentation related to installation and configuration on Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) and has published a great installation guide. But this article is NOT about […]