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Category: Cloud

Working with Postgres Extensions in Azure Cosmos DB

Published 2023-02-17 by Kevin Feasel

Sarah Dutkiewicz runs into an issue:

Problem: I installed PostGIS on my single-node cluster without issues. However, I scaled my cluster to 2 nodes afterwards. When I ran the query that uses ST_X and ST_Y from PostGIS, I got the following error:

ERROR:  type "public.geometry" does not exist
CONTEXT:  while executing command on private-w0.azure-cosmos-db-global-ug-demo.postgres.database.azure.com:5432

When I read the CONTEXT message, I realized by the w# reference that the worker nodes didn’t have PostGIS installed. When you scale the nodes – at least in this case, it doesn’t enable the extensions over there.

Read on to see how Sarah was able to resolve this issue.

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Azure Defender for SQL Overview

Published 2023-02-16 by Kevin Feasel

Deepthi Goguri looks at an Azure security offering:

Azure Defender for SQL, once you enable it will alert you for any SQL injection attacks, brute force attacks or any breached identities trying to access the data of your database. It also provides the vulnerability assessments. Vulnerability assessments give you alerts about the configurations of your database. If your database configuration is not following the standards of Azure, you will receive the alerts in the vulnerability assessment report.

You can enable the Azure Defender at the subscription level or at the Server level or at the resource level as well. Under the recommendations in the security center in the Azure portal, check for the Remediate security configuration. This will show if the Azure defender is configured properly.

I like Azure Defender for SQL, especially the advanced threat protection element. It’s based on IP address location and has caught me in different locations as I’ve traveled.

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Azure ML Overview

Published 2023-02-16 by Kevin Feasel

Sanil Mhatre gets us started with Azure Machine Learning:

The five-part series is designed to jump-start any IT professional’s journey in the fascinating world of Data Science with Azure Machine Learning (Azure ML). Readers don’t need prior knowledge of Data Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or Azure to begin this adventure.

All you will need is an Azure subscription and I will show you how to get a free one that you can use to explore some of Azure’s features before I show you how to set up the Azure ML environment.

Part 1 is available now, with the other parts coming up soon. Even so, Part 1 is a big article on its own.

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Distributing Azure Costs by Cost Centers, Divisions, and Projects

Published 2023-02-14 by Kevin Feasel

Pranab Paul divvies up the costs:

While working on various customer and partner facing roles, I felt the necessity of a simple and flexible solution to align Azure Cost to the customer’s organizational structure. “Project Bose” is a fully operational prototype derived from the same thought process. This is a side project I am working on during my leisure time. I found various customers derived similar solutions in-house, and there are ISV solutions as well. But there are a few fundamental differences between “Project Bose” and all the other solutions I found. “Project Bose” has a flexible backend and hence any changes in organizational structure can easily be implemented on it without disruption. It is also independent of using Resource Tags, which gives it the opportunity to remain non-vulnerable to erroneous values injected intentionally or non-intentionally by IT-Ops.

Pranab didn’t include a link to the GitHub repo, so here it is.

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Data Protection in Azure

Published 2023-02-10 by Kevin Feasel

Deepthi Goguri enumerates the ways:

Data needs to be protected no matter where it lives, On-prem or in Azure. Data can be protected by using the encryption that Azure provides. What are the types of encryption we have in Azure?

In addition to specific encryption options, Deepthi also provides an overview of Dynamic Data masking and Ledger tables.

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Migrating from Elasticsearch to Azure Data Explorer

Published 2023-02-03 by Kevin Feasel

Bhaskar Kakaraparthy does a logging switcharoo:

This article is an extension to an existing article to migrate data from Elastic Search to Azure Data Explorer (ADX) using Logstash pipeline as a step-step-step guide.  In this article, we will explore the process involved in migrating data from one source (ELK) to another (ADX) and discuss some of the best practices and tools available to make the process as smooth as possible.

Using Logstash for data migration from Elasticsearch to Azure Data Explorer (ADX) was a smooth and efficient process. With the help of ADX output plugin & Logstash, I was able to migrate approximately 30TBs of data in a timely manner. The configuration was straightforward, and the data transfer with ADX output plugin was quick and reliable. Overall, the experience of using ADX output plugin with Logstash for data migration was positive and I would definitely use it again for similar projects in the future.

Read on to see how.

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Azure Load Testing Now GA

Published 2023-02-03 by Kevin Feasel

Darryl Taft provides an overview of a now generally available service:

Moreover, Azure Load Testing collects detailed resource metrics to help you identify performance bottlenecks across your Azure application components. You can automate regression testing by running load tests as part of your CI/CD workflow.

Azure Load Testing also creates monitoring data using the Azure Monitor service, including application insights and container insights, to capture details from the Azure services.

It’s available in 11 regions, including the best region of all (East US) and the second-best region of all (East US 2).

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The Power of Managed Identities in Azure

Published 2023-02-02 by Kevin Feasel

Koen Verbeeck waxes about managed identities:

This however presented me with the opportunity to review what users were actually necessary in the ETL. Turns out, not that many. In many cases, one Azure resource (for example, an Logic App) can use a managed identity to access another Azure resource (such as an Azure SQL DB). For those of you not familiar with the concept, a managed identity is basically a service principal in Azure AD with the same name as your resource. If your Azure Data Factory instance is called myADF, you’ll have an entry in AAD with the name myADF (it’s very much alike the SQL Server service account used on-premises). You can then assign role permissions to this managed identity.

Read on to see how you can use these managed identities to grant permissions without having to set (or reset or store) passwords.

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Registering AKS Endpoints on Azure DNS

Published 2023-02-02 by Kevin Feasel

Denny Cherry notes that the DNS server is in another castle:


If you have an Azure environment when you have your DNS servers in a separate vNet from your new AKS environment you’ll notice that you get an error when deploying the AKS environment which looks something like this.

Agents are unable to resolve Kubernetes API server name. It’s likely custom DNS server is not correctly configured, please see https://aka.ms/aks/private-cluster#hub-and-spoke-with-custom-dns for more information.

The fix for this is actually pretty straightforward, but I’m going to give you a little background on why this happens.

Click through for the answer.

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