Updated Solutions to Classic Challenges
A personal website dedicated to helping IT professionals review where we've been, where we are, and maybe where we are headed.
HashiCorp’s Packer has proven to be a useful tool for those working towards those management goals. Packer in an AWS Cloud enables administrators to create customized AMIs by using Packer’s scripting process. This blog post walks through the installation of Packer on an Amazon Linux EC2 Instance.
Read MoreBlazor is a feature of .Net that allows for client-side web applications to be built via CSS, HTML, and C#. Apps written in Blazor can be written on almost any platform, including the Mac. This blog post walks through the installation process as documented on the MS Blazor Tutorial website.
Blazor’s tech stack is part of Microsoft’s .Net developer platform. Because of that, the first thing we need to do is install the .Net Software Developer Kit (SDK).
Read MoreGitLab is a powerful, all-in-one package for use as a source code repository as well as a full continuous integration / continuous deployment (CI/CD) suite. Using GitLab on AWS for implementing CI/CD tasks is made possible by using an EC2 Instance that’s allocated for use by GitLab as a “runner.” Runners execute the commands included in the pipeline definition. This document walks through the steps used to install the runner software. The software is installed on a typical AWS EC2 Instance running Amazon Linux 2 as an OS. If you’d like to follow along using this blog in a simple proof-of-concept (PoC), it’s acceptable to use choose a free tier option.
Read MoreThis blog post describes the steps used to install Ansible on Ubuntu for use with AWS.
Read MoreThe Cfn-Linter extension for the Microsoft Visual Studio Code (hereafter referred to as vscode) editor can be a major help to anyone asked to write AWS ClouidFormation Templates. Using a linter may be new to some. Linters are like Grammarly for your code. A good linter will alert you to mistakes before you attempt to compile or otherwise execute your code. Cfn-lint is like Grammarly for CloudFormation. This blog posts describes that install process.
Read MoreQuick steps for installing Microsoft VSCode on Ubuntu Desktop 19.10 using the GUI Tools included in the OS.
Read MoreThe Go programming language has been popular for a few years now. Developers like Go because it’s modern and fits well with the types of architectures in use today. Some of the cool guy features developers gain when they use Go are around improved garbage collection and networking.
Like many other apps on Mac OS X, Go is easy to install via a package.
Download Go for Mac OS X via the website https://golang.org/dl/
Open the downloaded file
Follow the prompts through to completion
In this blog post, I describe the installation process for Azure Data Studio on Mac OSX. I’ve decided to download and install the “insiders build” from GitHub.
Read MoreMicrosoft released a new version of it’s Edge web browser based on the chromium engine. This is the same engine that powers Google’s chrome browser. While it seems strange at first for Microsoft to use tech that’s from an outside source, it’s another indication that this is a new Microsoft willing to make radical changes if needed to stay competitive. This decision turns out to be advantageous to Enterprise customers.
Read MoreIn a previous post, I wrote about setting up SQL Server 2019 via Docker container on Windows 10. Microsoft has championed the fact that they support more than just Windows. I decided to put that to the test and try running SQL Server 2019 on on Mac OS X using Docker. I figure Docker is Docker on pretty much everywhere it’s running, so this should be a piece of cake.
Read MoreI recently decided to try out the SoftNAS virtual appliance in my Azure account. The installation went as smoothly as any other Azure template install. All was good until I tried to login to the web interface. No matter what userid / password combination I tried, I could not get into the web admin GUI. Frustrated by this, I decided to do some digging.
Read MoreVisual Studio Code is one of my favorite editors, and it works on any platform. The MacOS install is pretty easy. That said, I’ve found a few things that can make it easier. This post has a few tips and videos to help anyone looking to install it for the first time.
Read MoreGit for Windows is a powerful tool for interacting with CI/CD pipelines. There are specific components that should be avoided during the installation when working with Amazon AWS’s CodeCommit service. More Specifically, the Git Credential Manager component should not be installed if you plan to use Git for Windows with Amazon's CodeCommit source code repository.
I ran into access denied errors a while back with Git and CodeCommit. I'd read the advice on Amazon's troubleshooting website (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/codecommit/latest/userguide/troubleshooting-ch.html) but to be honest, it didn't click with me. It wasn't until I had the errors and re-read the instructions, that it started to set in that I needed to reinstall Git and change the option.
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I usually access github from within Visual Studio Code. As such, when I start coding a new project, I often need a reminder, or a cheat sheet for how to connect Visual Studio Code to a Git repository. These notes are more for me than for anyone else, but I'm sharing them nonetheless.
git config --global user.name <github userID> git clone <URL from github link copied earlier>
That should be all that's required. any newly created file should be available on github after stage/commit/push.
Microsoft has touted several new features of Windows Server 2019. The last few days have seen multiple release announcements describing features Microsoft wishes to highlight. Containers continue to be one of the features in the spotlight. In fact, container support is hyped by both Microsoft and Docker as part of their partnership.
The first few signs of this were in Windows Server 2106. We also saw a very nice integration in newer builds of the Windows 10 desktop OS. Because of this, I was super excited to see how the integration would work in Windows 2019.
I was surprised to see the installation process documented for newer versions of Windows Server 2016 seemed to be the same process for Server 2019 build 17623 due to the hype of Docker and Kubernetees support in the platform.
Based on a Microsoft quick-start guide, I was able to create a PowerShell Script to install Docker. The code has since been uploaded to my github page here (https://github.com/nathaniel-avery/WS2019_Container_Enable_v1PS).
The process is fairly simple. It consists of downloading the DockerMsftProvider from the PowerShell Gallery. The module has a prerequisite called NuGet, so that gets installed too. Finally, Docker is installed. A reboot is required once everything finishes. The video below demonstrates execution of the script on Windows Server 2019.
*** Note *** These steps enable Windows Containers only. Additional steps are required to run Linux containers. My initial reading and experimentation shows it's not as easy to use Linux containers on Server as it is on Windows 10. I'm considering exploring that topic in a future blog post. Moreover, it will not automatically run Windows containers where the versions do not match.
Double check that the Docker service starts after the first boot, otherwise you may receive an error.
At the time of this article, the version installed was 17.06.2-ee-7
C:\Users\Administrator>docker version Client: Version: 17.06.2-ee-7 API version: 1.30 Go version: go1.8.7 Git commit: 925df35 Built: Fri Mar 16 22:29:37 2018 OS/Arch: windows/amd64 Server: Engine: Version: 17.06.2-ee-7 API version: 1.30 (minimum version 1.24) Go version: go1.8.7 Git commit: 925df35 Built: Fri Mar 16 22:39:05 2018 OS/Arch: windows/amd64 Experimental: false
I'll admit that I was surprised that he install wasn't easier. I'm also surprised by the fact that Windows version compatibility and Linux weren't addressed. Why are these features not already in the box? It seems odd to have to download docker after all the fuss made about it. What I expected was to find a "container host" role similar to the one offered for Hyper-V. It seems that either a feature or role could have sub-components for selecting different support options and kubernetees. This is still an early build. It's entirely possible that the installation of docker will be better integrated. I'll continue to look out for updates from Microsoft and Docker on the situation.
References
Windows Containers on Windows Server. (n.d.). Retrieved March 28, 2018, from https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/quick-start/quick-start-windows-server
Introducing Windows Server 2019 – now available in preview. (n.d.). Retrieved March 28, 2018, from https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/windowsserver/2018/03/20/introducing-windows-server-2019-now-available-in-preview/
Using Windows Server Containers in Kubernetes. (n.d.). Retrieved March 28, 2018, from https://kubernetes.io/docs/getting-started-guides/windows/
Frank, B. H. (2018, March 20). Windows Server 2019 will feature Linux and Kubernetes support. Retrieved March 28, 2018, from https://venturebeat.com/2018/03/20/windows-server-2019-will-feature-linux-and-kubernetes-support/
Windows Container Version Compatibility. (n.d.). Retrieved March 28, 2018, from https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/deploy-containers/version-compatibility
In this post, I walk through setup and install of the new Windows Server 2019 Preview build 17623. The install will take place on a Windows 10 laptop running Hyper-V.
The files can be downloaded directly from Microsoft. To download the files, register to be a part of the Insider Preview Program. Registration and Download information can be found here (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windowsinsiderpreviewserver).
The specific version I will install is the LTSC Preview - Build 17623. The download arrives in the form of an ISO.
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Microsoft has recently released several cross-platform tools for managing code and databases. It's possible that these tools either would not have been developed previously, or would have been made available exclusively for Windows. But as they say, the times are changing. Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella has promised a new Microsoft, and here it is.
Visual Studio Code is a tool which represents this "new" Microsoft. It's open source, it's free, and it can be used on Windows, MacOS, and Linux OSes. Moreover, there is extensive context sensitive support of multiple programming languages - even non-MS languages. VS Code is a very modern editor offering built-in support of get, modular extensions, and it also offers "IntelliSense," a feature that "provides smart completions based on variable types, function definitions, and imported modules."
Installation of VS code on Windows is pretty straight forward, so I decided to try the process on a recent distribution of CentOS 7. Specifically, I used the CentOS OS below.
The installation Instructions for Fedora and RHEL variants can be found here: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/setup/linux#_rhel-fedora-and-centos-based-distributions
Step 1. Install the correct keys for the MS repo
Step 2. Install VS Code. Answer "y" if there are needed dependencies.
That's it! VS Code is ready to execute. It is not recommended to run VS Code with elevated permissions, so sudo is not needed. Once running, you may discover that you need to also install Git if it isn't already installed.
