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.
Visual 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 MoreI’m on my way to Silicon Valley to serve as a delegate for Cloud Field Day 4 (http://techfieldday.com/event/cfd4/). Delegates aren’t industry analysts. They are regular, in the trenches IT people who love what they do and co tribute to the community. Many of the delegates have blogs and/ or podcasts as well as present at local user groups or trade shows.
And then there’s me... my profile is nowhere near as high as many of my peers. But I’m going, in part, due a decision I made a few years back to put myself out there. I got on Twitter. I started a blog. I tried to keep myself open to meeting people at conferences. I joined the greater community.
I’m just as introverted as the next person in this field (maybe even more so), so much of this isn’t easy for me. But it is rewarding. Maybe not financially, but being a part of any group who shares similar experiences provides comfort. There are certain things that only people in your tribe can ever truely “get.” Late night & weekend SAN upgrades, fixing Domain Controllers that stop controlling, migrating legacy enterprise apps from old on-prem server to the cloud - these are situations that only make sense to people in this business.
Blog. Tweet. Slack. Do whatever suits you, as long as you do something. We all get better when more experiences are shared.
Chat tools vendors Slack and Atlassian last week announced a partnership where Atlassian's two ChatOps apps, Hipchat and Stride would be shut down and the existing users could migrate onto Slack. Atlassian also agreed to a financial investment in Slack as part of the terms. A lack of competition in the ChatOps space seems detrimental on the surface, however, it could be the best thing for the sector long term.
Read MoreSubscribing to Microsoft Visual Studio Professional for 1 year is a great option for anyone considering putting time into Azure as a learning platform. The annual subscription for Visual Studio is $539 and includes $50 in Azure credits. Let that sink in for a second. Microsoft is giving away $600 ($50 x 12 months) worth of Azure for $539.
Read MoreI recently completed the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate exam. This blog post details some of my exam prep experience and testing tips.
Read MoreWhen using MS Azure to create Infrastructure as a Service based solutions, choosing an appropriate server type is crucial to not only performance, but controlling costs. B Series Servers might be the right option for your workload.
Read MoreSometimes you need a good set of icons to help create a design. I recently discovered just such a set and it's been a pleasant surprise in multiple ways. Not only are the images in this download available in Visio format, but SVG, PNG, and PowerPoint formats are also included.
Read MoreMy Azure bill was higher than expected. I looked deeper and found a VM in a state that read "Stopped (still incurring compute charges)." Which translated to “I turned my VM off incorrectly.”
Read MoreAmazon Web Services offers several services which are region specific. When encountering an error, the first thing you should do is validate that you are operating in the correct region(s). This was an issue I ran into recently when using CloudFormation.
Read MoreVirtual Reality was pervasive at the Dell Technologies World show. Not only was it prominently featured in the Day 1 and Day 2 keynotes, but several VR experiences could be had in the Village and in the several vendor booths in the Solutions Expo. One of the themes of this year's show was "Make it Real," and VR was shown as something that exists now and not just in the future.
Read MoreNow that the Dell Technologies World conference has ended, I've had a little time to reflect. This year's Dell Technologies World conference took place April 30 - May 2. It was a large show encompassing keynotes, breakout sessions, Guru sessions, Customer Meetings, Solutions Center, and so much more.
Read MoreThe DevOps movement has been great at increasing inclusion among the various roles in IT, breaking down solos and creating groups capable of deploying code. But one group seems to have been left out of the mix - DBAs. For whatever reason, DBA tools have been slow to build in features synonymous with DevOps such as source control.
The Phoenix Project and DevOps Handbook spend a great deal of time discussing Flow and how a we’ll run organization will look to eliminate blockages at choke points. Often these blockages occur during hand-offs. The best way to avoid hand-offs is to build teams with all members needed to make a deployable package.
Read MoreSlack, and the new wave of enterprise chat applications like it, show their value through integration with other tools. One of the most popular integrations is with GitHub. The Github app for Slack documents select GitHub actions in a Slack channel. With the actions logged in a Slack channel teams don't have to jump between tools to look for for status updates. Moreover, teams can search through Slack's logs for history related to commits, issues, pulls, etc. for a project.
The instructions for installing the App are located at https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/232289568-GitHub-for-Slack . I have attempted to walk through those same instructions an log my notes along the way.
Read MoreAmazon's AWS public cloud is often used by IT pros to test and prototype ideas on their own often replacing a traditional home lab setup. The ability to quickly spin up virtual infrastructure components and then shut them down after testing completes is a great help for exploring new ideas. Costs for AWS are based upon consumption. Customers "pay by the drink." Because the monthly bill is based on what's consumed, it's important to keep track of the costs.
Recently, I was confronted with a higher than usual monthly bill. I wasn't sure how it was possible as I hadn't used the service very much the previous month. Moreover, I always remember to shutdown unused servers.
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.
Slack is a collaboration tool that's well known among the DevOps and developer communities. It has been widely embraced due to the extensible nature of the app. In fact, it's safe to say that Slack is more of a platform than just a chat tool. Slack supports "bots" which are apps that can do all sorts of things, from answering simple questions, to deploying software.
Slack is used primarily by private organizations, however, government agencies have begun to test the waters. Slack is actively pursuing wider use by government customers. They recently posted a position on popular job board LinkedIn for a "Manager, Government Strategy" to work in Washington, DC. Specifically, the role is to "manage relationships with government accounts and help develop our government program at Slack " The posting can be read at this link (https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/manager-government-strategy-at-slack-577290692/). If Slack has their way, more government agencies will adopt it.
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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
This blog post details steps to resolve the "There are no active source control providers" in Visual Studio Code on Windows 10.
Read MoreIn 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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