Tag: Microsoft Azure

I Became a Microsoft MVP — A Personal Milestone in My Azure Journey

Today, I want to share something very special and meaningful for me — I have been recognised as a Microsoft MVP in Azure Compute Infrastructure.

For those who don’t know, the Microsoft MVP programme recognises people who contribute to the technical community through knowledge-sharing, guidance, content creation, support, mentoring, and helping others grow.

This became part of who I am many years ago.

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Azure Private Link Service Direct Connect – Simplified Private Connectivity (Public Preview)

Azure Private Link Service (PLS) has long been the go-to option for exposing your services privately to consumers across Azure — ensuring that traffic never crosses the public internet.
Until recently, this required a Standard Load Balancer to sit in front of your service. That setup worked well, but it added complexity and limited flexibility, especially in hybrid or custom routing scenarios.
Now, with Private Link Service Direct Connect, Microsoft has simplified the model. You can route traffic directly to any privately routable IP address, removing the dependency on load balancers altogether.
This new feature opens the door to several use cases — from simplifying secure hybrid connections to enabling private access to third-party SaaS and appliances.

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Automating a Monthly Azure Update Compliance Report with Logic Apps + Azure Resource Graph

Most patching dashboards are great for interactive views—but what if your stakeholders want a scheduled email that shows the current patch compliance for only a scoped set of servers (for example, those tagged for patch governance)? That’s where a small, reliable custom report shines.

In this post I’ll walk through the exact solution I built: a Logic App that queries Azure Update Manager data via Azure Resource Graph (ARG), filters to VMs tagged Monthly_Patch : yes, formats the results into a clean HTML email, and sends it on a monthly cadence.

Why a custom report?

  • No native email report: Azure Update Manager provides blades and workbooks, but not a ready-to-send, nicely formatted email.
  • Audience-specific scoping: We only want to report on VMs with a specific business tag (Monthly_Patch : yes).
  • Consistent sorting & formatting: Stakeholders wanted alphabetical order, readable timestamps, color-coded rows, and centered table content.
  • Lightweight & fast: With ARG we can query Update Manager resources directly—no Log Analytics workspace required for this report.

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Azure Storage: GA Support for Entra ID and RBAC in Supplemental APIs

On 26 August 2025, Microsoft announced the general availability (GA) of Entra ID authentication and role-based access control (RBAC) for several supplemental Azure Storage APIs. This update improves security and gives administrators more precise control over sensitive operations such as managing container, queue, and table access permissions.

What has changed

The following APIs now support Entra ID and RBAC:

  • GetAccountInfo
  • GetContainerACL / SetContainerACL
  • GetQueueACL / SetQueueACL
  • GetTableACL / SetTableACL

These APIs now support OAuth 2.0 authentication via Entra ID.
A key change is the way error responses are returned:

  • Before: using OAuth without the right permissions resulted in 404 (not found).
  • Now:
    • 403 (forbidden) is returned when OAuth is used but the caller does not have the required permission (for example, Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/blobServices/getInfo/action for GetAccountInfo).
    • 401 (unauthorised) is returned for anonymous requests.
    • 404 (not found) is still possible if the resource itself does not exist.

If your application logic depends on the old 404 behaviour, you should update it to handle both 404 and 403 responses. Microsoft also recommends not relying on error codes to detect unsupported APIs but instead following the Entra ID authorization guidance.

Why this matters

  • Improved security – no more reliance on shared keys.
  • Granular access – assign only the necessary permissions.
  • Consistent responses – OAuth error codes now match industry standards.
  • Application impact – developers may need to update their code to support the new response model.

Continue reading “Azure Storage: GA Support for Entra ID and RBAC in Supplemental APIs”

Enable OpenTelemetry in Azure Functions: The Easiest Way via Azure Portal

Good news! As of June 2025, OpenTelemetry is now in preview for Azure Functions. If you want basic observability without writing code or installing libraries, you can now enable distributed tracing directly from the Azure Portal.

This quick guide shows the simplest way to enable OpenTelemetry in Azure Functions using built-in features — no NuGet packages or custom code needed.

What You Need

  • An existing Azure Function App (v4)

  • Application Insights already enabled (most new Function Apps have this by default)

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