Tag: Microsoft Azure

Deploying Your Own Agents (VMs) in Azure for Azure DevOps CI/CD Pipelines

AzDevops

Introduction

In the world of software development, Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD) practices are crucial for automating the testing and deployment of code. Azure DevOps provides a powerful platform for implementing CI/CD pipelines. While Azure DevOps offers hosted agents for running pipelines, there are scenarios where you might need to deploy your own agents in Azure. These scenarios can range from requiring a specific environment setup to needing to run pipelines on-premises or in a private network. This blog post guides you through the process of deploying your own agents in Azure to work with Azure DevOps CI/CD pipelines.

Why Deploy Your Own Agents?
  • Customization: You can customize your agents to have any software and configuration you need.
  • Performance: You can choose the size and performance characteristics of the VMs that host your agents.
  • Control: You have more control over the environment and can implement stricter security measures.

Continue reading “Deploying Your Own Agents (VMs) in Azure for Azure DevOps CI/CD Pipelines”

Creating Azure Support Tickets with PowerShell: A Step-by-Step Guide

24-7-IT-Support

Introduction

As cloud services become increasingly complex, the ability to manage and troubleshoot them effectively is crucial. Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing service, offers a range of tools to help with this. Today, we’ll explore how you can leverage PowerShell, to create support tickets in Azure. This is particularly useful for automating support processes or integrating them into your existing PowerShell scripts.

Prerequisites
  • An Azure subscription
  • PowerShell installed on your system
  • Azure PowerShell Module

Step 1: Installing Azure PowerShell Module

First, ensure that the Azure PowerShell module is installed on your system. Open PowerShell and run:

Install-Module -Name Az -AllowClobber -Scope CurrentUser

Step 2: Authenticating with Azure

Next, log in to your Azure account using:

Connect-AzAccount

Follow the prompts to complete the authentication.

Continue reading “Creating Azure Support Tickets with PowerShell: A Step-by-Step Guide”

Automating Device Wipe in Microsoft 365 with PowerShell and Azure

In today’s digitally connected world, organizations often need to manage and secure their devices efficiently. This includes the ability to remotely wipe devices in case they are lost or stolen. Microsoft 365 offers powerful tools for device management and security, and with PowerShell and Azure, you can automate the process of wiping devices when needed.

In this blog post, we will walk you through a PowerShell script that utilizes Azure and Microsoft Graph API to search for a user and remotely wipe their devices if necessary. We will also include some Azure screenshots to help you visualize the process.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, make sure you have the following prerequisites in place:

    Azure AD App Registration: You will need to register an Azure AD App and obtain the AppID and AppSecret for authentication.

Wipe_01

    Microsoft 365 Tenant: You should have access to a Microsoft 365 tenant, and you’ll need to know the tenant ID (e.g., $Tenant = “YourTenantName”).

Microsoft Graph API: Make sure you have permissions to use the Microsoft Graph API and can authenticate with the provided App ID and App Secret.

Wipe_02

Continue reading “Automating Device Wipe in Microsoft 365 with PowerShell and Azure”

Azure’s Certifications

Hi Folks!

Recently I’ve decided to renew my Microsoft certifications and also get new ones. Although I have already good years of experience working with Azure, I never tried to get its certifications, then because of that, I decided to start with Azure’s certifications.

At the moment my certification target is the exam Az-104: Microsoft Azure Administrator. I’ve started my studies in the middle of January, so 2 weeks ago I decided to have a shot at the exam Az-900: Azure Fundamentals, just to have an idea of how my studies are going on, got approved on that \0/ !!

image

My Badge

The exam isn’t that hard and has a lot of free content on the Microsoft Learn portal to help understand the exam measures (I will leave the link address at the end of the post).

My study method:

  1. I always read the outline of the skills measured in each exam.
  2. If there’s anything I’m not familiar with, I’ll read the documentation available in Microsoft Docs (always free and up-to-date).
  3. If I don’t understand what the documents are saying, I use my tenant for proper validations.
  4. I always dedicate 20 to 40 hours (per exam) to perform the laboratories (On Azure you can have a free tenant for 30 days to do your validations).
  5. When it comes to new technology, I start by watching the training available in Microsoft Learn, Pluralsight and/or Udemy.

That’s my method, share in the comments how’s your studies method?

So from now on, I will start posting my study path to get approved on these certifications and try to share some acquired knowledge for the most important skill measured on the exams.

Azure Free tenant: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/free/

Microsoft Learning: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/

Exam skills outline Az-900: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/exams/az-900

Exam skills outline Az-104: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/exams/az-104

Got it? Get Practical!