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New Task: Tag Build or Release
I have a build/release task pack in the marketplace. I’ve just added a new task that allows you to add tags to builds or releases in the pipeline, inspired by my friend and fellow MVP Rene van...
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Testing in Production: Routing Traffic During a Release
DevOps is a journey that every team should at least have started by now. Most of the engagements I have been on in the last year or so have been in the build/release automation space. There are still...
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Aurelia, Azure and VSTS
I am a huge fan of Aurelia– and that was even when I was working with it in the beta days. I recently had to do some development to display d3 graphs, and needed a simple SPA app. Of course I decided...
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DevOps with Kubernetes and VSTS: Part 2
In Part 1 I looked at how to develop multi-container apps using Kubernetes (k8s) - and more specifically, minikube, which is a full k8s environment that runs a single node on a VM on your laptop. In...
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DevOps with Kubernetes and VSTS: Part 1
If you've read my blog before, you'll probably know that I am huge fan of Docker and containers. When was the last time you installed software onto bare metal? Other than your laptop, chances are you...
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Protecting a VSTS Web Hook with Basic Authentication
VSTS supports service hooks like Slack, AppVeyor, Bamboo and a host of other ALM tools. You can also create your own hooks using a simple WebHooks API. There's an example here. However, one thing that...
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Configuring AAD Authentication to Azure SQL Databases
Azure SQL is a great service - you get your databases into the cloud without having to manage all that nasty server stuff. However, one of the problems with Azure SQL is that you have to authenticate...
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A/B Testing with Azure Linux Web Apps for Containers
I love containers. I've said before that I think they're the future. Just as hardly anyone installs on tin any more since we're so comfortable with Virtualization, I think that in a few years time...
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Tips and Tricks for Complex IaaS Deployments Using VSTS Deployment Groups
Recently I was working with a customer that was struggling with test environments. Their environments are complex and take many weeks to provision and configure - so they are generally kept around even...
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Using Linked ARM Templates with VSTS Release Management
If you've ever had to create a complex ARM template, you'll know it can be a royal pain. You've probably been tempted to split out your giant template into smaller templates that you can link to, only...
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Using VSTS to Test Python Code (with Code Coverage)
I recently worked with a customer that had some containers running Python code. The code was written by data scientists and recently a dev had been hired to help the team get some real process in...
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Using Chrome to Solve Identity Hell
This week at MVP summit, I showed some of my colleagues a trick that I use to manage identity hell. I have several accounts that I use to access VSTS and the Azure Portal: my own Microsoft Account...
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Tip: Creating Task Groups with Azure Service Endpoint Parameters
I've been working on some pretty complicated infrastructure deployment pipelines using my release management tool of choice (of course): VSTS Release Management. In this particular scenario, we're...
View ArticleVSTS, One Team Project and Inverse Conway Maneuver
There are a lot of ALM MVPs that advocate the "One Team Project to Rule Them All" when it comes to Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) and Team Foundation Server (TFS). I've been recommending it for a...
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Auditing VSTS Client Access IPs
Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) is a cloud platform. That means it's publicly accessible from anywhere - at least, by default. However, Enterprises that are moving from TFS to VSTS may want to...
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Managing Credentials and Secrets in VSTS Release Management
Releases almost always require some kind of credentials - from service credentials to database usernames and passwords. There are a number of ways to manage credentials in VSTS release management. In...
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Terraform all the Things with VSTS
I've done a fair amount of ARM template authoring. It's not as bad as XML, but the JSON can get laborious. A number of my colleagues use Terraform templates and I was recently on a project that was...
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Serverless Parallel Selenium Grid Testing with VSTS and Azure Container...
I've written before about Selenium testing (Parallel Testing in a Selenium Grid with VSTS and Running Selenium Tests in Docker using VSTS and Release Management). The problem with these solutions,...
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Pimp Your Consoles on Windows
I spend a fair amount of time in consoles - specifically PowerShell and Bash (Windows Subsystem for Linux) on my Windows 10 machine. I also work with Git - a lot. So having a cool console that is Git...
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Implement an Azure DevOps Release Gate to ServiceNow
I'm currently doing some work with a customer that is integrating between ServiceNow and Azure DevOps (the artist formerly known as VSTS). I quickly spun up a development ServiceNow instance to play...
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