In this part of the series, I want to start creating my resource groups with Terraform. There are more ways to do this, but since I have been working with automation a bit, I know I want to start with a list of resource group names and make a loop through these. The first step is to create a list of resource group names. I create a file called “variables.tf” a reserved name in Terraform that you can use to contain the variables you want to use in the automation.

In this series, I want to go through deploying a complete infrastructure in Azure using Terraform. My goal is to create a virtual network, network security groups, VPN to on-premises, a couple of virtual machines with Citrix Cloud connector installed on them. I am learning this myself as I go through this series, so if anyone reading this has some pointers to do it better or easier, please do reach out to me.

In this article, I want to show you how easy it is to create a new Active Directory domain for demo environments. If you want something for production, there are some additional steps to take, but I won’t cover that here. You can use Azure DSC for many configurations, like setting up a domain controller, as I will show here. It is also possible to install Windows Roles and Feature and create your own resources to install and configure software.

If you have ever worked with Azure DevOps and Azure PowerShell, you most likely also banged your head into the wall trying to get the release pipeline to use the latest version. I have run into this a few times myself, and this time around, I choose to stick with it until I found a solution, and I did. Most times, the answer was way more straightforward than I thought, and in this post, I will show you step by step how to do it.

Hi all, In this blog series, I want to take you through the process of setting up Azure DevOps and using source control to provision and maintain a virtual server environment in Microsoft Azure. The technique used here can just as well apply to any other cloud or on-premises environment. The reason I am putting together is that I have found lots of material online about the subject, but I haven’t found any useful guides that explain the process from start to end.

Hi all, In this second part of the blog series, I want to focus in on Azure Boards and my use of it. In short Azure Boards is where I have all my notes for the project I am currently doing. I will describe the items I use when doing projects, but I won’t get into all the things you can use Azure Boards to do. Using Azure Boards also helps out a lot when more people are working together on the same project.

In this part of the series, I want to focus on the use of repositories. Repositories are where your code is stored, and in my case, this is often PowerShell code as I will also show in this series. Also, a part of repositories is the actual source control of your code, there are branches and pull requests. I will show how I am using this, and remember that I am an Ops consultant, so maybe developers are doing this very differently, but this seems to work for me at least.

In this part of the series, I will have a look at branches and pull requests. These two terms are essential to get familiar with since they are needed when working in teams on the code you are developing. I want to start with branches and what they are. The way I understand branches is that each time I need to work on an item on my boards, I want to create a new branch matching that board item.

Hi all, In this part of the series, I want to focus on the build pipeline. In short, the build pipeline will provide the rest of your pipelines with artifacts. Artifacts can be files, folders, or compiled code, and in my case here, it will be PowerShell files. As you will see in the series, I also use Pester tests to verify my code lives up to the demands I have.

Hi all, In this last part of the blog series about Azure DevOps for the Ops consultant I want to show you how to create the release pipeline for Azure deployments. The release pipeline is where the code written gets into the environment where it is used. Normally the first release pipeline would push to the development environment, but with all the different ways that companies use separate environment you will need to figure out how you want to do it.