Azure Automation - Manage AWS EC2 with Azure Automation Pull Server

Tarun Arora on Mar 7, 2017

In this blog post I’ll show you how to manage the desired state configuration of a server in Amazon cloud using Azure Automation DSC Pull Server… My goal is to hook up the virtual machines I have in AWS cloud to use the Azure Automation DSC Pull server and ensure compliance to the BasicWebServer script which checks compliance for a web server feature on the node machine.

Azure Automation - Fix Failing Module Upgrade in Azure Portal

Tarun Arora on Mar 7, 2017

If your Run Books in Azure Automation rely on any of the new versions of the AzureRM PowerShell module, then they may start to fail! That’s because all the modules that get pre-added in Azure Automation point to an older version of AzureRM modules… Follow the steps in this post to fix failing module upgrade…

Open sourcing Export/Import Build Definition extension

Utkarsh Shigihalli on Feb 23, 2017

I have decided to open source my favorite Export/Import build definition extension. I wanted to open source the extension from day one, but at that time, I was just starting to learn the extension development and wrote the code hastily concentrating only on achieving the minimum functionality without much thought to code. So in the end my code was too complicated to understand, tightly coupled and hence difficult to manage.

Extension Download Monitor Widget - Monitor your extension downloads/ratings from VSTS/TFS dashboard

Utkarsh Shigihalli on Jan 4, 2017

This dashboard widget allows you to track your extension’s downloads, ratings and downloads/day right from the VSTS/TFS dashboard!

Using VSTS to provision multi server environments in Azure Dev Test Labs

Tarun Arora on Jan 4, 2017

At launch Azure Dev Test Labs only supported single server environments. While this was great for development and standalone testing, this limited the use of Dev Test Labs for any meaningful testing. If you are truly following DevOps you would like your automated environment provisioning to resemble production like environments throughout from development all the way to production. After all it’s all about pushing left and testing your automation from the outset ;)

Tag Admin extension is now available for Visual Studio 2017

Utkarsh Shigihalli on Dec 3, 2016

Tarun and I, developed Tag Admin extension for Visual Studio around 2 years back. Over a period of time, we got busy and the extension has developed few bugs, mostly because there were few changes in the REST API and we could not update the extension accordingly.

However, now that Visual Studio 2017 is out, it was time to update the extension and make it compatible with Visual Studio 2017 and also fix the bugs :-).

Replace appsetting tokens in config files with Build & Release Management in VSTS (TFS)

Tarun Arora on Nov 5, 2016

Whether you are developing for web or windows. Replacing the configuration variables persisted in the web/app.config is always a pain during the build and deployment process using TFS. In this walkthrough we’ll learn how to use the “ReplaceTokens” task during build and deployment to update the configuration easily.

Continuous delivery of NuGet packages to Package Management in TFS15 RC1

Utkarsh Shigihalli on Aug 14, 2016

TFS 15 RC1 got released a couple of days ago and one of the most awaited features from on-prem customers was Package Management.

In this post, we will see how we can publish our common code as NuGet packages so that it can be shared across the organization. Also, we will see how we can keep these packages up to date by publishing them to our TFS15 package management server as part of our continuous delivery process.

TF254027 : Cannot create a binding on port 443 because the specified certificate could not be found

Utkarsh Shigihalli on Jul 3, 2016

When doing the upgrade of TFS2015 from previous update version you might get an error as TF254027 : Cannot create a binding on port 443 because the specified certificate could not be found. In this post we will see detailed steps to solve it.

Export and Import your build definitions in VSTS and TFS between team projects

Utkarsh Shigihalli on Jul 1, 2016

This VSTS/TFS extension will help you to export your build definition and then import it in same or another team project.

Have you created a complex build definition with numerous steps, configured it with various build schedules, variables, and other build options? You now have a situation to create similar build definition in another team project - What do you do?

As you probably know there is no built-in way to do that currently and you have to manually create complete build definition again. But with this extension now you can with few simple steps!