Azure

Using Azure Data Factory with the Application Insights REST API

28 October 2019

Persisting aggregates of AppInsights data in a warehouse can be a useful means of distributing summary information or retaining monitoring data over the long term. You can automate the harvesting of these aggregates using Azure Data Factory.

Azure Data Factory and the myth of the code-free data warehouse

4 July 2019

Azure Data Factory has been much improved with the addition of data flows, but it suffers from some familiar integration platform shortcomings. The claim of enabling a “code free” warehouse may be pushing things a bit.

Now that Kubernetes is on Azure, what is Service Fabric for?

9 February 2019

There does seem to be growing confusion over what Service Fabric is really for. Is it an orchestrator for microservices? A means of lifting and shifting legacy applications into the cloud? An application development framework?

Custom token authentication in Azure Functions

18 December 2018

Azure Functions only provides direct support for a narrow range of authentication providers. If you want to use an external token provider or custom solution, you’ll have to create the plumbing yourself.

Kafka on Azure Event Hub – does it miss too many of the good bits?

10 July 2018

Microsoft have added a Kafka façade to Azure Event Hubs, presumably in the hope of luring Kafka users onto its platform. This makes sense as the platforms have a lot in common, though there are some missing Kafka features that may prove critical.

Managing and throttling serverless scaling with Azure Functions

3 October 2017

The serverless promise of unlimited scale-out can be a curse when your downstream processes and data stores have strict limits on throughput. With Azure Functions your options for mitigating this are limited, though the new durable functions may provide an answer…

The poor man’s Cassandra: scaling Azure Table Storage to maximise throughput.

22 July 2017

Azure Table Storage can be tuned for high throughput workloads, but you’ll probably be faced with some difficult trade-offs.

Comparing serverless C# and .Net development using Azure Functions and AWS Lambda

26 May 2017

Recently released toolsets for AWS Lambda and Azure Functions are finally making serverless application development available to C# developers.

Is “Serverless” architecture just a finely-grained rebranding of PaaS?

2 June 2016

Serverless computing makes bold promises of development without having to worry about environments, scaling or deployment. Haven’t we been here before?

Don’t assume message ordering in Azure Service Bus

16 December 2014

Azure Service Bus can provide first-in-first-out messaging in theory, but this is not the same as guaranteeing the order in which your messages are processed.

Writing a brokered messaging client for Azure Service Bus that is production-ready

22 April 2013

Azure’s Brokered Message API provides a basic set of methods that make it easy to start sending and receiving messages through the Azure Service Bus. The problem is that it doesn’t do much to provide some of the basic scaffolding required by a serviceable messaging client.