Route to Management Dashboard Locally for a RabbitMQ Cluster Deployed in AKS via Azure App Gateway and Nginx Ingress Controller

We have discussed "Setting Up RabbitMQ Cluster in AKS Using RabbitMQ Cluster Operator" and how to expose dashboard with "Access Management Dashboard Locally for a RabbitMQ Cluster Deployed in AKS via Port Forwarding or Nginx Ingress Controller Inside VNet". Using the same Nginx route we can setup app gateway route rule so that the RabbitMQ dashboard can be accessed public url.

The expectation  is to route via App Gateway as shown below..

Access Management Dashboard Locally for a RabbitMQ Cluster Deployed in AKS via Port Forwarding or Nginx Ingress Controller Inside VNet

 We have discussed "Setting Up RabbitMQ Cluster in AKS Using RabbitMQ Cluster Operator" in a previous post. RabbitMQ management dashboard is a useful tool to have simple monitoring and inspecting the setup, connections etc. in the deployed RabbitMQ cluster (It is better to implement proper monitoring and alerting, which we will discuss in a next post). let' look at how to enable access to the dashboard of RabbitMQ deployed in the AKS cluster via port forwarding as well as setting up ingress via nginx.

Run a Test on RabbitMQ Cluster in AKS with perf-test

 Once a RabbitMQ cluster is deployed on AKS as described in "Setting Up RabbitMQ Cluster in AKS Using RabbitMQ Cluster Operator" it would be grat to test if the deployment is working as expected. For this purpose we can use a perf-test . Let's run a perf-test step by step for RabbitMQ in AKS cluster using wsl in this post.

Expectation is to run a performance test as shown below.

Setting Up RabbitMQ Cluster in AKS Using RabbitMQ Cluster Operator

 We have discused "Setting Up RabbitMQ Cluster Operator and Topology Operator via Azure Pipelines in AKS" in the previous post. The deployed cluster oprator in AKS can be used deploy a RabbitMQ cluster. In this post let's explore deploying a production ready RabbitMQ Cluster in AKS (without TLS/SSL - we will explore that in a future post), to be used with apps deployed in same AKS cluster. 

Once successfully deployed the RabbitMQ clsuter the rabbitmq namcspace should have resources shown in the below image. We are deploying a three node RabbitMQ cluster, each pod scheduled in a different Azure availability zone node. Cluster access setup with service/rabbitmq-cluster ClusterIP, as we only need access within AKS cluster for apps. How to use it for local development, we can discuss in a future post.

Setting Up RabbitMQ Cluster Operator and Topology Operator via Azure Pipelines in AKS

Using operators to setup RabbitMQ cluster in  AKS (kubernetes) is a recomended approach. There are two RabbitMQ operators we need to deploy into AKS for setting up a RabbitMQ cluster and managing message setup in the deployed RabbitMQ cluster.

• Cluster Operator: Automate provisioning, management and oprations of a RabbitMQ cluster within AKS.
• Messaging Topology Operator: Managing message topologies within the deployed RabbitMQ cluster in AKS.

In this post let's look at how to seup above two operators in AKS using Azure DevOps pipeline step.

Publish Ascii Documentation to Confluence via Azure Pipelines

We can use AsciiDoc to write technical documentation. However, confluence is a popular wiki to keep the documentation related to software projects. In this blog let's look at how to publish AsciiDoc documentation in a repo to Confluence via Azure DevOps pipelines.

Restrict State Transitions in Azure DevOps Work Items

 Azure DevOps work items for example User Story work item can be moved from one state to another in a workflow. As per this question in tech communties a requirement is there to resrict a New state user story from moving to Closed state directly. But if the uer story is in another state such as Active it should be able to moved to Closed state. Let's explore how to implement a solution for this Azure DevOps.

We can use customized templates in Azure DevOps to customize the work items and work flows. To restrict moving a user story from New to Closed state we can implement a rule in user story work item as below.

• Open custom template user story work item.
• Then go to rules tab and add a new rule.
• Provide a rule name. 
• Add condition "Work item state is moved from" and select New as the value.
• Add action "Restrict transition to state" and select Closed as the value.

Loop Jobs based on Parameter Value in Azure DevOps Pipelines

 Consider a situation where we want to perform same set of steps in a pipeline, multiple times. A good example would be building or deloying multiple apps, using same set of steps. Let's explore this example to understand how we can loop through set of pipeline steps, to build multiple apps using a list of app names provided as a parameter in the pipeline.

Update Azure Pipeline Library Group Variable Value in Azure Pipeline using CLI

We can set a variable value in Azure piplines using task.setvariable. This will only set a variable in the pipeline but not in a variable group. If we want to set a variable in a library variable group in Azure DevOps, we have to use command line azure-devops extension  for Azure CLI. Let's explore how to update a library variable group variable value using Azure pipeline step.

Deploying Kubernetes Event Drivern Autoscaling (KEDA) with Azure Pipelines Using Helm

 We have discussed how to deploy KEDA using helm in the post "Setting Up Kubernetes Event Drivern Autoscaling (KEDA) in AKS with Workload Identity" .  Instead of deploying KEDA manually it is better to automate the deployment. Let's look at the steps to get KEDA deployed using Azure pipelines.

Using Object Type Azure DevOps YAML Pipeline Parameter in PowerShell Task

 Using a YAML pipeline paramter in a PowerShell task is straight forward for types such as string. For example, if there is a YAML pipeline parameter named env of type string, we can read it in PowerShell task with $envName = '${{ parameters.env }}; without any issue. However, if the parameter is type of object we cannot read, the paramter the same way we do with string parameters. If we try to read object parameter named apps, $apps = '${{ parameters.apps}}; , there will be an YAML validation error staring the pipeline such as below. 

/azure-pipelines.yml (Line: 57, Col: 23): Unable to convert from Array to String. Value: Array

Even if we try to use below it will be same issue.

[String[]]$apps = '${{ parameters.apps}};

[PSObject[]]$apps = '${{ parameters.apps}};

Let's explore the issueand solution in detail.

Fix Terraform Azure AD Group Read with "403 Insufficient privileges" in Azure Pipelines

 For deploying Azure resources  with Terraform via Azure pipelines we use service principals (SPN) to connect to Azure from Azure DevOps. You might encounter "403 Insufficient privileges" errors while trying to read Azure AD groups data, which you might want to use to create role assignment in the new resources you are provsioning with Terraform. For example it can be a Azure AD group referred as data as shown below.

# refer to sub_owners AD group to assign as aks admins

data "azuread_group" "myteam" {

  display_name     = "sub_owners"

  security_enabled = true

}

 Let's look at the how to resolve the exception "403 Insufficient privileges".

Set Value for a Secret Variable in Azure Release Pipelines while Triggering from Another Release

 You might want to trigger a release from another release pipeline, specially if you are deploying to a multi tenant application environment. In such cases when you trigger a pipeline from another pipeline the variables you are setting dynamically cannot be a secret variable. If you set a variable that should be settable at release time as a secret, the release cannot be triggerd via the Azure DevOps REST API call, as it will throw an exception such as below.

The 'secret' property of

variables cannot be altered while creating a release. Verify the value

provided for variables UserPwd at scope Release and try again.  

Let's try to understand bit more of the requirement.

Create Deployment Groups Dynamically in Azure DevOps Release Pipeline

 Deployment groups are used in Azure DevOps classic release pipelines to define groups of targets an application should be deployed. We may sometime need to create these deployment groups dyamically based on the stage we are running in release pipeline. Let's look at the sample PowerShell code to use for creating depployment group dynamically, using Azure DevOps REST API, and how to use it in a pipeline.