Deploying ASP.NET Core App to Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS)–Setting Up Azure DevOps Pipeline Manually–Step By Step Guide–Part 1

In the post “Deploy ASP.NET Core App to AKS with Azure DevOps” a quick start guide has been given on setting up an ASP.NET Core App with Azure DevOps projects. The application code, Azure Container Registry, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Cluster as well as build and deployment pipelines were auto generated, with few clicks in the Azure Portal. To do deployment to AKS, Helm packaging was used in the Azure DevOps Projects auto generated sample app. In this post, let’s look at much simpler implementation, to get the ASP.NET Core App build and deployed to AKS via Azure Pipelines.

Updating Test Case Work Item Tags and Description based on Test Automation Code Test Category Attributes and Summary Descriptions

A test automation development team has come up with a requirement to keep track of some test automation code related attributes and documentation descriptions in the relevant Test Case work items in Azure DevOps. The documentation description added to each test method in  the code should be captured and updated to Test Case work item summary description. Any test category attribute values should be applied as Tags to the Test Case work item. Let’s look at how we can automate the above requirement using a little bit of PowerShell in combination with Azure DevOps build pipelines.

Draft Pull Request in Azure Git Repos

Pull Request are the controlled way to bring in the changes to your stable branches in your Azure Git repos, or for that matter all Git providers support Pull Requests. In Azure DevOps now you can create Pull Request as a draft so that it is giving the ability to developers to getting it ready and prevent it from being completed accidently by the reviewers. Let’s look at simple steps involved in creating Pull Request as a draft in Azure Repos.

Steps to View Dashboard of Azure Kubernetes Cluster When RBAC Enabled

Azure Kubernetes Services offers you to host your containerized applications in Kubernetes without having to worry about getting the Kubernetes cluster infrastructure setting up and maintenance. Dashboard in Kubernetes helps you to monitor the status of services deployed as well as deployment states and health of the cluster etc. Let’s look at the steps required to perform to access the Kubernetes Dashboard once you have the Azure Kubernetes Service up and running with Role Base Access Control (RBAC) enabled.

Choosing Right Size for Windows 10 VM in Azure to Run Docker

The post “Setup Windows 10 VM in Azure to Develop with Docker CE” has a detailed walkthrough on setting up Docker CE in Azure VM, which is using Windows 10. While trying out the same, encountered an issue to start the Docker giving error message “Failed to start the virtual machine 'MobyLinuxVM' because one of the Hyper-V components is not running. 'MobyLinuxVM' failed to start.” It is interesting to inspect and find a fix to this issue.

Custom Control Conditions in Azure DevOps Pipeline Steps

Azure DevOps pipelines support default conditions allowing you to execute a step “Only when all previous tasks have succeeded”, “Even if a previous task has failed, unless the build was canceled”, “Even if a previous task has failed, even if the build was canceled” or “Only when a previous task has failed”. These conditions facilitate execution of  steps in a build or release pipeline to cater different scenarios. However, to support scenarios not covered by the default conditions you can implement custom control conditions in Azure DevOps pipeline steps. There is a good explanation of custom conditions in this article. Let’s explore two advance scenarios that can be handled with custom conditions, which are not explained in the article.

Inspecting Most Frequently Changed Files in Azure Git Repos

When analyzing an application with its telemetry data we would be looking at usage of the application, and would be able to identify which parts of the system is often used. Wouldn’t it be nice to compare that with the most frequently updated areas of the system? Let’s look at how we can get this information via Azure DevOps REST API.

Resigning and Deploying Xamarin iOS Apps with Azure DevOps

Creating iOS mobile application with Xamarin is a good option for developers who are familiar with Visual Studio family of products. Any project you create nowadays demand for CI/CD implementation as it is the first step towards enabling DevOps. Azure DevOps comes with feature rich set of tasks for building the iOS apps. Tasks that allows re-signing of packaged ipa (iOS deployment files) are available as Marketplace task. App Center allows you to do mobile application testing in much simpler way. Let’s look at steps required to resign and deploy iOS package to APP Center using Azure DevOps pipelines.