Presenting at and attending Experts Live Europe 2023

Presenting at and attending Experts Live Europe 2023

I am happy to share that I am both presenting at and attending Experts Live Europe 2023. It runs September 18-20 2023 in Prague.

Presenting at and attending Experts Live Europe 2023

Isidora Katanic (@IsidoraKatanic) is the lead organizer and driving force behind Experts Live Europe. She’s dedicated to making this one of the best Microsoft technology-focused conferences in Europe. When you look at the pre-conference and session calendar you can already see this. She and her team lined up everything to make the 2023 edition a great professional and community experience. Experts Live Europe is a two-day conference (three days with the preconference workshops) and is scheduled in Prague, September 18-20,  2023.  It is the first edition since 2019 due to the Corona/Covid pandemic. I can share that I personally, and many others, are happy that this is possible again. Next to that, I am thrilled to share my research and expertise at this conference once more.

In my session “Azure Storage – The SMB over QUIC protocol is here!” I will be diving deeper into the why and how of SMB over QUIC.

Presenting at and attending Experts Live Europe 2023

This is a very powerful and promising, relatively recent addition to the SMB 3 stack. Once again it shows that file sharing is far from an obsolete protocol in the era of anything “cloud”.

Meet the experts and ask me anything galore

This conference is about you and me, about us, sharing insights, experiences, knowledge, and expertise. Both the concept and the setup of the conference facilitate this by design.

Presenting at and attending Experts Live Europe 2023

While I’m there, come say hi, and talk shop about networking, storage, clustering, Hyper-V, DevOps, Bicep, and Veeam data protection in on-premises, hybrid, and Azure scenarios. I’ll be around during the breaks for the “Ask The Expert” and at the dedicated speaker’s booth in the expo area. Now, next to a Microsoft MVP I am also a Veeam Vanguard. Veeam is a gold sponsor and I’ll be around their boot as well. So come find me if you want to talk about Veeam Backup & Replication, Hardened (immutable) repositories, and other related subjects.

I am there to learn as well

Finally,  I also look forward to the sessions other speakers are giving. One of those sessions, “Azure Firewall: The Legacy Firewall Killer”,  is presented by Aidan Finn (@joe_elway). That subject is both very interesting and a bit controversial. Many people know and master 3rd party firewall interfaces with their specific tooling and capabilities. While there is nothing wrong with that, many people scoff at Azure Firewall. But you should not write off Azure firewall with different products. This is especially true when you start delivering Azure Firewall via Infrastructure as Code (IaC).

Call to action

Do not delay! Register to attend Experts Live Europe and do not miss out on a ton of great sessions by expert speakers,  networking with knowledgeable attendees, and talking shop with your fellow IT professionals, who are as passionate about technology as you.  I look forward to seeing you there.

Presenting at and attending Experts Live Europe 2023

ConvertFrom-Json is not serializable

Introduction

While writing Bicep recently, I was stumped by the fact that my deployment kept failing. I spent a lot of time troubleshooting many possible ideas on what might be causing this. As JSON is involved and I am far from a JSON syntax guru, I first focused on that. Later I moved to how I use JSON in Bicep and PowerShell before finally understanding the problem was due to the fact that ConvertFrom-Json is not serializable.

Parameters with Bicep

When deploying resources in Azure with Bicep, I always need to consider who has to deliver or maintain the code and the parameters. It has to be somewhat structured, readable, and understandable. It can’t be one gigantic listing that confuses people to the point they are lost. Simplicity and ease of use rule my actions here. I know when it comes to IaC, this can be a challenge. So, when it comes to parameters, what are our options here?

  • I avoid hard-coding parameters in Bicep. It’s OK for testing while writing the code, but beyond that, it is a bad idea for maintainability.
  • You can use parameter files. That is a considerable improvement, but it has its limitations.
  • I have chosen the path of leveraging PowerShell to create and maintain parameters and pass those via objects to the main bicep file for deployment. That is a flexible and maintainable approach. Sure, it is not perfect either, but neither am I.

Regarding Bicep and PowerShell, we can also put parameters in separate files and read those to create parameters. Whether this is a good idea depends on the situation. My rule of thumb is that it is worth doing when things become easier to read and maintain while reducing the places where you have to edit your IaC files. In the case of Azure Firewall Policy Rules Collection Groups, Rules collections, and Rules, it can make sense.

Bicep and JSON files

You can read file content in Bicep using. With the json() function, you can tell Bicep that this is JSON. So far, so good. The below is perfectly fine and works. We can loop through that variable in a resource deployment.

var firewallChildRGCs = [

    json(loadTextContent('./AFW/Policies/RGSsAfwChild01.json'))

    json(loadTextContent('./AFW/Policies/RGSsAfwChild02.json'))

    json(loadTextContent('./AFW/Policies/RGSsAfwChild03.json'))

]

However, I am not entirely happy with this. While I like it in some aspects, it conflicts with my desire not needing to edit a working Bicep file once it is in use. So what do I like about it?

It keeps Bicep clean and concise and limits the looping to iterate over the Rules Collection Groups, thus avoiding the nested looping for Rules collections and Rules. Why is that? Because I can do this

@batchSize(1)

resource firewallChildPolicyWEUColGroups 'Microsoft.Network/firewallPolicies/ruleCollectionGroups@2022-07-01' = [for (childrcg, index) in firewallChildRGCs: {

  parent: firewallChildPolicyWEU

  name: childrcg.name

  dependsOn: [firewallParentPolicyWEUColGroups]

  properties: childrcg.properties

}]

As you can see, I loop through the variable and pass the JSON into the properties. That way, I create all Rule Collections and Rules without needing to do any nested looping via “helper” modules to get this done.

The drawback, however, is that the loadTextContent function in Bicep cannot use dynamic parameters or variables. As a result, the paths to the files need to be hard coded into the Bicep file. That is something we want to avoid. But until that is possible, it is a hard restriction. That is because parameters are evaluated during runtime (bicep deployment), whereas loadTextContent in Bicep happens while compiling (bicep build). So, in contrast to the early previews of Bicep, where you “transpiled” the Bicep manually, it is now done for you automatically before the deployment. You think this can work, but it does not.

PowerShell and JSON files

As mentioned above, I chose to use PowerShell to create and maintain parameters, and I want to read my JSON files there. However, it prevents me from creating large, long, and complex to maintain PowerShell objects with nested arrays. Editing these is not straightforward for everyone. On top of that, it leads to the need for nested looping in Bicep via “helper” modules. While that works, and I use it, I find it more tedious with deeply nested structures and many parameters to supply. Hence I am splitting it out into easier-to-maintain separate JSON files.

Here is what I do in PowerShell to build my array to pass via an Object parameter. First, I read the JSON filers from my folder.

$ChildFilePath = "../bicep/nested/AfwChildPoliciesAndRules/*"
$Files = Get-ChildItem -File $ChildFilePath -Include '*.json' -exclude 'DONOTUSE*.json'
$Files
$AfwChildCollectionGroupsValidate = @() # We use this with ConvertFrom-Json to validate that the JSON file is OK, but cannot use this to pass as a param to Bicep
    $AfwChildCollectionGroups = @()
    Foreach ($File in $Files) {
    try{
        $AfwChildCollectionGroupsValidate += (Get-Content $File.FullName -Raw) | ConvertFrom-Json
        # DO NOT PUT JSON in here - the PSCustomObject is not serializable and passing this param to Bicep will than be empty!
        $AfwChildCollectionGroups += (Get-Content $File.FullName -Raw) # A string is serializable!
        }
        Catch
        {
        write-host -ForegroundColor Red "ConvertFrom-Json threw and error. Check your JSON in the RCG/RC/R files"
        Exit
        }
    }

I can then use this to roll out the resources, as in the below example.

// Roll out the child Rule Collection Group(s)

var ChildRCGs = [for (rulecol, index) in firewallChildpolicy.RuleCollectionGroups: {

  name: json(rulecol).name

  properties: json(rulecol).properties

}]

Initially, the idea was that by using ConvertFrom-Json I would pass the JSON to Bicep as a parameter directly.

$AfwChildCollectionGroups += (Get-Content $File.FullName -Raw) | ConvertFrom-Json

So not only would I not need to load the files in Bicep with a hard-coded path, I would also not need to use json() function in Bicep.

// Roll out the child Rule Collection Group(s)
var ChildRCGs = [for (rulecol, index) in firewallChildpolicy.RuleCollectionGroups: {
  name: rulecol.name
  properties: rulecol.properties
}]

However, this failed on me time and time again with properties not being found and what not. Below is an example of such an error.

Line |
  30 |          New-AzResourceGroupDeployment @params -DeploymentDebugLogLeve …
     |          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
     | 2:46:20 PM - Error: Code=InvalidTemplate; Message=Deployment template validation failed: 'The template variable 'ChildRCGs' is not valid: The language expression property 'name' doesn't exist, available properties are ''.. Please see    
     | https://aka.ms/arm-functions for usage details.'.

It did not make sense at all. That was until a dev buddy asked if the object was serializable at all. And guess what? ConvertFrom-Json creates a PSCustomObject that is NOT serializable.

You can check this quickly yourself.

((Get-Content $File.FullName -Raw) | ConvertFrom-Json).gettype().IsSerializable

Will print False

While

((Get-Content $File.FullName -Raw)).gettype().IsSerializable

Will print True

With some more testing and the use of outputs, I can even visualize that the parameter remained empty! The array contains three empty {} where I expected the JSON.

ConvertFrom-Json is not serializable

I usually do not have any issues with this in my pure PowerShell scripting. But here, I pass the object from PowerShell to Bicep, and guess what? For that to work, it has to be serializable. Now, when I do this, there are no warnings or errors. It just seems to work until you use the parameter and get errors that, at first, I did not understand. But the root cause is that in Bicep, the parameter remained empty. Needless to say, I wasted many hours trying to fix this before I finally understood the root cause!

As you can see in the code, I still use ConvertFrom-Json to test if my JSON files contain any errors, but I do not pass that JSON to Bicep as that will not work. So instead, I pass the string and still use the json() function in Bicep.

Hence, this blog post is to help others not make the mistake I made. It will also help me remember ConvertFrom-Json is not serializable.

VeeeamOn 2023 – The Community Event for Data Recovery Experts

Why attend VeeamOn?

VeeeamOn 2023 – The Community Event for Data Recovery Experts is in less than 50 days. During May 22nd -25th 2023, Veeam is organizing a hybrid event in Miami, Florida, USA. You can attend in person or online. This is “The Community Event for Data Recovery Experts” so if you fall into that target group, try to be there!

The high-level agenda is already available as well as the speakers list. A detailed agenda and schedule will be available any moment now. As you can see the content is real world actionable content. You will learn concepts, get tips, gain a deeper understanding of the challenges you face. Next to that you will learn how to address those challenges from industry experts and fellow professionals. Yes, it is not just vendor driven. The event speakers include partners, fellow IT professionals at customers sharing their knowledge and expertise with you!

This is truly a community event, and it will help you expand your on-prem, hybrid, cloud and security skills when it comes to data recovery. You will learn to build better solutions while growing your professional network in the global community.

VeeamOn is really special!

What sets Veeam apart is how accessible their top talent and leadership is. I have experienced it firsthand. That’s why I have found memories of the times I attend VeeamOn or other Veeam events. Parts of that is the conversations I had with Anton Gostev, Danny Allen, Rick Vanover and their team members. All solid technologists with a no nonsense, straight talk attitude when it comes to our business and technical challenges. This is pretty unique and shows how much they are involved in guiding Veeam on the best possible course to serve their customers as well as possible! I would say it is a privilege, but to Veeam each of their customers truly matters. How do I know? I am one and Veeam is a beacon of light and hope for other vendors to follow.

Call to action

Register now for VeeeamOn 2023 – The Community Event for Data Recovery Experts and do not miss out! Because I am a Veeam Vanguard and as gift to my readers and followers Veeam provided me with this discount code VOMIAMI1002. Using it will give you a 100$ discount when registering. I really hope you can make it, if not in person, then at least online. The good news is that Veeam got pretty good at organizing online events and makes those interactive as well. I wish you a great conference!

Festive Tech Calendar 2022 – mTLS with Azure AppGateway & AppService

Introduction

Wim Matthyssen and I are presenting on implementing mTLS with Azure AppGateway & AppService web application. The idea to present this subject came from a practice session Wim and I were doing on DELL Interactive Touch screens for white boarding. While testing out the hardware we were drawing various networking scenarios, many with private endpoints and that led to showing a mTLS solution I had helped work out recently for some projects. As we had to figure out some details to get this to work, we figured it would be worth presenting about.

Update: The presentation is available here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oanMZ6sFyYc&feature=youtu.be

mTLS with Azure AppGateway & AppService – the article

I have already written an article about Mutual TLS or Client Certificate Auth with Azure | StarWind Blog (starwindsoftware.com). While writing it I made some sketches to help explain the subject. I already had them sitting in a PowerPoint deck to create a session. The idea to present this topic together arose during that evening. Later we decided to do the premier during the Festive Tech Calendar 2022.

Festive Tech Calendar 2022 – mTLS with Azure AppGateway & AppService

So next weekend, December 18th at 11:00-12:00 UTC, this presentation will go live. We hope you will enjoy it and that our finding help you out in your own endeavors. Wim and I would be honored to have you watch.