A primer on using VMs with multi-stage pipelines

One of the most demanded features for multi-stage pipelines in Azure DevOps is the possibility of natively targeting VMs. As of today you can easily target Kubernetes environments and cloud-hosted environments, but it is not...

16 Jan 2020

Create a build matrix with Azure Pipelines

I was discussing this with a colleague a couple of days ago (if you are reading this, hi Keith!): can we easily build a build matrix with Azure Pipelines? A build matrix is something that...

07 Jan 2020

Review - The Unicorn Project

Here it is, the most awaited book this year for whoever is even tangentially involved with DevOps… The book covers the endeavours of Maxine, demoted from her team at Parts Unlimited to the Phoenix Project...

22 Dec 2019

Why isn't my agent updating?

This happens fairly often in restricted configurations where there are proxies, firewalls, etc… Let’s say you want to update your Azure Pipelines agent from the UI: If you see a message saying that it’s downloading...

13 Dec 2019

You've got no excuses in managing secrets with Azure DevOps and KeyVault!

As part of a solid engineering practices one of the first things I flag up during an assessment is how you handle secrets - their management is really one of these things where you cannot...

01 Dec 2019

Enforce governance on Azure DevOps Organisations

This is a crucial but often overlooked detail when it comes to corporate adoption of Azure DevOps - how can I prevent users from creating rogue Organisations? Needless to say, the first port of call...

20 Nov 2019

Did you know? Repo branching policies in Azure DevOps

It’s one of these things that go unnoticed until you actually stumble upon them: did you know that Azure DevOps has a number of branch policies you can apply to each repository in your Team...

13 Nov 2019

When to integrate SCA?

As much as I am a fan of Microsoft Secure Code Analysis I would not go and blindly integrate the whole suite without a degree of thought. If you attended one of the sessions where...

01 Nov 2019

Getting started with Secure Code Analysis

I recently got in touch with the Microsoft Secure Code Analysis team as part of my deeper research on DevSecOps practices, and I was astounded by how easy and effective it is to integrate a...

22 Oct 2019

Review - DevOps for the Modern Enterprise

It’s been a while since my last book review - unfortunately I did not read any work-related book for the last few months, and that dried up a fair bit. That said, I just finished...

19 Oct 2019

When to scan what?

Picking up from my last post, a question I regularly get after showing these tools is: Should I apply all of these (tools and practices) to CI builds and canary releases? The answer is clearly...

10 Oct 2019

Integrate Fortify in Azure DevOps, how easy!

For my latest session (at WinOps 2019, brilliant conference as usual) I dabbled with some addition to my session on Code Quality and DevSecOps. One of these additions was Fortify - a well-known security scanner...

30 Sep 2019

Let's talk about Build retention, shall we?

Build Retention Policies have always been a contentious thing to talk about: at some point, you need to let go of your old builds. This post is not about after how long, but to talk...

15 Sep 2019

Project-wide flaky test detection

Azure DevOps is a complex platform and today I found out something quite interesting: system-wide flaky test detection. A really neat feature indeed - you can configure detection and management of flaky (unreliable) tests so...

05 Sep 2019

Hey, my Service Principal expired!

If you used Azure DevOps long enough, you will eventually run into a situation like this - your Service Principal will expire and throw this error: Don’t panic if you see this - when you...

19 Aug 2019

Challenges of creating an internal sharing model with Azure DevOps

Azure DevOps is a brilliant platform with a flexibility second to none, so it comes fairly natural to try and push its boundaries more and more when you start experimenting with its feature. A very...

10 Aug 2019

What is the difference between Usage and Auditing in Azure DevOps?

The Azure DevOps team released a new Auditing feature a couple of days ago, and then a question immediately sprung up: what is the difference between Auditing (the new feature) and Usage? Usage is pretty...

28 Jul 2019

Why are you not using conditions?

All technology tools and platforms have some feature which, for one reason or another, are less known and used compared to others. More often than not, Conditions in Azure Pipelines fall within this category. Out...

20 Jul 2019

How to implement rollback strategies in Azure Pipelines

Sometimes simple things seem really hard - rollback strategies seem to end up in this category! Let’s make things simple: each and every release pipeline you create can have multiple jobs, and each job can...

07 Jul 2019

Ten years of MVP Award

Today is an important day. Today is Renewal Day for a sizeable amount of the Microsoft MVP population, and I was renewed as well for the 10th year in a row. Ten years is a...

01 Jul 2019

Remember the power of an Agent

This post stems from a discussion I had a few days ago: sometimes we just forget how powerful having an Agent on a target system can be. The example in case is for a well...

30 Jun 2019

Postmortem of the Global DevOps Bootcamp 2019

This year I hosted the Global DevOps Bootcamp 2019 for London, and the theme of the event was You Build It, You Run It! - so it’s time for a postmortem! It was a wrap-up...

16 Jun 2019

Review - Azure DevOps Server 2019 Cookbook

More than ten years ago I was at the beginning of my career, and I bought a book - “Team Foundation Server 2008 in action”. That book was a cornerstone in cementing my future as...

05 Jun 2019

How to move your Release Definitions to YAML today!

You might have got it - I am very, very keen on YAML Build and Release Pipelines, because they unleash the power of a full-fledged orchestrator in a single format: YAML files. A friend of...

23 May 2019

How YAML pipelines change the whole CI/CD story

At Build the Azure DevOps team announced YAML pipelines for the deployment side of the story. I am very excited, because I believe this changes the whole CI/CD proposition not just for Azure DevOps as...

10 May 2019

Solving the looping problem in Azure DevOps Pipelines

What should you do if you want to have a Pipelines job that loops based on dynamic inputs? Working around this problem has always been a pet peeve of mine - luckily today we’ve got...

04 May 2019

Make your life easier with Group Rules in Azure DevOps Services

This is something that comes in very handy - licence management isn't the simplest thing to implement and police. There is always someone who is going to try and sneak around the process in place,...

22 Apr 2019

Do you want to move to YAML pipelines? Here is how I would do it.

YAML pipelines can be daunty, no question about this - especially if you come from a background where you come from a nice UI like the one for Build Pipelines to a plain text file...

11 Apr 2019

Use Azure DevOps Release Gates to check for website availability and automate stage flows

Modern deployment patterns rely on automation, everywhere. A common request in this space is to automatically verify if a web resource is up and running before proceeding with the deployment.Instead of having a script that...

20 Mar 2019

Did you know? Changing default and comparison branch in Git from Azure DevOps

This was one of those things you never realise until you actually look at it:Have you ever thought that many people just leave that at the default setting (both Default and Compare on master) without...

14 Mar 2019

A quick reflection on git reset

This is fairly quick, but I haven't realised how important it is up to now - a friend made up such a mess of his repository adding and changing files before committing that he wanted...

08 Mar 2019

Using the Basic Process Template in Azure DevOps to make support management easier

I love the introduction of a Basic Process Template in Azure DevOps, and I will tell you why – it provides a very simple structure for projects that do not want or require a more...

17 Feb 2019

The continuous quest for automation in DevOps, and the Azure ML Studio example

When you think about it, most of the tasks you carry on in a DevOps environment revolve around automation.Infrastructure as Code? It’s automation, right? Cool. Testing? As automated as possible. Integration with 3rd party systems...

10 Feb 2019

How to reorder your stages in Azure Pipelines

It might seem funny, it might seem stupid... but this might happen to someone else, so it can be handy for the future. How do you re-order your stages in a pipeline?Let's take this example:Now,...

01 Feb 2019

My road to an open source project: Azure Traffic Manager extension for Azure DevOps

As I mentioned in my last few posts, I have been working in my spare time to convert the existing scripts I had for Azure Traffic Manager into an Azure DevOps extension.I finally managed a...

23 Jan 2019

The dev.azure.com URL - can I move away from the old visualstudio.com URL?

Plenty of reasons behind this, but you might want to move away from your <organisation>.visualstudio.com URL and onto the new dev.azure.com/<organisation> URL as a matter of standards.It is fairly easy to do - straight from...

17 Jan 2019

The importance of the .gitignore file

A few days ago I spent a some time reviewing some old repositories of mine (mostly demos) and I realised how cluttered they were.You know why? Because they were created years ago, went unmaintained for...

11 Jan 2019

Recycle your PowerShell scripts in a custom Azure DevOps task

I am a huge PowerShell fan, and pretty much anybody who knows me is aware of that.Over time I developed my set of scripts for demos and conferences, and some of them are in use...

28 Dec 2018

How to authenticate with the Azure subscription you select in a custom PowerShell Azure DevOps task

I will cover more about my custom PowerShell Azure DevOps task, but I wanted to share this quick tip as I struggled as much as the next guy about it...Say that you want to re-use...

19 Dec 2018

Lift and shift migration of Team Foundation Server to Azure with Azure DevOps Server 2019

This is a consequence of the support for Azure SQL Database - as you can use it as a data tier now, you can also upgrade your existing Team Foundation Server instance to Azure DevOps...

06 Dec 2018

Time for a change

Today is my last day at Quest Software and One Identity. Moving on has been a hard-thought decision, after over five and a half years. I met some great people there, and I managed to...

30 Nov 2018

Big changes in Azure DevOps Server 2019 - Inherited Processes

Another huge feature brought by Azure DevOps Server 2019 is Process Inheritance - meaning you are going to get the same customisation experience you get today on Azure DevOps Services on your own Azure DevOps...

26 Nov 2018

Big changes in Azure DevOps Server 2019 - SQL Azure Database support

This is the first of a (hopefully!) series of posts looking at the substantial new features of Azure DevOps Server, which was released yesterday in RC1.If you follow my blog you know that despite everything...

21 Nov 2018

Tips on granular migrations with the Migration Tools for Azure DevOps

As you know, I am a huge fan of Martin Hinshelwood's Migration Tools for Azure DevOps. I've been using them for the past few months, and I put together a list of common occurrences that...

13 Nov 2018

Why you should scan your code within your pipelines

Like many I received this email from GitHub a couple of weeks ago on an old repository: This made me think about how important security scanning is in this day and age. Your code might...

28 Oct 2018

Unblock the SonarQube upgrade process when using Azure AD plugin for authentication

There is a well known issue with SonarQube's Azure AD plugin, where an upgrade from v6.x to v7.x fails. Fixing this issue involves modifying the Users table manually outside of the upgrade process, and at...

22 Oct 2018

A small detail to keep in mind while exporting Build Definitions

As part of a migration process you might want to easily migrate the Build Definitions for your pipelines – you can easily do this by using the Export Definition in your Pipelines:This will create a...

12 Oct 2018

Why Universal Packages?

You might have read about the new Universal Package, something I am quite a fan of. There is no need for a huge software system in order to use them: actually I read about the...

09 Oct 2018

Should I use GitHub to use the ten free Azure Pipelines?

At yesterday's meetup we got this question: why should I use GitHub to get the ten free parallel Azure Pipelines if I already have a project in the service?It is an excellent question, and the...

25 Sep 2018

Use the free Azure Pipeline plan with your GitHub project!

It's been a couple of weeks from the Azure DevOps announcement, and I am contemplating an amazing London sunset while I prepare for tomorrow's event.Before getting distracted by the landscape, I was setting up the...

23 Sep 2018

So... what happened to VSTS?

Yes I know – it is a bit of an old news, but I was on holiday and I realised that there are so many crumbs of information around, hence a nice summarising post would...

17 Sep 2018

A collection of SQL Server-related tips for the TFS Administrator

If you run Team Foundation Server on-premise, understanding how SQL Server works on the Data Tier is extremely important. Despite the push for the cloud, there might be so many reasons why you need to...

20 Aug 2018

How VSTS Sync Migrator is going to change then way you migrate to VSTS

Like I said in my last post, I really enjoy using VSTS Sync Migrator for Work Item migrations.There are a few reasons why I believe this tool stands out from the rest, and it is not...

09 Aug 2018

A set of tools to deal with granular VSTS migrations

I am in the middle of a TFS to VSTS migration, and unfortunately I cannot use the TFS Database Import Service this time around. So I put together this list of tools to use for...

31 Jul 2018

I want to move my project from TFVC on TFS to Git on VSTS, without command-line tools. Can I do it?

Many often do not realise how easy is to consume technology to make it accomplish a certain scenario. This happened just last week to me.For example: you have a project on a Team Foundation Server,...

17 Jul 2018

Review – Accelerate

As you know, I am not only a technology enthusiast but also very into the business side of DevOps. And as a fan of The Phoenix Project, I really could not refrain from purchasing it...

10 Jul 2018

A set of tricky situations with HTTPS and TFS

HTTPS is more and more common-place, not just for public websites but also for internal websites. This is extremely good for a number of reasons, but from an administration standpoint there are a few bits...

27 Jun 2018

Easily handle internal settings while orchestrating components' deployments and parameters

After ten years of attending, then speaking at conferences it always strikes me what demos often miss are real world details that really make the difference.Like...deploying an application with a pipeline. Everybody talks about it,...

20 Jun 2018

Quickly deploy a baseline SQL database with VSTS

"Sometimes we go full steam ahead with a complex solution for a very simple problem..."That was the answer I gave to a friend of mine who asked me how to feed some baseline database for...

16 Jun 2018

How to run UI tests in a Deployment Group with TFS and VSTS

Especially if you are testing client applications, you might want to run UI tests on a Deployment Group instead of a Build Agent. While technology is the same, there are a couple of things to...

07 Jun 2018
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