Microservices Orchestration with Azure Container Apps

Explore the transformative potential of microservices architecture on Azure Container Apps in this engaging session. Join us as we delve into the intricacies of designing, deploying, and managing microservices-based applications, leveraging the power of Azure's containerization solutions.

During this session, I will guide you through the key principles of microservices and demonstrate how Azure Container Apps streamlines the development and deployment process. Learn best practices for breaking down monolithic applications into smaller, manageable services and witness the benefits of increased scalability, improved fault isolation, and enhanced agility.

Discover the robust features of Azure Container Apps, such as seamless integration with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Azure Container Registry. Gain insights into monitoring, scaling, and troubleshooting microservices in a containerized environment, ensuring optimal performance and reliability.

Whether you're a seasoned developer or a cloud enthusiast, this session promises valuable insights and practical knowledge to empower you in adopting microservices on Azure Container Apps. Unlock the potential of a scalable, resilient, and agile application architecture, and stay ahead in the ever-evolving landscape of modern cloud computing.

ARM yourself with Bicep

In the ever-evolving landscape of cloud computing, the ability to efficiently deploy and manage infrastructure is key to completing a true DevOps cycle. Microsoft Azure, a leading cloud platform, has introduced Bicep, an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) language that streamlines and enhances the process of defining and deploying Azure resources.

This session aims to delve into the intricacies of Bicep, providing attendees with a comprehensive understanding of its features, advantages, and real-world applications. We will explore the evolution of Bicep from its predecessors, examining how it addresses the challenges faced by developers and operations teams in managing infrastructure on Azure.

Get an introduction to BICEP, learn the differences between ARM templates and BICEP. Learn how to incorporate BICEP in your CI/CD pipelines and processes and how to leverage its power.

Forget SignalR! Start working real-time with Azure Web PubSub

In the dynamic landscape of real-time communication, Azure Web PubSub emerges as a game-changer, offering a robust and scalable solution for building interactive and collaborative applications. This conference session aims to explore the capabilities of Azure Web PubSub, comparing it with its cousin, SignalR, and highlighting scenarios where it excels.

By the end of this session, participants will have a deep understanding of Azure Web PubSub's capabilities, differentiating factors from SignalR, and the strategic advantages it brings to real-time communication scenarios. Whether you are a seasoned developer or new to real-time communication services on Azure, this session promises to equip you with the knowledge to elevate your applications to new heights of interactivity and responsiveness.

This session shows real-time communication between a C#.NET backend and an Angular SPA front-end application. I will demonstrate some basic features, and dig into Web PubSub's true possibilities with advanced scenarios.

Kubernetes made easy - Getting the hang of Azure Container Apps

Containers are taking over! And it is time to get yourself familiar with containers and containerization of your software systems. The learning curve for Kubernetes is fairly high making hosting and maintenance complicated. The new Azure service called Container Apps, runs Kubernetes for you with a unique, and easy to use abstraction layer between you, and Kubernetes. Get the hang of Container Apps and learn how to spin up your first containers during this session.

Azure Networking - A love story between a Hub and a Spoke

Join my session on Azure Networking as we explore the creation of virtual networks, VPN connections, and network peering. This hands-on session will guide you through the process of building virtual networks and establishing secure connections. Learn how to configure VPN gateways, for seamless connectivity between on-premises networks and Azure virtual networks. Discover the power of network peering to connect virtual networks within Azure and enable secure communication across different network boundaries. Gain practical skills and knowledge to enhance your Azure Networking projects and unlock the true potential of cloud networking.

Advanced Azure Container Apps - By Example

Discover the world of Azure Container Apps. During this session, where we'll illustrate the concept using a URL minifier example. From grasping the core containerization principles and their advantages to exploring dynamic scaling with KEDA integration, and harnessing the potential of Azure Container Apps Jobs for orchestrating batch tasks, this session will provide a comprehensive understanding of modern application deployment. Join me in unraveling the synergy of containerization, scaling strategies, and job management, empowering you to create efficient and robust applications in the Azure ecosystem.

This is a demo-heavy session about Azure Container Apps where we will slowly work to a fully working URL minifier. This minifier uses the full potential of Azure Container Apps like scaling using HTTP traffic and using KEDA, but also event-driven background tasks and scheduled jobs using Azure Container Apps Jobs.

Glueing .NET Aspire Services with Container Apps and Dapr

Ready to move your .NET Aspire project from local development to a production-ready cloud environment? This session provides a practical roadmap for deploying multi-service .NET solutions using Azure Container Apps and Dapr, tackling the common challenges of scaling, inter-service communication, and resilience.

In this session, you will learn how to:
* Containerize .NET Aspire services for a seamless deployment to Azure Container Apps.
* Leverage built-in Dapr components for robust service invocation, pub/sub messaging, and state management.
* Enhance communication and reliability between services without writing complex, boilerplate code.
* Create a clear strategy for streamlining the deployment and operation of your applications on Azure.

Join us to gain the skills and confidence needed to operate modern, cloud-native .NET solutions in production. This session is essential for developers and architects looking to simplify their service landscape and accelerate their deployment pipeline.

Target Audience
.NET developers and architects interested in building and deploying distributed applications on Azure. A basic understanding of .NET and C# is recommended. Prior experience with a multi-service environment, microservices or Azure is beneficial but not required.

Duration
This session is designed to be delivered within a 40 to 60-minute timeframe. It can be extended to a 90-minute session with more in-depth examples and hands-on coding.

Session Outline (60-Minute Version)
Part 1: Setting the Stage (25 minutes)

Introduction: Start with the core problem: the complexity of deploying, managing, and connecting multiple services in a production environment.

What is .NET Aspire?: Explain that Aspire is an opinionated, cloud-ready stack for building observable, production-ready, distributed applications. Focus on its role in simplifying the local development experience through service discovery, orchestration, and component configuration.

What is Dapr?: Introduce Dapr (Distributed Application Runtime) as a set of portable, event-driven APIs that simplify microservice development. Explain the sidecar pattern and how Dapr decouples your application code from infrastructure concerns like state management, pub/sub, and service-to-service calls.

Part 2: Introducing the Demo Application (15 minutes)

Application Architecture: Present a simple multi-service demo application

Local Development with Aspire: Showcase the .NET Aspire AppHost project, demonstrating how easily services are defined and connected. Run the application locally and highlight the Aspire Dashboard, showing logs, traces, and metrics across all services in one place.

Part 3: Deploying to Production (15 minutes)

The "Production Problem": Explain that the Aspire AppHost is for local development only and does not run in production. This creates the need for a production-ready orchestration and hosting platform.

Solution: Azure Container Apps: Introduce Azure Container Apps as the ideal host. Emphasize its serverless nature, built-in Dapr integration, and scaling capabilities.

Step 1: Containerize Services: Briefly explain how to containerize the individual services of the Aspire solution. Mention the use of azd (Azure Developer CLI) to streamline this process.

Step 2: Deploy to Azure Container Apps: Walk through the process of deploying the containerized services to an Azure Container Apps Environment.

Step 3: Configure Dapr: Demonstrate how to enable and configure Dapr on Azure Container Apps to replace the functionality provided by Aspire components locally. Show how to configure a state store and pub/sub broker using Dapr components.

Live Demo: Show the application running successfully in Azure, demonstrating that service invocation and state management are now handled by Dapr.

Part 4: Recap and Q&A (5 minutes)

Summary: Reiterate the key takeaways: Aspire for local development, Dapr for building portable distributed applications, and Azure Container Apps for production hosting and scaling.

Resources: Provide links to the GitHub repository with the demo code and official documentation.

Q&A: Open the floor for audience questions.

Taking advantage of Dapr in practice

Dapr (Distributed Application Runtime) is a powerful open-source framework that simplifies building cloud-native, distributed applications by providing a set of building blocks for microservices. In this session, you'll get hands-on with Dapr and discover how to harness its key components: the state store for efficient data management, pub/sub for seamless event-driven communication, and the task scheduler for automated workflows. We’ll walk through setting up Dapr in a .NET Aspire environment, making it easy to integrate resilient and scalable microservices into your applications. Whether you're new to microservices or looking to streamline your architecture, this session will equip you with practical insights and techniques to enhance your development workflow with Dapr.

This is not a theoretical session, we will dive in the code and actually add components and use them. All code is C#.NET

Cloud Patterns to the rescue

Designing software for the cloud can be quite similar to on-premises solutions. However, when running software systems in the cloud you will run into issues you never ran into on-premises. During this session, I show common pitfalls and key differences between the two. Following this session will make you write better cloud-native, robust and resilient code

Learn how to use cloud design patterns to dodge common pitfalls. I will guide you through the solution and show you how to create highly performant, scalable software systems.

Deploy your API secured, with a DevSecOps CI/CD pipeline

This talk will take you through all the bits and pieces needed to deploy an ASP.NET Core Web API with DevSecOps. The infrastructure is deployed using ARM Templates and I will show you a secure and safe way to use and read values from the KeyVault keeping all your secrets safe.

This talk is all about DevOps and CI/CD. I will build an ASP.NET WebApi from scratch, provision the entire infrastructure, and configure the services in Azure leaving attendants with a full working deployable system, and access to the GitHub repo with all the sources. All the secrets are stored in KeyVault and referenced using KeyVault References. This talk is a real eye-opener for those who don’t have their pipelines fully under control.