Unwrapping Serverless GPUs in Azure Container Apps

In this festive session, we'll explore Azure Container Apps' newly GA'd serverless GPU capability, which brings NVIDIA A100 and T4 GPUs to a fully managed serverless environment. I'll show you how to deploy an AI-powered holiday application that automatically scales from zero to hero (and back to zero when the elves take a break), with per-second billing that won't break your budget.

We'll cover:

🎄 What serverless GPUs are and why they're a game-changer for AI workloads
🎅 Deploying a festive AI application with NVIDIA GPU acceleration
⚡ How automatic scaling works - from scale-to-zero to handling holiday traffic spikes
💰 The cost benefits of per-second billing vs. dedicated compute

Whether you're building AI applications, fine-tuning models, or just curious about running GPU workloads without the infrastructure headaches, this session will show you how Azure Container Apps makes it as easy as opening presents on Christmas morning.

Perfect for developers and architects who want to add AI capabilities to their applications without becoming infrastructure experts. No prior GPU or AI experience required - just bring your curiosity and festive spirit!

SRE Agent for Azure: Less Work, Faster Insights

In this session, we'll delve into the Azure SRE Agent (Preview), an AI-powered tool designed to assist in monitoring and maintaining the health of your Azure resources. The agent continuously monitors your resources, providing daily reports that include incident summaries and potential issues, allowing for proactive management and quicker response times. By integrating with tools like Azure Monitor, PagerDuty, and ServiceNow, it facilitates streamlined incident management and remediation workflows. We'll explore its capabilities, including natural language queries for diagnostics, and discuss how it can help reduce operational toil and accelerate root-cause analysis, ultimately enhancing the reliability and efficiency of your Azure environments.

Simplifying Kubernetes Management with AKS Automatic

In this session, we will explore Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Automatic, a new mode of operation for AKS clusters designed to enhance application availability and resiliency. AKS Automatic simplifies the deployment, management, and operations of Kubernetes clusters by incorporating best practices and automating key tasks. This session will cover the features, benefits, and practical applications of AKS Automatic, making it easier than ever to get started with Kubernetes.

Patch Perfect: Keeping Your Containers Secure with Copacetic

Join us to explore Copacetic, a handy CLI tool that makes patching container images quick and easy using vulnerability scans from tools like Trivy. We'll show you how Copacetic lets you patch images directly without needing a full rebuild, saving you time and hassle. Plus, you'll see how it can help you patch third-party images before the original maintainers do, keeping your deployments on track. We'll cover how it works, share some real-world examples, and give you tips on getting the most out of it. Come learn how Copacetic can help you keep your container images secure and up-to-date.

This talk on Copacetic provides a practical solution for quickly patching container images without requiring a full rebuild. This capability is crucial for addressing security vulnerabilities promptly, especially in third-party images, ensuring that deployments are not delayed while waiting for upstream fixes. By demonstrating how Copacetic integrates seamlessly with existing tools like Trivy, the session will show how it simplifies the patching process, reduces operational overhead, and enhances overall security. Attendees will gain actionable insights to improve their container security strategy and maintain robust, secure Kubernetes environments.

Getting Started with Bicep: Your First Steps into Infrastructure as Code

Ready to start deploying Azure infrastructure through code but don't know where to begin? This hands-on workshop will take you from zero to deploying real Azure resources using Bicep—Microsoft's domain-specific language for Infrastructure as Code.

No prior IaC experience required! We'll start with the absolute basics: setting up your development environment, understanding Bicep syntax, and writing your first template. Through guided exercises, you'll learn how to define and deploy common Azure resources, work with parameters and variables, organize your code with modules, and follow best practices from day one.

This workshop is designed for developers who have never used IaC or Bicep before. You'll work through practical, real-world scenarios at your own pace with instructor support throughout. By the end of the session, you'll have hands-on experience deploying Azure infrastructure through code and the confidence to start using Bicep in your own projects.

What you'll need: A laptop with an active Azure subscription (free tier is fine), Visual Studio Code installed, and a willingness to learn. All other setup will be covered in the workshop.

What you'll take away: Working Bicep templates you've written yourself, a solid foundation in IaC concepts, and the knowledge to continue your Bicep journey independently.

Enforce Budgets with Cost Management and Logic Apps

Azure Cost Management allows you to create budgets for your Azure subscriptions, but out of the box it is focussed around providing alerts when you breach those budgets. What if you want to do more than just alert, what if you want to stop users creating new resources, or even turn of existing resources when a budget is reached?

We will look at how you can use Logic Apps in combination with Cost Mangement to perform actions when you a budget is breached, ranging from simple notifications, to shutting down resources.

Creating Secure and Compliant Azure AI Deployments

Cloud providers make it easy to get started with AI, sometimes a little too easy. Spinning up an AI deployment can be done within a matter of minutes, but that doesn't mean its secure and it doesn't mean it is compliant with your organisational policies. Without the right controls in place you can have AI infrastructure popping up all over the place, and your companies data leaking out.

In this session we will look at how you can deploy Azure's AI services in a secure and compliant manner and protect your IP and data. We'll cover the areas of concern, how to secure them and how to automate the process to ensure your environments are secure every time.

Building an infrastructure self service portal with Pulumi and Backstage

Learn how to harness Pulumi's infrastructure as code capabilities with Backstage's developer-friendly interface to empower developers. This session will teach you how to create a self-service portal that enables developers to efficiently deploy and manage their own infrastructure whilst maintaining your standards, policies and security posture.

In this session we'll look at creating Pulumi templates, integrating them with backstage and triggering deployments right from the backstage portal.

AKS or Azure Container Apps? Making the Right Choice for Your Workloads

For a long time, AKS was the only real option for running containers at scale on Azure. Now Azure Container Apps offers a simpler, more managed alternative, but with trade-offs. This session deals with how to choose between them, examining when the additional abstraction helps and when it gets in the way, based on production deployments of both platforms.

We'll walk through real scenarios including microservices with complex networking requirements, event-driven workloads leveraging KEDA, stateful applications, and scale-to-zero use cases. We'll show where each platform fits and where it doesn't.

You'll leave with a clear framework for evaluating your workloads, understanding the trade-offs and knowing when each option makes sense.

AI-Powered Incident Management with Azure SRE Agent

In this session, we'll delve into the Azure SRE Agent, an AI-driven tool designed to enhance incident management in Azure environments. The agent leverages natural language processing to interpret and respond to queries about system health, deployments, and incidents. We'll explore its ability to provide explainable root-cause analysis, automate incident workflows, and integrate with existing tools like Azure Monitor, PagerDuty, and ServiceNow. Through practical demonstrations, we'll showcase how the agent can streamline operations, reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR), and align with your team's operational practices.

AI-Driven Infrastructure: Automating Cloud Infrastructure as Code

In this session, we'll explore how artificial intelligence is transforming the landscape of cloud infrastructure development through Infrastructure as Code (IaC). We'll examine AI-powered tools that assist in generating, validating, and optimizing IaC scripts, such as Bicep, Terraform and Ansible, directly from high-level design specifications. Through practical demonstrations, we'll showcase how these tools can accelerate deployment cycles, reduce human error, and enhance security by automating best practices. Additionally, we'll discuss the integration of AI with existing CI/CD pipelines and observability platforms to create a cohesive and intelligent infrastructure management workflow. Attendees will gain hands-on experience with AI-assisted IaC generation and learn strategies to incorporate these technologies into their own DevOps and platform engineering practices.

Wrap Up your Bicep Code with Modules

This Christmas why not give the gift of your awesome Bicep code all wrapped up in a delightful module.

In this video we’ll look at why you might want to create Bicep modules, best practice for creating them and how to get these modules into the hands of your users so they can unwrap the shiny Bicep code.

Infrastructure as Code with real code, for anyone

In this session we'll take a look at Pulumi, a framework for creating Infrastructure as Code using real programming languages including Dotnet, Node, Typescript and Python.

We'll take an objective look at what Pulumi is and how it works, what the benefits are see some real world of examples of using it. In addition we'll take a look at my personal experience of adopting Pulumi as an IT Pro rather than a developer and how it has helped facilitate better collaboration between IT pro's and developers.

At the end of this session you should have a good understanding of what Pulumi provides and whether it is of interest to you, and how to get started with it, along with some exciting examples to play with.

Streamline Your Infrastructure Deployment with GitOps and Pulumi Operator

Are you tired of managing infrastructure deployments through a tedious and error-prone process? It's time to switch to GitOps and Pulumi Operator. GitOps has transformed the application deployment process, and with Pulumi Operator, you can now apply the same principles to your infrastructure.

Join us for an insightful session where we will dive deep into the Pulumi Operator and learn how it works. We will demonstrate how you can define your infrastructure in Git, and have Pulumi automatically reconcile it into deployed infrastructure. Whether you are new to Pulumi or an experienced user, this session will provide valuable tips and tricks to help you streamline your infrastructure deployment process. Say goodbye to the pain of manual infrastructure deployments and say hello to GitOps and Pulumi Operator!

Reuse, Don't Repeat - Creating an Infrastructure as Code Module Library

With each new Infrastructure as Code project it can often feel like your re-writing the same code you used for the last project, creating a virtual machine that complies with all your corporate security standards, or deploying all the required WAF rules. There is a better way.

In this session we will look at how you can build a library of reusable modules that you can reuse over and over in your IaC projects. This is not just about boilerplate code, but real, usable modules that provide value to your whole team, help you comply with standards and build infrastructure faster.

At the end of this session you'll have an understanding on the benefits of creating reusable modules, what sort of modules you can create, how to go about creating them and how to distribute them to your teams.

How to build reusable Infrastructure as Code

A live session on Twitch and YouTube where we will work through the process of creating reusable infrastructure as code.

In this session we will look at how you can stop re-writing the same IaC over and over, and turn it into re-usable modules that you can use over and over, share with your team and help introduce best practice and governance into your IaC workflow.

We will work through this process live, taking some existing code and turning it into a module that you can share with others. The example will be done in Azure Bicep but the process will be applicable for any language.

Come along and watch, ask questions and get involved.

I'm the developer now! - A guide to developing Infrastructure as Code for IT Pros

The cloud and Infrastructure as Code has changed the way we deploy infrastructure. No longer are we installing physical hardware, crimping network cables or installing OS's from disk. Instead, we are writing code, just like developers.

Because our infrastructure is in code, we have the ability to use all the same tools developers have been using for years and get all the benefits, but coming from an IT Pro background this can be daunting. In this session we are going to look at how to take your infrastructure as code up a level by implementing things like source control, automated testing, build and release pipelines and package delivery. All things developers have been using for years, but that are now available to you, if you know how to use them.

If your an IT Pro who's moving into the world of infrastructure as code, or if you've been writing IaC for a while now but want to know how to move to the next level then this session is for you. You'll see real world examples of how to implement developer tooling, and understand why you would want to do this and what benefit it has for you.

Project Bicep: ARM Templates Evolved

ARM Templates are evolving! Microsoft have released a preview of brand new language for working with ARM Templates called Project Bicep.

In this session we will explore Project Bicep to understand what it is, how it works and why it's being introduced. Attendees will learn how to write and deploy Bicep templates, see the benefits of the Bicep language over the current ARM JSON language, and learn about what is coming in the future for Bicep.

At the end of this session attendees should have a good understanding of how to get started using Bicep and what benefits it will bring for them.

Infrastructure as Real Code with Pulumi

If you're working with a cloud provider, you're likely using or looking to use Infrastructure as Code tooling. Often these tools can require learning a whole new language or DSL, which can be problematic in a DevOps world where you're looking for developers to take on more responsibility for deploying everything their application needs.

In this session, we will look at Pulumi, an Infrastructure as Code tool that allows you to write IaC in real programming languages. As well as allowing your developers to use languages they already know, this opens up exciting possibilities around testing and automation, which we will explore in this demo-heavy session. This session will focus on real-world use cases, from working directly with Pulumi in real projects, from an objective viewpoint covering good and bad!

At the end of this session, you should better understand how Pulumi can be used in the real world and the benefits this might bring to your work.

Providing Reliable SMB Shares In Microsoft Azure

Many first applications move into Azure are a lift and shift operation utilizing Infrastructure as a Service. If this is a Windows application it will invariably require some sort of SMB file share, but the lack of shared storage in Azure can make providing resilient file services an issue.

This presentation covers what options are available for SMB shares in Azure and the benefits and problems associated with these. Updated for 2020 with new capabilities, this includes Azure Files, Azure NetApp files, Storage Spaces Direct and Storage Replica.

Sql Agent In The Cloud

Azure’s Platform as a Service solution, SQL Azure is a compelling solution for many who don’t want to manage their own highly available SQL implementation. SQL Azure, however, does not replicate all of the services of on-premises SQL, and one of those missing is the SQL Agent.

This session looks at what alternatives exist for running and managing SQL jobs in Azure without SQL Agent. In particular, we focus on Elastic Database Jobs, Azure Automation and Azure Functions. The presentation includes a brief overview of these services and how they are applicable to SQL workloads, followed by demos creating and running SQL jobs.

Testing Azure Infrastructure With Pester

When our infrastructure is defined as code it means we can test it like code! This presentation looks at using the popular PowerShell based testing framework Pester to test Infrastructure as Code, both before deployment to try and catch issues before they happen, and after deployment to validate you deployed what you expected.

Developer tools in an Infrastructure World

More and more IT Pros are moving to defining their environments in code form, both inside and outside Azure. This presentation talks about how techniques used by developers for years are now applicable to the world of infrastructure. With a focus on Azure we will look at source control, build, test and release management in an Infrastructure as Code world.

Azure Resource Manager Templates Tips, Tricks and Advanced Techniques

A technical discussion of some more advanced techniques to take your Azure Resource Manager templates to the next level. Covering techniques such as T-Shirt sizes, functions, outputs as well as tooling and testing. Intended for IT Pro's or Devops who have used basic ARM templates to deploy Azure resources but now want to learn some more advanced techniques.

Azure AD Domain Services - domain controllers in the cloud?

Azure AD Domain Services is Microsoft’s PaaS offering for a domain controller as a service. At first glance, it seems like it can solve many problems when migrating to Azure, but when you dig deeper this might not always be the case.

In this session, we’ll look at what AAD DS is, what it can do and also what it can’t do. We’ll look at the pitfalls to be aware of, the problems that need to be solved and the use cases where AAD DS shines.

This presentation is designed to de-mystify AAD DS and clearly demonstrate what it can do, and what it can’t. This is all based on real-world experience from implementing AAD DS and working through many of the issues experienced early in it’s life. Attendees should leave this presentation with a clear idea of whether AAD DS is the solution they need or not.

What's your data doing? A guide to monitoring in Azure SQL.

You've decided to move your data into Azure, but how do you keep an eye on what it's doing, how it's performing and whether it is secure?

In this session, we will take a look at the tools available in Azure to monitor your data and get notified when something isn't right. This will include:

- Azure Monitor
- Azure Alerts and Dashboards
- Log Analytics
- Service Health
- App Insights
- Azure Security Center
- SQL Database Threat Detection

We will cover what all these services do, when they are (and aren't) useful and a consolidated approach to using them for your monitoring needs without having to check multiple different services.

Pick a Platform - Hosting Containers in Azure

If your looking to run container-based applications in Azure, the number of choices can be overwhelming. Azure offers a wide array of options for hosting containers in the cloud. AKS, ACI, Web Apps, Service Fabric, Functions and more. In this session, we'll look at what options are available for container hosting and explore when you would, and would not, use them. We'll look at the advantages and disadvantages of each platform and the use cases that fit them.

Beginning your Infrastructure as Code journey in Azure

Infrastructure as Code allows you to consistently deploy and configure your cloud infrastructure without human interaction and the errors that come along with that.

If you're deploying into Microsofts Azure cloud there are a variety of different ways you can deploy using IaC, ARM Templates, Terraform, PowerShell DSC, Chef, Puppet, Ansible etc. In this session, we will take a look at why you might want to make use of some of these tools, when to use which tools, and what the benefits (and downsides) are for these tools.

You'll come away from this session with an overview of how to start your Infrastructure as Code journey in Azure, what tools are available, and which are best for you.

Regain Control with Azure Governance

If you've been using Azure for any length of time, the question of how you govern and control the resources you and your team create will have come up.

Azure now offers a number of tools that you can leverage to start to understand what you have deployed, what it is costing you and then to start regaining control over these resources. In this session, we will look at what these tools are, how they work and how you can implement them. Starting with some simple audits we'll work all the way up to strict policies and resource definitions. We'll cover Policies, Blueprints, Resource Graph and Cost Management, individually and working together to provide a complete governance solution.

Integrating Kubernetes and Azure

Kubernetes is more than an orchestrator, it is an ecosystem of operators, extensions and librarys that allow you to tailor your deployments to your platform of choice. In this session we will take a look at ways you can enhance your Kubernetes clusters to work better, and integrate more deeply, with Azure.

We'll look at how to integrate with Azure Services using Open Service Broker and KeyVault Flex Volumes, authentication using Pod Identity, Ingress using App Gateway and monitoring integration with Promitor.

After attending this session you'll have an understanding of what these technologies are, how they work, and how they can be used to enhance your work with Kubernetes and Azure. All of these technologies can be used with Kuberntes in Azure, in other clouds, or on premesis.

Azure Active Directory Is Not Active DIrectory!

If your new to Azure, or identity in the cloud then Azure Active Directory can be a confusing concept. Just because it's got Active Directory in the name, it doesn't mean it's the same as the Active Directory you grew up with.

In this session we'll look at what Azure Active Directory actually is, what it can do, what it can't do, and what it really shouldn't do. We will look at some of the core concepts of AAD and where it really shines. We'll look at some of the common questions and confusion I see around AAD, and what we can do to either solve these, or work around them.

After this session you'll have a much better understanding of what the purpose of AAD is, how it differs from on premises AD, and what other solutions there are for providing solutions for things that aren't part of AAD.

An Introduction to Infrastructure as Code

If you've even slightly dipped your toe into the cloud world, then you've probably been told that Infrastructure as Code or IaC is how you should be deploying your cloud resources. But what does this mean, what is IaC? If you write a bit of PowerShell, isn't this IaC, and most importantly what is the benefit of using IaC?

In this session, we will start from the very basics of what IaC is, why you might want to use, and what it's going to bring that will make your life better. Along the way, we will look at some examples and see it in action. By the end of the session, you should be clear on what IaC means to you, and how you can get started with using it in your cloud environment.

The State of Azure Infrastructure as Code

If you're working in Azure, you've probably heard about, been told to use, or are already using Infrastructure as Code to deploy your cloud resources. However, the last few years have seen significant growth in the options available for working with IaC in Azure. As a result, it can be very confusing to keep up to date on what's possible and decide what tools and processes you should use.

In this session, we will explore the current state of play for Infrastructure as Code in Azure. What tools, languages and processes are available, their good and bad sides, and why and how do you choose what to use. Finally, we'll look at real-world use cases and help you understand what might be helpful to you.

You'll leave this session with an overview of what IaC in Azure looks like today, what you can achieve with it, and what tools and processes might be helpful to you.

From Queues to GPUs: Event-Driven Architecture with Azure Container Apps & KEDA

Serverless event-driven architectures promise automatic scaling and pay-per-use pricing, but delivering on that promise requires the right patterns and tools. In this session, we'll explore how Azure Container Apps and KEDA enable you to build scalable, cost-effective systems that scale from zero to hundreds of instances based on actual demand, whether you're processing queues, handling HTTP traffic, or running compute-intensive workloads.

We'll cover the fundamentals of how KEDA's event-driven scaling works, then dive into real patterns: queue-based processing, scheduled jobs, HTTP scaling, and combining multiple event sources. You'll see practical examples ranging from background job processing to GPU-accelerated workloads that only spin up when there's work to do. We'll also tackle the production reality: handling failures, managing cold starts, cost optimisation with scale-to-zero, and knowing when event-driven architecture isn't the right answer.

You'll leave with working knowledge of KEDA scalers and architectural patterns you can implement immediately.