Manage Complex Terraform Lists and Maps in a CSV Format

When developing some resource in Terraform you develop a large complex map or list of entries. This can become hard to manage, difficult to read and worst to maintain. An easier method is to convert these items into a Comma Separated Values (CSV) file. This will condense something that could be 100’s of lines down toContinueContinue reading “Manage Complex Terraform Lists and Maps in a CSV Format”

Authenticating with Azure Databricks Service Principal

While working with Azure Databricks, I have discovered a few different ways to authenticate with the Service Principal. Some of these are documented and some I have found through a lot of searching, but none I have found a quick easy guide on how to action them all.  Setup  Step one is of course makeContinueContinue reading “Authenticating with Azure Databricks Service Principal”

Automating Azure PIM Requests with PowerShell

Privileged Identity Management (PIM) is made to be a secure authentication method to assign user permissions via groups and monitor the access.  This enables short time requests for the permissions that can require fields like reason for access, how long to have access and who is having access. This can typically be used for engineers’ContinueContinue reading “Automating Azure PIM Requests with PowerShell”

Best Practices for Terraform Module Testing and Validation

Terraform Modules are great for isolated components you can reuse and plug-in to your main Infrastructure as Core code base. They can then also be shared and used by multiple other teams at the same time to reduce repeated code, complexity and increase compliance. However, as they are isolated, they are harder to test, maintainContinueContinue reading “Best Practices for Terraform Module Testing and Validation”

Azure DevOps REST API: Add Users and Set Administrators Easily

When using the Azure DevOps REST API to create Teams and add users, you may want to set the administrators as well at the same time. However, this REST API is not well documented on the Microsoft documentation site for the REST API. With some searching and mapping of resources, I have below the methodContinueContinue reading “Azure DevOps REST API: Add Users and Set Administrators Easily”

Shared Azure API Management Service Design

Azure API Management Services (APIM) are a powerful, flexible, and well-equipped product in Azure, but they are also expensive. There are reasons for this, and ways in general you can reduce the cost with SKUs, but another way is to share it with other products within your organisation instead of having a dedicated APIM. IContinueContinue reading “Shared Azure API Management Service Design”

How to get Azure Artifact Feed ID from user readable name

This is a simple post but with some affective content. Sometimes when using Azure DevOps YAML Pipelines you might need to interact with the Azure DevOps Artifacts and their Feeds. However, to do this you need to obtain the Feed ID, which is not obvious where it is and how to get it, especially duringContinueContinue reading “How to get Azure Artifact Feed ID from user readable name”

Automatic ACME SSL Certificate Rotation

Technology needs to be secure, but we also want to make it easy to use. This is the same for us engineers managing SSL Certificates and their rotation. You can get long life certificates, but why when you can get free ones generated via the Automated Certificate Management Environment (ACME protocol). This is normally dueContinueContinue reading “Automatic ACME SSL Certificate Rotation”