The Cloud Hub

Author: Brenton

  • Azure DevOps system variables now read-only

    Azure DevOps provides a number of predefined system variables out of the box on hosted build agents. While these have officially always been read-only, informally you’ve previously been able to change the value of a predefined system variable by overwriting it in a pipeline task. However, as of the January 28 2020 DevOps release this…

  • Managed identities and Azure App Service staging slots

    If you’re using an Azure App Service on a tier that offers staging slots (standard and above) then you might want to consider what happens when you swap a slot. If you’ve configured a slot then you’ll want to swap deployments at a minimum between a production and pre-production environment. Microsoft cover in depth what…

  • Azure Availability Zones vs Availability Sets

    A common question for newcomers to Microsoft’s Azure platform is what’s the difference between an availability zone and an availability set?

  • How to retry a failed stage in Azure DevOps

    One of the biggest limitations of Azure DevOps has until now been the fact that you can’t retry an individual stage or step in a pipeline if it fails. Instead, you’d have to retry the entire pipeline again and hope that the failed stage passes. As of September 2019, in most cases you can now…

  • Using Cloudflare with Azure Blob Storage

    If you’re storing files in Azure Storage, you’ll likely soon find that the cost of bandwidth will soon become one of the more expensive items in your Azure bill. By using a content delivery network (CDN), you can improve performance for those accessing your files from around the world, while also reducing the bandwidth costs…

  • What is Azure DevOps used for?

    Azure DevOps is a Microsoft product that can be used as part of the software development lifecycle, to manage the delivery, development and release of software products. DevOps is a paid product (although there is a free tier available) that many software development companies use – particularly those within the Microsoft ecosystem. It used to…