The process of compiling a .NET project and creating a ZIP file for deployment is often more complicated than it needs to be. Most CI/CD systems use a series of commands and external dependencies to build and package the project. This post shows how to use built-in functionality to simplify the process to a single call to dotnet publish.

Scaling systems is a process that is often counter-intuitive. It’s not just about adding more resources. It’s about understanding the bottlenecks and how to overcome them. After years spent troubleshooting highly scaled systems, I’ve learned a few things that can make the journey easier.

Sometimes you just need a little human interaction. And sometimes you need that to happen when you’re starting up a dev container so you can configure the environment. Thankfully, there is a way to get user input that works with most of the dev container implementations.

Ever needed to automate creating an Azure Entra ID (Azure Active Directory) application and federating it with GitHub? With just a little PowerShell, you can!

With the rise of OIDC, we no longer need to rely on secret keys or passwords to connect two services together. Instead, we can configure a trust relationship between the services and use that to securely request tokens for accessing resources. Adopting this approach can simplify things, but it can be scary for security teams and developers; they want to understand what makes this process work. In this post, walk through what’s happening under the covers.

I’ve seen lots of teams trying to increase the availability of GitHub runners for their organization by implementing GitHub Actions Runner Controller (ARC). In some cases, they hope to try to exceed GitHub’s 99.9% SLA. Unfortunately, the math works against them. In this post, I’ll explain why.

One challenge with the GitHub’s Actions Runner Controller (ARC) is that it does not officially support Windows containers for the runners. With a little bit of work, though, it’s possible to make this configuration work on a hybrid Linux/Windows cluster.

Continuing with the discussion of mastering Azure, it’s time to understand how the Azure VM SKU families are named. Most people don’t realize that each letter is actually associated with a mnemonic that is designed to make it easy to identify the ideal workload. In addition, the complete SKU name is designed to tell you key details about the VM capabilities in a way that’s easy to remember.

While I was at VS Live Nashville, I heard the same question multiple times: if you’re new to Azure, how do you get started? There are nearly 300 different services, and the numbers continue to grow. That’s a lot to try to understand without a roadmap. I have a few suggestions to make the learning process more manageable …

What if I told you that the portal experience you see with the Microsoft-provided resources was also available for your resources? Want to build a nice wizard for your ARM template? It’s time to dive deeper into Azure and learn how to develop ARM and Bicep templates like a pro. Learn to create your own custom Azure Portal experience!