Category: Devops

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Connect to power platform – Azure Devops pipelines

In this article I will explain how to create a Power platform environment and connect on it through Azure Devops pipelines. Power platform is a low code environment provided by Microsoft that can implement services and functionality quickly with a GUI.

In order to follow the tutorial you will need an Azure subscription and a power platform subscription which will be connected.

First things first, you should create a power platform environment. You can do this, by logging in the Power Platform admin center and pressing the New button.

Then you should select the type and region and also the database connection. I chose a sample database so that I get automatically data to test.

By choosing the trial subscription the environment only works for 30 days. This is good enough for the purposes of this article but not for production environments. After the provision of the environment you will get the environment URL and also some sessions details that will be needed for Azure devops.

You can find the sessions details on the right upper corner.

The you will need to create an app registration on your Azure subscription.

Press New registration

Give a name and select which accounts could access this application.

After the provision of the application, you will have to set the API permissions. Select Dynamics CRM -> User impersonation

Then you will have to create a secret for the application. Go to certificates and secrets and create a new client secret. Copy the value, as it will be needed later.

On Azure Devops you should create a service connection. Go to project settings -> Service connections and add a new connection. Select power platform on the connection type.

You should then add the connection details gathered on previous steps. Client secret and application ID from the Azure application that you created. The server URL and tenant ID can be gathered from power platform admin center.

Then go and create a new Pipeline on Azure Devops and add the below two steps. The power platform tools installer is required any time you want to connect on power platform. This will instruct the build agent to download the necessary tools for the deployment. The WhoAmI task will authenticate with the instance and verify if the connection is working.

Edit the WhoAmI step and include the service connection

Check the result of the task, as it should be successful (Green)

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Deploy between different environments with variable groups – Azure DevOps

Group variables is a functionality provided by Azure pipelines that let one handle a lot of variables as one entity. It also supports key vault integration but also secrets on comparison with the standard pipeline variables which should not be used as secrets according to Microsoft, as their value can be seen.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/library/variable-groups?view=azure-devops&tabs=yaml

In this article I will describe how you can use variable groups for different deployments based on the environment you work. For example the company may want to differentiate the variables for a product on the test and production version. This could be injected and handled on the pipeline accordingly with group variables and parameters.

This article refers to a product which has the same variables (version, password, environment) on test and prod, but their values are different.

In order to create a variable group you should go to Pipelines -> Library -> +Variable group.

The values which I provided on prod variable group are below:

Accordingly the same values exist for test.

The pipeline will trigger when a commit is merged on the main branch.

trigger:
- main

parameters:
  - name: environment
    displayName: Where to deploy?
    type: string
    default: test
    values:
    - prod
    - test


pool:
  vmImage: ubuntu-latest

variables:
 - group: ${{parameters.environment}}

steps:

- script: |
    echo $(ENV)
    echo $(VERSION)
  displayName: Step 1 - print version and environment

- script: echo $(PASSWORD)
  displayName: Step 2 - print secret

- script: pwd ENV ${{parameters.environment}}
  displayName: Step 3 - print parameter

By running the pipeline the type of environment will be asked

Depending on the selected input, the group variables of the specific category will be printed. If I run with test as input then I will get the test version and env variable.

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Deploy wordpress with mysql in less than a minute using docker containers

For testing purposes I had to deploy a wordpress installation and perform some work. As the standalone installation with wamp/mamp/xampp software would require time, I chose docker and containers for the deployment.

You can use the below docker-compose.yml file and have a working site stack in less than a minute. 

version: '3.1'

services:

  wordpress:
    image: wordpress
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 8080:80
    environment:
      WORDPRESS_DB_HOST: host.docker.internal
      WORDPRESS_DB_USER: root
      WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD: password
      WORDPRESS_DB_NAME: wordpress
    volumes:
      - wordpress:/var/www/html

  db:
    image: mysql:latest
    restart: always
    environment:
      MYSQL_DATABASE: wordpress
      MYSQL_USER: user1
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: password
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: password
    ports:
      - 3306:3306
    volumes:
      - db:/var/lib/mysql

volumes:
  wordpress:
  db:

You can run the above composer file with: 

docker compose up -d

In order to access the new wordpress installation you should go to 0.0.0.0:8080 or localhost:8080

You can clone the code from the below repository:

https://github.com/geralexgr/wordpress-mysql-containers/

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Create a release pipeline and deploy to local Kubernetes cluster with Azure Devops

On a previous article I described how you could create your self hosted agent to run your pipelines on Azure Devops. In this article I will explain how you can use this agent to deploy resources on your local Kubernetes cluster. As a prerequisite you should already have a kubernetes cluster locally. You can do that by installing Docker and enable the option for a kube cluster.

First things first you should connect your local Kubernetes cluster with Azure devops. For that reason you should go on Project settings -> Service connections and select Kubernetes

You can select between three different options. I selected kubeconfig

Get the output of the below command and paste it on the box. Then select untrusted certificates and add press verify and save.

kubectl config view --raw

Then you should go and create a release pipeline. Go on releases tab and press create release.

In the setup of the release pipeline you can change the trigger from automatic to manual. You should select your build pipeline that will trigger the release. In my case I selected the one I created on a previous article.

On the tasks of the release pipeline you should select the agent pool, as a result your self hosted agent. Depending on which pool you placed your agent you should add it appropriately. In my case it was on the default pool.

Then you can go and create the tasks of the release.

I chose two tasks, one for a deployment creation through kubectl commands and another one for a service exposure. You could also apply a .yml config file.

In this deployment I selected a sample image I created on a previous article, selected the namespace, added the requested parameters and selected create as the command. KubernetesConnection is the service connection that you will create and add on the first steps.

When you run the release pipeline you should see that the self hosted agent will be prepared for the run.

The job will start on your locally deployed agent.

The stages will start running.

Taken into account that everything is correct with your commands and configuration the job will be successful.

The green button of result indicate the win of your try.