Let’s start today’s tech tip by identifying what a Kubernetes Context is. Kubernetes Context, which is also known as kubectl context, represents a Kubernetes cluster that kubectl command-line tool is currently targeting. You decide which Kubernetes cluster to set as active by modifying currently active context with kubectl config use-context <cluster_name> command. All the configured and available Kubernetes contexts are stored in a kubeconfig file. Kubeconfig file contains a collection of properties for every Kubernetes cluster that respective client is connected to - properties such as Kubernetes cluster name, authentication mechanisms, user/service account, etc. This information is used by kubectl command-line tool to connect to the API server of the respective cluster once it’s set as the active Kubernetes context. ...

In this blog post I would like to take a look at how we can ensure that Dockerfiles we create are of high quality and are following best practices in the industry. Tools like Hadolint make it very easy for us to do that and can automate the verification process. If you’re working with containerized applications or are planning on containerizing an application you will most likely be working with a Dockerfile. Dockerfile is a variation of a text file (without a file extension though) where you define a set of instructions for assembling, configuring and starting up your application container image. Those instructions are then compiled during the build process (for example, with docker build command) and are packaged into an artifact, known as a container image, which may then be pushed to a container registry like Docker Hub or Azure Container Registry. ...

Linting tools, aka linters, can help you write better and cleaner code early in the software development lifecycle. Linter is a tool that scans existing and new code for potential errors, bad and insecure patterns and violations of the respective programming language best practices. In most cases you can install a linter as an IDE extension so that you can get notified about potential issues during local development, long before the code is checked in to your source code base. ...

In July 2019, as part of Sprint 154, Microsoft introduced support for auditing in Azure DevOps and this is a feature that you really should look into if you haven’t set it up or maybe haven’t heard about it yet. Auditing in Azure DevOps allows you to get an aggregated log of important events related to access control, permission and resource management++ across projects in your Azure DevOps organization. Functionality evolved quite a bit since it’s initial release and it currently also supports streaming logs to an external service like Azure Monitor logs, which we will take a look at in a bit. At the moment of writing this blog post the feature is still in public preview according to official Microsoft documentation. Hopefully it will soon be released in GA - according to the blog post from November 2021 the plan was to release it in GA early 2022 so let’s hope that it will happen by the end of 2022 at least!😁 You can check out the blog post link in Additional resources section below. ...

⚠️ Please note that the HTTP Application routing add-on for AKS is now deprecated and will be retired on 3rd of March, 2025. Normally if you were to expose an application running in AKS for external access, you would need multiple bits and pieces to be deployed and configured: Ingress Controller to ensure proper traffic routing and load balancing in an AKS cluster; Certificate management solution for automatic obtaining, provisioning, renewing and using of TLS certificates for applications running in AKS clusters; DNS zone and respective DNS records to expose applications on a specific URL for external access; This can be quite a lot to set up and will in some cases be an overhead for dev/test or playground AKS clusters. That’s when HTTP Application Routing add-on can help you out and do all this work for you! 🚀 ...