What are we running - Tagging infrastructure in Azure

Asset Tagging is one of the best ways for providing run-time compliance and versioning information in cloud-based resources.  All of the major cloud providers provide the ability to annotate cloud resources with custom tags.  We reliably version/tag cloud resources if we follow the Infrastructure as Code philosophy.  All our infrastructure is created using scripts that call cloud APIs, or resource templates that can be loaded by cloud APIs.


Infrastructure versioning has both design time and run time components. The design-time pieces come into play at build and packaging time and when deploying.  The run time component is what lets us interrogate the component or the cloud metadata around that component. 

Video

Design-time infrastructure versions with IaC

IaC uses code or configuration files to drive provisioning. Those files can be checked into source code management systems where they can be branched and versioned like any other code. We can always query the VCS for the various branches and versions of our IaC code.

Run-time version interrogation: Tagging

Cloud resource tags are the simplest most flexible way of attaching metadata to cloud provisioned resources. Everyone should have a minimum set of standard tags that are attached to all cloud infrastructure components.  My personal set are:
  • UpdatedAt: the last time this infrastructure was updated via template or script.
  • Version:  The semantic version of the configuration scripts or templates that updated this resource.
  • Project: The project or team project code

Viewing Tags in the Portal

Almost every Azure resource can have tags. You can see the tags in the Azure Portal or via management API call.


Tagging with az tag create

We have our scripts tag resources at the time of creation or after updates.  I update the version and publishedAt tag every time I run an infrastructure script even if nothing changes on a particular resource.  I do that because individual components may not change during an infrastructure set update but I still want to know the last time they were "correct".
# re-tag every time we deploy
rg_metadata=$(az group list --query "[?name=='$AZURE_RESOURCE_GROUP']")
rg_id=$(jq -r ".[0].id" <<< "$rg_metadata")
tagging_metadata=$(az tag create --resource-id $rg_id --tags PublishedAt="$NOW_PUBLISHED_AT" Purpose="$PROJECT" Version="$VERSION")
# don't want to re-fetch but will to get the latest tags
rg_metadata=$(az group list --query "[?name=='$AZURE_RESOURCE_GROUP']")
echo "using resource group: $rg_metadata"

Tagging with an ARM template

We can tag resources as part of a template-based provisioning process.  Template engines will update individual tags even if no other changes were made to the tagged component.  We want this behavior because we often version at the infrastructure set level where an individual component may not actually be changed on every update.  We want to know the latest release this component was configured for.  So every template update brings in a later version and date that is applied to new and updated pieces.

       {
            "type": "Microsoft.EventHub/namespaces",
            "apiVersion": "2021-06-01-preview",
            "name": "[parameters('namespaces_namespace_name')]",
            "location": "[parameters('location')]",
            "tags": {
                "PublishedAt": "[parameters('lastPublishedAt')]",
                "Project": "[parameters('project')]",
                "Version": "[parameters('version')]"
            },
  }


Created 2022 01

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Understanding your WSL2 RAM and swap - Changing the default 50%-25%

Image
The Windows Subsystem for Linux operates as a virtual machine that can dynamically grow the amount of RAM to a maximum set at startup time.  Microsoft sets a default maximum RAM available to 50% of the physical memory and a swap-space that is 1/4 of the maximum WSL RAM.  You can scale those numbers up or down to allocate more or less RAM to the Linux instance. The first drawing shows the default WSL memory and swap space sizing. The images below show a developer machine that is running a dev environment in WSL2 and Docker Desktop.  Docker Desktop has two of its own WSL modules that need to be accounted for.  You can see that the memory would actually be oversubscribed, 3 x 50% if every VM used its maximum memory.  The actual amount of memory used is significantly smaller allowing every piece to fit. Click to Enlarge The second drawing shows the memory allocation on my 64GB laptop. WSL Linux defaults to a maximum RAM size of 5
Read more

Installing the RNDIS driver on Windows 11 to use USB Raspberry Pi as network attached

Image
I do a lot of my development and configuration via ssh into my Raspberry Pi Zero over the RNDIS connection. Some models of the Raspberry PIs can be configured with  gadget drivers  that let the Raspberry pi emulate different devices when plugged into computers via USB. My favorite gadget  is the network profile that makes a Raspberry Pi look like an RNDIS-attached network device.  All types of network services travel over an RNDIS device without knowing it is a USB hardware connection. A Raspberry Pi shows up as a Remote NDIS (RNDIS) device when you plug the Pi into a PC or Mac via a USB cable. The gadget  in the Windows Device Manager picture shows this RNDIS Gadget connectivity between a Windows machine and a Raspberry Pi. The Problem Windows 11 and Windows 10 no longer auto-installs the RNDIS driver that makes magic happen. Windows recognizes that the Raspberry Pi is some type of generic USB COM device. Manually running W indows Update  or  Update Driver  does  not  install the RNDI
Read more

DNS for Azure Point to Site (P2S) VPN - getting the internal IPs

Image
I wanted to access all my Azure resources without making any of them visible to the Internet.   The easiest give my local machine access to everything on my Azure Virtual Network (VNET) was to connect to it over VPN. It turns out creating Azure VPN gateways and connecting to Azure VPN endpoints is easy.  There are some subtleties in getting DNS name resolution to work that can confuse when first starting out. Setting the Stage There are a few ways to get to Azure endpoints and resources that are blocked from the internet.  We can  Create a Point-to-Site connection from our local machines to Azure Network Gateways Create a Site-to-Site network connection from our local networks to Azure Network Gateways. Use Bastion Hosts Use Cloud Shell Leave everything open to the internet. I chose a Point-to-Site (P2S) VPN connection that connects from my laptop to a VNet Gateway.  That joins my laptop
Read more