
Most Popular Microsoft Azure Certifications
There's no better way to prove your expertise with Microsoft technologies than earning a Microsoft certification. The certification exams are difficult as they really test your experience and expertise with Microsoft products. Also, some certifications even require...

Get Started with Terraform on Azure
One of the technologies that has come around through the DevOps movement of increased communication and cooperation between the Development and Operations teams has been Infrastructure as Code (IaC). These are technologies that DevOps Engineers and Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) have been adopting to build the latest technique of infrastructure automation in the cloud. Microsoft Azure natively supports ARM Templates for implementing IaC, but that’s an Azure specific technology.

Terraform: Code Project Organization Strategies (based on team, workload, or monolithic)
It's easy to get started writing HashiCorp Terraform code to deploy and manage the infrastructure as code (IaC) for a single project, or even the infrastructure needed by a single engineering team. However, it gets a bit more complicated when the amount of Terraform...

Terraform: Import Existing Azure Resource Group
If you find yourself with an existing Azure Resource Group that you need to import into a Terraform project, you can use the terraform import command to do it. This article goes through the steps necessary to take you through the process of importing an existing Azure...

Best Practices: 7 Key Benefits of Automated Infrastructure Deployment
The automation of infrastructure deployments through the use of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools has become a standard best practice in the industry. The easy to see benefits of saving time and cost are easy to understand. However, there are several other key...

Microsoft and OpenAI: Extended Partnership Announcement for ChatGPT, Azure, and more
Both Microsoft and OpenAI have announced they are extending on the 3 year partnership they already have to keep making advancements together around Artificial Intelligence (AI). This partnerships includes AI products like ChatGPT, DALL-E, GitHub Copilot, and the Azure...

Create Linux VM in Microsoft Azure
There are many reasons to create a Linux Virtual Machine (VM) in Azure; like hosting a web server, database, or many other uses for VMs. It's extremely easy to create a Linux VM in Azure, in fact you can do it in a matter of a few minute. Then once created, the VM can...

Azure Bicep: If/Else Conditional Resource and Module Deployment
Azure Bicep has an inline If/Else conditional expression that can be used to conditionally provision an Azure Resource or even a full Azure Bicep Module. It's not the same syntax as traditional If/Else statements used in may programming languages like C#, Java, or...

Comparison: Terraform vs Azure Bicep
HashiCorp Terraform and Azure Bicep are both declarative Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools for provisioning and managing infrastructure in the Microsoft Azure cloud. While they are really similar tools, they have different slightly different philosophies of use. One...
Latest Articles

Most Popular Microsoft Azure Certifications
There's no better way to prove your expertise with Microsoft technologies than earning a Microsoft certification. The certification exams are difficult as they really test your experience and expertise with Microsoft products. Also, some certifications even require...

Build5Nines Weekly – January 30, 2023
Build5Nines Weekly provides your go-to source to keep up-to-date on all the latest Microsoft Azure news and updates. Included within Build5Nines Weekly newsletter are blog articles, podcasts, videos, and more from Microsoft and the greater community over the past...

Get Started with Terraform on Azure
One of the technologies that has come around through the DevOps movement of increased communication and cooperation between the Development and Operations teams has been Infrastructure as Code (IaC). These are technologies that DevOps Engineers and Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) have been adopting to build the latest technique of infrastructure automation in the cloud. Microsoft Azure natively supports ARM Templates for implementing IaC, but that’s an Azure specific technology.

Terraform: Deploy to Multiple AWS Accounts in Single Project
Generally, when using HashiCorp Terraform to deploy and manage Amazon AWS resources, the Terraform project will be working with AWS resources in only a single AWS Account. However, it's common to structure cloud deployments across multiple Amazon AWS Accounts in...
Build5Nines Weekly Newsletter

Build5Nines Weekly – January 30, 2023
Build5Nines Weekly provides your go-to source to keep up-to-date on all the latest Microsoft Azure news and updates. Included within Build5Nines Weekly newsletter are blog articles, podcasts, videos, and more from Microsoft and the greater community over the past...

Build5Nines Weekly – January 22, 2023
Build5Nines Weekly provides your go-to source to keep up-to-date on all the latest Microsoft Azure news and updates. Included within Build5Nines Weekly newsletter are blog articles, podcasts, videos, and more from Microsoft and the greater community over the past...

Build5Nines Weekly – January 10, 2023
Build5Nines Weekly provides your go-to source to keep up-to-date on all the latest Microsoft Azure news and updates. Included within Build5Nines Weekly newsletter are blog articles, podcasts, videos, and more from Microsoft and the greater community over the past...

Build5Nines Weekly – January 2, 2023
Build5Nines Weekly provides your go-to source to keep up-to-date on all the latest Microsoft Azure news and updates. Included within Build5Nines Weekly newsletter are blog articles, podcasts, videos, and more from Microsoft and the greater community over the past...
More Articles

Get Started with Terraform on Azure
One of the technologies that has come around through the DevOps movement of increased communication and cooperation between the Development and Operations teams has been Infrastructure as Code (IaC). These are technologies that DevOps Engineers and Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) have been adopting to build the latest technique of infrastructure automation in the cloud. Microsoft Azure natively supports ARM Templates for implementing IaC, but that’s an Azure specific technology.

Terraform: Deploy to Multiple AWS Accounts in Single Project
Generally, when using HashiCorp Terraform to deploy and manage Amazon AWS resources, the Terraform project will be working with AWS resources in only a single AWS Account. However, it's common to structure cloud deployments across multiple Amazon AWS Accounts in...

Terraform: Code Project Organization Strategies (based on team, workload, or monolithic)
It's easy to get started writing HashiCorp Terraform code to deploy and manage the infrastructure as code (IaC) for a single project, or even the infrastructure needed by a single engineering team. However, it gets a bit more complicated when the amount of Terraform...

Terraform: Import Existing Azure Resource Group
If you find yourself with an existing Azure Resource Group that you need to import into a Terraform project, you can use the terraform import command to do it. This article goes through the steps necessary to take you through the process of importing an existing Azure...

Terraform: Import Existing Azure Resource Group
If you find yourself with an existing Azure Resource Group that you need to import into a Terraform project, you can use the terraform import command to do it. This article goes through the steps necessary to take you through the process of importing an existing Azure...

Azure CLI: Call Azure REST API Directly
The Azure CLI is a command-line tool built to give a native CLI interface for working with Microsoft Azure resources. The Azure CLI itself will make calls to the Azure REST API to perform actions that each of the Azure CLI (az) commands support. However, there are...

Azure CLI: Add/Remove IP Addresses on Azure Synapse Firewall
Recently, I performed a lot of work as a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) / DevOps Engineer on a project that utilizes Azure Synapse for a large data lake and data processing implementation. Through my duties as SRE, I needed to configure the security of Azure Synapse...

Azure CLI: Get Private Link Service Alias / DNS Name
Azure Private Link provides a way to be able to access resources sitting behind an Azure Load Balancer (such as Virtual Machines) to be accessed by other Azure services using Private Endpoints from their own VNets. It's basically a way to access resources that do not...

Exam AZ-220: Microsoft Azure IoT Developer Specialty Certification
The Microsoft Azure IoT Developer certification exam (AZ-220) tests and validates your expertise as an Azure Internet of Things (IoT) Developer. Passing this exam will earn you the Microsoft Certified: Azure IoT Developer Specialty certification. If you are an IoT...

What is the Internet of Things?
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a growing market that is bringing an ever increasing amount of connected devices and innovative solutions that mix compute power, sensors, and other hardware with the physical world to provide monitoring, predictive, and automation...

Azure IoT Development Tools for Visual Studio Code
You can use Visual Studio Code (VSCode) to develop Azure Internet of Things solutions using Azure services; like Azure IoT Hub, Azure IoT Edge, and device applications. Microsoft provides a rich set of tools that can be used for Azure IoT development along with other...

Top 5 IoT Messaging Protocols
Internet of Things (IoT) solutions employ some kind of messaging protocol for each individual IoT device to communicate in the system. These messaging protocols are used to transmit device telemetry (or messages) from the IoT devices to the IoT Messaging Hub (or...

Most Popular Microsoft Azure Certifications
There's no better way to prove your expertise with Microsoft technologies than earning a Microsoft certification. The certification exams are difficult as they really test your experience and expertise with Microsoft products. Also, some certifications even require...

Exam AZ-220: Microsoft Azure IoT Developer Specialty Certification
The Microsoft Azure IoT Developer certification exam (AZ-220) tests and validates your expertise as an Azure Internet of Things (IoT) Developer. Passing this exam will earn you the Microsoft Certified: Azure IoT Developer Specialty certification. If you are an IoT...

Top FREE Microsoft Certification Hands-on Labs
It's important to use plenty of great study materials when studying for that next Microsoft certification exam. There are many great paid resources available on the video course front. You can always read the official Microsoft documentation too. However, if you need...

GitHub Certifications (Actions, Admin and Security) for Azure Partners
There have been some in the community talking about new GitHub Certifications that are currently in a private beta available to Microsoft Partners (and maybe Microsoft employees too) that are let into this early program. I've been wondering for some time as to when...

Azure Arm64-based VM Sizes Available (Arm-based Dv5-Series & Ev5-Series)
The General Purpose Dpsv5 and Dplsv5 and Memory Optimized Epsv5 pricing tiers for Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) brings the ability to host Virtual Machine using Arm-based CPUs in the Microsoft Azure cloud. It's been a few years since I first wrote about...

Azure Resource Naming Conventions and Best Practices
One of the most difficult things in IT is naming things. The same goes for choosing the correct naming convention to use when naming cloud resources in Microsoft Azure. Sure, you can name things pretty much anything you want, but if you're not careful you'll end up...

Microsoft Azure: Brand Logo Evolution Over Time (2009 – Present)
There have been a few different logos used by Microsoft over the years for the Azure cloud platform; originally Windows Azure and later rebranded to Microsoft Azure. Let's take a look at the various Microsoft Azure logos used over time; starting with the early days...

How my passion for BCDR saved my life
I have been working in technology since 1995. My first real job was working for Citibank Mortgage as a Novell Netware administrator. As a new member of the team, I was given the job no one wanted: Continuity of Business (COB) Lead. This meant that I was responsible...

Setup Visual Studio 2022 Development VM in Microsoft Azure
Sure, you could always install Visual Studio 2022 on your local machine, but there are times when a quick, easy to provision Virtual Machine with Visual Studio 2022 pre-installed may be very useful. First, you don't need to install Visual Studio and can get developing...

Microsoft Azure: Brand Logo Evolution Over Time (2009 – Present)
There have been a few different logos used by Microsoft over the years for the Azure cloud platform; originally Windows Azure and later rebranded to Microsoft Azure. Let's take a look at the various Microsoft Azure logos used over time; starting with the early days...

Azure Functions: Copy Blob Between Azure Storage Accounts in C#
I recently worked on a project where I was required to write an Azure Function that would watch for newly stored files in Azure Blob Storage, copy the new files over to separate Azure Storage Account, and then delete the original file. Sure, you can use azcopy from...

Azure Functions: Extend Execution Timeout Past 5 Minutes
Azure Functions is the Serverless compute option within the Microsoft Azure platform. One of the biggest benefits of Azure Functions, and Serverless compute, is that you only pay when your code is actually executing. However, there has been a limitation of Azure...

Best Practices: 7 Key Benefits of Automated Infrastructure Deployment
The automation of infrastructure deployments through the use of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools has become a standard best practice in the industry. The easy to see benefits of saving time and cost are easy to understand. However, there are several other key...

Create Linux VM in Microsoft Azure
There are many reasons to create a Linux Virtual Machine (VM) in Azure; like hosting a web server, database, or many other uses for VMs. It's extremely easy to create a Linux VM in Azure, in fact you can do it in a matter of a few minute. Then once created, the VM can...

Azure Arm64-based VM Sizes Available (Arm-based Dv5-Series & Ev5-Series)
The General Purpose Dpsv5 and Dplsv5 and Memory Optimized Epsv5 pricing tiers for Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) brings the ability to host Virtual Machine using Arm-based CPUs in the Microsoft Azure cloud. It's been a few years since I first wrote about...

Azure Regions: Interactive Map of Global Datacenters
This Microsoft Azure Regions Interactive Map shows the locations of each of the Microsoft Azure cloud regions plotted on a map. The map code is built using the Azure Maps Web SDK Disclaimer: This is an unofficial map of Azure Regions and is not endorsed by or...

Microsoft Windows Dev Kit 2023 vs Apple Mac mini with M1 Chip
Microsoft started shipping its Windows Dev Kit 2023 which is a new hardware device built for developers to use for developing, testing, and running Windows on ARM applications. With this device, Microsoft too is pushing further towards the ARM CPU direction with their...

NVIDIA Releases Jetson Nano 2GB Developer Kit
NVIDIA released a lower cost 2GB version of the NVIDIA Jetson Nano Development Kit that also includes Wifi. This new Jetson Nano Developer Kit is priced at $59 USD putting it in direct competition with the Raspberry Pi 4, and it can be pre-ordered for deliveries to...

Surface Duo with Dan Patrick on Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast
I was lucky enough to join Ben Stegink and Scott Hoag for a detailed discussion about the new Surface Duo. We spend an hour talking Duo and exploring some of the differences between an iPhone, iPad, and other phones. Along the ride, we explore who would use the phone...

Surface Duo First Impressions
The first-ever Microsoft Android phone arrived yesterday, and I have to say I'm impressed with the device. It's been about 72 hours since I received it so I thought I would give you my first impressions. Surface Duo Pros Great unboxing experience Microsoft did a...