Having fun with Helm and file encoding

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 6 Comments

Had some spare time, so I’ve tried to learn a bit more about Helm, the package manager for Kubernetes.

I’ve decided to follow the relatively new Pluralsight course called – Kubernetes Package Administration with Helm, done by my MVP colleague Andrew Pruski. And it was great – not too long, clear and easy to follow, with only a handful of prerequisites if you want to follow along! Great job!

Of course, there is also the nice, official documentation.

But why am I writing this post?

I was normally following this course on my Windows 10 laptop, using Visual Studio Code, as suggested, and also using PowerShell terminal, with Helm v3.3.1.

It all went well until the part when we are creating our Helm Chart, more specifically – when we’re filling up our deployment.yaml and service.yaml files. Suggested (and simplest) method is to use the simple output redirection (with “>“), like this:

But, this gave me the following error when trying to deploy the chart:

It’s quite obvious – Helm works with UTF-8, and my .yaml files seem to be encoded differently. Quick look at the bottom of my VSCode confirms it:

How can I fix it?

As I’m using PowerShell, it’s pretty easy – instead of doing the simple output redirection (“>“), I pipe output to Out-File cmdlet with -Encoding UTF8 option, in all cases, which takes care of the encoding (and sets it to UTF-8 with BOM, which is just fine for Helm):

So, long story short – if you run into the error above (“Error: unable to build kubernetes objects from release manifest: error parsing : error converting YAML to JSON: yaml: invalid leading UTF-8 octet”), remember to check your file’s encoding (and change it to UTF-8, if needed)! 🙂

Cheers!

P.S. Thanks to good people at Pluralsight for providing me a complimentary subscription!

Fixing Hyper-V virtual machine import with Compare-VM

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 2 Comments

Well, I was rearranging some stuff the other day, and come to an interesting “lesson learned”, which I’ll share. 🙂

In my lab, I’ve had a Hyper-V server running Windows 2012 R2, which I finally wanted to upgrade to something newer. I’ve decided to go with the latest Windows Server Insider Preview (SA 20180), just for fun.

When trying to do an in-place upgrade, I was presented with the message “it can’t be done“, which is fine – my existing installation is with GUI, the new one will be Core.

So, evacuate everything and reinstall.

In the process, I’ve also reorganized some stuff (machines were moved to another disk, not all files were on the same place, etc.).

Installed Windows, installed Hyper-V, created VM switches, but when I tried to import it all back (from PowerShell… because I had no GUI anymore), I was presented with an error.

Error during virtual machine import was (I know – could’ve used more specific Import-VM command, which will select all the right folders and required options, but… learned something new by doing it this way!):

So, the error says it all – “Please use Compare-VM to repair the virtual machine.” 🙂

But how?! 🙂

If you go to the docs page of Compare-VM, you can see how it’s used.

And, in my case, the whole process of repairing this virtual machine looks like this:

Hope this helps you as well!

Cheers!

Fixing things with… terraform destroy

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 0 Comment

I like Terraform, because it’s so clean, fast and elegant; OK, I also suck at it, but hey – I’m trying! 🙂

The long story

Usually, Terraform and its providers are very good at doing things in the order they should be done. But sometimes people do come up with silly ideas, and mine was such (of course) – I’ve decided to rename something and it broke things. Just a little.

I have a simple lab in Azure, with a couple of virtual machines behind the Azure Load Balancer, no big deal. All this is being deployed (and redeployed) via Terraform, using the official azurerm provider. It’s actually a Standard SKU Azure Load Balancer (don’t ask why), with a single backend pool and a few probes and rules. Nothing special.

I’ve deployed this lab a few days ago (thanks to good people at Microsoft, I have some free credits to spare), everything worked just fine, but today I’ve got the wild idea – I’ve decided to rename my backend pool.

With all the automation in place, this shouldn’t be a problem… one would think. 🙂

So, as I’ve updated my code and during the make it so phase (terraform apply), I’ve got some errors (truncated, with only the useful stuff):

Issue

After going through these errors, I’ve realized that my resources are indeed in the same region, but existing rules are referencing the current backend pool by name and actually blocking Terraform in renaming the backend pool.

There are a couple of options at this stage – you can destroy your deployment and run it again (as I normally would) and it should all be fine. Or you can try to fix only the dependent resources and make it work as part of the existing deployment.

With some spare time at my hands, I’ve tried to fix it using the second one and it actually worked.

Resolution

Terraform has a nice option for destroying just some parts of the deployment.

If you look at help for the terraform destroy command, you can see the target option:

And if you run it to fix your issues, you’ll get a nice red warning saying that this is only for exceptional situations (and they mean it!):

 

So… BE CAREFUL! (can’t stress this enough!)

 

Anyhow, I’ve destroyed rules which were preventing my rename operation:

And then another terraform apply –auto-approve recreated everything that was needed, and finally – my backend pool got renamed:

Another idea I’ve had was to taint the resources (terraform taint -help), which would probably be a lot nicer. Oh, well… maybe next time. 🙂

As things are constantly improving, it shouldn’t be long until this is fixed (should it even be fixed?!). Until then, hope this will help you with similar issues!

Cheers!

CRC – OpenShift 4 cluster in your pocket

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 0 Comment

… but only if you have large pockets, that is! 🙂

I suppose that, by now, you’ve already heard of minishift – tool which helps you run a single-node OpenShift 3.x cluster inside a virtual machine (on your preferred hypervisor), which is extremely convenient if you need to do some local development, testing, etc. Of course, you can always deploy what you need on top of Azure or any other cloud provider, but having OpenShift cluster locally can have its benefits.

And what if you need, let’s say, an OpenShift 4.x cluster “to go”?

Don’t worry, there is a solution for you as well! It’s called CodeReady Containers (CRC) (version 1.9 at the time of writing), and is basically a single node OpenShift 4.x cluster, inside a virtual machine (sounds a lot like minishift, doesn’t it?).

So, how can you get your hands on CRC and make it work?

There are a couple of steps involved:

  • download the OpenShift tools (as I’m using Windows, so I’ll use this one):

  • unzip all to a location you like (mine is C:\PocketOpenShift):

  • (optional) add this location to PATH for easier usage (as already mentined, I’m using Windows & PowerShell):

  • run “crc setup” which will prepare the environment:

  • run “crc start” (with one or more options, if needed – as you can see, I’ll be using custom number of vCPUs, amount of RAM and a custom nameserver):

  • at any time, you can check the status of your cluster by using “crc status” command:

  • once it is up, you can use “oc login” or console (bring it up with “crc console“) to connect to it, either as an (kube)admin or a developer, and continue working as you would normally with any other OpenShift cluster:

  • one other thing I like to do is to enable monitoring and other disabled stuff (note though – your VM should have 12+ GB RAM) – you can do it with two commands – first one lists all that is disabled, and the second one, with the index at the end, enables it (also note that in the official documentation there is an issue with “” and ” (they are switched), if you’re working in PowerShell):

  • monitoring should now be working as well:

And that’s it – you’re ready to work on your own “pocket OpenShift cluster”! 🙂

Of course, don’t forget that there is also the official documentation, including the Getting Started guide and Release Notes and Known Issues document. So… take a look!

Cheers!

Something new – Google Cloud Certified: Associate Cloud Engineer (ACE)

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 0 Comment

So, I’ve decided to end last year in style – as my Christmas gift to me, I’ve purchased Linux Academy (monthly full-access plan) and taken their course to prepare for the Google Cloud Certified: Associate Cloud Engineer (ACE).

And yesterday, I’ve taken and passed the certification exam (OK, still waiting on the official e-mail from Google; it takes 7-10 days, as it said on the exam). 🙂

UPDATE: It’s here!

This brought me another nice badge (as this is “a thing” now):

Why?

Well, I’ve been curious.

I know – “curiosity killed the cat”… except, this time, it didn’t! 🙂

Let’s get serious – I wanted to better understand how and why would someone use Google Cloud (GCP) instead of (or even in conjunction with), I don’t know, Microsoft Azure or AWS or even Exoscale.

The only fair way to do this would be to learn about the platforms, spend some time using them and decide about their strengths and weaknesses (for your specific scenarios)… while keeping in mind that things move and change pretty fast now (something you’ll be missing today in, for example, Microsoft Azure, will perhaps be there in a matter of months, so… nothing is really final)! And this is exactly what I did/do/will keep doing – trying to stay on top of things.

How?

I’ve already mentioned that I’ve taken the course, but here is a short list of what I’ve used, with links:

  • Linux Academy course (they say it adds about +30% on top of your GCP knowledge – sessions are nice, updated regularly, practice tests and hands-on labs certainly help a lot(!)… and you can take a monthly subscription)
  • hands-on experience in using GCP (open up a free account, add custom domain, set up identity provider, bring up some Kubernetes clusters, store some files, …, just play around a bit and try the things out by yourself!)
  • exam guide (it’s nice to read what they’ll test you on)
  • official documentation (yes, you’ll need to read something as well… sorry)
  • practice exam (it’s there, it’s free, try it out… more than once!)

What’s next?

Considering Google Cloud – I’ll probably take a peek at Professional Cloud Architect certification as well.

Considering other learning/certifications – as I’ve done all of the Microsoft Azure exams (that were available at the time), maybe I’ll continue with deepening my knowledge about AWS, who knows… it all depends on my next adventures.

Considering everything else – we’ll see where I’ll end up in 2020 (I’m pretty sure I won’t be doing what/where I was doing in 2019, but we’ll see ;))!

Happy 2020!

Veeam Best Practices

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 0 Comment

My last post in 2019 was about Veeam Backup for Office 365 – I think it’s only fair to continue the story. 🙂

If you haven’t noticed this short post by Niels Engelen, you may be unaware that good people at Veeam put together a Best Practice Guide for Veeam Backup for Office 365!

Great thing about this guide is that it’s really a “live document”, which covers design, configuration and operations for VBO and it will be updated regularly, so make sure to bookmark it and check it from time to time!

Also, there is a Best Practice Guide for Veeam Backup & Replication, which should be bookmarked and checked regularly as well, in case you forgot about it! 🙂

Cheers!

Backing up Office 365 to S3 storage (Exoscale SOS) with Veeam

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 0 Comment

Are you backing up your Office 365? And… why not? 🙂

I’m not going into the lengthy and exhausting discussion of why you should take care of your data, even if it’s stored in something unbreakable like “the cloud”, at least not in this post. I would like to focus on one of the features of the new Veeam Backup for Office 365 v4, which was released just the other day. This feature is “object storage support“, as you may have guessed it already from the title of this fine post!

So, this means that you can take Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure Blob Storage or even IBM Cloud Object Storage and use it for your Veeam Backup for Office 365. And even better – you can use any S3-compatible storage to do the same! How cool is that?!

To test this, I decided to use the Exoscale SOS (also S3-compatible) storage for backups of my personal Office 365 via Veeam Backup for Office 365.

I’ve created a small environment to support this test (and later production, if it works as it should) and basically done the following:

  • created a standard Windows Server 2019 VM on top of Microsoft Azure, to hold my Veeam Backup for Office 365 installation
    (good people at Microsoft provided me Azure credits, so… why not?!)
  • downloaded Veeam Backup for Office 365
    (good people at Veeam provided me NFR license for it, so I’ve used it instead of Community Edition)
  • created an Exoscale SOS bucket for my backups
    (good people at Exoscale/A1TAG/A1.digital/A1HR provided me credits, so… why not?!)
  • installed Veeam Backup for Office 365
    (it’s a “Next-Next-Finish” type of installation, hard to get it wrong)
  • configured Veeam Backup for Office 365 (not so hard, if you know what you are doing and you’ve read the official docs)
    • added a new Object Storage Repository
    • added a new Backup Repository which offloads the backup data to the previously created Object Storage Repository
    • configured a custom AAD app (with the right permissions)
    • added a new Office 365 organization with AAD app and Global Admin account credentials (docs)
    • created a backup job for this Office 365 organization
    • started backing it all up

Now, a few tips on the “configuration part”:

  • Microsoft Azure:
    • no real prerequisites and tips here – simple Windows VM, on which I’m installing the downloaded software (there is a list of system requirements if want to make sure it’s all “by the book”)
  • Exoscale:
    • creating the Exoscale SOS bucket is relatively easy, once you have your account (you can request a trial here) – you choose the bucket name and zone in which data will be stored and… voilà:

    • if you need to make adjustments to the ACL of the bucket, you can (quick ACL with private setting is just fine for this one):

    • to access your bucket from Veeam, you’ll need your API keys, which you can find in the Account – Profile – API keys section:

    • one other thing you’ll need from this section is the Storage API Endpoint, which depends on the zone you’ve created your bucket in (mine was created inside AT-VIE-1 zone, so my endpoint is https://sos-at-vie-1.exo.io):

  • Office 365:
    • note: I’m using the Modern authentication option because of MFA on my tenant and… it’s the right way to do it!
    • for this, I created a custom application in Azure Active Directory (AAD) (under App registrations – New registration) (take a note of the Application (client) ID, as you will need it when configuring Veeam):

    • I’ve added a secret (which you should also take a note of, because you’ll need it later) to this app:

    • then, I’ve added the minimal required API permissions to this app (as per the official docs) – but note that the official docs have an error (at this time), which I reported to Veeam – you’ll need the SharePoint Online API access permissions even if you don’t use the certificate based authentication(!) – so, the permissions which work for me are:

    • UPDATE: Got back the word from Veeam development – additional SharePoint permissions may not be necessary after all, maybe I needed to wait a bit longer… will retry next time without those permissions. 🙂
    • after that, I’ve enabled the “legacy authentication protocols”, which is still a requirement (you can do it in Office 365 admin center – SharePoint admin center – Access Control – Apps that don’t use modern authentication – Allow access or via PowerShell command “Set-SPOTenant -LegacyAuthProtocolsEnabled $True”):

    • lastly, I’ve created an app password for my (global admin) account (which will also be required for Veeam configuration):

  • Veeam Backup for Office 365:
    • add a new Object Storage Repository:

    • add a new Backup Repository (connected to the created Object Storage Repository; this local repository will only store metadata – backup data will be offloaded to the object storage and can be encrypted, if needed):

    • add a new Office 365 organization:

    • create a backup job:

    • start backing up your Office 365 data:

Any questions/difficulties with your setup?
Leave them in the comments section, I’ll be happy to help (if I can).

Cheers!

Deploying Kubernetes on top of Azure Stack (Development Kit)

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 0 Comment

If you had a chance to deploy Azure Stack or Azure Stack Development Kit (ASDK) in your environment, maybe you’ve asked yourself “OK, but what should I do with it now?“.

Well, one of many things you “can do with it” is offer your users to deploy Kubernetes clusters on top of it (at least, that was what I did the other day… on my ASDK deployment) – in short, official documentation has you pretty much covered. I know, Azure enables it as well… and the process here is similar, or – the same.

The main thing you have to decide at the beginning, is if you’ll use Azure AD or ADFS for identity management (the same as with Azure Stack deployment, if you remember, from my previous posts). Why – because the installation steps differ a bit.

Once you decide it (or you ask your Azure Stack administrator how it’s done in your case), you can proceed with the installation – I assume you have your Azure Stack/ASDK up and running.

Next, in the admin portal (https://adminportal.local.azurestack.external/), you’ll need to add the prerequisites from Azure Marketplace (for this, if you remember, your Azure Stack/ASDK has to be registered):

Once done, you’re ready to set up the service principal, to which you’ll then assign the required permissions on both – the Azure side and on the Azure Stack side! (don’t forget this detail… it is well documented, but easy to overlook)

In case you don’t give your service principal the required permissions on both “sides”, you’ll probably get the “error 12” and your deployment will fail:

And you can see details in the log:

So… be careful with service principal and permissions! 🙂

Next thing you’ll need to make sure of is that you create a plan and an offer, but set your quotas right! It depends on your Kubernetes cluster deployment settings, but if you’ll go with the defaults, the default quotas (disk, in particular) need to be expanded!

If not, you’ll probably get this error:

If you were careful while reading the official docs (with a few “lessons learned” in this post), and you’ve made it to here… you’re probably set to deploy your first Kubernetes cluster on top of your Azure Stack/ASDK.

In the user portal (https://portal.local.azurestack.external/), you now have the option to deploy something called Kubernetes Cluster (preview):

Here you really can’t miss much – you’ll give your deployment a brand new (or empty) resource group, user details (together with your public SSH key, of course), DNS prefix, number and size of nodes and service principal details:

After that, your deployment starts and runs for some time (it, again, depends on your hardware and settings you’ve chosen for your cluster). Hopefully, it will end with this message:

If all is good, you can SSH into one of your master nodes and see the details of your cluster:

One other thing that would be nice to have is the Kubernetes dashboard – the process of enabling it is well documented here:

And – you’re done!

You now have your own Kubernetes cluster deployment on top of your Azure Stack/ASDK! How cool is that?! 🙂

One last thing to note – currently, this is in preview (as it says on the template), but… it works. 🙂

Cheers!

Microsoft AZ-500 down, more to go

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 0 Comment

Another month, another Azure cert! 🙂

So, for the last couple of weeks, I was reading about, learning and playing around with Azure security technologies, mainly as a preparation for AZ-500 (Microsoft Azure Security Technologies) exam.

And then… today I took the exam and… PASSED!

I must say, with a few certificates under my sleeve, this exam was not the easiest I took. I was feeling prepared and still – passing it demanded concentration on the details and a bit of thinking! Nonetheless, it’s over now – one down, more to go!

Note that… by passing this exam, I’m not automatically an Azure security guru (!) – it just means that I know a thing or two about what Azure offers in terms of security and how it works. 🙂

What did I use to prepare?

There is a great book about Azure governance called Pro Azure Governance and Security, written by my MVP colleagues Peter De Tender, David Rendon and Samuel Erskine. It’s purpose is not to be an exam prep guide, but to tackle into the world of governance and security features available within Microsoft Azure (which are part of the exam, who would know).

There is also a great post, containing a bunch of helpful AZ-500 material from Stanislas Quastana, located here, and Thomas provided some useful links in his post here and even did a webinar on Azure Security Center (hosted by Altaro) the other day – you can find the recording here.

Of course, there is also the official exam page with skills measured and docs.com.

And… don’t forget to try things out yourself! There is also a free Azure subscription, you know?! 🙂

If you’ll be taking this exam – good luck, hope this resources help you!

Cheers!