Alex K.

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Fixing an issue with self-hosted agents in Azure Pipelines

If you decided to go with a self-hosted agent(s) as I described in one of my previous articles, you might run into specific runtime issues related to the absence of a framework or software installed on a target machine. One such error is “[error] No agent found in pool … which satisfies the specified demands: java Agent.Version -gtVersion 2…x”. The ways it looks in Azure Pipelines: The error
Azure DevOps SonarQube

Beautify your Windows 10 terminal

Windows Terminal became generally available in January this year. It supposes to replace the existing command line and offers many curious features, like: multiple tabs (for quick quickly switching between Windows Command Prompt, PowerShell, Azure CLI, Linux, etc.), create custom key bindings (shortcut keys for opening or closing tabs, copy+paste, etc.), uses the search feature, and custom themes
Windows WSL ZSH

Install Ubuntu Linux on Windows 10

DevOps craft is tough, no doubts. If you’re a big Windows fan, it makes the business even tougher, as there are tasks that could only be performed in Linux. This article is not about the profession challenges, but rather about the approaches of how you could resolve ones. There are several categories of tasks you may need Linux for: Running or developing Bash shell scripts Running Linux-
Windows WSL Linux

Google Cloud Architect certification prep notes

As an Architect and consultant, I try to broaden my knowledge horizon by learning something new. Getting the new certifications and keeping those I already have up to date is an essential part of my job. This article is devoted to the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and respective certification, i.e., Professional Cloud Architect. I began my journey with the set of courses form Coursera. The beauty
Certification DevOps GCP

SSH keys to access your VMs securely

We have already covered SSL certificates preparation and conversion in the previous topic. For completeness sake, I’d like to cover another important aspect in DevOps, which is SSH keys configuration. The case where you may need an SSH key are: Accessing a Linux-based Virtual Machine (VM) Accessing Git repository Build/release pipeline Deployment automation tools like Chef/Ansible/Puppet etc.
Azure DevOps

SSL done the right way

This time I decided to devote a separate topic to generate a Private Key and CSR. In the world of DevOps, security certificates are something you deal with on a daily basis, so knowing how to get an SSL certificate and convert it into a proper format is critical. Despite many similar topics over the internet, people still can’t make heads and tails around this theme and the explanation below is
.NET Azure DevOps

The theory of control

The idea to write this topic came to me after a production system failure we experienced recently. Failures are unavoidable. Nothing is worse than having your business application down without the proper way to mitigate the issue. That’s exactly how the catastrophe may develop, i.e. due to the somebody's negligence, lack of experience, bugs sneaked into the software, natural disaster, hacker
Azure DevOps

AZ-102 my way and the new role-based certifications explained

Oh boy, what a week! It's been a hasty preparation as this exam retires tomorrow. I had to put in extra effort to get this done, and I am absolutely happy about my achievement. The funny thing - I was taking part in beta testing of this and other transition exams, but never had time to take it for real... Until the note from MS landed in my mailbox, saying that AZ-102 is about to retire soon. So,
Azure Certification DevOps

DevOps Friday: Scalability in Azure

Scalability and resiliency are important quality attributes for any Enterprise Application. When it comes to scalability, Azure has multiple options to achieve the goal. This article can be helpful not only for the beginners who want to familiarize themselves with different scalability tactics but also for the professionals looking to broaden their horizons around this Architectural aspect. I
Azure DevOps Architecture

Microsoft DevOps Competency Assessment

Passed Azure DevOps Assessment (18473) today. Quite happy and excited about it as it helps organizations to achieve Gold DevOps Partner status. The requirements have changed, so now, instead of taking dated TFS-related exams, there is one compound assessment for the purpose. Passing it is not that difficult, although, any achievement requires meticulous preparation. Among sources you can use
DevOps