Tag: automation

Automating API Management Backup and Restore with Logic Apps

I’ve been working during the last week or so on setting up a DR strategy for a solution that is based on API Management, Azure Functions and Service Bus. Most of the deployment to the secondary site is dealt by VSTS, but one of the main issues on the proposed strategy was the fact that APIM instance utilized is Standard, which doesn’t allow multi-region deployments. This way, to guarantee that all APIM configuration, including users, API policies and subscriptions, I had to leverage from the backup/restore functionality available in APIM, based on the Management API.

The API calls for backup and restores are quite straight forward, but use a authorization token that must be requested before the API call can be executed. So, to automate the process to generate the token and execute the backup or restore API calls, I decided to use Logic Apps. Continue reading “Automating API Management Backup and Restore with Logic Apps”

Enable/disable all logic apps in a resource group

Have you ever wanted to stop all logic apps in a resource group in one go – either for production maintenance, or maybe because that set of logic apps in a resource group is eating all your resources? If so, welcome to the club… What you probably found is that there is no way to do this in the portal. Coming from a BizTalk background where you can stop all orchestration – or even the whole application) with a right click, in some cases you will ask “Why?”, while in others you might shout “Khaaaannn!” (I know I probably did both). Continue reading “Enable/disable all logic apps in a resource group”

Rethinking an old Logic App deployment package- part IV

Previously in Note to self…

I got one step closer to my goal to export all logic apps from a resource group to a Visual Studio project, using linked templates to deploy all logic apps in one when required, but still being able to deploy individual logic apps for a patch template. In previous posts, I’ve managed to use the extend a open source component originally created by Jeff Hollan and maintained by Mattias Lögdberg, adding a couple of extra cmdlets. You can get the last post here.

Visual Studio ARM Deployment Project

For the last step in this process, I needed to create an Azure Resource Manager deployment project. I decided to go through the most pragmatic route – to use an existing project as template. So as a first step, I created an empty Azure Resource Group VS project and tried to find out how artefacts can be associated to it. Continue reading “Rethinking an old Logic App deployment package- part IV”

Rethinking an old Logic App deployment package – part III

Previously in Note to self…

I’ve been discussing how I’ve leveraged Jeff Hollan’s Logic App Template Generator and some PowerShell goodness to export a ARM templates to all Logic Apps in a specific resource group. You can read about that here.

Linking ARM Templates together

Azure Resource Manager templates have the ability to link templates, creating a “parent-child” or “nested” relationship, allowing a single template to deploy resources that are defined in various individual templates. The advantages of this technique in my opinion are:

  • Each resource can be defined in isolation, which makes maintenance of that resource simpler.
  • Related components can be grouped in “parent” templates for a simpler deployment experience, but they can still be deployed individually if required.

This was exactly the type of solution I was looking for, after having to deal with the pain of replacing a logic app template in the middle of a monolithic ARM template containing another 15 templates. That would usually take a couple of hours to make sure that the template was replaced correctly and nothing was removed that would make the deploy to break. Continue reading “Rethinking an old Logic App deployment package – part III”

Rethinking an old Logic App deployment package – part II

Previously in Note to self…

I’ve been discussing how my first Logic App deployment package was not exactly what I’ve envisaged. So when I had a chance to revamp it, I jumped into the opportunity. You can read about that here.

Logic App Template Generator

I’ve decided to use Jeff Hollan’s Logic App Template Generator – a PowerShell utility that Jeff created sometime ago and have made available on GitHub. Jeff’s PowerShell module have a two cmdlets: Continue reading “Rethinking an old Logic App deployment package – part II”

Rethinking an old Logic App deployment package – Part I

Some time ago I had the opportunity to work on a big Logic Apps implementation. The project was a big success and I’ve learned a lot… but one thing always bugged me on that project: the way I’ve tackled deployment. It was a mix of me, my team getting used to logic apps and the tooling still on early stages.

Almost a year later and I have the opportunity to revisit this deployment setup, as I’m working on some updates in the logic apps. So I’m taking this opportunity to try to create the deployment package the way I think it should be. My plan is to document the new “thinking”, any gotchas and tools I’m using along the way. So expect a series of blog posts as this evolves. Continue reading “Rethinking an old Logic App deployment package – Part I”