SSIS DevOps Tools new version tasks in preview

by Contributed | Apr 22, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

SSIS DevOps Tools released new version of SSIS Build task and SSIS Deploy task. Major enhancements include:

• SSIS Build task version 1.* (Preview)
  
  
  
  • Remove the dependency on Visual Studio and SSIS designer. Build task can run on Microsoft-hosted agent or self-hosted agent with Windows OS and .NET framework 4.6.2 or higher.
  
  
  • No need of installing out-of-box components.
  
  
  • Support protection level EncryptionWithPassword and EncryptionAllWithPassword.
  
  
  
  


• SSIS Deploy task version 1.* (Preview)
  
  
  
  • Support protection level EncryptionWithPassword and EncryptionAllWithPassword.
  
  
  
  

Use new version of SSIS Build task:

1. Microsoft-hosted agent or self-hosted agent Windows OS and .NET framework 4.6.2 or higher


2. Add SSIS Build task and select Task version as 1.* (Preview). Default version is 0.*. 


3. 1.* only properties:
   
   
   
   • 
     

     Project Password
     Password of the SSIS project and its packages. This argument is only valid when the protection level of the SSIS project and packages is EncryptSensitiveWithPassword or EncryptAllWithPassword. For package deployment model, all packages must share the same password specified by this argument.

     
     
   
   
   • 
     

     Strip Sensitive Data
     Convert the protection level of the SSIS project to DontSaveSensitve if this value is true. When protection level is EncryptSensitiveWithPassword or EncryptAllWithPassword, the argument Project Password must be correctly set. This option is only valid for project deployment model.

     
     
   
   
   
   

Use new version of SSIS Deploy task:

1. Add SSIS Deploy task and select Task version as 1.* (Preview). Default version is 0.*. 


2. 1.* only properties:
   
   
   
   • 
     

     Project Password
     Password to decrypt the ISPAC or DTSX files. This argument is only valid when the protection level is EncryptSensitiveWithPassword or EncryptAllWithPassword.

     
     
   
   
   
   

Please refer to this page for more detail usage. If you have questions, visit Q&A.

Azure portal March 2021 update

by Contributed | Apr 22, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Storage > Storage Accounts

• Encryption scopes in Azure Storage now generally available

 Compute>Virtual Machines and Virtual machine scale sets

• Virtual machine scale sets with flexible orchestration mode are now available in public preview in the Azure portal

General > Management + Governance

• New Management Group UX: Introducing a tree hierarchy, get started page, security tab and more

Intune 

• Updates to Microsoft Intune 

  Let’s look at each of these updates in greater detail. 

Storage > Storage Accounts

Encryption scopes in Azure Storage now generally available

Encryption scopes introduce the option to provision multiple encryption keys in a storage account for blobs. Previously, customers using a single storage account for multi-tenancy scenarios were limited to using a single account-scoped encryption key for all the data in the account. With encryption scopes, customers now can provision multiple encryption keys and choose to apply the encryption scope either at the container level (as the default scope for blobs in that container) or at the blob level. Encryption scopes in Azure Storage now generally available.

The key that protects an encryption scope may be either a Microsoft-managed key or a customer-managed key in Azure Key Vault. Customers can also choose to enable automatic rotation of a customer-managed key that protects an encryption scope. When customers generate a new version of the key in their Key Vault, Azure Storage will automatically update the version of the key that is protecting the encryption scope, within a day.

Please refer to our documentation on encryption scopes for more details on the feature.

To create an encryption scope in the Azure portal

1. Sign into Azure portal


2. Click on ‘More Services’

3. Click on ‘Storage Accounts’

4. Click on ‘Encryption’ in the table of contents

5. Navigate to the ‘Encryption scopes’ tab

6. Click ‘Add’ to create an encryption scope and configure as desired

Compute>Virtual Machines and Virtual machine scale sets

Virtual machine scale sets with flexible orchestration mode are now available in public preview in the Azure portal

Virtual machine scale sets with flexible orchestration mode helps customers simplify the deployment, management, and scalability of their applications. This new capability provides full control of the individual VMs within a scale set, like Availability Sets, while increasing high availability for large deployments (thousands of VMs). However, scale sets will now be able to provide several additional features compared to Availability Sets, such as higher levels of reliability and performance, ability to deploy VMs in conjunction with load balancers, support for Availability Zones etc. Virtual machine scale sets with flexible orchestration mode are now available for public preview in Azure portal.

Demo steps to enable flexible orchestration mode preview:

To be able to use flexible orchestration mode you must register your subscription for preview of this feature. Follow the documentation to register your subscription.

Demo steps to a Create VMSS UX:

1. Click ‘Create a resource’

2. Search for ‘Virtual machine’, then select one of the options for a Virtual Machine

3. Click ‘Create’

4. In ‘Create a virtual machine scale set’ Basics tab select Orchestration mode to ‘Flexible (preview)’

5. Follow instructions on the page to configure the rest of the settings. See documentation to learn more.

 Demo steps to Create VM UX:

1. Click ‘Create a resource’

2. Search for ‘Virtual machine’, then select one of the options for a Virtual Machine

3. In ‘Create a virtual machine’ Basics tab select ‘Availability’ options to ‘Virtual machine scale set (preview)’

4. Select an existing Virtual machine scale set or create new one.

5. Follow instructions on the page to configure the rest of the settings. See documentation to learn more.

General > Management + Governance

New Management Group UX: Introducing a tree hierarchy, get started page, security tab and more

The new management groups Azure portal experience provides a visual hierarchy of management groups to organize your subscriptions and resources for unified policy, security, access control and more. Traverse through the tree structure and expand or collapse nodes of management groups to build or navigate through your structure. You can also now click on a single management group to add subscriptions and apply governance conditions.

Our new experience includes the following changes:

• A new ‘Get Started’ page for first time users with links to documentation and examples of tree structures for planning

On the Management groups homepage, users can view and manage subscriptions in three ways:

1. Click on the ‘Subscriptions’ tab on the Management groups homepage which shows all subscriptions at Root level


2. Click on a single management group, navigate to the ‘Subscriptions’ tab
   
   
   
   • NEW: Click directly on a display name to drill down to the details of single management group view
   
   
   • Note: We removed the ‘details’ button
   
   
   
   


3. Click on a subscription count via the tree view columns (Child subscriptions and Total subscriptions)
   
   
   
   • Added aggregated counts of subscriptions to understand hierarchy faster
   
   
   
   

• Note: We removed the Role column
  
  
  
  • Management groups where a user does not have owner/contributor access are now explicit through disabled links
  
  
  
  

• However, if a user has access to subscriptions within a disabled management group, they can still view these subscriptions

• NEW: More information provided in Essentials of a single management group (details view)
  
  
  
  • Added Path
  
  
  • Added Subscription count
  
  
  • Added a clickable parent group for faster upward traversal of structure
  
  
  
  

• In the single management group view, we added a new section called ‘Governance’. Our current offerings include:
  
  
  
  • Security
  
  
  • Policy
  
  
  • Deployments
  
  
  
  

• We added the ability to select subscriptions directly contained in a management group. You can also view all subscriptions included in its child groups.

• You can select a scope by checking/unchecking the ‘Only show direct children’ checkbox

• NEW: Security Center menu item to view secure score and recommendations for single management group

INTUNE 

Updates to Microsoft Intune 

The Microsoft Intune team has been hard at work on updates as well. You can find the full list of updates to Intune on the What’s new in Microsoft Intune page, including changes that affect your experience using Intune.

Azure portal “how to” video series 

Have you checked out our Azure portal “how to” video series yet? The videos highlight specific aspects of the portal so you can be more efficient and productive while deploying your cloud workloads from the portal.  Check out our most recently published videos: 

• How to get a visualization view of your resources 


• How to manage applications in Azure Kubernetes Service 


• How to get started in Azure using the Azure Quickstart Center 

Next steps 

The Azure portal has a large team of engineers that wants to hear from you, so please keep providing us your feedback in the comments section below or on Twitter @AzurePortal. 

Sign in to the Azure portal now and see for yourself everything that’s new. Download the Azure mobile app to stay connected to your Azure resources anytime, anywhere.  See you next month! 

Visual Studio 2019 Tricks and Techniques – Review, sort of

by Contributed | Apr 21, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Earlier this year, Packt released a new book…

Visual Studio 2019 Tricks and Techniques: A developer’s guide to writing better code and maximizing productivity

http://aka.ms/VS2019Book 

But I should be honest. I was involved in this book. Let me find a version of the cover with my name on it…

There you go. I wrote the foreword! It was a great and wonderful thing! At least, I think it was. I really can’t remember what I wrote. I’ll go read it…

Oh, I like how I opened the foreword…

“By combining Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio (VS), the brand is over two times more commonly used by developers than any other environment (Stack Overflow, 2019). What that means is that this topic for 80% of all developers.”

Have you thought about that? In this day and age, when there are so many IDE options for developers to pick from, they simply are choosing Visual Studio. There are many reasons why developers want to use Visual Studio, including compatibility with languages and tools, as well as various feature sets. 

And that’s really what this book is about. As I said/wrote in my foreword, the authors (Paul Schroeder and Aaron Cure) have cracked the code! If you apply the snippets, templates, git tips, and extension-based practices that you’ll find in this book, then not only will you become more efficient, but you’ll also become your team’s hero and thought leader!

Before I move on, did you notice how weird the subtitle was in the top version of the book cover? Let’s inspect it:

“A developer’s guide to mastering in core skills with the IDE and unlock advanced productivity secrets.”

You could probably read that sentence for 20 minutes before you decipher and interpret all its secrets. Moving on…

Let’s take a look at what the topics are…

1. Flavors of Visual Studio


2. Keyboard Shortcuts


3. IDE Tips and Tricks


4. Working with a Repository


5. Working with Snippets


6. Database Explorers


7. Compiling, Debugging, and Versioning 


8. Introduction to Project and Item Templates


9. Creating Your Own Templates


10. Deploying Custom Templates


11. Overviewing Visual Studio 2019 Extensions


12. Overviewing VS Code Extensions


13. CodeMaid is Your Friend


14. Be Your Team’s Hero with CodeGenHero


15. Secure Code with Puma Scan


16. Appendix: Other Popular Productivity Extensions

I know what you’re thinking! You’re thinking, “Is overviewing a word?” Yes, yes it is a word! More specifically, it’s the present participle of a word.

Anyway, the reason why I wanted to write the foreword (and blog about it), is because I truly believe in the value. Developers don’t use templates, especially, to the degree that they could. Plus, you’ll peruse a plethora of other topics that you’d be wise to glean from. 

Also, one interesting tidbit is that the author is partially at fault for the extension featured in chapter 14, CodeGenHero. So check that out!

Whilst perusing the Amazons, I saw the reviews for the book, and they’re pretty impressive. I want to give you just the titles of the reviews here, so you can see what I mean:

• “Useful Visual Studio shortcuts, Git-Jitsu, snippet and debugging knowledge here.” – Dan Hermes


• “Clear and concise with good examples to draw upon for furthering learning.” – Robert Frey


• “This one is a must have!” – Binit Datta


• “Learn everything about Visual Studio 2019.” – Yusuf


• “Excellent for those with some C# programming experience.” – Ben Miller

This book is great for noobs and still useful for ratchety, engineering curmudgeons. So check it out, and leave a review on the Amazons:

• http://aka.ms/VS2019Book 

Remember to keep your mask on your face, your feet on the ground, and your head in the Cloud!

Ed