How to Convert StringList Parameters to PowerShell Arrays in Azure DevOps YAML Pipelines

Azure DevOps YAML pipelines provide a well-established, code-based approach to defining CI/CD workflows as code. When working with YAML pipelines, various types of parameters can be used to pass input values into the pipeline. These parameters can be referenced in later stages for multiple purposes, such as structuring the pipeline, adding conditions, or controlling task behavior.

In this blog, we’ll learn how to use StringList parameters in a PowerShell task within a YAML pipeline.

Pre-requites: Experience with Azure DevOps YAML pipelines

Enable Cross-Origin Resource Sharing in Nginx Reverse Proxy

Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) is a web security feature that controls how web pages can request resources from a different domain than the one that served the web page. Without CORS restrictions, any website could make requests to other sites where a user is logged in.

This blog explains how to configure CORS when using Nginx as a reverse proxy. By handling CORS at the Nginx layer, we can centralize and simplify cross-origin access control for multiple backend applications.

Pre-requisites: Nginx Configured as reverse proxy

How to Use Painless Scripts for Conditional Logic in Ingest Pipelines

In the ELK stack, an ingest pipeline is used to process and transform documents before they are indexed into Elasticsearch. There are several processors available in an ingest pipeline that can be applied to transform documents. To perform transformations effectively, it is sometimes necessary to use conditions. This blog explains how to add conditions in ingest pipelines.

Prerequisites:

• An Elastic Stack account
• An ingest pipeline configured in Elasticsearch

Integrating Azure Key Vault with AKS via External Secrets Operator

Managing secrets centrally is a best practice in software development. Secrets should be stored and rotated in a central location, even when they are used by multiple components of an application. However, when secrets need to be accessed in different places, such as CI/CD pipelines and Kubernetes, manually copying them can lead to errors and failures caused by human mistakes.

To address this in Kubernetes, we can use External Secrets Operators, which automatically sync secrets from external secret stores such as Azure Key Vaults into Kubernetes secrets. This removes the need for manual synchronization and reduces the risk of errors due to incorrect or outdated secrets.

Pre-requites:

• Azure Kubernetes Cluster
• Azure Key vault
• Managed identity

Fixing Azure CLI Storage Account Whitelisting Error: ‘IPs does not appear to be an IPv4 or IPv6 network

This blog explains an error that occurs when whitelisting IPs on a storage account using an Azure CLI script. The script attempts to pass the IPs as a space-separated string and apply them through the CLI. However, it fails with an error indicating that the IP format is incorrect. This post explains the issue and provides the steps to fix it.

Pre-requites:

• Azure Storage account
• The $ipList parameter accepts a semicolon-separated list of IP addresses

How to Extract Certificates and Keys from a PFX File in Windows Using WSL

A Personal Information Exchange (PFX) is a cryptographic file format used to store and protect sensitive information such as certificates, private keys, and secrets. In this blog, I’ll explain how to extract the certificates and private keys from PFX using OpenSSL in Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

Prerequisites:

1. WSL
2. PFX file with certificate and private key

• Open WSL and run sudo apt update to refresh the list of available packages and their versions.
• Run sudo apt install openssl to install OpenSSL in WSL.

Creating and Testing Ingest Pipelines with Grok for NGINX Logs in Elasticsearch

The Elastic Stack is widely used for log management, monitoring, analytics, and observability. It includes several tools such as Beats, which collect logs from various systems. However, not all data in these logs is necessary for indexing. To filter, transform, and enrich documents before they are indexed, we can use ingest pipelines. In this blog, we will discuss how to create a simple ingest pipeline and test it.

Automate PagerDuty Maintenance Windows with Azure DevOps

Reliable notifications, scheduled escalations, and effective on-call management are essential for operations teams to quickly identify and address issues. PagerDuty is a platform that provides all of these capabilities, enabling teams to maintain high reliability and reduce operational noise.When working with any operations platform, reliability is key to avoiding unnecessary alerts or actions. For example, during a scheduled system update, creating a maintenance window in PagerDuty can prevent false alarms triggered by expected changes.

In this blog, we'll discuss how to create a PagerDuty maintenance window using an Azure DevOps pipeline. By adding this step to your deployment process, you can automatically start a maintenance window during system updates, improving alert accuracy and reducing manual overhead.