AZ-400 Microsoft Azure DevOps Solutions Questions and Answers

You can create a service hook for Azure DevOps Services and TFS with Jenkins.

However, the service subscription event should use the code pushed event, is triggered when the code is pushed to a Git repository.

Step 1: Create an instance of Azure Application Insights

1. Open Microsoft Azure Portal

2. Log into your Azure account, Select Create a resource > Developer tools > Application Insights.

3. Enter the following settings, and then select Review + create.

Name: az400-9940427-main

Step 2: Configure App Insights SDK

4. Open your ASP.NET Core Web App project in Visual Studio > Right-click on the AppName in the Solution Explorer > Select Add > Application Insights Telemetry.

5. Click the Get Started button

6. Select your account and subscription > Select the Existing resource you created in the Azure portal > Click Register.

References:

https://d ocs.microsoft.com/bs-latn-ba/azure/azure-monitor/learn/dotnetcore-quick-start?view=vs-2017

Azure Key Vault provides a way to securely store credentials and other keys and secrets.

The Set-AzureKeyVaultSecret cmdlet creates or updates a secret in a key vault in Azure Key Vault.

References:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/po wershell/module/azurerm.keyvault/set-azurekeyvaultsecret

A task group in Azure DevOps is a collection of tasks that can be reused across multiple pipelines. You can create a task group that contains the three specific tasks that you need to execute during pipeline execution, and then reference that task group in all new pipelines in Project1. This way, you can ensure that the three specific tasks are executed in all new pipelines without having to manually add them to each pipeline.

Instead enable pipeline caching.

Note:

npm-cache is a command line utility that caches dependencies installed via npm, bower, jspm and composer.

It is useful for build processes that run [npm|bower|composer|jspm] install every time as part of their build process. Since dependencies don't change often, this often means slower build times. npm-cache helps alleviate this problem by caching previously installed dependencies on the build machine.

Note: PAT Supported only on Azure Pipelines and TFS 2017 and newer. After you choose PAT, paste the PAT token you created into the command prompt window. Use a personal access token (PAT) if your Azure DevOps Server or TFS instance and the agent machine are not in a trusted domain. PAT authentication is handled by your Azure DevOps Server or TFS instance instead of the domain controller.

To enable streaming of diagnostic telemetry for a single or a pooled database, follow these steps:

1. Go to Azure SQL database resource.

2. Select Diagnostics settings.

3. Select Turn on diagnostics if no previous settings exist, or select Edit setting to edit a previous setting. You can create up to three parallel connections to stream diagnostic telemetry.

4. Select Add diagnostic setting to configure parallel streaming of diagnostics data to multiple resources.

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5. Enter a setting name for your own reference.

6. Select a destination resource for the streaming diagnostics data: Archive to storage account, Stream to an event hub, or Send to Log Analytics.

7. For the standard, event-based monitoring experience, select the following check boxes for database diagnostics log telemetry: Query Store Runtime Statistics

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8. For an advanced, one-minute-based monitoring experience, select the check box for Basic metrics.

9. Select Save.

The following diagram displays the entire app re-signing flow in App Center.

You can use the Docker task to sign into ACR and then use a subsequent script to pull an image and scan the container image for vulnerabilities.

Use the docker task in a build or release pipeline. This task can be used with Docker or Azure Container registry.

References: https://docs.microsoft.com/ en-us/azure/devops/articles/security-validation-cicd-pipeline?view=vsts

Step 1: Prepare Analysis Configuration

Prepare Analysis Configuration task, to configure all the required settings before executing the build.

This task is mandatory.

In case of .NET solutions or Java projects, it helps to integrate seamlessly with MSBuild, Maven and Gradle tasks.

Step 2: Visual Studio Build

Reorder the tasks to respect the following order:

Prepare Analysis Configuration task before any MSBuild or Visual Studio Build task.

Step 3: Visual Studio Test

Reorder the tasks to respect the following order:

Run Code Analysis task after the Visual Studio Test task.

Step 4: Run Code Analysis

Run Code Analysis task, to actually execute the analysis of the source code.

This task is not required for Maven or Gradle projects, because scanner will be run as part of the Maven/Gradle build.

Note:

References: https://docs.sonarqube.org/display/SCAN/Analyzing+wit h+SonarQube+Extension+for+VSTS-TFS

Instead implement Continuous Assurance for the project.

The Feature Manager in the Azure portal for App Configuration provides a UI for creating and managing the feature flags that you use in your applications.

App Configuration offers the following benefits:

• A fully managed service that can be set up in minutes
• Flexible key representations and mappings
• Tagging with labels
• Point-in-time replay of settings
• Dedicated UI for feature flag management
• Comparison of two sets of configurations on custom-defined dimensions
• Enhanced security through Azure-managed identities
• Encryption of sensitive information at rest and in transit
• Native integration with popular frameworks

App Configuration complements Azure Key Vault, which is used to store application secrets.

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Box 1: User Flows

The User Flows tool visualizes how users navigate between the pages and features of your site. It's great for answering questions like:

How do users navigate away from a page on your site?

What do users click on a page on your site?

Where are the places that users churn most from your site?

Are there places where users repeat the same action over and over?

Box 2: Users

Counting Users: The user behavior analytics tools don't currently support counting users or sessions based on properties other than anonymous user ID, authenticated user ID, or session ID.

Box 3: Impact

Impact analyzes how load times and other properties influence conversion rates for various parts of your app. To put it more precisely, it discovers how any dimension of a page view, custom event, or request affects the usage of a different page view or custom event.

Box 1: A Build task

Trigger a build

You have a Java code provisioned by the Azure DevOps demo generator. You will use WhiteSource Bolt extension to check the vulnerable components present in this code.

• Go to Builds section under Pipelines tab, select the build definition WhiteSourceBolt and click on Queue to trigger a build.

• To view the build in progress status, click on ellipsis and select View build results.

Box 2: WhiteSource Bolt

WhiteSource is the leader in continuous open source software security and compliance management. WhiteSource integrates into your build process, irrespective of your programming languages, build tools, or development environments. It works automatically, continuously, and silently in the background, checking the security, licensing, and quality of your open source components against WhiteSource constantly-updated definitive database of open source repositories.

References:

https://www.azuredevopslabs.co m/labs/vstsextend/whitesource/

To connect Azure Boards to GitHub.com, connect and configure from Azure Boards. Or, alternatively, install and configure the Azure Boards app from GitHub. Both methods have been streamlined and support authenticating and operating via the app rather than an individual.

Note (see step 4 below):

Add a GitHub connection:

• Sign into Azure Boards.
• Choose (1) Project Settings, choose (2) GitHub connections and then (3) Connect your GitHub account.
• If this is your first time connecting to GitHub from Azure Boards, you will be asked to sign in using your GitHub credentials. Choose an account for which you are an administrator for the repositories you want to connect to.
• The Add GitHub Repositories dialog automatically displays and selects all GitHub.com repositories for which you are an administrator. Unselect any repositories that you don't want to participate in the integration.

Application Insights will tell you about any performance issues and exceptions, and help you find and diagnose the root causes.

Application Insights can monitor both Java and ASP.NET web applications and services, WCF services. They can be hosted on-premises, on virtual machines, or as Microsoft Azure websites.

On the client side, Application Insights can take telemetry from web pages and a wide variety of devices including iOS, Android, and Windows Store apps.

The first thing to do is to declare your Sonar Qube server as a service endpoint in your VSTS/DevOps project settings.

References: https://docs.sonarqube.org/display/SCAN/Analyzing+with+SonarQube+Extension+for+vsts-TFS

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Use a variable group to store values that you want to control and make available across multiple pipelines.

References:

https://docs.microsoft.com /en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/library/variable-groups

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/d evops/pipelines/library/variable-groups?view=azure-devops&tabs=yaml#link-secrets-from-an-azure-key-vault

Scenario: Implement Project4 and configure the project to push Docker images to Azure Container Registry.

You use Azure Container Registry Tasks commands to quickly build, push, and run a Docker container image natively within Azure, showing how to offload your "inner-loop" development cycle to the cloud. ACR Tasks is a suite of features within Azure Container Registry to help you manage and modify container images across the container lifecycle.

References:

https://do cs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/container-registry/container-registry-quickstart-task-cli

Scenario:

References: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/build/triggers

The Register-AzureRmAutomationDscNode cmdlet registers an Azure virtual machine as an APS Desired State Configuration (DSC) node in an Azure Automation account.

Scenario: The Azure DevOps organization includes:

The Docker extension

A deployment pool named Pool7 that contains 10 Azure virtual machines that run Windows Server 2016

References: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/azurerm.automation/register-azurermautomationdscnode

Scenario:

Step 1: Sign in to Azure Develops by using an account that is assigned the Administrator service connection security role.

Note: Under Agent Phase, click Deploy Service Fabric Application. Click Docker Settings and then click Configure Docker settings. In Registry Credentials Source, select Azure Resource Manager Service Connection. Then select your Azure subscription.

Step 2: Create a personal access token..

A personal access token or PAT is required so that a machine can join the pool created with the Agent Pools (read, manage) scope.

Step 3: Install and register the Azure Pipelines agent on an Azure virtual machine.

By running a Azure Pipeline agent in the cluster, we make it possible to test any service, regardless of type.

References:

https://doc s.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-fabric/service-fabric-tutorial-deploy-container-app-with-cicd-vsts

https://mohitgoyal.co/2 019/01/10/run-azure-devops-private-agents-in-kubernetes-clusters/

Step 1: Create a repository

A Git repository, or repo, is a folder that you've told Git to help you track file changes in. You can have any number of repos on your computer, each stored in their own folder.

Step 2: Create a branch

Branch policies help teams protect their important branches of development. Policies enforce your team's code quality and change management standards.

Step 3: Add a build validation policy

When a build validation policy is enabled, a new build is queued when a new pull request is created or when changes are pushed to an existing pull request targeting this branch. The build policy then evaluates the results of the build to determine whether the pull request can be completed.

Scenario:

Implement a code flow strategy for Project2 that will:

Enable Team2 to submit pull requests for Project2.

Enable Team2 to work independently on changes to a copy of Project2.

Ensure that any intermediary changes performed by Team2 on a copy of Project2 will be subject to the same restrictions as the ones defined in the build policy of Project2.

References: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/repos/git/man age-your-branches

Scenario: Implement Project3, Project5, Project6, and Project7 based on the planned changes

Step 1: Open the release pipeline editor.

In the Releases tab of Azure Pipelines, select your release pipeline and choose Edit to open the pipeline editor.

Step 2: Enable Gates.

Choose the pre-deployment conditions icon for the Production stage to open the conditions panel. Enable gates by using the switch control in the Gates section.

Step 3: Add Query Work items.

Choose + Add and select the Query Work Items gate.

Configure the gate by selecting an existing work item query.

Note: A case for release gate is:

Incident and issues management. Ensure the required status for work items, incidents, and issues. For example, ensure deployment occurs only if no priority zero bugs exist, and validation that there are no active incidents takes place after deployment.

References:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/release/deploy-using-approvals?view=azure-devops#configure-gate

Step 1: Create a Desired State Configuration (DSC) configuration file that has an extension of .ps1.

Step 2: Run the Import-AzureRmAutomationDscConfiguration Azure Powershell cmdlet

The Import-AzureRmAutomationDscConfiguration cmdlet imports an APS Desired State Configuration (DSC) configuration into Azure Automation. Specify the path of an APS script that contains a single DSC configuration.

Example:

PS C:\>Import-AzureRmAutomationDscConfiguration -AutomationAccountName "Contoso17"-ResourceGroupName "ResourceGroup01" -SourcePath "C:\DSC\client.ps1" -Force

This command imports the DSC configuration in the file named client.ps1 into the Automation account named Contoso17. The command specifies the Force parameter. If there is an existing DSC configuration, this command replaces it.

Step 3: Run the Start-AzureRmAutomationDscCompilationJob Azure Powershell cmdlet

The Start-AzureRmAutomationDscCompilationJob cmdlet compiles an APS Desired State Configuration (DSC) configuration in Azure Automation.

References:

https://docs.microsoft. com/en-us/powershell/module/azurerm.automation/import-azurermautomationdscconfiguration

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powers hell/module/azurerm.automation/start-azurermautomationdsccompilationjob

Box 1: A source control system

A source control system, also called a version control system, allows developers to collaborate on code and track changes. Source control is an essential tool for multi-developer projects.

Box 2: A hosted service

To build and deploy Xcode apps or Xamarin.iOS projects, you'll need at least one macOS agent. If your pipelines are in Azure Pipelines and a Microsoft-hosted agent meets your needs, you can skip setting up a self-hosted macOS agent.

Scenario: The investment planning applications suite will include one multi-tier web application and two iOS mobile applications. One mobile application will be used by employees; the other will be used by customers.

References:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/agents/v2-osx?view=azure-devops

Unattended config:

The agent can be set up from a script with no human intervention. You must pass --unattended and the answers to all questions.

To configure an agent, it must know the URL to your organization or collection and credentials of someone authorized to set up agents. All other responses are optional.

Scenario: A branching strategy that supports developing new functionality in isolation must be used.

Feature isolation is a special derivation of the development isolation, allowing you to branch one or more feature branches from main, as shown, or from your dev branches.

When you need to work on a particular feature, it might be a good idea to create a feature branch.

The commit-msg hook is invoked by git-commit and git-merge, and can be bypassed with the --no-verify option.

Scenario: By default, all releases must remain available for 30 days, except for production releases, which must be kept for 60 days.

Box 1: Set the default retention policy to 30 days

The Global default retention policy sets the default retention values for all the build pipelines. Authors of build pipelines can override these values.

Box 2: Set the stage retention policy to 60 days

You may want to retain more releases that have been deployed to specific stages.

References: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/policies/retention

Every request made against a storage service must be authorized, unless the request is for a blob or container resource that has been made available for public or signed access. One option for authorizing a request is by using Shared Key.

Scenario: The mobile applications must be able to call the share pricing service of the existing retirement fund management system. Until the system is upgraded, the service will only support basic authentication over HTTPS.

The investment planning applications suite will include one multi-tier web application and two iOS mobile application. One mobile application will be used by employees; the other will be used by customers.

References: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/storageservices/authorize-with-shared-key

Box 1: rwx

The Log Analytics agent for Linux runs as the omsagent user. To grant >write permission to the omsagent user, run the command setfacl -m u:omsagent:rwx /tmp.

Box 2: /tmp

Deploying DSC to a Linux node uses the /tmp folder.

Box 1: Get-AzResource

Use the following command to examine the access control mode for all workspaces in the subscription:

PowerShell

Get-Az Resource –Resource Type Microsoft. Operational Insights/workspaces –Expand Properties | for each {s.Name + ": " + $_.Properties.features.enableLogAccessUsingOnlyResourcePermissions

Box 2: -Resource Type

Change the ConfigurationMode parameter from ApplyOnly to ApplyAndAutocorrect.

The Register-AzureRmAutomationDscNode cmdlet registers an Azure virtual machine as an APS Desired State Configuration (DSC) node in an Azure Automation account.

Scenario: Current Technical Issue

The test servers are configured correctly when first deployed, but they experience configuration drift over time. Azure Automation State Configuration fails to correct the configurations.

Azure Automation State Configuration nodes are registered by using the following command.

References: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/azurerm.automation/register-azurerma utomationdscnode?view=azurermps-6.13.0

Batching CI runs

If you have many team members uploading changes often, you may want to reduce the number of runs you start. If you set batch to true, when a pipeline is running, the system waits until the run is completed, then starts another run with all changes that have not yet been built.

Example:

# specific branch build with batching

trigger:

batch: true

branches:

include:

- master

To clarify this example, let us say that a push A to master caused the above pipeline to run. While that pipeline is running, additional pushes B and C occur into the repository. These updates do not start new independent runs immediately. But after the first run is completed, all pushes until that point of time are batched together and a new run is started.

Box 1: Reader

Members of a group named Developers must be able to install packages.

Feeds have four levels of access: Owners, Contributors, Collaborators, and Readers. Owners can add any type of identity-individuals, teams, and groups-to any access level.

Box 2: Owner

Members of a group named Team Leaders must be able to create new packages and edit the permissions of package feeds.

Scenario: Visual Studio App Center must be used to centralize the reporting of mobile application crashes and device types in use.

In order to use App Center, you need to opt in to the service(s) that you want to use, meaning by default no services are started and you will have to explicitly call each of them when starting the SDK.

Insert the following line to start the SDK in your app's App Delete class in the didFinishLaunchingWithOptions method.

MSAppCenter.start("{Your App Secret}", withServices: [MSAnalytics.self, MSCrashes.self])

References: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/appcenter/sdk/getting-started/ios

Every request made against a storage service must be authorized, unless the request is for a blob or container resource that has been made available for public or signed access. One option for authorizing a request is by using Shared Key.

Scenario: The mobile applications must be able to call the share pricing service of the existing retirement fund management system. Until the system is upgraded, the service will only support basic authentication over HTTPS.

The investment planning applications suite will include one multi-tier web application and two iOS mobile application. One mobile application will be used by employees; the other will be used by customers.

References: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/storageservices/a uthorize-with-shared-key

Woodgrove Bank plans to implement the following changes to the DevOps environment:

• Migrate all the source code from TFS1 to GitHub.

The Git-TFS tool is a two-way bridge between Team Foundation Version Control and Git, and can be used to perform a migration.

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Woodgrove Bank identifies the following technical requirements:

• The Azure DevOps dashboard must display the metrics shown in the following table:

Box 1: Velocity

Velocity displays your team velocity. It shows what your team delivered as compared to plan.

Box 2: Release pipeline overview

Release pipeline overview shows the status of environments in a release definition.

Box 3: Query tile

Query tile displays the total number of results from a query.

Scenario: Deploy App2 to an Azure virtual machine named VM1.

A personal access token (PAT) is used as an alternate password to authenticate into Azure DevOps.

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Setting 1: Threshold value

Set to 80 %

Scenario: An Azure Monitor alert for VM1 must be configured to meet the following requirements:

• Be triggered when average CPU usage exceeds 80 percent for 15 minutes.
• Calculate CPU usage averages once every minute.

Setting 2: Aggregation granularity

Set to 15 minutes.