devops

Discover my recent professional and personal milestones, from speaking engagements at Azure Fest and the European Collaboration Summit to the continued growth of the Ctrl+Alt+Azure podcast. I also share updates on my home studio equipment upgrades and celebrate reaching significant strength training goals in the gym.

Drawing on my decade of experience with Microsoft Azure, I reveal the actual monthly costs of a personal solution that tracks AKA.MS URLs from Twitter, which averages around €26 despite my efforts to minimize expenses. I break down how the Azure SQL database accounts for over 80% of the bill after an upgrade was necessary to handle growing data volumes, emphasizing why relying on initial estimates rather than active monitoring leads to unexpected spending.

I show you how I evolved my Raspberry Pi weather monitoring system to display real-time Azure data on a Sense HAT LED matrix, all housed in a custom LEGO case. By using Azure Logic Apps to retrieve latest temperature readings from a SQL database, I created an efficient setup that alerts me to high temperatures while reviving my passion for building with LEGOs.

I share how I leverage Azure Application Insights to create a simple yet powerful monitoring solution for my hosted WordPress blog, ensuring I’m alerted to potential outages or certificate expirations. I detail the process of provisioning the service via Azure CLI for automation readiness and configuring URL ping tests through the portal to track availability.

If you are interested in streamlining your Power Platform development workflow, this post shares my hands-on experience with the newly released Power Platform CLI. I walk through the installation, authentication process, and demonstrate key administrative commands like environment management and solution handling to show how these command-line tools can enhance your productivity.