Hello again! Today, I want to shine a light on a powerful but often overlooked Azure Policy mechanism: resource tags. While widely available, they’re rarely used to their full potential, especially when it comes to policy scoping. What do Azure resource tags have to do with policies you might ask - the short answer is that since tags can be described as both meta and child resources that are available on every Azure resource and service offering, this makes them a prime candidate for laser-focused policy scoping.

In the third edition to the series, I would like to explain how we can actually determine when a policy can or should be used to achieve our goal.

First, let’s recall how Azure Policy works: By interacting with the Azure Resource Manager (ARM) API. This already shows us the first limitation: We will not be able to use a policy to restrict the behavior of an Azure resource or service if the level that we want to restrict is not accessible via the ARM API. This includes for example:

In the second post of this series, I want to show you an example of using a function inside a policy definition to restrict the scope. Based on personal experience, policy functions are often somewhat neglected but have received significant development over the past few years. As you can see in the official documentation Azure policy supports a wide range of functions, including:

• copyIndex()
• dateTimeAdd()
• dateTimeFromEpoch
• dateTimeToEpoch
• deployment()
• environment()
• extensionResourceId()
• listKeys()
• listSecrets()
• reference()
• resourceId()

Many of these functions are also available for ARM templates, such as copyIndex(), listKeys(), and resourceId(), and are very practical for operations targeting complex deployments with multiple, interdependent resources. However, a function that is perhaps less well-known is requestContext().

Communication is one of the key skills of any good solution architect. Not only should you be able to create sound, secure and performant software designs but you also need to be able to communicate these to stakeholders.

To visualize these complex solutions, diagrams are a handy tool and there are a lot of different software offerings out there that help with this exact use case - most popular perhaps Microsoft Visio and Enterprise Architect.

As the days grow shorter and Christmas decorations begin to light up our streets, the festive spirit comes alive. With the start of Advent, Christmas markets are finally opening in most places, bringing with them the delightful aromas of Bratwurst, Raclette, gingerbread, and — of course — Glühwein. But what makes a good Glühwein, and can you make it at home?

Mulled wine, or Glühwein as it’s known in German-speaking countries, is essentially spiced wine and can be made with either red or white wine as the base. To the wine, you add a variety of spices — usually seasonal ones like cinnamon, star anise, and cloves — to give it more depth and warmth. You can also incorporate fruit juices, most commonly orange juice, to make the Glühwein a bit easier to drink and to add sweetness and acidity. Some people prefer to give it a little extra kick by adding a shot of rum, brandy, cognac, or other liqueurs.