Azure Insights: Tags to store GCP instance data; Managing ARM template test toolkits; App Gateway Ingress

Microsoft Azure pros discuss storing GCP instance data with an Azure tag, managing an ARM template test toolkit in Azure DevOps, and setting up AKS with Application Gateway Ingress.

Storing GCP instance data with an Azure tag

Microsoft senior cloud advocate Thomas Maurer explored how to store Google Cloud Platform VM instances as an Azure tag for an Arc-enabled server, building off of a recent blog describing a similar process for AWS. Ideally, users should set up tags during the onboarding process for an Arc-enabled server from GCP. This process avoids the need to the GCP console or GCP CLI to pull instance metadata.

He shared a PowerShell command that shows available metadata.

I want to store the GCP Zone as well as the GCP instance Id as an Azure tag for my Azure Arc enabled server. For onboarding the GCP VM instance, I use the Azure arc onboarding method by using a service principal…Of course, there is way more metadata you can get from the machine itself. Maybe not everything you need, but at least you have access to some of the data.

Managing an ARM template test toolkit in Azure DevOps

Joe Carlyle, writing on WeDoAzure, explained that ARM templates and Azure DevOps are already tightly integrated. But as pipelines become more complex, users often find that managing different triggers, filters, and tests can be challenging. Once users have an ARM template, they can deploy it as a single task from a pipeline. Stages and jobs are often involved in more complex pipelines.

In an example, Carlyle shared a multi-stage pipeline that validates, tests, and reports results. He imported additional tasks to a job and then validated the template with the ARM deploy task. After a first test task, a second task in his example published results to DevOps presenting a graphical representation and test history.