Azure Functions - The ultimate integration platform
Azure Functions is an awesome serverless offering from Microsoft. It lets you deploy a small piece of code as a “function” without having to worry about any underlying infrastructure. A function will then execute on a given event, which for example could be an event from an event service like Event Grid or Event Hubs, a message on a queue like Azure ServiceBus or Azure storage queues, a direct HTTP request like an API call or a webhook, or a timer.
This is an extremely powerful and flexible tool to serve most of your integration needs. Not only do you not have to worry about any underlying infrastructure or patching any servers, but you also get to choose from writing your code in C#, JavaScript, F#, Java, PowerShell, Python, or TypeScript! And as if that wasn’t enough, there are several SKU’s available for all your needs and my favorite SKU, the consumption SKU, only charges you for the time your code runs! This makes Functions one of my favorite tools in my integration tool-belt!
As with all powerful tools, there are a few things to wrap your head around to use them efficiently. In this series of posts, I’m going to summarize my experience and give some recommendations to build secure and robust functions with as little GUI-clicking as possible. Since I’m a huge fan of PowerShell, I’ll be focusing on functions running PowerShell code, but most things will be applicable when using any language.
I’ll update this post and add more links as I come up with new posts.
- Azure Functions - The Ultimate integration platform (this post)
- Designing Azure Function App for production
- Designing Azure Function App for PowerShell
- Azure Functions and Azure AD authentication
- Azure Functions and Azure AD authorization
- Calling Azure Function from PowerShell
I wish you a happy reading and if you have any questions or feedback, don’t hesitate to tell me in the comments!