Azure Governance and ARM Templates

For our January meetup, we're proud to welcome Jack Tracey, who's joining us all the way from sunny Brighton to give us not just one, but two talks!

As Usual, there'll be both drinks and prize draws! See sponsor section below for details.

# Azure Governance: The Things You Should Be Doing But Probably Aren't

We all know that all it takes to get building and creating resources within Azure, is just access to a subscription or credit card. Being this easy to create resources, it becomes even easier to get yourself/company into a governance and compliance nightmare in the space of a few hours, if that.

In this talk, I will go over my top tips on Azure Governance tools and techniques to ensure you can start getting the most important part of your Azure environment right!

We will cover the following:

• Tags & Tagging Policies
• Naming Schemes & Their Importance
• Azure Governance Scopes
• RBAC
• Azure Management Groups
• Azure Policy
• Azure Blueprints

# Azure ARM Template Basics & The Latest Developments

Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) is the latest buzzword/bingo option to hit the IT sector, especially from a management level. In my eyes it's the new "Digital Transformation" or "SD-WAN"; however I think this one actually deserves it's place!

Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Templates is the native IaC language & tool of Azure.

A lot of people will be put off by ARM templates upon their initial look at one, due to them being written in JSON (so lots of brackets, commas etc...), but they aren't actually that scary and with the latest developments to VS Code & the ARM Template Extension; they are getting even simpler to put together!

In this talk, I will cover the basics of ARM templates, so you can start building your own. As well as some of the latest developments like the "What-If" function that's currently in private preview and much more.

# Speaker Bio:

Jack is a Public Cloud Solution Architect, based just outside of Brighton in Sussex, who has been working with Azure since its inception across all disciplines (Architecture, Deployment, Engineering & Operations). Situated within the Public Cloud Architecture team at CDW UK, Jack has involvement in projects spanning all verticals and brings wide ranging Azure exposure and experience to every engagement he is involved in.

Jack is also Co-Founder of the Sussex Azure User Group that meet monthly down in Brighton in Sussex. #AzureFamily So if your ever down in Sussex please go join them @SussexAzure | https://sussexazure.uk

Jack's route into the cloud comes primarily from his network engineering background (Cisco, HP, Palo Alto, Juniper) and therefore has strong skills in helping businesses get started in the public cloud space; as networking is key to a successful cloud journey.

Outside of work, Jack enjoys playing a range of sports (football, cricket, golf & squash to name a few) as well as spending time with his wife Kate walking/hiking around the South Downs! Or more often than not you'll find them both at various music gigs all over the UK; as music is massive part of their lives!

Fun Fact: Jack is an FA qualified Level 5 Football Referee and has refereed in the FA cup (even it was a preliminary round). Does the twitter handle make sense now?

Twitter: @Jack_Ref
Blog: https://jacktracey.co.uk

# Sponsors:

Corriculo (corriculo.co.uk) are the venue and refreshments sponsor for Azure Oxford. Based in Oxford, Corriculo are an IT specialist recruitment agency committed to building relationships with both candidates and clients. They will be in attendance at the event, feel free to say hello!

Everstack (everstack.com) is Dan's company, providing Dan's time to organise and manage Azure Oxford. Everstack is a software development company providing development and consultation services.

Our prize draw sponsors are Manning Books (manning.com ) and NewOrbit (neworbit.co.uk).