This post shows how to add an AI assistant plugin to Backstage that lets internal developers chat with their own domain data using Azure AI Foundry Agents. We cover agent concepts, minimal API usage, plugin structure (frontend + lightweight backend proxy), security (secrets & identity), and deployment guidance. 1. Why an AI Chat Plugin in… Continue reading Building Backstage AI Chat Plugin with Azure AI Foundry Agents
Category: Azure Container Registry
Backstage on Azure Container Apps with Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) Authentication
End-to-end guide: containerizing Backstage, provisioning Azure resources (with Bicep & CLI), enabling Microsoft Entra (formerly Azure AD) sign-in, managing secrets, scaling, observing, troubleshooting, and cleaning up — all aligned with current Azure best practices (managed identities, least privilege, and no hard‑coded secrets). Why Backstage + Azure Container Apps Backstage centralizes your internal developer portal (catalog,… Continue reading Backstage on Azure Container Apps with Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) Authentication
AKS Workload identity – A Deeper look
Background Recently, I found myself delving into the intricacies of Workload Identity Federation within Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) while explaining it to some friends. As I delved deeper into the topic, I realized the importance of documenting and summarizing this information for anyone else navigating the same waters - including my future self. So, let's… Continue reading AKS Workload identity – A Deeper look
Azure Communication Service with Managed Identity
Background A few months ago, I have written a Demo application that shows how to send email and SMS via Azure Communication Service. The code was written in Spring Boot (Java) and hosted on Azure Container Apps. During the demo, I have used Connection strings of Azure Communication Service which is not ideal for production… Continue reading Azure Communication Service with Managed Identity
Secure API with API Management, network integrated Container Apps
Introduction In today's digital landscape, APIs play a crucial role in connecting applications and enabling seamless interactions. However, with the increasing importance of APIs, ensuring their security becomes paramount. In this blog post, we'll explore how to create a secure API using .net and hosted on Azure Container Apps, expose them via Azure API Management… Continue reading Secure API with API Management, network integrated Container Apps
Self-Hosted GitHub runner on Azure Container Apps
Last week I have shown how to run Azure DevOps self-hosted agents on Azure Container Apps. Using KEDA with its built-in Azure Pipeline scaler it was relatively straightforward to spin up new replicas in Container Apps. You can read all about that process here. However, today I wanted to achieve the same for GitHub self-hosted… Continue reading Self-Hosted GitHub runner on Azure Container Apps
Self-Hosted Azure DevOps pool on Azure Container Apps
A while ago, I have worked with few of our customers, helping to build elastic self-hosted pool for their Azure DevOps pipeline agents based on Azure Kubernetes Service. You can read all about that journey here - where I have created a Kubernetes Controller that observes the Job queue of Azure DevOps for incoming pipeline… Continue reading Self-Hosted Azure DevOps pool on Azure Container Apps
Demystifying Azure Container Apps & Dapr – Part 5
Read Part 1 here. Read Part 2 here. Read Part 3 here. Read Part 4 here. Today I will be using the traffic-splitting capability of Azure Container Apps. Azure Container Apps implements container app versioning by creating revisions. A revision is an immutable snapshot of a container app version. Revisions in Azure Container App The… Continue reading Demystifying Azure Container Apps & Dapr – Part 5
Demystifying Azure Container Apps & Dapr – Part 4
Read Part 1 here. Read Part 2 here. Read Part 3 here. Last time, I wrote the backend service (JobListener) which gets triggered by the Dapr pubsub whenever an image is uploaded into the designated blob container in the storage account. It then uses Computer Vision APIs to do the image recognition. Today we will… Continue reading Demystifying Azure Container Apps & Dapr – Part 4
Demystifying Azure Container Apps & Dapr – Part 3
Read Part 1 here. Read Part 2 here. Last time, I created an empty Azure Container Apps Environment, some supporting components like Key vaults, Log analytics workspace, Application Insights and Computer vision. I have also created an Event Grid topic that subscribed changes in Azure Storage container and dispatches change events to a Service Bus… Continue reading Demystifying Azure Container Apps & Dapr – Part 3