by ezs | Aug 29, 2020 | evilzenscientist
More fun this morning with grappling DAX to pull out the data I need.
We write multiple tags to Azure resources – from the resource group down to anything that takes them. Makes showback, accountability, support so much cleaner.
The tags are returned, in a non deterministic order, via the billing API – and look like this (data cleaned up), a list of tag/values. JSON-like ish kinda.
“application“: “Shared SQL“,”project“: “Shared Database Engineering“,”costcenter“: “1234“,”itowner“: “Buckley, Martin“,”supportgroup“: “Database Engineering“,”businessowner“: “Buckley, Martin“
I was looking at some DAX to pull this apart; PowerBI has a native “extract text between delimiters” function. It’s not going to build a tree of arbitary values; but I can now cleanly extract the tags I need to build this datamodel.
After I get this working, it might be time to pull all of the discrete DAX steps together to make it more efficient against a vast dataset.
Fun times on a Saturday.
Follow up to this. Extracting multiple pieces of insight from the tags – that drive KPIs for service improvement:
– resource groups with no costcenter tag (this is the cardinal sin – no costcenter and showback isn’t there, getting to health on this is easy)
– resource groups where itowner or businessowner don’t meet business rules (ICs can’t be owners)
– resource groups where the supportgroup is not valid (it doesn’t match a ServiceNow Assigment group)
Most of all – I can find everything tagged with “placeholder” or “set by policy” and sweep that broom through the tagging.
All in all – a good few hours of work.
by ezs | Aug 29, 2020 | evilzenscientist
SLES on Azure.
Windows Server 2019.
Nice and easy.
by ezs | Aug 24, 2020 | evilzenscientist
Weekend – a handful of confirmed “re-infections” is a worrying sign. Will a vaccine even be effective?
Weekly reminder of the state of the State from The Seattle Times. Plateau – but not safe.

Friday – across Europe travel restrictions are returning – similar to earlier in the year.
Thursday – “undeniable surge” in France, South Korea struggling to contain outbreaks. Second wave? Maybe. How these cases are suppressed is going to be vital learning.
Wednesday – the never ending flood of news is numbing. Trying to sustain empathy with 24M global cases, 5.8M US cases, 820K global deaths and 180k US deaths is hard. US politics are working to suppress the numbers and the news. Meanwhile Italy has surge of cases. Russia approves second vaccine.
Tuesday – Today India, Turkey, Spain again. US back to school is starting to prove a disaster.
Monday – it’s nearly September. Birmingham, UK continues towards lockdown. Boris says “go back to school”. We know how this ends. HK confirms re-infection.
by ezs | Aug 20, 2020 | evilzenscientist
Weekend – was planning a late week camping trip; PNW National Parks are “over full, over flowing, over used” – there is no availability. Folk are heading to the mountains and lakes.
Sobering: 800k global deaths. 23 million cases. WHO says “pandemic over in two years”.
The Seattle Times weekly graphic:

Friday – continued stories of “folk rushing back” to avoid lockdown and quarantine. It’s not the time to be heading on long haul trips for vacations tbh.
Thursday – Russia vaccine trials starting. Vast amounts of European cases. BBC saying “end of first wave” not a second wave.
Wednesday – King County reporting “lower ratio of positive tests” but spiking elsewhere.
Tuesday – more vaccines in clinical trials. Korea sees new cases.
Monday – reports of mutated Coronavirus strain. Will there be any chance of a vaccine? My guess is yearly variants like influenza. Much like the US, exam results are in disarray across the UK. Spain new cases spike.
by ezs | Aug 10, 2020 | evilzenscientist
Weekend – Weekend continues to report European second waves, US deaths.
The update from The Seattle Times for the week. Case count is trending down. Deaths still at low double digits. Too high for reopening.

Friday – UK quarantine chaos. Europe second wave. 167k deaths in the US, 5.3M cases.
Thursday – US death toll highest since May.
Wednesday – New Zealand outbreak in Auckland. Will be interesting to see how the track and trace works for this – and how the cases emerged.
Tuesday – BBC have the daily updates on the front page again. Clearly second wave rolling through. Russia has a vaccine ready for test; unknown what the initial testing looks like.
Monday – work from home is going to be the normal for at least six months – so this is really a COVID news tracking page for me now. Week 23, it’s August, summer is passing, back to school is all virtual. I’ll keep aggregating the news stories – and try to remain above the political fray. As we approach six months I will try and reflect on what 2020 has looked like. BBC summary returned.
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