// Videos

Karl Cooke (irishtechie.com) interviews Chris Reddington about the full architecture and GitHub workflow powering CloudWithChris.com. The session covers Azure Storage static website hosting, Azure CDN with a custom rules engine for enforcing HTTPS and security headers (CSP, HSTS, Permissions Policy), Hugo as the static site generator, multi-environment GitHub Actions pipelines (preview, staging, production), GitHub Codespaces for in-browser editing, and practical security hardening using securityheaders.com and Mozilla Observatory.

Weekly Vlog #16 covers significant IoT Edge updates — including nested device hierarchies now GA and zero-touch provisioning blueprints — plus the GA of Azure API Management support for availability zones and a new open-source API portal. GitHub highlights include a detailed guide to implementing least-privilege secrets in GitHub Actions using environments and branch protection rules, and the GitHub CLI's new support for managing Actions workflows from the terminal. Chris recaps two Global Azure talks on Hugo static sites and GitHub Actions, shares a SecurityHeaders.com deep-dive using Azure CDN rules, and previews Azure RBAC data-plane content and an upcoming Azure Spring Cloud session.

Weekly Vlog #15 covers a lighter-than-usual Azure week, spotlighting Azure Cloud Services extended support GA with a migration tool preview, Azure Orbital's ground station-as-a-service partnership updates, and a great Azure DevOps blog post on building and publishing your first GitHub Action. Cloud with Chris highlights include a Windows Terminal productivity Cloud Drop, the Bulkhead resilience pattern episode, a Microsoft Learn introductory video, and a recap of the Northern Azure User Group talk alongside Scott Hanselman — with two Global Azure sessions on Hugo static sites and GitHub Actions just around the corner.

The Bulkhead pattern takes its name from the watertight compartments in a ship's hull. Just as those compartments prevent a single breach from sinking the whole vessel, the Bulkhead pattern isolates components of a cloud application so that failures or resource exhaustion in one service cannot cascade to others. This episode covers partitioning strategies, connection pools, Kubernetes resource limits, and multi-tenancy considerations.

Gaming has evolved from isolated save files to persistent, cloud-powered experiences that follow players across every device they own. In this third episode of Cloud Gaming Notes, Chris and Lee Williams explore the cloud architecture behind in-game inventory and economy systems — using Sea of Thieves as a live example. Topics include persistent state management with Azure Cosmos DB, managed gaming backends with PlayFab, Live Ops patterns, and how cloud infrastructure enables monetisation and long-term player retention at scale.

Microsoft Learn is a gamified education hub on docs.microsoft.com covering Azure, GitHub, Microsoft 365, and more through modules, learning paths, and the LearnTV video platform. Browse the catalogue by role, level, or product, earn XP to level up, and use renewal assessments to recertify without retaking full exams.

In this Easter Sunday livestream, Chris covers Microsoft's Forrester Wave leader recognition for Azure Functions (FaaS), a wave of AKS updates including the new run command feature and Open Service Mesh add-on, and the GitHub Advanced Security security overview beta plus GA of secret scanning for private repositories. Delivery Plans 2.0 in Azure DevOps approaches GA with card styling and dependency visualisation, while GitHub Desktop gains cherry-pick support and GitHub Mobile adds working-hours notification controls. Cloud with Chris highlights include a beginner Git 101 Cloud Drop, a community blogging panel, the External Configuration and Claim Check architecture pattern episode with Peter Piper, and a preview of the upcoming Northern Azure User Group talk alongside Scott Hanselman.

Windows Terminal is a modern multi-shell application available via the Microsoft Store or winget, supporting Windows Command Prompt, PowerShell, PowerShell Core, WSL distributions, and Azure Cloud Shell in a single window. This Cloud Drop demonstrates installing Windows Terminal, connecting to Azure Cloud Shell via device code login, and creating custom SSH profiles to connect directly to Azure virtual machines from both Windows OpenSSH and WSL.

Chris and Peter cover two cloud design patterns in depth. The External Configuration Store pattern addresses one of the most critical security concerns in cloud development: keeping secrets and connection strings out of source code. They explore Azure Key Vault and Azure App Configuration as canonical implementations, discuss deployment slot behaviour, and highlight the risks of committing credentials to version control. The Claim Check pattern tackles a different challenge — what happens when your message payload exceeds the size limits of your messaging infrastructure (Azure Service Bus, Azure Queue Storage)? By externalising the payload to a data store and passing only a correlation ID on the queue, you gain scalability and flexibility at the cost of added latency. Azure Event Grid's automatic claim check generation is also demonstrated. Security is a thread running through both patterns: compromised config stores and poisoned messages both demand an operational response plan.

Git is a distributed version control system where every developer holds a complete copy of the repository and its history locally, enabling offline work and fast branching. This Cloud Drop covers git init, git add, git commit, git status, git log, git push, git pull, and git clone, plus VS Code's built-in Git integration and the Git Credential Manager for authenticating against GitHub and other remote hosts.