Category: Dev Ops

All about code tracking and management for example, Azure DevOPS branching and merging, Release management, Continuous integration (CI) and Continuous deployment (CD).

Does Azure charge for stopped VMs?

If we stop a VM inside OS then it goes into “stopped” state. Azure will charge for the compute (hardware), network and storage services.

We can stop maximum charges for VM by using the stopped (deallocated) state. For this we would need Azure Portal (or Azure CLI) to stop the VM. This will shutdown the Operating System and deallocate the compute resource/network resource allocated for the VM. These compute/network resource can be used for another customer.  In this case Azure will report the status of the VM as being in a “Stopped (Deallocated” state.

Stopping (deallocating) a VM also release the internal IP address. A quick tip to prevent this from happening is to make sure that you have at least one VM that you haven’t put in the Stopped (Deallocated) state. You’d still be charged for that one but not the others, whilst maintaining your virtual IP.

Azure doesn’t charge for the VM core hours in Stopped (deallocated) state. However, it continues to accrue charges for the Azure storage needed for the VM’s OS disk and any attached data disks.

View effective permission of single user

Login to SQL Server as an admin account. Run following query by impersonating the user;

execute as user = 'SomeUserName' -- Set this to the user name you wish to check
select * from fn_my_permissions(null, 'DATABASE') -- Leave these arguments, don't change to MyDatabaseName
order by subentity_name, permission_name
revert

This will list all effective permission for this user;

Read, Write and Execute permission to SQL Login

I have a web application. This application connect to MS SQL SERVER 2017 for data manipulation (SELECT, UPDATE, DELETE, INSERT) and execute stored procedures. The application also run SQL Agent jobs. I need to create a user in the database to allows application to connect and execute queries, stored procedures and run SQL Agent jobs.  

Open SSMS (sql server management studio) login through sysaddmin  acount e.g.  sa

Make sure “user1” has connect permission to yourDB.

Execute this query

use yourDB
go

GRANT EXECUTE TO user1
GRANT SELECT TO user1
GRANT INSERT TO user1
GRANT UPDATE TO user1
GRANT DELETE TO user1

and also execute this

GRANT ALTER ON SCHEMA::dbo TO user1

where user1 is your user

If we want to allow this user to run sql agent jobs, we need to add it to “SQLAgentOperatorRole”. This role will allow the user to run any job on the server.

Now to SQL Agent permissions;

USE [msdb]
GO
CREATE USER [user1] FOR LOGIN [user1]
GO
USE [msdb]
GO
ALTER ROLE [SQLAgentOperatorRole] ADD MEMBER [user1]
GO

Make sure user has these permissions in MSDB database;

This is a good article on setting up jobs and an idea to integrate those jobs in UI.

How do I let someone execute a SQL Agent job they don’t own?

for troubleshooting, assign user to “sysadmin” Server Role. Make sure to revoke this permission afterwards.

Unbind solution from TFS

My problem, I was opening a solution from the internet and the original author had forgotten to remove the TFS bindings, so every time I open the solution I’d get an annoying popup saying “binding…”.

To get rid of this, I deleted the .suo next to the .sln file, and then opened the .sln file in Notepad and deleted this entire section:

GlobalSection(TeamFoundationVersionControl) = preSolution
    SccNumberOfProjects = 2
    SccEnterpriseProvider = {xxxxx}
    SccTeamFoundationServer = http://some-other-guys-tfs-server/
    SccLocalPath0 = .
    SccProjectUniqueName1 = xxDemo\\xxDemo.csproj
    SccProjectName1 = xxDemo
    SccLocalPath1 = xxDemo
EndGlobalSection

Save the .sln in Notepad and then open in Visual Studio, problem solved.

Resources

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/358951/how-can-i-completely-remove-tfs-bindings