Introducing the 2024 Advent Calendar
Stephen Tulp
November 26, 2024
4 minutes to read
Overview
It’s almost the end of another year and like most people I’m gearing up for a well earned break after another busy and eventful year. After the feedback and comments on my 2023 Azure Bicep Calendar, I have decided to do it again and focus on a topic that I have working with for around 18 months now and something that has become popular this year and will become more prominent heading into 2025.
Welcome to the 2024 Azure Platform Engineering Advent Calendar
As the landscape of technology continues to evolve, the importance of robust and efficient platform engineering has never been more critical. This Advent Calendar series aims to demystify platform engineering, exploring its principles, best practices, and the transformative impact it can have on organizations. By sharing insights and real-world examples, I hope to provide valuable knowledge to both seasoned professionals and newcomers alike.
Platform Engineering is broad and encompassing so the main focus of the series will be:
- Platform Engineering within the Azure Ecosystem: - I am Azure focused and all my experience is in this space so best to go with what you know!
- Introduce the concepts but focus on real world examples: There is a lot of great content, tools and open source solutions that will provide a good foundations.
- It’s not all about Kubernetes and Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs): While K8s and self-service portals are a key to mature platform engineering organisation, most aren’t there yet.
2024 Azure Platform Engineering Advent Calendar Schedule
Outlined below is the schedule for the month, with a new update daily and a link to the blog post as it’s published.
| Date | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
 |
Azure Platform Engineering Introduction & Overview | What is this Platform Engineering thing all about? |
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Azure Platform Engineering Principles | Some guiding principals to align with when implementing Platform Engineering. |
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Azure Platform Engineering Journey | You have to start somewhere, what should I focus on. |
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Azure Platform Engineering Tools & Capabilities - Part 1 | An overview of useful tools across the different capability areas related to Platform Engineering - Part 1/2 |
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Azure Platform Engineering Tools & Capabilities - Part 2 | An overview of useful tools across the different capability areas related to Platform Engineering - Part 2/2 |
 |
Unlocking the Power of Azure Verified Modules for Infrastructure as Code and Platform Engineering - Part 1 | Approach to IaC across both Bicep and Terraform for building and consuming repeatable infra patterns - Part 1/2. |
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Unlocking the Power of Azure Verified Modules for Infrastructure as Code and Platform Engineering - Part 2 | Approach to IaC across both Bicep and Terraform for building and consuming repeatable infra patterns - Part 2/2. |
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Microsoft Symphony for Engineering & Platform Orchestration | A framework, set of patterns, and best practices for developing, testing, and deploying IaC on Azure. |
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Subscription Vending for Landing Zones - Part 1 | Stamping out repeatable Landing Zones for App owners, developers, engineers and anyone that needs to consume Azure workloads. Part 1/2 |
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Subscription Vending for Landing Zones - Part 2 | Stamping out repeatable Landing Zones for App owners, developers, engineers and anyone that needs to consume Azure workloads. Part 2/2 |
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Microsoft DevBox for coding environments | Providing self-service access to pre-configured, project-specific developer boxes. |
 |
Azure Monitor Baseline Alerts for Platform Observability - Part 1 | Observability and monitoring provided as a Platform Service that can be leveraged by workload consumers. Part 1/2 |
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Azure Monitor Baseline Alerts for Platform Observability - Part 2 | Observability and monitoring provided as a Platform Service that can be leveraged by workload consumers. Part 2/2 |
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Enterprise Policy as Code for Security & Governance - Part 1 | Desired state configuration for Azure Policy with alignment to Policy as Code principles. Part 1/2 |
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Enterprise Policy as Code for Security & Governance - Part 2 | Desired state configuration for Azure Policy with alignment to Policy as Code principles. Part 2/2 |