u/DataFreakk

Hey Folks, need your advice badly ,

I'm building out a CI/CD flow for AKS using Azure DevOps Pipelines (not ArgoCD/GitOps for this one, using native Azure Pipelines + KubernetesManifest@1 tasks). Trying to understand what people actually do in production.

The MS Learn sample bundles CI and CD into one pipeline (Build stage → Deploy stage, same YAML file), which builds once and deploys straight to the cluster. That seems fine for a single environment, but once you add QA → UAT → Prod with a manual sign-off before prod, it starts to feel like the wrong shape.

Questions:

1. Do you run one CD pipeline with multiple stages (QA → UAT → Prod, each an Azure DevOps Environment with its own approval gates), or separate pipelines per environment (e.g. cd-nonprod and cd-prod)? What made you choose one over the other?
2. How do you handle the nonprod → prod ACR promotion? Are you doing az acr import to copy the same digest into a separate prod registry, or do you just use one ACR with RBAC-scoped repositories/tags instead of physically separate registries?
3. If CI only has push access to a nonprod ACR, what triggers the CD pipeline — a pipeline completion trigger (resources.pipelines), a manual run with an image tag parameter, or something else?
4. For those who've tried both native Azure Pipelines deploys and ArgoCD/GitOps for AKS was there a specific pain point that pushed you from one to the other?

Not looking for "just use GitOps" as the whole answer (I get the appeal); more interested in how people structure this with plain Azure DevOps pipelines if they're not on ArgoCD, since that's what I'm working with right now.

Hey Folks, need your advice badly ,

I'm building out a CI/CD flow for AKS using Azure DevOps Pipelines (not ArgoCD/GitOps for this one, using native Azure Pipelines + KubernetesManifest@1 tasks). Trying to understand what people actually do in production.

The MS Learn sample bundles CI and CD into one pipeline (Build stage → Deploy stage, same YAML file), which builds once and deploys straight to the cluster. That seems fine for a single environment, but once you add QA → UAT → Prod with a manual sign-off before prod, it starts to feel like the wrong shape.

Questions:

1. Do you run one CD pipeline with multiple stages (QA → UAT → Prod, each an Azure DevOps Environment with its own approval gates), or separate pipelines per environment (e.g. cd-nonprod and cd-prod)? What made you choose one over the other?
2. How do you handle the nonprod → prod ACR promotion? Are you doing az acr import to copy the same digest into a separate prod registry, or do you just use one ACR with RBAC-scoped repositories/tags instead of physically separate registries?
3. If CI only has push access to a nonprod ACR, what triggers the CD pipeline — a pipeline completion trigger (resources.pipelines), a manual run with an image tag parameter, or something else?
4. For those who've tried both native Azure Pipelines deploys and ArgoCD/GitOps for AKS was there a specific pain point that pushed you from one to the other?

Not looking for "just use GitOps" as the whole answer (I get the appeal); more interested in how people structure this with plain Azure DevOps pipelines if they're not on ArgoCD, since that's what I'm working with right now.

Hey Folks, need your advice badly ,

I'm building out a CI/CD flow for AKS using Azure DevOps Pipelines (not ArgoCD/GitOps for this one, using native Azure Pipelines + KubernetesManifest@1 tasks). Trying to understand what people actually do in production.

The MS Learn sample bundles CI and CD into one pipeline (Build stage → Deploy stage, same YAML file), which builds once and deploys straight to the cluster. That seems fine for a single environment, but once you add QA → UAT → Prod with a manual sign-off before prod, it starts to feel like the wrong shape.

Questions:

1. Do you run one CD pipeline with multiple stages (QA → UAT → Prod, each an Azure DevOps Environment with its own approval gates), or separate pipelines per environment (e.g. cd-nonprod and cd-prod)? What made you choose one over the other?
2. How do you handle the nonprod → prod ACR promotion? Are you doing az acr import to copy the same digest into a separate prod registry, or do you just use one ACR with RBAC-scoped repositories/tags instead of physically separate registries?
3. If CI only has push access to a nonprod ACR, what triggers the CD pipeline — a pipeline completion trigger (resources.pipelines), a manual run with an image tag parameter, or something else?
4. For those who've tried both native Azure Pipelines deploys and ArgoCD/GitOps for AKS was there a specific pain point that pushed you from one to the other?

Not looking for "just use GitOps" as the whole answer (I get the appeal); more interested in how people structure this with plain Azure DevOps pipelines if they're not on ArgoCD, since that's what I'm working with right now.

Hi all,

I'm an NRI based in Europe and want to start a monthly donation of around €30–50 to a good cause back home. I'm especially interested in organizations that support underprivileged women education, skill training, shelter, livelihood programs, etc.

If there's a good option based around Hyderabad, that would be a nice bonus, but I'm open to recommendations from anywhere in India.

I know there are unfortunately some NGOs that misuse funds, so I'd really appreciate recommendations from people who've personally interacted with, volunteered at, or verified an organization's transparency not just a generic list. Not looking for any tax benifts so dont need such benifits.

Thanks in advance for any pointers!

Hi all,

I'd like to start a monthly donation of around €30–50 to a good cause, and I'm especially interested in organizations that support underprivileged women (education, skill training, shelter, livelihood, etc.).

I'm Telugu myself, so I'd also love to support something based around Hyderabad or more broadly in Telangana/Andhra Pradesh could be an NGO or an orphanage.

I know there are unfortunately some NGOs out there that misuse funds, so I'd really appreciate it if anyone could recommend organizations they personally know, have volunteered with, or have verified are transparent with how donations are used. First-hand experience would mean a lot more to me than just a list of names.

Thanks in advance for any pointers!

Hey Folks, would love some advice from the community,

I'm currently a .NET developer who also handles Azure, CI/CD pipelines, containers, and some Kubernetes work for my team not for company. I've been in the same company for about 4 years and haven't interviewed since.

I'm now targeting Platform Engineer / DevOps / SRE-type roles. I wouldn't consider myself a beginner, but I'm not a senior-level engineer either. I've already covered most of the fundamentals (Linux, networking, containers, Kubernetes basics, CI/CD, monitoring, etc.).

What I'm trying to understand is how AWS is typically assessed in interviews today.

Are interviewers more focused on:

• Architecture and trade-offs?
• System design and operational decisions?
• Cost, scalability, reliability, and security considerations?

Or do they expect detailed implementation knowledge of AWS services such as:

• ECS/EKS
• IAM, STS, Roles, Policies
• VPC and networking design
• Route53
• Auto Scaling

For those who have interviewed recently for mid-level DevOps, Platform Engineer, or SRE roles, what did the AWS portion of the interview actually look like?

Any examples of real interview questions would be appreciated.

Hey Folks, would love some advice from the community,

I'm currently a .NET developer who also handles Azure, CI/CD pipelines, containers, and some Kubernetes work for my team not for company. I've been in the same company for about 4 years and haven't interviewed since.

I'm now targeting Platform Engineer / DevOps / SRE-type roles. I wouldn't consider myself a beginner, but I'm not a senior-level engineer either. I've already covered most of the fundamentals (Linux, networking, containers, Kubernetes basics, CI/CD, monitoring, etc.).

What I'm trying to understand is how AWS is typically assessed in interviews today.

Are interviewers more focused on:

• Architecture and trade-offs?
• System design and operational decisions?
• Cost, scalability, reliability, and security considerations?

Or do they expect detailed implementation knowledge of AWS services such as:

• ECS/EKS
• IAM, STS, Roles, Policies
• VPC and networking design
• Route53
• Auto Scaling

For those who have interviewed recently for mid-level DevOps, Platform Engineer, or SRE roles, what did the AWS portion of the interview actually look like?

Any examples of real interview questions would be appreciated.

Hey everyone,

I am trying to complete a playlist in the Microsoft AI Skills Fest to get the free exam voucher, but I'm a bit confused. I want to take the AZ-104 exam.

I couldn't find an official "AZ-104" playlist in the Skill Fest section, so I created a custom one. However, I'm pretty sure custom playlists don't qualify for the voucher promo.

Can someone share the link to an official playlist that qualifies for the voucher?