Mark Fussell on Dapr 1.0 - Episode 130

Joining Jeffrey today is return guest, Mark Fussell! Mark works on the Azure Incubations Team and is the Product Manager for Dapr, the Distributed Application Runtime. He has been working at Microsoft for over 19 years and has been a passionate advocate for building microservice-based applications for the last 10 years. He has a proven track record of building innovative computing platforms, running large-scale cloud services, and starting new million-dollar businesses within corporations.

Last time Mark was on the show, he and Jeffrey discussed Dapr and what it can do for developers. In this episode, Mark and Jeffrey discuss the new 1.0 release of Dapr. Mark shares how to build, test, deploy, and monitor an application that's built and deployed using Dapr. He speaks about the team's journey for the last six months with working on the 1.0 release, the new and exciting changes with the 1.0 release, and all that Dapr is currently capable of.

Topics of Discussion:

[:38] Be sure to visit AzureDevOps.Show for past episodes and show notes.

[:50] About The Azure DevOps Podcast, Clear Measure, and Jeffrey's offer to speak at virtual user groups.

[1:16] About Jeffrey's newest podcast, Architect Tips!

[1:20] About today's episode with return guest, Mark Fussell.

[1:42] Jeffrey welcomes Mark Fussell back to The Azure DevOps Podcast.

[2:03] Mark gives a rundown of what's new at Microsoft, how he ended up on the Azure Incubations Team at Microsoft, and what the team works on.

[3:15] An overview of Dapr.

[5:08] The huge news for Dapr: the new 1.0 release.

[5:41] Mark elaborates on the journey for the last six months with Dapr and what's new and exciting with the 1.0 release.

[7:07] Is Dapr aimed squarely at processes such as backend services with no UI (that either need to be triggered by something or to pop up and do something)?

[9:19] Is Dapr only for Javascript apps? Is it for .NET developers? How is it positioned?

[11:55] The strategy of Azure and the positioning of Dapr.

[13:25] What are some of Dapr's main goals? Can Dapr be as simple as a single backend process to a whole bunch of backend processes?

[21:53] A word from Azure DevOps Podcast's sponsor: Clear Measure.

[22:24] Is there overlap with Dapr and open-source distributed application frameworks for .NET such as MassTransit and NServiceBus? Did the Azure Incubations Team discuss these when developing Dapr?

[24:19] Jeffrey and Mark dive into the operational side of Dapr. Mark speaks about how to build, test, deploy, and monitor an application that's built and deployed using Dapr.

[28:24] Does Dapr integrate with Application Insights on its own set of custom events and custom metrics?

[29:28] What does deploying with ASP.NET look like? Is it possible, with Dapr, that you would not need to deploy a second process (whether it be Windows Service, Azure Function, or Containers) and you can simply bundle it in with a regular app service web application deployment?

[33:51] Mark provides an update on the status of Kubernetes in Azure.

[37:04] Discussing the future of running and deploying to Azure.

Mentioned in this Episode:

Architect Tips — New video podcast!

Azure DevOps

Clear Measure (Sponsor)

.NET DevOps for Azure: A Developer's Guide to DevOps Architecture the Right Way, by Jeffrey Palermo — Available on Amazon!

bit.ly/dotnetdevopsebook — Click here to download the .NET DevOps for Azure ebook!

Jeffrey Palermo's Youtube

Jeffrey Palermo's Twitter — Follow to stay informed about future events!

The Azure DevOps Podcast's Twitter: @AzureDevOpsShow

Mark Fussell's LinkedIn