MSIX Architecture

For deploying applications to the Microsoft Store, the MSIX format is something you need to very familiar with. It is the successor of the MSI format.

Start by reading the Overview on Microsoft Learn.  

For additional background you can read the Microsoft guide to packaging and deployment for Windows Applications. The latter will recommend Microsoft Store as the recommended distribution path for most developers.  Other avenues will require additional certificate signing obligations (and concomitant costs).

The Azure Tenant Concept

An Azure tenant is the security and identity boundary for an organization within Azure (in AWS this broadly corresponds to an AWS organization). Within the tenant you have subscriptions.

Tenants are endowed with a unique Tenant ID, a globally unique GUID that identifies your tenant across Microsoft services.

Set up Artifact Signing Quickly

 Quickstart: Set up Artifact Signing | Microsoft Learn

Useful Azure Shell Commands

 az account list --output table

will give you a list of subscriptions (the table command line flag tells the shell to convert scraggly-looking JSON to a smarter-looking tabular format).  Subscriptions will display their name, cloud name (e.g. AzureCloud), Subscription ID, Tenant ID, State (Enabled?) and the IsDefault flag.

Copilot Integrated into Azure (Portal)

Copilot is integrated into the Azure portal, and sports a number of agents to help you. 

For example, the Troubleshooting agent exists to help you diagnose problems. To some extent, having a natural language interface may appear liberating, but technical language is still required to operate/co-operate with the agent, for example providing context around Azure resources, resource groups or subscriptions. Azure VMs and Azure VM scalesets (VMSS) are supported.

Stacked PRs - Was Ist Das?

A crazy concept from GH fully detailed here.

Cloudflare on RAG - Hello AutoRAG

This came out in April 2025. Create an AutoRAG instance and point it at a storage location like R2. Simples. Don't craft RAG yourself.