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  • Part 2&ndash;Load Testing In The Cloud

    - by Tarun Arora
    Welcome to Part 2, In Part 1 we discussed the advantages of creating a Test Rig in the cloud, the Azure edge and the Test Rig Topology we want to get to. In Part 2, Let’s start by understanding the components of Azure we’ll be making use of followed by manually putting them together to create the test rig, so… let’s get down dirty start setting up the Test Rig.  What Components of Azure will I be using for building the Test Rig in the Cloud? To run the Test Agents we’ll make use of Windows Azure Compute and to enable communication between Test Controller and Test Agents we’ll make use of Windows Azure Connect.  Azure Connect The Test Controller is on premise and the Test Agents are in the cloud (How will they talk?). To enable communication between the two, we’ll make use of Windows Azure Connect. With Windows Azure Connect, you can use a simple user interface to configure IPsec protected connections between computers or virtual machines (VMs) in your organization’s network, and roles running in Windows Azure. With this you can now join Windows Azure role instances to your domain, so that you can use your existing methods for domain authentication, name resolution, or other domain-wide maintenance actions. For more details refer to an overview of Windows Azure connect. A very useful video explaining everything you wanted to know about Windows Azure connect.  Azure Compute Windows Azure compute provides developers a platform to host and manage applications in Microsoft’s data centres across the globe. A Windows Azure application is built from one or more components called ‘roles.’ Roles come in three different types: Web role, Worker role, and Virtual Machine (VM) role, we’ll be using the Worker role to set up the Test Agents. A very nice blog post discussing the difference between the 3 role types. Developers are free to use the .NET framework or other software that runs on Windows with the Worker role or Web role. Developers can also create applications using languages such as PHP and Java. More on Windows Azure Compute. Each Windows Azure compute instance represents a virtual server... Virtual Machine Size CPU Cores Memory Cost Per Hour Extra Small Shared 768 MB $0.04 Small 1 1.75 GB $0.12 Medium 2 3.50 GB $0.24 Large 4 7.00 GB $0.48 Extra Large 8 14.00 GB $0.96   You might want to review the Windows Azure Pricing FAQ. Let’s Get Started building the Test Rig… Configuration Machine Role Comments VM – 1 Domain Controller for Playpit.com On Premise VM – 2 TFS, Test Controller On Premise VM – 3 Test Agent Cloud   In this blog post I would assume that you have the domain, Team Foundation Server and Test Controller Installed and set up already. If not, please refer to the TFS 2010 Installation Guide and this walkthrough on MSDN to set up your Test Controller. You can also download a preconfigured TFS 2010 VM from Brian Keller's blog, Brian also has some great hands on Labs on TFS 2010 that you may want to explore. I. Lets start building VM – 3: The Test Agent Download the Windows Azure SDK and Tools Open Visual Studio and create a new Windows Azure Project using the Cloud Template                   Choose the Worker Role for reasons explained in the earlier post         The WorkerRole.cs implements the Run() and OnStart() methods, no code changes required. You should be able to compile the project and run it in the compute emulator (The compute emulator should have been installed as part of the Windows Azure Toolkit) on your local machine.                   We will only be making changes to WindowsAzureProject, open ServiceDefinition.csdef. Ensure that the vmsize is small (remember the cost chart above). Import the “Connect” module. I am importing the Connect module because I need to join the Worker role VM to the Playpit domain. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition"> <WorkerRole name="WorkerRole1" vmsize="Small"> <Imports> <Import moduleName="Diagnostics" /> <Import moduleName="Connect"/> </Imports> </WorkerRole> </ServiceDefinition> Go to the ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg and note that settings with key ‘Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.%%%%’ have been added to the configuration file. This is because you decided to import the connect module. See the config below. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="1" osVersion="*"> <Role name="WorkerRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.ActivationToken" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Refresh" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.WaitForConnectivity" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Upgrade" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.EnableDomainJoin" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainFQDN" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainControllerFQDN" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainAccountName" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainPassword" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainOU" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Administrators" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainSiteName" value="" /> </ConfigurationSettings> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>             Let’s go step by step and understand all the highlighted parameters and where you can find the values for them.       osFamily – By default this is set to 1 (Windows Server 2008 SP2). Change this to 2 if you want the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system. The Advantage of using osFamily = “2” is that you get Powershell 2.0 rather than Powershell 1.0. In Powershell 2.0 you could simply use “powershell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted ./myscript.ps1” and it will work while in Powershell 1.0 you will have to change the registry key by including the following in your command file “reg add HKLM\Software\Microsoft\PowerShell\1\ShellIds\Microsoft.PowerShell /v ExecutionPolicy /d Unrestricted /f” before you can execute any power shell. The other reason you might want to move to os2 is if you wanted IIS 7.5.       Activation Token – To enable communication between the on premise machine and the Windows Azure Worker role VM both need to have the same token. Log on to Windows Azure Management Portal, click on Connect, click on Get Activation Token, this should give you the activation token, copy the activation token to the clipboard and paste it in the configuration file. Note – Later in the blog I’ll be showing you how to install connect on the on premise machine.                       EnableDomainJoin – Set the value to true, ofcourse we want to join the on windows azure worker role VM to the domain.       DomainFQDN, DomainControllerFQDN, DomainAccountName, DomainPassword, DomainOU, Administrators – This information is specific to your domain. I have extracted this information from the ‘service manager’ and ‘Active Directory Users and Computers’. Also, i created a new Domain-OU namely ‘CloudInstances’ so all my cloud instances joined to my domain show up here, this is optional. You can encrypt the DomainPassword – refer to the instructions here. Or hold fire, I’ll be covering that when i come to certificates and encryption in the coming section.       Now once you have filled all this information up, the configuration file should look something like below, <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="2" osVersion="*"> <Role name="WorkerRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.ActivationToken" value="45f55fea-f194-4fbc-b36e-25604faac784" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Refresh" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.WaitForConnectivity" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Upgrade" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.EnableDomainJoin" value="true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainFQDN" value="play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainControllerFQDN" value="WIN-KUDQMQFGQOL.play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainAccountName" value="playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainPassword" value="************************" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainOU" value="OU=CloudInstances, DC=Play, DC=Pit, DC=com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Administrators" value="Playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainSiteName" value="" /> </ConfigurationSettings> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration> Next we will be enabling the Remote Desktop module in to the ServiceDefinition.csdef, we could make changes manually or allow a beautiful wizard to help us make changes. I prefer the second option. So right click on the Windows Azure project and choose Publish       Now once you get the publish wizard, if you haven’t already you would be asked to import your Windows Azure subscription, this is simply the Msdn subscription activation key xml. Once you have done click Next to go to the Settings page and check ‘Enable Remote Desktop for all roles’.       As soon as you do that you get another pop up asking you the details for the user that you would be logging in with (make sure you enter a reasonable expiry date, you do not want the user account to expire today). Notice the more information tag at the bottom, click that to get access to the certificate section. See screen shot below.       From the drop down select the option to create a new certificate        In the pop up window enter the friendly name for your certificate. In my case I entered ‘WAC – Test Rig’ and click ok. This will create a new certificate for you. Click on the view button to see the certificate details. Do you see the Thumbprint, this is the value that will go in the config file (very important). Now click on the Copy to File button to copy the certificate, we will need to import the certificate to the windows Azure Management portal later. So, make sure you save it a safe location.                                Click Finish and enter details of the user you would like to create with permissions for remote desktop access, once you have entered the details on the ‘Remote desktop configuration’ screen click on Ok. From the Publish Windows Azure Wizard screen press Cancel. Cancel because we don’t want to publish the role just yet and Yes because we want to save all the changes in the config file.       Now if you go to the ServiceDefinition.csdef file you will see that the RemoteAccess and RemoteForwarder roles have been imported for you. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition"> <WorkerRole name="WorkerRole1" vmsize="Small"> <Imports> <Import moduleName="Diagnostics" /> <Import moduleName="Connect" /> <Import moduleName="RemoteAccess" /> <Import moduleName="RemoteForwarder" /> </Imports> </WorkerRole> </ServiceDefinition> Now go to the ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg file and you see a whole bunch for setting “Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.%%%” values added for you. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="2" osVersion="*"> <Role name="WorkerRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.ActivationToken" value="45f55fea-f194-4fbc-b36e-25604faac784" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Refresh" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.WaitForConnectivity" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Upgrade" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.EnableDomainJoin" value="true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainFQDN" value="play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainControllerFQDN" value="WIN-KUDQMQFGQOL.play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainAccountName" value="playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainPassword" value="************************" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainOU" value="OU=CloudInstances, DC=Play, DC=Pit, DC=com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Administrators" value="Playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainSiteName" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.Enabled" value="true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountUsername" value="Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountEncryptedPassword" value="MIIBnQYJKoZIhvcNAQcDoIIBjjCCAYoCAQAxggFOMIIBSgIBADAyMB4xHDAaBgNVBAMME1dpbmRvd 3MgQXp1cmUgVG9vbHMCEGa+B46voeO5T305N7TSG9QwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQAEggEABg4ol5Xol66Ip6QKLbAPWdmD4ae ADZ7aKj6fg4D+ATr0DXBllZHG5Umwf+84Sj2nsPeCyrg3ZDQuxrfhSbdnJwuChKV6ukXdGjX0hlowJu/4dfH4jTJC7sBWS AKaEFU7CxvqYEAL1Hf9VPL5fW6HZVmq1z+qmm4ecGKSTOJ20Fptb463wcXgR8CWGa+1w9xqJ7UmmfGeGeCHQ4QGW0IDSBU6ccg vzF2ug8/FY60K1vrWaCYOhKkxD3YBs8U9X/kOB0yQm2Git0d5tFlIPCBT2AC57bgsAYncXfHvPesI0qs7VZyghk8LVa9g5IqaM Cp6cQ7rmY/dLsKBMkDcdBHuCTAzBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwFAYIKoZIhvcNAwcECDRVifSXbA43gBApNrp40L1VTVZ1iGag+3O1" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountExpiration" value="2012-11-27T23:59:59.0000000+00:00" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteForwarder.Enabled" value="true" /> </ConfigurationSettings> <Certificates> <Certificate name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.PasswordEncryption" thumbprint="AA23016CF0BDFC344400B5B82706B608B92E4217" thumbprintAlgorithm="sha1" /> </Certificates> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>          Okay let’s look at them one at a time,       Enabled - Yes, we would like to enable Remote Access.       AccountUserName – This is the user name you entered while you were on the publish windows azure role screen, as detailed above.       AccountEncrytedPassword – Try and decode that, the certificate is used to encrypt the password you specified for the user account. Remember earlier i said, either use the instructions or wait and i’ll be showing you encryption, now the user account i am using for rdp has the same password as my domain password, so i can simply copy the value of the AccountEncryptedPassword to the DomainPassword as well.       AccountExpiration – This is the expiration as you specified in the wizard earlier, make sure your account does not expire today.       Remote Forwarder – Check out the documentation, below is how I understand it, -- One role in an application that implements a remote desktop connection must import the RemoteForwarder module. The two modules work together to enable the remote desktop connections to role instances. -- If you have multiple roles defined in the service model, it does not matter which role you add the RemoteForwarder module to, but you must add it to only one of the role definitions.       Certificate – Remember the certificate thumbprint from the wizard, the on premise machine and windows azure role machine that need to speak to each other must have the same thumbprint. More on that when we install Windows Azure connect Endpoints on the on premise machine. As i said earlier, in this blog post, I’ll be showing you the manual process so i won’t be scripting any star up tasks to install the test agent or register the test agent with the TFS Server. I’ll be showing you all this cool stuff in the next blog post, that’s because it’s important to understand the manual side of it, it becomes easier for you to troubleshoot in case something fails. Having said that, the changes we have made are sufficient to spin up the Windows Azure Worker Role aka Test Agent VM, have it connected with the play.pit.com domain and have remote access enabled on it. Before we deploy the Test Agent VM we need to set up Windows Azure Connect on the TFS Server. II. Windows Azure Connect: Setting up Connect on VM – 2 i.e. TFS & Test Controller Glad you made it so far, now to enable communication between the on premise TFS/Test Controller and Azure-ed Test Agent we need to enable communication. We have set up the Azure connect module in the Test Agent configuration, now the connect end points need to be enabled on the on premise machines, let’s have a look at how we can do this. Log on to VM – 2 running the TFS Server and Test Controller Log on to the Windows Azure Management Portal and click on Virtual Network Click on Virtual Network, if you already have a subscription you should see the below screen shot, if not, you would be asked to complete the subscription first        Click on Install Local Endpoints from the top left on the panel and you get a url appended with a token id in it, remember the token i showed you earlier, in theory the token you get here should match the token you added to the Test Agent config file.        Copy the url to the clip board and paste it in IE explorer (important, the installation at present only works out of IE and you need to have cookies enabled in order to complete the installation). As stated in the pop up, you can NOT download and run the software later, you need to run it as is, since it contains a token. Once the installation completes you should see the Windows Azure connect icon in the system tray.                         Right click the Azure Connect icon, choose Diagnostics and refer to this link for diagnostic detail terminology. NOTE – Unfortunately I could not see the Windows Azure connect icon in the system tray, a bit of binging with Google revealed that the azure connect icon is only shown when the ‘Windows Azure Connect Endpoint’ Service is started. So go to services.msc and make sure that the service is started, if not start it, unfortunately again, the service did not start for me on a manual start and i realised that one of the dependant services was disabled, you can look at the service dependencies and start them and then start windows azure connect. Bottom line, you need to start Windows Azure connect service before you can proceed. Please refer here on MSDN for more on Troubleshooting Windows Azure connect. (Follow the next step as well)   Now go back to the Windows Azure Management Portal and from Groups and Roles create a new group, lets call it ‘Test Rig’. Make sure you add the VM – 2 (the TFS Server VM where you just installed the endpoint).       Now if you go back to the Azure Connect icon in the system tray and click ‘Refresh Policy’ you will notice that the disconnected status of the icon should change to ready for connection. III. Importing Certificate in to Windows Azure Management Portal But before that you need to import the certificate you created in Step I in to the Windows Azure Management Portal. Log on to the Windows Azure Management Portal and click on ‘Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN’ and then ‘Management Certificates’ followed by Add Certificates as shown in the screen shot below        Browse to the location where you saved the certificate earlier, remember… Refer to Step I in case you forgot.        Now you should be able to see the imported certificate here, make sure the thumbprint of the certificate matches the one you inserted in the config files        IV. Publish Windows Azure Worker Role aka Test Agent Having completed I, II and III, you are ready to publish the Test Agent VM – 3 to the cloud. Go to Visual Studio and right click the Windows Azure project and select Publish. Verify the infomration in the wizard, from the advanced settings tab, you can also enabled capture of intellitrace or profiling information.         Click Next and Click Publish! From the view menu bar select the Windows Azure Activity Log window.       Now you should be able to see the deployment progress in real time.             In the Windows Azure Management Portal, you should also be able to see the progress of creation of a new Worker Role.       Once the deployment is complete you should be able to RDP (go to run prompt type mstsc and in the pop up the machine name) in to the Test Agent Worker Role VM from the Playpit network using the domain admin user account. In case you are unable to log in to the Test Agent using the domain admin user account it means the process of joining the Test Agent to the domain has failed! But the good news is, because you imported the connect module, you can connect to the Test Agent machine using Windows Azure Management Portal and troubleshoot the reason for failure, you will be able to log in with the user name and password you specified in the config file for the keys ‘RemoteAccess.AccountUsername, RemoteAccess.EncryptedPassword (just that enter the password unencrypted)’, fix it or manually join the machine to the domain. Once you have managed to Join the Test Agent VM to the Domain move to the next step.      So, log in to the Test Agent Worker Role VM with the Playpit Domain Administrator and verify that you can log in, the machine is connected to the domain and the connect service is successfully running. If yes, give your self a pat on the back, you are 80% mission accomplished!         Go to the Windows Azure Management Portal and click on Virtual Network, click on Groups and Roles and click on Test Rig, click Edit Group, the edit the Test Rig group you created earlier. In the Connect to section, click on Add to select the worker role you have just deployed. Also, check the ‘Allow connections between endpoints in the group’ with this you will enable to communication between test controller and test agents and test agents/test agents. Click Save.      Now, you are ready to deploy the Test Agent software on the Worker Role Test Agent VM and configure it to work with the Test Controller. V. Configuring VM – 3: Installing Test Agent and Associating Test Agent to Controller Log in to the Worker Role Test Agent VM that you have just successfully deployed, make sure you log in with the domain administrator account. Download the All Agents software from MSDN, ‘en_visual_studio_agents_2010_x86_x64_dvd_509679.iso’, extract the iso and navigate to where you have extracted the iso. In my case, i have extracted the iso to “C:\Resources\Temp\VsAgentSetup”. Open the Test Agent folder and double click on setup.exe. Once you have installed the Test Agent you should reach the configuration window. If you face any issues installing TFS Test Agent on the VM, refer to the walkthrough on MSDN.       Once you have successfully installed the Test Agent software you will need to configure the test agent. Right click the test agent configuration tool and run as a different user. i.e. an Administrator. This is really to run the configuration wizard with elevated privileges (you might have UAC block something's otherwise).        In the run options, you can select ‘service’ you do not need to run the agent as interactive un less you are running coded UI tests. I have specified the domain administrator to connect to the TFS Test Controller. In real life, i would never do that, i would create a separate test user service account for this purpose. But for the blog post, we are using the most powerful user so that any policies or restrictions don’t block you.        Click the Apply Settings button and you should be all green! If not, the summary usually gives helpful error messages that you can resolve and proceed. As per my experience, you may run in to either a permission or a firewall blocking communication issue.        And now the moment of truth! Go to VM –2 open up Visual Studio and from the Test Menu select Manage Test Controller       Mission Accomplished! You should be able to see the Test Agent that you have just configured here,         VI. Creating and Running Load Tests on your brand new Azure-ed Test Rig I have various blog posts on Performance Testing with Visual Studio Ultimate, you can follow the links and videos below, Blog Posts: - Part 1 – Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate - Part 2 – Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate - Part 3 – Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Videos: - Test Tools Configuration & Settings in Visual Studio - Why & How to Record Web Performance Tests in Visual Studio Ultimate - Goal Driven Load Testing using Visual Studio Ultimate Now that you have created your load tests, there is one last change you need to make before you can run the tests on your Azure Test Rig, create a new Test settings file, and change the Test Execution method to ‘Remote Execution’ and select the test controller you have configured the Worker Role Test Agent against in our case VM – 2 So, go on, fire off a test run and see the results of the test being executed on the Azur-ed Test Rig. Review and What’s next? A quick recap of the benefits of running the Test Rig in the cloud and what i will be covering in the next blog post AND I would love to hear your feedback! Advantages Utilizing the power of Azure compute to run a heavy virtual user load. Benefiting from the Azure flexibility, destroy Test Agents when not in use, takes < 25 minutes to spin up a new Test Agent. Most important test Network Latency, (network latency and speed of connection are two different things – usually network latency is very hard to test), by placing the Test Agents in Microsoft Data centres around the globe, one can actually test the lag in transferring the bytes not because of a slow connection but because the page has been requested from the other side of the globe. Next Steps The process of spinning up the Test Agents in windows Azure is not 100% automated. I am working on the Worker process and power shell scripts to make the role deployment, unattended install of test agent software and registration of the test agent to the test controller automated. In the next blog post I will show you how to make the complete process unattended and automated. Remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Hope you enjoyed this post, I would love to hear your feedback! If you have any recommendations on things that I should consider or any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment. See you in Part III.   Share this post : CodeProject

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  • What free space thresholds/limits are advisable for 640 GB and 2 TB hard disk drives with ZEVO ZFS on OS X?

    - by Graham Perrin
    Assuming that free space advice for ZEVO will not differ from advice for other modern implementations of ZFS … Question Please, what percentages or amounts of free space are advisable for hard disk drives of the following sizes? 640 GB 2 TB Thoughts A standard answer for modern implementations of ZFS might be "no more than 96 percent full". However if apply that to (say) a single-disk 640 GB dataset where some of the files most commonly used (by VirtualBox) are larger than 15 GB each, then I guess that blocks for those files will become sub optimally spread across the platters with around 26 GB free. I read that in most cases, fragmentation and defragmentation should not be a concern with ZFS. Sill, I like the mental picture of most fragments of a large .vdi in reasonably close proximity to each other. (Do features of ZFS make that wish for proximity too old-fashioned?) Side note: there might arise the question of how to optimise performance after a threshold is 'broken'. If it arises, I'll keep it separate. Background On a 640 GB StoreJet Transcend (product ID 0x2329) in the past I probably went beyond an advisable threshold. Currently the largest file is around 17 GB –  – and I doubt that any .vdi or other file on this disk will grow beyond 40 GB. (Ignore the purple masses, those are bundles of 8 MB band files.) Without HFS Plus: the thresholds of twenty, ten and five percent that I associate with Mobile Time Machine file system need not apply. I currently use ZEVO Community Edition 1.1.1 with Mountain Lion, OS X 10.8.2, but I'd like answers to be not too version-specific. References, chronological order ZFS Block Allocation (Jeff Bonwick's Blog) (2006-11-04) Space Maps (Jeff Bonwick's Blog) (2007-09-13) Doubling Exchange Performance (Bizarre ! Vous avez dit Bizarre ?) (2010-03-11) … So to solve this problem, what went in 2010/Q1 software release is multifold. The most important thing is: we increased the threshold at which we switched from 'first fit' (go fast) to 'best fit' (pack tight) from 70% full to 96% full. With TB drives, each slab is at least 5GB and 4% is still 200MB plenty of space and no need to do anything radical before that. This gave us the biggest bang. Second, instead of trying to reuse the same primary slabs until it failed an allocation we decided to stop giving the primary slab this preferential threatment as soon as the biggest allocation that could be satisfied by a slab was down to 128K (metaslab_df_alloc_threshold). At that point we were ready to switch to another slab that had more free space. We also decided to reduce the SMO bonus. Before, a slab that was 50% empty was preferred over slabs that had never been used. In order to foster more write aggregation, we reduced the threshold to 33% empty. This means that a random write workload now spread to more slabs where each one will have larger amount of free space leading to more write aggregation. Finally we also saw that slab loading was contributing to lower performance and implemented a slab prefetch mechanism to reduce down time associated with that operation. The conjunction of all these changes lead to 50% improved OLTP and 70% reduced variability from run to run … OLTP Improvements in Sun Storage 7000 2010.Q1 (Performance Profiles) (2010-03-11) Alasdair on Everything » ZFS runs really slowly when free disk usage goes above 80% (2010-07-18) where commentary includes: … OpenSolaris has changed this in onnv revision 11146 … [CFT] Improved ZFS metaslab code (faster write speed) (2010-08-22)

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  • How to get a *.cer file to add a self-signed HTTPS certificate as trusted for Java

    - by pako
    I'm connecting to a HTTPS website with a self-signed certificate using a Java applet. The applet can't open the HTTPS connection - it returns the following exception: javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: sun.security.validator.ValidatorException: PKIX path building failed: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target So the problem is that I need to add the certificate as "trusted" for Java. I read that I should use the following command: keytool -import -alias abc -file ABCCA.cer Am I correct? How do I retrieve the *.cer file? The server is running Debian 5. I'm using Windows 7 and Java 6 on the client machine.

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  • importing an existing x509 certificate and private key in Java keystore to use in ActiveMQ ssl context

    - by Aleksandar Ivanisevic
    I have this in activemq config <sslContext> <sslContext keyStore="file:/home/alex/work/amq/broker.ks" keyStorePassword="password" trustStore="file:${activemq.base}/conf/broker.ts" trustStorePassword="password"/> </sslContext> I have a pair of x509 cert and a key file How do I import those two to be used in ssl and ssl+stomp connectors? All examples i could google always generate the key themselves, but I already have a key. I have tried keytool -import -keystore ./broker.ks -file mycert.crt but this only imports the certificate and not the key file and results in 2009-05-25 13:16:24,270 [localhost:61612] ERROR TransportConnector - Could not accept connection : No available certificate or key corresponds to the SSL cipher suites which are enabled. I have tried concatenating the cert and the key but got the same result How do I import the key?

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  • ODBC and NLS_LANG

    - by Michael S.
    Let's say that I've created two different program executables, e.g. in C++. For some reason, the two programs internals representation of text are different from each other. Let's say the first program is using text representation A and the other text representation B. It could be a specific 8-bit ANSI codepage, Unicode/UTF-8 or Unicode/UTF-16 or whatever. Now each program want to communicate text (add/retrieve data) to/from the same database table on a (database) server. Each program communicates with the database through ODBC. So the programs do not know what database system they they are communicating with. In this specific case through the database is actually a Oracle RDMS database and the database server administrator has setup the database to use UTF-8. On the system on which the programs are running an appropriate ODBC driver is available, so that the programs can connect through ODBC. Each program will treat and convert from the ODBC data type SQL_C_CHAR to its internal text representation appropriately. I assume that the programs cannot do no other than to assume a specific encoding returned for SQL_C_CHAR text. If not the programs has to be told which encoding that is. For Oracle, I know that the NLS_LANG environment variable can be used on the client. I assume it affects the ODBC driver (related to SQL_C_CHAR) to convert from a specific encoding (as given by NLS_LANG) to the internal encoding of the database (in this example UTF-8) and vice-versa. If the machine running my programs are having a NLS_LANG this setting will affect the byte sequences returned for SQL_C_CHAR so my programs cannot suddenly assume a specific encoding for the text returned via SQL_C_CHAR. Is it possible to setup the ODBC connection (preferably programmatically at runtime), so that it takes care of text conversions appropriately for the two programs, i.e. from/to representation to/from UTF-8 and from/to representation B to/from UTF-8? Regards, /Michael PS. As the programs are connecting through ODBC I don't think it would be nice that they should now anything about NLS_LANG as this is a Orcacle specific environment variable.

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  • How do I sign a HTTP request with a X.509 certificate in Java?

    - by Rune
    How do I perform an HTTP request and sign it with a X.509 certificate using Java? I usually program in C#. Now, what I would like to do is something similar to the following, only in Java: private HttpWebRequest CreateRequest(Uri uri, X509Certificate2 cert) { HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create(uri); request.ClientCertificates.Add(cert); /* ... */ return request; } In Java I have created a java.security.cert.X509Certificate instance but I cannot figure out how to associate it to a HTTP request. I can create a HTTP request using a java.net.URL instance, but I don't seem to be able to associate my certificate with that instance (and I'm not sure whether using java.net.URL is even appropriate).

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  • How to use a self-signed SSL certificate when developing with Trigger.io?

    - by user610345
    Our backend is in rails, and for several reasons the development environment has to be run with rails using a self-signed SSL certificate. This works fine on the desktop after manually trusting the certificate. Using Trigger.io, we're developing a mobile application targeting iOS from the same backend. It would be ideal for us to be able to run the rails server with SSL (so we can compare the browser output) and still have the iOS simulator connect properly without complaining about invalid certs. Production is using a proper ssl-cert, but what's the best way to set up the simulator?

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  • Combining Shared Secret and Certificates

    - by Michael Stephenson
    As discussed in the introduction article this walkthrough will explain how you can implement WCF security with the Windows Azure Service Bus to ensure that you can protect your endpoint in the cloud with a shared secret but also combine this with certificates so that you can identify the sender of the message.   Prerequisites As in the previous article before going into the walk through I want to explain a few assumptions about the scenario we are implementing but to keep the article shorter I am not going to walk through all of the steps in how to setup some of this. In the solution we have a simple console application which will represent the client application. There is also the services WCF application which contains the WCF service we will expose via the Windows Azure Service Bus. The WCF Service application in this example was hosted in IIS 7 on Windows 2008 R2 with AppFabric Server installed and configured to auto-start the WCF listening services. I am not going to go through significant detail around the IIS setup because it should not matter in relation to this article however if you want to understand more about how to configure WCF and IIS for such a scenario please refer to the following paper which goes into a lot of detail about how to configure this. The link is: http://tinyurl.com/8s5nwrz   Setting up the Certificates To keep the post and sample simple I am going to use the local computer store for all certificates but this bit is really just the same as setting up certificates for an example where you are using WCF without using Windows Azure Service Bus. In the sample I have included two batch files which you can use to create the sample certificates or remove them. Basically you will end up with: A certificate called PocServerCert in the personal store for the local computer which will be used by the WCF Service component A certificate called PocClientCert in the personal store for the local computer which will be used by the client application A root certificate in the Root store called PocRootCA with its associated revocation list which is the root from which the client and server certificates were created   For the sample Im just using development certificates like you would normally, and you can see exactly how these are configured and placed in the stores from the batch files in the solution using makecert and certmgr.   The Service Component To begin with let's look at the service component and how it can be configured to listen to the service bus using a shared secret but to also accept a username token from the client. In the sample the service component is called Acme.Azure.ServiceBus.Poc.Cert.Services. It has a single service which is the Visual Studio template for a WCF service when you add a new WCF Service Application so we have a service called Service1 with its Echo method. Nothing special so far!.... The next step is to look at the web.config file to see how we have configured the WCF service. In the services section of the WCF configuration you can see I have created my service and I have created a local endpoint which I simply used to do a little bit of diagnostics and to check it was working, but more importantly there is the Windows Azure endpoint which is using the ws2007HttpRelayBinding (note that this should also work just the same if your using netTcpRelayBinding). The key points to note on the above picture are the service behavior called MyServiceBehaviour and the service bus endpoints behavior called MyEndpointBehaviour. We will go into these in more detail later.   The Relay Binding The relay binding for the service has been configured to use the TransportWithMessageCredential security mode. This is the important bit where the transport security really relates to the interaction between the service and listening to the Azure Service Bus and the message credential is where we will use our certificate like we have specified in the message/clientCrentialType attribute. Note also that we have left the relayClientAuthenticationType set to RelayAccessToken. This means that authentication will be made against ACS for accessing the service bus and messages will not be accepted from any sender who has not been authenticated by ACS.   The Endpoint Behaviour In the below picture you can see the endpoint behavior which is configured to use the shared secret client credential for accessing the service bus and also for diagnostic purposes I have included the service registry element.     Hopefully if you are familiar with using Windows Azure Service Bus relay feature the above is very familiar to you and this is a very common setup for this section. There is nothing specific to the username token implementation here. The Service Behaviour Now we come to the bit with most of the certificate stuff in it. When you configure the service behavior I have included the serviceCredentials element and then setup to use the clientCertificate check and also specifying the serviceCertificate with information on how to find the servers certificate in the store.     I have also added a serviceAuthorization section where I will implement my own authorization component to perform additional security checks after the service has validated that the message was signed with a good certificate. I also have the same serviceSecurityAudit configuration to log access to my service. My Authorization Manager The below picture shows you implementation of my authorization manager. WCF will eventually hand off the message to my authorization component before it calls the service code. This is where I can perform some logic to check if the identity is allowed to access resources. In this case I am simple rejecting messages from anyone except the PocClientCertificate.     The Client Now let's take a look at the client side of this solution and how we can configure the client to authenticate against ACS but also send a certificate over to the service component so it can implement additional security checks on-premise. I have a console application and in the program class I want to use the proxy generated with Add Service Reference to send a message via the Azure Service Bus. You can see in my WCF client configuration below I have setup my details for the azure service bus url and am using the ws2007HttpRelayBinding.   Next is my configuration for the relay binding. You can see below I have configured security to use TransportWithMessageCredential so we will flow the token from a certificate with the message and also the RelayAccessToken relayClientAuthenticationType which means the component will validate against ACS before being allowed to access the relay endpoint to send a message.     After the binding we need to configure the endpoint behavior like in the below picture. This contains the normal transportClientEndpointBehaviour to setup the ACS shared secret configuration but we have also configured the clientCertificate to look for the PocClientCert.     Finally below we have the code of the client in the console application which will call the service bus. You can see that we have created our proxy and then made a normal call to a WCF in exactly the normal way but the configuration will jump in and ensure that a token is passed representing the client certificate.     Conclusion As you can see from the above walkthrough it is not too difficult to configure a service to use both a shared secret and certificate based token at the same time. This gives you the power and protection offered by the access control service in the cloud but also the ability to flow additional tokens to the on-premise component for additional security features to be implemented. Sample The sample used in this post is available at the following location: https://s3.amazonaws.com/CSCBlogSamples/Acme.Azure.ServiceBus.Poc.Cert.zip

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  • How to empty swap if there is free RAM?

    - by jfoucher
    When I open a RAM-intensive app (VirtualBox set at 2 Gb RAM), Some swap space is generally used, depending on what else I have open at the time. However, when I quit that last application, the 2 Gb of RAM are freed, but the same swap space use remains. How can I tell ubuntu to stop using that swap and to revert to using the RAM? Thank you Edit : Right now, about 2 hours after having closed VirtualBox, I have 1.6 Gb free RAM and still 770 Mb in swap.

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  • Where can I find free or buy "next-gen" 3D Assets?

    - by Valmond
    Usually I buy 3D Assets from sites like turbosquid.com or similar. My problem is that I have lately implemented glow, normal maps, specular (and specular power) maps and reflection maps and I can't find any models that use those techniques. So where can I find / buy "next gen" assets (at least models/items with a normal map)? I have checked for similar posts but those I found are about either free only or 2D or 'ordinary' 3D so I hope this is not a duplicate.

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  • MicroTraining: Executing SSIS 2012 Packages 22 May 10:00 AM EDT (Free!)

    - by andyleonard
    I am pleased to announce the latest (free!) Linchpin People microtraining event will be held Tuesday 22 May 2012 at 10:00 AM EDT. The topic will be Executing SSIS 2012 Packages. In this presentation, I will be demonstrating several ways to execute SSIS 2012 packages. Register here ! Interested in learning about more microtraining from Linchpin People – before anyone else? Sign up for our newsletter ! :{>...(read more)

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  • Win 2 years free web hosting for your site!!!

    - by mcp111
    EggHeadCafe is giving away a free 2 year Personal Class Account to Arvixe ASP.NET Web Hosting! In fact, all members who enter the drawing below win a 20% discount off a Personal Class Account. The nice thing about Arvixe is that they also accept Google checkout and Paypal. http://www.eggheadcafe.com/tutorials/aspnet/828f2029-b7be-4d15-877c-0d9e9ab74fc5/review-of-arvixecom-web-site-hosting.aspx  Tweet

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  • MicroTraining: Executing SSIS 2012 Packages 22 May 10:00 AM EDT (Free!)

    - by andyleonard
    I am pleased to announce the latest (free!) Linchpin People microtraining event will be held Tuesday 22 May 2012 at 10:00 AM EDT. The topic will be Executing SSIS 2012 Packages. In this presentation, I will be demonstrating several ways to execute SSIS 2012 packages. Register here ! Interested in learning about more microtraining from Linchpin People – before anyone else? Sign up for our newsletter ! :{>...(read more)

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  • Want to become and WebLogic 12c expert? free WebLogic 12c partner bootcamps – new location: Madrid Spain

    - by JuergenKress
    We offer free 2 days hands-on WebLogic 12c workshops for Oracle partners who want to become WebLogic Specialize: Spain 18 - 19 September 2012 Oracle Ibérica For details please visit our registration page. WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: WebLogic 12c bootcamp,WebLogic training,education,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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  • Under which circumstances (if any) does it make sense to work for a startup, for free?

    - by blueberryfields
    I've been bumping around the startup world for a while, and most startups I've seen seem to have (amongst other things) two things in common: A lack of money An inability to, reliably, hire good quality developers This means that, for startups, the ideal hire is someone who is free - where they can wait until they've both raised money and found out that the hire is worth his price tag. When (if ever) is this a win win situation? For you, as a programmer or software developer, when would this make sense?

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  • Reflector is no longer going to be free - What do you think?

    - by simonsabin
    Redgate recently announced that the next version of reflector was no longer going to be free ( http://www.red-gate.com/products/dotnet-development/reflector/announcement ). Instead you will be changed $35 . Here is the FAQ about the decision http://www.red-gate.com/products/dotnet-development/reflector/announcement-faq As a side note it drives me nuts when a UK company quotes dollars on their website. Especially when I am in the UK and I use pounds. The more I think about this the more I don’t like...(read more)

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  • Free book from Microsoft - Building Elastic and Resilient Cloud Applications - Developer's Guide to the Enterprise Library 5.0 Integration Pack for Windows Azure

    - by TATWORTH
    At http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29994, Microsoft are are offering a free book  - "Building Elastic and Resilient Cloud Applications - Developer's Guide to the Enterprise Library 5.0 Integration Pack for Windows Azure"The Microsoft Enterprise Library Integration Pack for Windows Azure is an extension to the Microsoft Enterprise Library 5.0 that can be used with Windows Azure. It includes the Autoscaling Application Block, the Transient Fault Handling Application Block, a protected configuration provider and the Blob configuration source.The book is available as PDF, mobi and epub formats.

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  • SQLskills training goes online worldwide (and free in September!)

    SQLskills is recording their knowledge in conjunction with Pluralsight for you to view from the time and place of your choosing. And it's free in September. Read more to find out how you can get access. Learn Agile Database Development Best PracticesAgile database development experts Sebastian Meine and Dennis Lloyd are running day-long classes designed to complement Red Gate’s SQL in the City US tour. Classes will be held in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and Seattle. Register Now.

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  • OPN Exchange Test Fest - Specialization for FREE! at Oracle OpenWorld

    - by Cinzia Mascanzoni
    Registered partners can take advantage of Test Fest during the conference to earn an Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialist certification. Check the list of current exams and study materials now available, and make sure partners preregister soon to reserve a seat in one of the 10 sessions being offered at Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld—free to registered attendees. Further details are available here.

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  • Should I use the ATI proprietary or free drivers with two Crossfire HD5850s?

    - by Dekel
    I own 2 XFX Radeon HD 5850 in crossfire configuration connected to 3 24" monitors. I really want to make Ubuntu my daily OS but can't seem to find the best configuration to use. Some threads say that the free driver is better then the ATI one and some say the new Catalyst fully takes advantage of the card capabilities. Anyone out there with a similar setup? What are your recommendations for a good production in 12.04 setup?

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