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  • Puppet - Possible to use software design patterns in modules?

    - by Mike Purcell
    As I work with puppet, I find myself wanting to automate more complex setups, for example vhosts for X number of websites. As my puppet manifests get more complex I find it difficult to apply the DRY (don't repeat yourself) principle. Below is a simplified snippet of what I am after, but doesn't work because puppet throws various errors depending up whether I use classes or defines. I'd like to get some feed back from some seasoned puppetmasters on how they might approach this solution. # site.pp import 'nodes' # nodes.pp node nodes_dev { $service_env = 'dev' } node nodes_prod { $service_env = 'prod' } import 'nodes/dev' import 'nodes/prod' # nodes/dev.pp node 'service1.ownij.lan' inherits nodes_dev { httpd::vhost::package::site { 'foo': } httpd::vhost::package::site { 'bar': } } # modules/vhost/package.pp class httpd::vhost::package { class manage($port) { # More complex stuff goes here like ensuring that conf paths and uris exist # As well as log files, which is I why I want to do the work once and use many notify { $service_env: } notify { $port: } } define site { case $name { 'foo': { class 'httpd::vhost::package::manage': port => 20000 } } 'bar': { class 'httpd::vhost::package::manage': port => 20001 } } } } } That code snippet gives me a Duplicate declaration: Class[Httpd::Vhost::Package::Manage] error, and if I switch the manage class to a define, and attempt to access a global or pass in a variable common to both foo and bar, I get a Duplicate declaration: Notify[dev] error. Any suggestions how I can implement the DRY principle and still get puppet to work? -- UPDATE -- I'm still having a problem trying to ensure that some of my vhosts, which may share a parent directory, are setup correctly. Something like this: node 'service1.ownij.lan' inherits nodes_dev { httpd::vhost::package::site { 'foo_sitea': } httpd::vhost::package::site { 'foo_siteb': } httpd::vhost::package::site { 'bar': } } What I need to happen is that sitea and siteb have the same parent "foo" folder. The problem I am having is when I call a define to ensure the "foo" folder exists. Below is the site define as I have it, hopefully it will make sense what I am trying to accomplish. class httpd::vhost::package { File { owner => root, group => root, mode => 0660 } define site() { $app_parts = split($name, '[_]') $app_primary = $app_parts[0] if ($app_parts[1] == '') { $tpl_path_partial_app = "${app_primary}" $app_sub = '' } else { $tpl_path_partial_app = "${app_primary}/${app_parts[1]}" $app_sub = $app_parts[1] } include httpd::vhost::log::base httpd::vhost::log::app { $name: app_primary => $app_primary, app_sub => $app_sub } } } class httpd::vhost::log { class base { $paths = [ '/tmp', '/tmp/var', '/tmp/var/log', '/tmp/var/log/httpd', "/tmp/var/log/httpd/${service_env}" ] file { $paths: ensure => directory } } define app($app_primary, $app_sub) { $paths = [ "/tmp/var/log/httpd/${service_env}/${app_primary}", "/tmp/var/log/httpd/${service_env}/${app_primary}/${app_sub}" ] file { $paths: ensure => directory } } } The include httpd::vhost::log::base works fine, because it is "included", which means it is only implemented once, even though site is called multiple times. The error I am getting is: Duplicate declaration: File[/tmp/var/log/httpd/dev/foo]. I looked into using exec, but not sure this is the correct route, surely others have had to deal with this before and any insight is appreciated as I have been grappling with this for a few weeks. Thanks.

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  • Kickstart based installation of RHEL 6.4 from USB

    - by Peter
    I want to setup some brand new servers with RHEL 6.4. Servers do not have DVD, so, I have to use USB for the installation. I already have a custom ISO with a kickstart file that I use on servers with DVD flawlessly. I used iso2usb to move the ISO t? my USB. When I boot from the USB, the ks file is found, anaconda starts, but then stops with the following error: "The installation source given by device ['sda1'] could not be found. Please check your parameters and try again" Notes: The USB IS the sda. My custom ISO file is renamed to linux.iso from iso2usb and it is present in the root directory of the USB. Kickstart file has the following entry: harddrive --partition=sda1 --dir=/ Please help me to automate the installation with kickstart. Edit 1: This the anaconda.log file: 09:01:57,029 INFO : no /etc/zfcp.conf; not configuring zfcp 09:01:57,259 INFO : created new libuser.conf at /tmp/libuser.4rAbps with instPath="/mnt/sysimage" 09:01:57,259 INFO : anaconda called with cmdline = ['/usr/bin/anaconda', '--stage2', 'hd:sda1:///images/install.img', '--dlabel', '--kickstart', '/tmp/ks.cfg', '--graphical', '--selinux', '--lang', 'en_US.UTF-8', '--keymap', 'us', '--repo', 'hd:sda1:/'] 09:01:57,260 INFO : Display mode = g 09:01:57,260 INFO : Default encoding = utf-8 09:01:59,444 DEBUG : X server has signalled a successful start. 09:01:59,446 INFO : Starting window manager, pid 1345. 09:01:59,537 INFO : Starting graphical installation. 09:01:59,741 INFO : Detected 7968M of memory 09:01:59,741 INFO : Swap attempt of 7968M 09:02:00,840 INFO : ISCSID is /usr/sbin/iscsid 09:02:00,840 INFO : no initiator set Edit 2: This is the part of anaconda log that indicates that it found the USB etc: 09:01:47,918 INFO : starting STEP_STAGE2 09:01:47,918 INFO : partition is sda1, dir is //images/install.img 09:01:47,918 INFO : mounting device sda1 for hard drive install 09:01:48,005 INFO : Path to stage2 image is /mnt/isodir///images/install.img 09:01:54,214 INFO : mounted loopback device /mnt/runtime on /dev/loop0 as /tmp/install.img 09:01:54,214 INFO : Looking for updates for HD in /mnt/isodir///images/updates.img 09:01:54,214 INFO : Looking for product for HD in /mnt/isodir///images/product.img 09:01:54,227 INFO : got stage2 at url hd:sda1:///images/install.img 09:01:54,254 INFO : Loading SELinux policy 09:01:54,700 INFO : getting ready to spawn shell now 09:01:54,975 INFO : Running anaconda script /usr/bin/anaconda 09:01:56,882 INFO : _Fedora is the highest priority installclass, using it 09:01:56,921 INFO : Running kickstart %%pre script(s) 09:01:56,922 WARNING : '/bin/sh' specified as full path 09:01:56,926 INFO : All kickstart %%pre script(s) have been run

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  • What are the pros and cons of AWS Elastic Beanstalk compared with other deployment strategies?

    - by James van Dyke
    I'm pretty new to the whole Netflix OSS stack and deployments in general. As a background for my current level of knowledge ops-wise, my main role is as a front-end application engineer. However, I enjoy the operations side of things, so I'm attempting to setup a new deployment strategy and the tooling for a new project. Our Goals Super easy deploys (we want to push a button to update production) Automated deploys to test environments (using Jenkins) Ease of maintenance (we have an app to write, don't want to spend our time fiddling with production issues) Ability to handle a service oriented architecture (many small apps, various languages and data stores) Enough flexibility to ensure we won't have to change strategies any time soon (we're already trying to get away from RightScale) We're OK with a little more initial setup time if doing so will save us some headaches in the future. So, along these lines, I've been listening to podcasts, watching Ops talks, and reading tons of blog posts and based on our goals and what I've taken to be some forming best practices, we've started forming a plan using Asgard, rolling our package into a jar and rolling that into an AMI. We had this all planned out and like the advantages the process versus using a Chef server and converging instances on the fly (we felt this was error prone given our limited timeline and lack of understanding around a Chef server workflow). However, a coworker did a little looking around on his own and felt like Elastic Beanstalk met our needs. I've looked into it and spun up a test environment with a WAR file and an attached RDS database. Things seem to work and I believe that we can automate deploys to a testing environment using Jenkins via the AWS API. Seems simple enough... perhaps too simple. What I'm wondering is, what's the catch? If Elastic Beanstalk is so simple and effective, why isn't it talked about more? I'm having a hard time finding enough objective opinions and facts about the two different deployment strategies, so I thought I'd ask around. Do you use Elastic Beanstalk? If so, why and what factors lead to that decision? What do you like and dislike? If you don't use Elastic Beanstalk but considered it, what do you use and why didn't you use Elastic Beanstalk? What are the advantages and disadvantages to a Elastic Beanstalk based deployment strategy for an SOA? That is, will Elastic Beanstalk work well with many small applications that rely on each other to work?

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  • Scoping a home dev server

    - by AbhikRK
    Hi. I’m looking to build a multi-purpose home development server. In this post, I’m looking to outline what I want from such a system, and the ‘why’s of it, to some limited extent, and finally, some rudiments of how I’m looking to go about that. I’m mostly a developer, with just about some sysadmin familiarity. So, please excuse, correct me, and suggest on any ignorance which would come across in the following ;-) It will serve the following goals to start with:- NAS (Looking at using ZFS) Source control repo e.g Git server Database e.g MySQL server Continuous Integration e.g Hudson server Other stuff as and when they come up e.g RabbitMQ etc A development sandbox to play around with new stuff I want to achieve a high uptime for 2-5 as much as possible. They should run as independent services and with minimal maintenance. (e.g TurnKey Linux appliances) I’m thinking of running them as individual Xen DomUs. Then, maybe the NAS can be a Dom0 and 6 can be another DomU. The User for this would be mostly me. I can see 2-4 being sometimes used by 2-3 users, but that would be infrequent. I’m looking for a repeatable setup. Ideally I’d like to automate this setup through Chef or Puppet or something similar. Once everything runs, I want to be able to ssh/screen/tmux into 1-6 from my laptop or any other computer on the LAN/on-the-go. My queries are:- Is putting 1-6, all of them on a single box, a good idea? If so, what kind of hardware should I be looking at, for a low-cost, low-power setup? Although not at present, but in future I might be looking at adding audio/media servers to the mix. Would that impact the answers to 1? I have an old Pentium 3 and 810e motherboard combination. Is there any way I could put it to use? I had a look at the Sheevaplug, and was wondering if I could split off the NAS on its own using that. But ruled it out preliminarily due to its reported heating issues. Is it something i should still consider? Thanks in advance

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  • Scoping a home dev server

    - by AbhikRK
    Hi. I’m looking to build a multi-purpose home development server. In this post, I’m looking to outline what I want from such a system, and the ‘why’s of it, to some limited extent, and finally, some rudiments of how I’m looking to go about that. I’m mostly a developer, with just about some sysadmin familiarity. So, please excuse, correct me, and suggest on any ignorance which would come across in the following ;-) It will serve the following goals to start with:- NAS (Looking at using ZFS) Source control repo e.g Git server Database e.g MySQL server Continuous Integration e.g Hudson server Other stuff as and when they come up e.g RabbitMQ etc A development sandbox to play around with new stuff I want to achieve a high uptime for 2-5 as much as possible. They should run as independent services and with minimal maintenance. (e.g TurnKey Linux appliances) I’m thinking of running them as individual Xen DomUs. Then, maybe the NAS can be a Dom0 and 6 can be another DomU. The User for this would be mostly me. I can see 2-4 being sometimes used by 2-3 users, but that would be infrequent. I’m looking for a repeatable setup. Ideally I’d like to automate this setup through Chef or Puppet or something similar. Once everything runs, I want to be able to ssh/screen/tmux into 1-6 from my laptop or any other computer on the LAN/on-the-go. My queries are:- Is putting 1-6, all of them on a single box, a good idea? If so, what kind of hardware should I be looking at, for a low-cost, low-power setup? Although not at present, but in future I might be looking at adding audio/media servers to the mix. Would that impact the answers to 1? I have an old Pentium 3 and 810e motherboard combination. Is there any way I could put it to use? I had a look at the Sheevaplug, and was wondering if I could split off the NAS on its own using that. But ruled it out preliminarily due to its reported heating issues. Is it something i should still consider? Thanks in advance Have posted this question previously on SuperUser but no responses yet. So was wondering if this is a more apt forum for this.

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  • Proper Imaging Procedures to Restore and Deploy Image with Separate System Reserved Partition

    - by alharaka
    UPDATE: As per my experience here, no one responded. If I do not hear back from TechNet forum members about it, I will post a bounty here, if it makes a difference. I have banged my head against a wall for what seems like all week. I am going to explain my simple procedure, and how none of it, absolutely none, seems to work afterword despite few alternatives and everyone on the internet telling assuming this is how to do it. Diskpart Commands to Create FS Structure REM Select the disk targeted for deployment. REM REM NOTE: Usually disk 0, but drive failure can make it external USB REM media. This will erase the drive regardless! select disk 0 REM Remove previous formatting. clean REM Create System Reserved partition bootloader and files. create partition primary size=100 REM Format the volume format fs=ntfs label="System Reserved" quick override noerr REM Assign the System Reserved partition the D: mount for now assign letter=C REM The main system partition, size not specified to occupy whole drive. create partition primary REM Format the volume format fs=ntfs quick override noerr REM Assign the OS partition the D: mount for now assign letter=D REM Make this the active/bootable partition. sel disk 0 sel partition 1 active REM Close out the diskpart session. exit Now, I thought this was madness, but it turns out the System Reserved partition and standard "System Partition" (C:, commonly both the boot and system volumes where you find the Windows directory AND the bootmgr/ntldr hardware files, this is where Windows 7 diverges) as mounted in the Windows PE session where I run these commands do not matter. See reference here. Since this needs to be BitLocker-ready, enter this crappy System Reserved partition that is separate 100MB of awesome that goes before the regular boot volume. I do this, then I proceed to the next step. Deploy System Reserved and Normal System Images REM C is still the "System Reserved Partition", and the image is just like it sounds. imagex /apply G:\images\systemreserved.wim 1 C: REM D is now what will be the C: system partition on reboot, supposedly. imagex /apply G:\images\testimage.wim 1 D: Reboot the system Now, the images I just captured should look good. This is not even sysprepped, but reapplying the same fscking image I prepared on the same reference workstation hours before. Problem is I get 0xc000000e could not detect the accessible boot device \Windows\system32\winload.exe or different kinds of nonsense revolving around being able to find the boot volume with all the right files. I try different variations of things, now none of them work. I tried repairs with bcdboot, with a fresh System Reserved partition or not, bootrec, and maually editing the damn BCD store with bcdedit. I tried finalizing the above process with and without bootsect /nt60 C: /force. I need to wrap up and automate this procedure. What am I doing wrong that does not make the image happy, but really just miserable.

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  • Why is mount -a not mounting fuse drive properly when executed remotely (via Fabric)?

    - by Jim D
    This is a weird bug and I'm not sure where it's coming from. Here's a quick run down of what I'm doing. I'm trying to mount a FUSE drive to an Amazon EC2 instance running Ubuntu 10.10 using s3fs (FUSE over Amazon). s3fs is compiled from source according to the instructions etc. I've also added an entry to /etc/fstab so that the drive mounts on boot. Here's what /etc/fstab looks like: # /etc/fstab: static file system information. # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0 LABEL=uec-rootfs / ext4 defaults 0 0 /dev/sda2 /mnt auto defaults,nobootwait,comment=cloudconfig 0 2 /dev/sda3 none swap sw,comment=cloudconfig 0 0 s3fs#mybucket /mnt/s3/mybucket fuse default_acl=public-read,use_cache=/tmp,allow_other 0 0 So the good news is that this works fine. On reboot the connection mounts correctly. I can also do: $ sudo umount /mnt/s3/mybucket $ sudo mount -a $ mountpoint /mnt/s3/mybucket /mnt/s3/mybucket is a mountpoint Great, right? Well here's the problem. I'm using Fabric to automate the process of building and managing this instance. I noticed I was getting this error message when using Fabric to build s3fs and set up the mount process: mountpoint: /mnt/s3/mybucket: Transport endpoint is not connected I isolated it down the the problem and built a fabric task that reproduces the problem: def remount_s3fs(): sudo("mount -a") Which does: [ec2-xx-xx-xx-xx.compute-1.amazonaws.com] Executing task 'remount_s3fs' [ec2-xx-xx-xx-xx.compute-1.amazonaws.com] sudo: mount -a [And yes, I was sure to unmount it before running this task.] When I check the mount using mountpoint I get: $ mountpoint /mnt/s3/mybucket mountpoint: /mnt/s3/mybucket: Transport endpoint is not connected Done. But if I run sudo mount -a at the command line, it works. Hrm. Here is that fab task output again, this time in full debug mode: [ec2-xx-xx-xx-xx.compute-1.amazonaws.com] Executing task 'remount_s3fs' [ec2-xx-xx-xx-xx.compute-1.amazonaws.com] sudo: sudo -S -p 'sudo password:' /bin/bash -l -c "mount -a" Again, I get that transport endpoint not connected error. I've also tried copying and pasting the exact command run into my ssh session (i.e. sudo -S -p 'sudo password:' /bin/bash -l -c "mount -a") and it works fine. So...that's my problem. Any ideas?

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  • Automating silent software deployments on Solaris 10

    - by datSilencer
    Hello everyone. Essentially, the question I'd like to ask is related to the automation of software package deployments on Solaris 10. Specifically, I have a set of software components in tar files that run as daemon processes after being extracted and configured in the host environment. Pretty much like any server side software package out there, I need to ensure that a list of prerequisites are met before extracting and running the software. For example: Checking that certain users exists, and they are associated with one or many user groups. If not, then create them and their group associations. Checking that target application folders exist and if not, then create them with preconfigured path values defined when the package was assembled. Checking that such folders have the appropriate access control level and ownership for a certain user. If not, then set them. Checking that a set of environment variables are defined in /etc/profile, pointed to predefined path locations, added to the general $PATH environment variable, and finally exported into the user's environment. Other files include /etc/services and /etc/system. Obviously, doing this for many boxes (the goal in question) by hand can be slow and error prone. I believe a better alternative is to somehow automate this process. So far I have thought about the following options, and discarded them for one reason or another. 1) Traditional shell scripts. I've only troubleshooted these before, and I don't really have much experience with them. These would be my last resort. 2) Python scripts using the pexpect library for analyzing system command output. This was my initial choice since the target Solaris environments have it installed. However, I want to make sure that I'm not reinveting the wheel again :P. 3) Ant or Gradle scripts. They may be an option since the boxes also have java 1.5 enabled, and the fileset abstractions can be very useful. However, they may fall short when dealing with user and folder permissions checking/setting. It seems obvious to me that I'm not the first person in this situation, but I don't seem to find a utility framework geared towards this purpose. Please let me know if there's a better way to accomplish this. I thank you for your time and help.

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  • Why Photoshop CS5's photomerge's result immediately disappear?

    - by koiyu
    I have a bunch of JPG-files which I want to stitch together with Photoshop's Photomerge function. I choose File → Automate → Photomerge... and browse for the files. Photoshop opens the files and starts analyzing. I see the process bar filling and different phases are mentioned on the process bar. Nothing weird there. When the merging is done (and if I don't blink my eyes), I can see layers-palette is populated with the chosen files and, by quickly judging from the layer thumbnails, they're properly aligned. Sometimes the image window itself can be seen, but not always. Problem is that the layers and the image disappear in a flash. There is no error message. Everything is like prior starting the photomerge. No file has been changed. I could continue to use Photoshop normally. This is what I've tried so far: Loaded folder which has 38 JPG images, 4272 x 2848 and ˜ 5 megabytes per file Loaded the same files, but chose Use Files instead of Use Folder in the photomerge's window Loaded 19 JPG images, 4272 x 2848 and ˜ 5 megabytes per file Loaded 10 JPG images, ⇑ see above Loaded 5 JPG images, see above Loaded 3 JPG images, see above Scaled the images to 2256 x 1504 and ˜< 1 megabytes per file Loaded in a set of 38, 19, 10, 5, 3 Following steps are tested with these smaller files and with a set of 5 images Read Adobe's forums and reduced the amount of RAM Photoshop uses gradually from ˜ 80 % to 50 % (though I didn't understand the logic behind this) Would've reduced cache tile size to 128K, but it was set so already Disabled OpenGL Scaled the images to 800 x 533 and ˜ 100 kilobytes per file, loaded a set of 5 Read more unanswered threads around the internet In between each test I closed and reopened Photoshop. This is the first time I've even tried using photomerge. Am I doing something wrong? How can I locate what is the problem? How do I fix this? Photoshop is 64 bit Extended CS5 version. I'm on a mid-2010 quad-core (i5) iMac with up-to-date Mac OS X 10.6.6. Edit: Weird. First loading the images into one file via File → Scripts → Load Files into Stack… and then using Edit → Auto-Align Layers…, which, effectively, is the same as photomerge (even the dialog looks kind of the same), works! Even with the original JPGs without any issues. This doesn't fix photomerge, though.

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  • Successfully concatenating multiple videos

    - by wiseguydigital
    My mission is to create videos out of old web slideshows. To start with I have jpegs and audio files that worked as Flash slideshows in an old system, structured such as this: Audio structure my_audio_1.mp3 (this file is a 3 second mp3 of silence) my_audio_2.mp3 my_audio_3.mp3 my_audio_4 etc... roughly 30 mp3s per slideshow Image structure my_image_1.jpg (this acts as the opening slide) my_image_2.jpg my_image_3.jpg my_image_4. etc... roughly 30 images per slideshow. As there are almost 100 slideshows that must be converted to video, I have created a web-based interface using PHP to automate the process, that sits on a local system and attempts to combine the files using shell_exec(). The process uses the following workflow: Loop through each slide and make an avi or mpeg. So for instance my_mini_video_2.avi would be a video that consists of my_image_2.jpg and has a soundtrack of my_audio_2.mp3. This slide would last the length of my_audio_2.mp3. Join / stitch / concat all of the mini videos to create the final video (Using a combination of cat and either mencoder or ffmpeg (I have also tried avimerge but to no avail). Transcode the new 'master' video to various formats such as flv etc. I thought this would be simple and have been close on many occasions but it still won't work. I can't get past stage 2 as I can't get a perfect 'master' video. I have now experimented with Mencoder, FFMpeg and seem to have been through every combination I can think of. The problem is that the audio and visuals never sync, no matter what I try. Also, I have even tried created audio-less mini videos, joining the MP3s into one long MP3 using both cat and mp3wrap and then assigning the new long MP3 as the audio track, but this always produces either a very short file or a badly slowed down file and makes the female voiceover sound like a male boxer!!! There appears to be no problems at all with the original files. Does anybody have any experience in producing a video successfully from the same kind of starting point? Or any ideas on what I may be doing wrong? As an example: If I create silent mini-videos, and stitch them together into 'temp-master.mpg' and then join the MP3s together into single MP3 called 'temp-master-audio.mp3', the audio file's duration is 09:10 and the video file's duration is 08:35. They should be the same and the audio will seem sloooow. I haven't posted code as I have written lots and lots of combinations.

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  • How to reliably map vSphere disks <-> Linux devices

    - by brianmcgee
    Task at hand After a virtual disk has been added to a Linux VM on vSphere 5, we need to identify the disks in order to automate the LVM storage provision. The virtual disks may reside on different datastores (e.g. sas or flash) and although they may be of the same size, their speed may vary. So I need a method to map the vSphere disks to Linux devices. Ideas Through the vSphere API, I am able to get the device info: Data Object Type: VirtualDiskFlatVer2BackingInfo Parent Managed Object ID: vm-230 Property Path: config.hardware.device[2000].backing Properties Name Type Value ChangeId string Unset contentId string "d58ec8c12486ea55c6f6d913642e1801" datastore ManagedObjectReference:Datastore datastore-216 (W5-CFAS012-Hybrid-CL20-004) deltaDiskFormat string "redoLogFormat" deltaGrainSize int Unset digestEnabled boolean false diskMode string "persistent" dynamicProperty DynamicProperty[] Unset dynamicType string Unset eagerlyScrub boolean Unset fileName string "[W5-CFAS012-Hybrid-CL20-004] l****9-000001.vmdk" parent VirtualDiskFlatVer2BackingInfo parent split boolean false thinProvisioned boolean false uuid string "6000C295-ab45-704e-9497-b25d2ba8dc00" writeThrough boolean false And on Linux I may read the uuid strings: [root@lx***** ~]# lsscsi -t [1:0:0:0] cd/dvd ata: /dev/sr0 [2:0:0:0] disk sas:0x5000c295ab45704e /dev/sda [3:0:0:0] disk sas:0x5000c2932dfa693f /dev/sdb [3:0:1:0] disk sas:0x5000c29dcd64314a /dev/sdc As you can see, the uuid string of disk /dev/sda looks somehow familiar to the string that is visible in the VMware API. Only the first hex digit is different (5 vs. 6) and it is only present to the third hyphen. So this looks promising... Alternative idea Select disks by controller. But is it reliable that the ascending SCSI Id also matches the next vSphere virtual disk? What happens if I add another DVD-ROM drive / USB Thumb drive? This will probably introduce new SCSI devices in between. Thats the cause why I think I will discard this idea. Questions Does someone know an easier method to map vSphere disks and Linux devices? Can someone explain the differences in the uuid strings? (I think this has something to do with SAS adressing initiator and target... WWN like...) May I reliably map devices by using those uuid strings? How about SCSI virtual disks? There is no uuid visible then... This task seems to be so obvious. Why doesn't Vmware think about this and simply add a way to query the disk mapping via Vmware Tools?

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  • Why Photoshop CS5's photomerge's result immediately disappear?

    - by koiyu
    I have a bunch of JPG-files which I want to stitch together with Photoshop's Photomerge function. I choose File → Automate → Photomerge... and browse for the files. Photoshop opens the files and starts analyzing. I see the process bar filling and different phases are mentioned on the process bar. Nothing weird there. When the merging is done (and if I don't blink my eyes), I can see layers-palette is populated with the chosen files and, by quickly judging from the layer thumbnails, they're properly aligned. Sometimes the image window itself can be seen, but not always. Problem is that the layers and the image disappear in a flash. There is no error message. Everything is like prior starting the photomerge. No file has been changed. I could continue to use Photoshop normally. This is what I've tried so far: Loaded folder which has 38 JPG images, 4272 x 2848 and ˜ 5 megabytes per file Loaded the same files, but chose Use Files instead of Use Folder in the photomerge's window Loaded 19 JPG images, 4272 x 2848 and ˜ 5 megabytes per file Loaded 10 JPG images, ⇑ see above Loaded 5 JPG images, see above Loaded 3 JPG images, see above Scaled the images to 2256 x 1504 and ˜< 1 megabytes per file Loaded in a set of 38, 19, 10, 5, 3 Following steps are tested with these smaller files and with a set of 5 images Read Adobe's forums and reduced the amount of RAM Photoshop uses gradually from ˜ 80 % to 50 % (though I didn't understand the logic behind this) Would've reduced cache tile size to 128K, but it was set so already Disabled OpenGL Scaled the images to 800 x 533 and ˜ 100 kilobytes per file, loaded a set of 5 Read more unanswered threads around the internet In between each test I closed and reopened Photoshop. This is the first time I've even tried using photomerge. Am I doing something wrong? How can I locate what is the problem? How do I fix this? Photoshop is 64 bit Extended CS5 version. I'm on a mid-2010 quad-core (i5) iMac with up-to-date Mac OS X 10.6.6. Edit: Weird. First loading the images into one file via File → Scripts → Load Files into Stack… and then using Edit → Auto-Align Layers…, which, effectively, is the same as photomerge (even the dialog looks kind of the same), works! Even with the original JPGs without any issues. This doesn't fix photomerge, though.

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  • Adding A Custom Dropdown in RCDC for Forefront Identity Manager 2010

    - by Daniel Lackey
    My latest exploration has been FIM 2010 for Identity Management. The following is a post of how to add a custom dropdown for the FIM Portal. I have decided to document this as I cannot find documentation on how to do this anywhere else. I hope that it finds useful to others.   For starters, this was to me not an easy task to figure out. I really would like to know why it is so cumbersome to do something that seems like a lot of people would need to do, but that’s for another day J   The dropdown I wanted to add was for ‘Account Status’ which would display if the account is ‘Enabled’ or ‘Disabled’ in the data source Active Directory. This option would also allow helpdesk users or admins to administer the userAccountControl attribute in AD from the FIM Portal interface.   The first thing I had to do was create the attribute itself. This is done by going to Administration à Schema Management from the FIM 2010 portal. Once here, you click on All Attributes. What is listed here are all attributes and their associated Resource Types in FIM. To create the ‘AccountStatus’ attribute, click on New. As shown below, enter ‘AccountStatus’ with no spaces for the System Name and ‘Account Status’ for the Display Name. The Data Type is going to be ‘Indexed String’. Click Next.           Leave everything on the Localization tab default and click Next.   On the Validation tab as shown below, we will enter the regex expression ^(Enabled|Disabled)?$ with our two desired string values ‘Enabled’ and ‘Disabled’. Click on Finish and then and Submit to complete adding the attribute.       The next step involves associating the attribute with a resource type. This is called ‘Binding’ the attribute. From the Schema Management page, click on All Bindings. From the page that comes up, click on New. As shown below, enter ‘User’ for the Resource Type and ‘Account Status’ for the Attribute Type. This is essentially binding the Account Status attribute to the ‘User’ Resource Type. Click Next.    On the ‘Attribute Override’ tab, type in ‘Account Status’ for the Display Name field. Click Next.   On the ‘Localization’ tab, click Next.   On the ‘Validation’ tab, enter the regex expression ^(Enabled|Disabled)?$ we entered previously for the attribute. Click Finish and then Submit to complete.   Now that the Attribute and the Binding are complete, you have to give users permission to see the attribute on the User Edit page. Go to Administration à Management Policy Rules. Look for the rule named Administration: Administrators can read and update Users and click on it. Once it opens, click on the ‘Target Resources’ tab and look at the section named Resource Attributes. Type in at the end the ‘Account Status’ attribute and check it with the validator. Once done click on OK to save the changes.         Lastly, we need to add the actual dropdown control to the RCDC (Resource Control Display Configuration) for User Editing. Go to Administration à Resource Control Display Configuration. From here navigate until you find the RCDC named Configuration for User Editing RCDC and click on it. The following is what you will see:       First step is to export the Configuration Data file. Click on the Export configuration link and save the file to your desktop of other folder.   Find the file you just exported and open the file in your XML editor of choice. I use notepad but anything will work. Since we are adding a dropdown control, first find another control in the existing file that is already a dropdown in FIM. I used EmployeeType as my example. Copy the control from the beginning tag named <my:Control… to the ending tag </my:Control>. Now take what you copied and paste it in whatever location you desire within the form between two other controls. I chose to place the ‘Account Status’ field after the ‘Account Name’ field. After you paste the control you will need to modify so it looks like this:       Notice where you specify what attribute you are dealing with where it has AccountStatus in the XML. Once you are complete with modifying this, save the file and make sure it is a .xml file.   Now go back to the Configuration for User Editing screen and look at the section named ‘Configuration Data’. Click the ‘Browse’ button and find the XML file you just modified and choose it. Click OK on the bottom of the window and you are done!   Now when you click on a user’s name in the FIM Portal, you should see the newly added dropdown box as below:       Later I will post more about this drop down, specifically on how to automate actually ‘Disabling’ the account in the data source through the FIM Workflows and MAs.   <my:Control my:Name="AccountStatus" my:TypeName="UocDropDownList" my:Caption="{Binding Source=schema, Path=AccountStatus.DisplayName}" my:Description="{Binding Source=schema, Path=AccountStatus.Description}" my:RightsLevel="{Binding Source=rights, Path=AccountStatus}"> <my:Properties> <my:Property my:Name="ValuePath" my:Value="Value"/> <my:Property my:Name="CaptionPath" my:Value="Caption"/> <my:Property my:Name="HintPath" my:Value="Hint"/> <my:Property my:Name="ItemSource" my:Value="{Binding Source=schema, Path=AccountStatus.LocalizedAllowedValues}"/> <my:Property my:Name="SelectedValue" my:Value="{Binding Source=object, Path=AccountStatus, Mode=TwoWay}"/> </my:Properties> </my:Control>

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  • Fix Windows Computer Problems with Microsoft Fix it Center

    - by Matthew Guay
    Fixing computer problems can often be difficult, but Microsoft is aiming to make it as simple as a couple clicks with.  Here’s how you can easily fix computer problems with Microsoft’s new Fix it Center Beta. Last year Microsoft began offering small Fix it scripts that you could download and run to help solve common computer problems automatically.  These were added to some of the most visited Windows help pages, and helped fix problems with things such as printing errors and Aero glass support.  Now, the Fix it scripts have been bundled together with the Fix it Center, making fixing your computer even easier.  This free tool works great on all editions of Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Note: The Fix it Center is currently in beta, so only run if you are comfortable running beta software. Getting Started Download the Fix it Center installer (link below), and install as normal. The installer will download the remaining components, and then finish the installation. In Windows XP, if you have not yet installed .NET 2.0, you may see the following prompt.  Click Yes to go to the download site, and once you’ve installed .NET 2.0, run the Fix it Center setup again. Also, the Fix it Center uses PowerShell to automate its fixes, but if it is not installed yet the installer will automatically download and install it. Find Fixes for Your PC Once Fix it Center is installed, you can personalize it for your computer.  Select Now, and the click Next. It will scan your computer for problems with known solutions, and will offer to go ahead and install these troubleshooters.  If you choose to not install them, you can always download them from within the Fix it Center at a later time. While those troubleshooters are downloading, you can create a Fix it account.  This will give you additional help and support, and let you review Fix it solutions for all your computers from an online dashboard.  You need a Windows Live ID to create an account. Also, choose whether or not to send information to Microsoft about your hardware and software problems. Get Problems Fixed Now that the Fix it Center is installed and has identified issues on your computer, it’s time to get the problems fixed.  Here’s the default front screen in Windows 7, showing all of the available fixes. And here’s the Fix it Center running in Windows XP. Select one of the Troubleshooters to see more information about it, and click Run to start it. You can choose to either detect problems and have them fixed automatically, or you can choose for the Fix it Center to show you the solutions and let you choose whether to apply them or not.  The defaults usually work good, and only take a couple minutes to apply the fixes, but you can select your own fixes if you’d rather be in control. It will scan your computer for known problems in this area, and then will show you the results.  Here, Fix it determined that startup programs may be causing performance issues.  Select Start System Configuration, and uncheck any of the programs you do not usually use. Once you’ve run a troubleshooter, you can see the issues it checked for and any problems it discovered. If you created the online account, you can also choose to view the details online.  This will show all of your computers with Fix it Center and the fixes you’ve run on them.   Conclusion Whether you’re a power user or new to computers, sometimes it’s best to just get your problems fixed and go on with life instead of digging through the registry, forums, and hacking your way to a solution.  Remember the service is still in beta and may not work perfectly or solve your issues every time. But it’s something cool and worth a look. Links Download Microsoft Fix it Center Beta Fix additional problems with Microsoft’s Fix it Center Online Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Disable Windows Mobility Center in Windows 7 or VistaMake Outlook Faster by Disabling Unnecessary Add-InsUsing Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Disable Security Center Popup Notifications in Windows VistaHow To Manage Action Center in Windows 7 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Icelandic Volcano Webcams Open Multiple Links At One Go NachoFoto Searches Images in Real-time Office 2010 Product Guides Google Maps Place marks – Pizza, Guns or Strip Clubs Monitor Applications With Kiwi

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  • Enable Automatic Code First Migrations On SQL Database in Azure Web Sites

    - by Steve Michelotti
    Now that Azure supports .NET Framework 4.5, you can use all the latest and greatest available features. A common scenario is to be able to use Entity Framework Code First Migrations with a SQL Database in Azure. Prior to Code First Migrations, Entity Framework provided database initializers. While convenient for demos and prototypes, database initializers weren’t useful for much beyond that because, if you delete and re-create your entire database when the schema changes, you lose all of your operational data. This is the void that Migrations are meant to fill. For example, if you add a column to your model, Migrations will alter the database to add the column rather than blowing away the entire database and re-creating it from scratch. Azure is becoming increasingly easier to use – especially with features like Azure Web Sites. Being able to use Entity Framework Migrations in Azure makes deployment easier than ever. In this blog post, I’ll walk through enabling Automatic Code First Migrations on Azure. I’ll use the Simple Membership provider for my example. First, we’ll create a new Azure Web site called “migrationstest” including creating a new SQL Database along with it:   Next we’ll go to the web site and download the publish profile:   In the meantime, we’ve created a new MVC 4 website in Visual Studio 2012 using the “Internet Application” template. This template is automatically configured to use the Simple Membership provider. We’ll do our initial Publish to Azure by right-clicking our project and selecting “Publish…”. From the “Publish Web” dialog, we’ll import the publish profile that we downloaded in the previous step:   Once the site is published, we’ll just click the “Register” link from the default site. Since the AccountController is decorated with the [InitializeSimpleMembership] attribute, the initializer will be called and the initial database is created.   We can verify this by connecting to our SQL Database on Azure with SQL Management Studio (after making sure that our local IP address is added to the list of Allowed IP Addresses in Azure): One interesting note is that these tables got created with the default Entity Framework initializer – which is to create the database if it doesn’t already exist. However, our database did already exist! This is because there is a new feature of Entity Framework 5 where Code First will add tables to an existing database as long as the target database doesn’t contain any of the tables from the model. At this point, it’s time to enable Migrations. We’ll open the Package Manger Console and execute the command: PM> Enable-Migrations -EnableAutomaticMigrations This will enable automatic migrations for our project. Because we used the "-EnableAutomaticMigrations” switch, it will create our Configuration class with a constructor that sets the AutomaticMigrationsEnabled property set to true: 1: public Configuration() 2: { 3: AutomaticMigrationsEnabled = true; 4: } We’ll now add our initial migration: PM> Add-Migration Initial This will create a migration class call “Initial” that contains the entire model. But we need to remove all of this code because our database already exists so we are just left with empty Up() and Down() methods. 1: public partial class Initial : DbMigration 2: { 3: public override void Up() 4: { 5: } 6: 7: public override void Down() 8: { 9: } 10: } If we don’t remove this code, we’ll get an exception the first time we attempt to run migrations that tells us: “There is already an object named 'UserProfile' in the database”. This blog post by Julie Lerman fully describes this scenario (i.e., enabling migrations on an existing database). Our next step is to add the Entity Framework initializer that will automatically use Migrations to update the database to the latest version. We will add these 2 lines of code to the Application_Start of the Global.asax: 1: Database.SetInitializer(new MigrateDatabaseToLatestVersion<UsersContext, Configuration>()); 2: new UsersContext().Database.Initialize(false); Note the Initialize() call will force the initializer to run if it has not been run before. At this point, we can publish again to make sure everything is still working as we are expecting. This time we’re going to specify in our publish profile that Code First Migrations should be executed:   Once we have re-published we can once again navigate to the Register page. At this point the database has not been changed but Migrations is now enabled on our SQL Database in Azure. We can now customize our model. Let’s add 2 new properties to the UserProfile class – Email and DateOfBirth: 1: [Table("UserProfile")] 2: public class UserProfile 3: { 4: [Key] 5: [DatabaseGeneratedAttribute(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)] 6: public int UserId { get; set; } 7: public string UserName { get; set; } 8: public string Email { get; set; } 9: public DateTime DateOfBirth { get; set; } 10: } At this point all we need to do is simply re-publish. We’ll once again navigate to the Registration page and, because we had Automatic Migrations enabled, the database has been altered (*not* recreated) to add our 2 new columns. We can verify this by once again looking at SQL Management Studio:   Automatic Migrations provide a quick and easy way to keep your database in sync with your model without the worry of having to re-create your entire database and lose data. With Azure Web Sites you can set up automatic deployment with Git or TFS and automate the entire process to make it dead simple.

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  • Convert Video and Remove Commercials in Windows 7 Media Center with MCEBuddy 1.1

    - by DigitalGeekery
    Today look at MCEBuddy for Windows 7 Media Center. This handy app automatically takes your recorded TV files and converts them to MP4, AVI, WMV, or MPEG format. It even has the option to cut out those annoying commercials during the conversion process. Installation and Configuration Download and extract MCE Buddy. (Download link below) Run the setup.exe file and take all the default settings.   Open MCEBuddy Configuration by going to Start > All Programs > MCEBuddy > MCEBuddy Configuration.   Video Paths The MCEBuddy application is comprised of a single window. The first step you’ll want to take is to define your Source and Destination paths. The “Source” will most likely be your Recorded TV directory. The Destination should NOT be the same as the Source folder. Note: The Recorded TV directory in Windows 7 Media Center will only display and play WTV & DVR-MS files. To watch the converted MP4, AVI, WMV, or MPEG files in Windows Media Center you’ll need to add them to your Video Library or Movie Library. Video Conversion Next, choose your preferred format for conversion from the “Convert to” drop down list. The default is MP4 with the H.264 codec. You’ll find a wide variety of formats. The first set of conversion options in the drop down list will resize the video to 720 pixels wide. The next two sections maintain the original size, and the final section is for a variety of portable devices.   Next, you’ll see a group of check boxes below the “Convert to” drop down list. The Commercial Skipping option will cut the commercials while converting the file. Sort By Series will create a sub-folder in your Destination folder for each TV show. Delete Original will delete the WTV file after conversion is complete. (This option is not recommended unless you are sure your files are converting properly and you no longer need the WTV file.) Start Minimized is ideal if you want to run MCEBuddy on Windows startup. Note: MCEBuddy installs and uses Comskip for commercial cutting by default. However, if you have ShowAnalyzer installed, it will use that application instead. Advanced Options To choose a specific time of day to perform the conversions, click the checkbox under the “Advanced Options,” and select the starting and ending times for conversion. For example, convert between 2 hours and 5 hours would be between 2 am and 5am. If you want MCEBuddy to constantly look for and immediately convert new recordings, leave the box unchecked.   The “Video age” option lets you choose a specific number of days to wait before performing the conversion. This can be useful if you want to watch the recordings first and delete those you don’t wish to convert. You can also choose the “Sub Directories” if you’d like MCEBuddy to convert files that are in a sub-folder in your “Source” directory. Second Conversion As you might expect, this option allows MCEBuddy to perform a second conversion of your file. This can be useful if you want to use your first conversion to create a higher quality MP4 or AVI file for playback on a larger screen, and a second one for a portable device such as Zune or iPhone. The same options from the first conversion are also available for the second. You’ll want to choose a separate Destination folder for the second conversion.   Start and Monitor Progress To start converting your video files, simply press the “Start” button at the bottom. You’ll be able to follow the progress in the “Current Activity” section. When all the video files have finished converting, or there are no current files to convert, MCEBuddy will display a “Started – Idle” status. Click “Stop” if you don’t want MCEBuddy to continue scanning for new files.   Conclusion MCEBuddy 1.1 will convert all WTV files in it’s source folder. If you want to pick and choose which recordings to convert, you may want to define a source folder different than the Recorded TV folder and then just copy or move the files you wish to convert into the new source folder. The conversion process does take a good bit of time. If you choose the commercial skipping and second conversion options it can take several hours to fully convert one TV recording. Overall, MCEBuddy makes a nice Media Center addition for those that want to save some space with smaller size files, convert Recorded TV files for their portable device, or automatically remove commercials. If you’re looking for a different method to skip commercials check out our post on how to skip commercials in Windows 7 Media Center. Download MCEBuddy 1.1 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)How To Skip Commercials in Windows 7 Media CenterHow To Convert Video Files to MP3 with VLCStartup Customizations for Media Center in Windows 7Add Folders to the Movie Library in Windows 7 Media Center TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional The Ultimate Excel Cheatsheet Convert the Quick Launch Bar into a Super Application Launcher Automate Tasks in Linux with Crontab Discover New Bundled Feeds in Google Reader Play Music in Chrome by Simply Dragging a File 15 Great Illustrations by Chow Hon Lam

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  • Seriously, It’s Time to Get Your Content Act Together

    - by Mike Stiles
    Branded content, content marketing, social content, brand journalism, we’re seeing those terms more and more. Why? The technology tools are coming together. We should know. We can gather big data, crunch it, listen to the public, moderate, respond, get to know the customer intimately, know what they like, know what they want, we can target, distribute, amplify, measure engagement and reaction, modify strategy and even automate a great deal of all that. An amazing machine, a sleek, smooth-running engine has been built such that all the parts can interact and work together to deliver peak performance and maximum output. But that engine isn’t going anywhere without any gas. Content is the gas. Yes, we curate other people’s content. We can siphon their gas. There’s tech to help with that too. But as for the creation of original, worthwhile content made for a specific audience, our audience, machines can’t do that…at least not yet. Curated content is great. But somebody has to originate the content for it to be curated and shared. And since the need for good, curated content is obviously large and the desire to share is there, it’s a winning proposition for a brand to be a consistent producer of original content. And yet, it feels like content is an issue we’re avoiding. There’s a reluctance to build a massive pipeline if you have no idea what you’re going to run through it. The C-suite often doesn’t know what content is, that it’s different from ads, where to get it, who makes it, how long it should be, what the point of it is if there’s no hard sell of the product, what it costs, how to use it, how to measure it, how to make sure it’s good, or how to make sure it will keep flowing. It could be the reason many brands aren’t pulling the trigger on socially enabling the enterprise. And that’s a shame, because there are a lot of creative, daring, experimental, uniquely talented entertainers and journalists chomping at the bit to execute content for brands. But for many corporate executives, content is “weird,” and the people who make it are even weirder. The content side of the equation is human. It’s art, but art that can be informed by data. The natural inclination is for brands to turn to their agencies for such creative endeavors. But agencies are falling into one of two categories. They’re failing to transition from ads to content. In “Content Era, What’s the Role of Agencies?” Alexander Jutkowitz says agencies were made for one-hit campaigns, not ongoing content. Or, they’re ready and capable but can’t get clients to do the right things. Agencies have to make money, even if it means continuing to do the wrong things because that’s all the client will agree to. So what we wind up with in the pipeline is advertising, marketing-heavy content, content that was obviously created or spearheaded by non-creative executives, random & inconsistent content, copy written for SEO bots, and other completely uninteresting nightmares. Frank Rose, author of “The Art of Immersion,” writes, “Content without story and excitement is noise pollution.” In the old days, you made an ad and inserted it into shows made by people who knew what they were doing. You could bask in that show’s success and leverage their audience. Now, you are tasked with attracting, amassing and holding your own audience. You may just want to make, advertise and sell your widgets. But now there’s a war on for a precious commodity, attention. People are busy. They have filters to keep uninteresting and irrelevant things out. They value their time and expect value back when they give it up. Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, says, "Your customers don't care about you, your products, your services…they care about themselves, their wants and their needs." Is it worth getting serious about content and doing it right? 61% of consumers feel better about a company that delivers custom content (Custom Content Council). Interesting content is one of the top 3 reasons people follow brands on social (Content+). 78% of consumers think organizations that provide custom content want to build good relationships with them (TMG Custom Media). On the B2B side, 80% of business decision makers prefer to get company info in a series of articles vs. an ad. So what’s the hang-up? Cited barriers to content marketing are lack of human resources (42%) and lack of budget (35%). 54% of brands don’t have a single on-site, dedicated content creator. And only 38% of brands have a content marketing strategy. Tech has built the biggest, most incredible stage for brands that’s ever been built. Putting something on that stage is your responsibility. Do a bad show, or no show at all, and you’ll be the beautiful, talented actress that never got discovered. @mikestilesPhoto: Gabriella Fabbri, stock.xchng

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  • Adopting DBVCS

    - by Wes McClure
    Identify early adopters Pick a small project with a small(ish) team.  This can be a legacy application or a green-field application. Strive to find a team of early adopters that will be eager to try something new. Get the team on board! Research Research the tool(s) that you want to use.  Some tools provide all of the features you would need while some only provide a slice of the pie.  DBVCS requires the ability to manage a set of change scripts that update a database from one version to the next.  Ideally a tool can track database versions and automatically apply updates.  The change script generation process can be manual, but having diff tools available to automatically generate it can really reduce the overhead to adoption.  Finally, an automated tool to generate a script file per database object is an added bonus as your version control system can quickly identify what was changed in a commit (add/del/modify), just like with code changes. Don’t settle on just one tool, identify several.  Then work with the team to evaluate the tools.  Have the team do some tests of the following scenarios with each tool: Baseline an existing database: can the migration tool work with legacy databases?  Caution: most migration platforms do not support baselines or have poor support, especially the fad of fluent APIs. Add/drop tables Add/drop procedures/functions/views Alter tables (rename columns, add columns, remove columns) Massage data – migrations sometimes involve changing data types that cannot be implicitly casted and require you to decide how the data is explicitly cast to the new type.  This is a requirement for a migrations platform.  Think about a case where you might want to combine fields, or move a field from one table to another, you wouldn’t want to lose the data. Run the tool via the command line.  If you cannot automate the tool in Continuous Integration what is the point? Create a copy of a database on demand. Backup/restore databases locally. Let the team give feedback and decide together, what tool they would like to try out. My recommendation at this point would be to include TSqlMigrations and RoundHouse as SQL based migration platforms.  In general I would recommend staying away from the fluent platforms as they often lack baseline capabilities and add overhead to learn a new API when SQL is already a very well known DSL.  Code migrations often get messy with procedures/views/functions as these have to be created with SQL and aren’t cross platform anyways.  IMO stick to SQL based migrations. Reconciling Production If your project is a legacy application, you will need to reconcile the current state of production with your development databases.  Find changes in production and bring them down to development, even if they are old and need to be removed.  Once complete, produce a baseline of either dev or prod as they are now in sync.  Commit this to your VCS of choice. Add whatever schema changes tracking mechanism your tool requires to your development database.  This often requires adding a table to track the schema version of that database.  Your tool should support doing this for you.  You can add this table to production when you do your next release. Script out any changes currently in dev.  Remove production artifacts that you brought down during reconciliation.  Add change scripts for any outstanding changes in dev since the last production release.  Commit these to your repository.   Say No to Shared Dev DBs Simply put, you wouldn’t dream of sharing a code checkout, why would you share a development database?  If you have a shared dev database, back it up, distribute the backups and take the shared version offline (including the dev db server once all projects are using DB VCS).  Doing DB VCS with a shared database is bound to cause problems as people won’t be able to easily script out their own changes from those that others are working on.   First prod release Copy prod to your beta/testing environment.  Add the schema changes table (or mechanism) and do a test run of your changes.  If successful you can schedule this to be run on production.   Evaluation After your first release, evaluate the pain points of the process.  Try to find tools or modifications to existing tools to help fix them.  Don’t leave stones unturned, iteratively evolve your tools and practices to make the process as seamless as possible.  This is why I suggest open source alternatives.  Nothing is set in stone, a good example was adding transactional support to TSqlMigrations.  We ran into situations where an update would break a database, so I added a feature to do transactional updates and rollback on errors!  Another good example is generating change scripts.  We have been manually making these for months now.  I found an open source project called Open DB Diff and integrated this with TSqlMigrations.  These were things we just accepted at the time when we began adopting our tool set.  Once we became comfortable with the base functionality, it was time to start automating more of the process.  Just like anything else with development, never be afraid to try to find tools to make your job easier!   Enjoy -Wes

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  • Your thoughts on Best Practices for Scientific Computing?

    - by John Smith
    A recent paper by Wilson et al (2014) pointed out 24 Best Practices for scientific programming. It's worth to have a look. I would like to hear opinions about these points from experienced programmers in scientific data analysis. Do you think these advices are helpful and practical? Or are they good only in an ideal world? Wilson G, Aruliah DA, Brown CT, Chue Hong NP, Davis M, Guy RT, Haddock SHD, Huff KD, Mitchell IM, Plumbley MD, Waugh B, White EP, Wilson P (2014) Best Practices for Scientific Computing. PLoS Biol 12:e1001745. http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001745 Box 1. Summary of Best Practices Write programs for people, not computers. (a) A program should not require its readers to hold more than a handful of facts in memory at once. (b) Make names consistent, distinctive, and meaningful. (c) Make code style and formatting consistent. Let the computer do the work. (a) Make the computer repeat tasks. (b) Save recent commands in a file for re-use. (c) Use a build tool to automate workflows. Make incremental changes. (a) Work in small steps with frequent feedback and course correction. (b) Use a version control system. (c) Put everything that has been created manually in version control. Don’t repeat yourself (or others). (a) Every piece of data must have a single authoritative representation in the system. (b) Modularize code rather than copying and pasting. (c) Re-use code instead of rewriting it. Plan for mistakes. (a) Add assertions to programs to check their operation. (b) Use an off-the-shelf unit testing library. (c) Turn bugs into test cases. (d) Use a symbolic debugger. Optimize software only after it works correctly. (a) Use a profiler to identify bottlenecks. (b) Write code in the highest-level language possible. Document design and purpose, not mechanics. (a) Document interfaces and reasons, not implementations. (b) Refactor code in preference to explaining how it works. (c) Embed the documentation for a piece of software in that software. Collaborate. (a) Use pre-merge code reviews. (b) Use pair programming when bringing someone new up to speed and when tackling particularly tricky problems. (c) Use an issue tracking tool. I'm relatively new to serious programming for scientific data analysis. When I tried to write code for pilot analyses of some of my data last year, I encountered tremendous amount of bugs both in my code and data. Bugs and errors had been around me all the time, but this time it was somewhat overwhelming. I managed to crunch the numbers at last, but I thought I couldn't put up with this mess any longer. Some actions must be taken. Without a sophisticated guide like the article above, I started to adopt "defensive style" of programming since then. A book titled "The Art of Readable Code" helped me a lot. I deployed meticulous input validations or assertions for every function, renamed a lot of variables and functions for better readability, and extracted many subroutines as reusable functions. Recently, I introduced Git and SourceTree for version control. At the moment, because my co-workers are much more reluctant about these issues, the collaboration practices (8a,b,c) have not been introduced. Actually, as the authors admitted, because all of these practices take some amount of time and effort to introduce, it may be generally hard to persuade your reluctant collaborators to comply them. I think I'm asking your opinions because I still suffer from many bugs despite all my effort on many of these practices. Bug fix may be, or should be, faster than before, but I couldn't really measure the improvement. Moreover, much of my time has been invested on defence, meaning that I haven't actually done much data analysis (offence) these days. Where is the point I should stop at in terms of productivity? I've already deployed: 1a,b,c, 2a, 3a,b,c, 4b,c, 5a,d, 6a,b, 7a,7b I'm about to have a go at: 5b,c Not yet: 2b,c, 4a, 7c, 8a,b,c (I could not really see the advantage of using GNU make (2c) for my purpose. Could anyone tell me how it helps my work with MATLAB?)

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  • Lessons from a SAN Failure

    - by Bill Graziano
    At 1:10AM Sunday morning the main SAN at one of my clients suffered a “partial” failure.  Partial means that the SAN was still online and functioning but the LUNs attached to our two main SQL Servers “failed”.  Failed means that SQL Server wouldn’t start and the MDF and LDF files mostly showed a zero file size.  But they were online and responding and most other LUNs were available.  I’m not sure how SANs know to fail at 1AM on a Saturday night but they seem to.  From a personal standpoint this worked out poorly: I was out with friends and after more than a few drinks.  From a work standpoint this was about the best time to fail you could imagine.  Everything was running well before Monday morning.  But it was a long, long Sunday.  I started tipsy, got tired and ended up hung over later in the day. Note to self: Try not to go out drinking right before the SAN fails. This caught us at an interesting time.  We’re in the process of migrating to an entirely new set of servers so some things were partially moved.  This made it difficult to follow our procedures as cleanly as we’d like.  The benefit was that we had much better documentation of everything on the server.  I would encourage everyone to really think through the process of implementing your DR plan and document as much as possible.  Following a checklist is much easier than trying to remember at night under pressure in a hurry after a few drinks. I had a series of estimates on how long things would take.  They were accurate for any single server failure.  They weren’t accurate for a SAN failure that took two servers down.  This wasn’t bad but we should have communicated better. Don’t forget how many things are outside the database.  Logins, linked servers, DTS packages (yikes!), jobs, service broker, DTC (especially DTC), database triggers and any objects in the master database are all things you need backed up.  We’d done a decent job on this and didn’t find significant problems here.  That said this still took a lot of time.  There were many annoyances as a result of this.  Small settings like a login’s default database had a big impact on whether an application could run.  This is probably the single biggest area of concern when looking to recreate a server.  I’d encourage everyone to go through every single node of SSMS and look for user created objects or settings outside the database. Script out your logins with the proper SID and already encrypted passwords and keep it updated.  This makes life so much easier.  I used an approach based on KB246133 that worked well.  I’ll get my scripts posted over the next few days. The disaster can cause your DR process to fail in unexpected ways.  We have a job that scripts out all logins and role memberships and writes it to a file.  This runs on the DR server and pulls from the production server.  Upon opening the file I found that the contents were a “server not found” error.  Fortunately we had other copies and didn’t need to try and restore the master database.  This now runs on the production server and pushes the script to the DR site.  Soon we’ll get it pushed to our version control software. One of the biggest challenges is keeping your DR resources up to date.  Any server change (new linked server, new SQL Server Agent job, etc.) means that your DR plan (and scripts) is out of date.  It helps to automate the generation of these resources if possible. Take time now to test your database restore process.  We test ours quarterly.  If you have a large database I’d also encourage you to invest in a compressed backup solution.  Restoring backups was the single larger consumer of time during our recovery. And yes, there’s a database mirroring solution planned in our new architecture. I didn’t have much involvement in things outside SQL Server but this caused many, many things to change in our environment.  Many applications today aren’t just executables or web sites.  They are a combination of those plus network infrastructure, reports, network ports, IP addresses, DTS and SSIS packages, batch systems and many other things.  These all needed a little bit of attention to make sure they were functioning properly. Profiler turned out to be a handy tool.  I started a trace for failed logins and kept that running.  That let me fix a number of problems before people were able to report them.  I also ran traces to capture exceptions.  This helped identify problems with linked servers. Overall the thing that gave me the most problem was linked servers.  In order for a linked server to function properly you need to be pointed to the right server, have the proper login information, have the network routes available and have MSDTC configured properly.  We have a lot of linked servers and this created many failure points.  Some of the older linked servers used IP addresses and not DNS names.  This meant we had to go in and touch all those linked servers when the servers moved.

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  • Backup options in SharePoint 2007

    - by sreejukg
    It is very important to make sure the server farm backup is taking properly, making sure that in case of any disaster, the administrator has the latest backup that can be used to restore. This articles addresses some of the options available for backup/restore in SharePoint 2007 Backup There are two options that can be utilized to take backup of SharePoint sites. Using SharePoint Central Administration website Using SharePoint central administration website, you can do backup/restore from user interface. Using central administration website you can back up the following · Server farm · Web application · Content databases Follow these steps to take backup of the server farm using central administration 1. Open Central administration website 2. Navigate to Operations -> Backup and Restore -> Perform a backup 3. Here you will have options to choose the item to back up. Select Farm (the top most item in the list) 4. Once you select the items to backup, click on “Continue to backup options” 5. Select “Full” as type of backup. 6. In the backup file location, enter the path where you need to store the backup. The path should be according to the UNC, for e.g. for c drive you may use \\server\c$\mybackupFolder 7. Click ok 8. Now you will be redirected to Backup and Restore Status page. This page shows the progress for the backup operation. You can use the refresh button to update the status of backup(this page will automatically refresh in every 30 seconds). Once completed you can find the files in the specified folder. Using STSADM website SharePoint comes with a STSADM command line tool. STSADM provides lot of administrative operations that can be performed on SharePoint 2007 sites. You can find STSADM command from the following location C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin (You may change the drive letter according to your installation) STSADM provides a method for performing the Office SharePoint Server 2007 administration tasks at the command line or by using batch files or scripts. STSADM provides access to operations not available by using the Central Administration site The general syntax for STSADM is as follows STSADM -operation Operation Name –parameter1 value1 –parameter2 value2 ……….. Using STSADM you can back up the following · Server farm · Web application · Content databases To perform any STSADM, operation you need to be a member of administrators group. Follow these steps to take backup of SharePoint server farm using STSADM tool. Note: make sure you are logged in to the computer where central administration website is installed. 1. Open the Command prompt (You should run command prompt with administrator privileges) 2. Change the working directory to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin 3. Enter the command, then press enter Stsadm –o backup -directory <UNC path> -backupmethod full 4. You will get success / failure message once the command finishes. How to schedule the backup There is no option to schedule a backup using central administration site. Also there is no operation provided by STSADM to automate the backup. The farm administrators need to take backup in regular intervals. To achieve this, you can write a batch file that includes STSADM command to take full backup of the server. This batch file can be scheduled using windows task scheduler to execute in certain intervals. Sample of the batch file 1. Open notepad(or any other text editor) 2. Enter the following commands @echo off echo =============================================================== echo Back up the farm to <C:\backup> echo =============================================================== cd %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN @echo off stsadm.exe -o backup -directory "<\backup>" -backupmethod full echo completed 3. Save the file with .bat extension You can schedule this batch file as you require. Other Options Using STSADM tool, you will be able to take backup for individual site collection. The syntax for this is stsadm -o backup -url <URL name for site collection> -filename <file name> [-overwrite] The explanations for the parameters are as follows. -url The url of the site collection you need to backup -filename The name of the backup file. E.g. c:\backup.bak -overwrite optional. Indicates if the filename specified exists, whether to overwrite or not. If you are creating the batch file for scheduling the backup for a site collection, you may need to specify the backup filename automatically created. It is an option that you can generate the filename with date so that you can keep backup for each day. e.g. The following commands can be utilized create a site collection backup. @echo off echo =============================================================== echo Back up the farm to <C:\backup> echo =============================================================== echo =============================================================== echo getting todays date to a variable echo =============================================================== @For /F "tokens=1,2,3 delims=/ " %%A in (‘Date /t’) do @( Set Day=%%A Set Month=%%B Set Year=%%C Set todayDate=%%C%%B%%A ) cd %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN @echo off stsadm -o backup -url <sitecollection url> -filename \\ServerName\ShareName\Backup_%todayDate%.bak -overwrite echo completed To read more about backup STSADM operation, read this http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263441.aspx

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  • SQL SERVER – An Efficiency Tool to Compare and Synchronize SQL Server Databases

    - by Pinal Dave
    There is no need to reinvent the wheel if it is already invented and if the wheel is already available at ease, there is no need to wait to grab it. Here is the similar situation. I came across a very interesting situation and I had to look for an efficient tool which can make my life easier and solve my business problem. Here is the scenario. One of the developers had deleted few rows from the very important mapping table of our development server (thankfully, it was not the production server). Though it was a development server, the entire development team had to stop working as the application started to crash on every page. Think about the lost of manpower and efficiency which we started to loose.  Pretty much every department had to stop working as our internal development application stopped working. Thankfully, we even take a backup of our development server and we had access to full backup of the entire database at 6 AM morning. We do not take as a frequent backup of development server as production server (naturally!). Even though we had a full backup, the solution was not to restore the database. Think about it, there were plenty of the other operations since the last good full backup and if we restore a full backup, we will pretty much overwrite on the top of the work done by developers since morning. Now, as restoring the full backup was not an option we decided to restore the same database on another server. Once we had restored our database to another server, the challenge was to compare the table from where the database was deleted. The mapping table from where the data were deleted contained over 5000 rows and it was humanly impossible to compare both the tables manually. Finally we decided to use efficiency tool dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server from DevArt. dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server is a powerful, fast and easy to use SQL compare tool, capable of using native SQL Server backups as metadata source. (FYI we Downloaded dbForge Data Compare) Once we discovered the product, we immediately downloaded the product and installed on our development server. After we installed the product, we were greeted with the following screen. We clicked on the New Data Comparision to start our new comparison project. It brought up following screen. Here is the best part of the product, we just had to enter our database connection username and password along with source and destination details and we are done. The entire process is very simple and self intuiting. The best part was that for the source, we can either select database or even backup. This was indeed fantastic feature. Think about this, if you have a very big database, it will take long time to restore on the server. Once it is restored, you will be able to work with it. However, when you are working with dbForge Data Compare it will accept database backup as your source or destination. Once I click on the execute it brought up following screen where it displayed an excellent summary of the data compare. It has dedicated tabs for the what is changing in what table as well had details of the changed data. The best part is that, once we had reviewed the change. We click on the Synchronize button in the menu bar and it brought up following screen. You can see that the screen has very simple straight forward but very powerful features. You can generate a script to synchronize from target to source or even from source to target. Additionally, the database is a very complicated world and there are extensive options to configure various database options on the next screen. We also have the option to either generate script or directly execute the script to target server. I like to play on the safe side and I generated the script for my synchronization and later on after review I deployed the scripts on the server. Well, my team and we were able to get going from our disaster in less than 10 minutes. There were few people in our team were indeed disappointed as they were thinking of going home early that day but in less than 10 minutes they had to get back to work. There are so many other features in  dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server, I am already planning to make this product company wide recommended product for Data Compare tool. Hats off to the team who have build this product. Here are few of the features salient features of the dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server Perform SQL Server database comparison to detect changes Compare SQL Server backups with live databases Analyze data differences between two databases Synchronize two databases that went out of sync Restore data of a particular table from the backup Generate data comparison reports in Excel and HTML formats Copy look-up data from development database to production Automate routine data synchronization tasks with command-line interface Go Ahead and Download the dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server right away. It is always a good idea to get familiar with the important tools before hand instead of learning it under pressure of disaster. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL, Technology

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  • Lync Server 2010

    - by ManojDhobale
    Microsoft Lync Server 2010 communications software and its client software, such as Microsoft Lync 2010, enable your users to connect in new ways and to stay connected, regardless of their physical location. Lync 2010 and Lync Server 2010 bring together the different ways that people communicate in a single client interface, are deployed as a unified platform, and are administered through a single management infrastructure. Workload Description IM and presence Instant messaging (IM) and presence help your users find and communicate with one another efficiently and effectively. IM provides an instant messaging platform with conversation history, and supports public IM connectivity with users of public IM networks such as MSN/Windows Live, Yahoo!, and AOL. Presence establishes and displays a user’s personal availability and willingness to communicate through the use of common states such as Available or Busy. This rich presence information enables other users to immediately make effective communication choices. Conferencing Lync Server includes support for IM conferencing, audio conferencing, web conferencing, video conferencing, and application sharing, for both scheduled and impromptu meetings. All these meeting types are supported with a single client. Lync Server also supports dial-in conferencing so that users of public switched telephone network (PSTN) phones can participate in the audio portion of conferences. Conferences can seamlessly change and grow in real time. For example, a single conference can start as just instant messages between a few users, and escalate to an audio conference with desktop sharing and a larger audience instantly, easily, and without interrupting the conversation flow. Enterprise Voice Enterprise Voice is the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) offering in Lync Server 2010. It delivers a voice option to enhance or replace traditional private branch exchange (PBX) systems. In addition to the complete telephony capabilities of an IP PBX, Enterprise Voice is integrated with rich presence, IM, collaboration, and meetings. Features such as call answer, hold, resume, transfer, forward and divert are supported directly, while personalized speed dialing keys are replaced by Contacts lists, and automatic intercom is replaced with IM. Enterprise Voice supports high availability through call admission control (CAC), branch office survivability, and extended options for data resiliency. Support for remote users You can provide full Lync Server functionality for users who are currently outside your organization’s firewalls by deploying servers called Edge Servers to provide a connection for these remote users. These remote users can connect to conferences by using a personal computer with Lync 2010 installed, the phone, or a web interface. Deploying Edge Servers also enables you to federate with partner or vendor organizations. A federated relationship enables your users to put federated users on their Contacts lists, exchange presence information and instant messages with these users, and invite them to audio calls, video calls, and conferences. Integration with other products Lync Server integrates with several other products to provide additional benefits to your users and administrators. Meeting tools are integrated into Outlook 2010 to enable organizers to schedule a meeting or start an impromptu conference with a single click and make it just as easy for attendees to join. Presence information is integrated into Outlook 2010 and SharePoint 2010. Exchange Unified Messaging (UM) provides several integration features. Users can see if they have new voice mail within Lync 2010. They can click a play button in the Outlook message to hear the audio voice mail, or view a transcription of the voice mail in the notification message. Simple deployment To help you plan and deploy your servers and clients, Lync Server provides the Microsoft Lync Server 2010, Planning Tool and the Topology Builder. Lync Server 2010, Planning Tool is a wizard that interactively asks you a series of questions about your organization, the Lync Server features you want to enable, and your capacity planning needs. Then, it creates a recommended deployment topology based on your answers, and produces several forms of output to aid your planning and installation. Topology Builder is an installation component of Lync Server 2010. You use Topology Builder to create, adjust and publish your planned topology. It also validates your topology before you begin server installations. When you install Lync Server on individual servers, the installation program deploys the server as directed in the topology. Simple management After you deploy Lync Server, it offers the following powerful and streamlined management tools: Active Directory for its user information, which eliminates the need for separate user and policy databases. Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Control Panel, a new web-based graphical user interface for administrators. With this web-based UI, Lync Server administrators can manage their systems from anywhere on the corporate network, without needing specialized management software installed on their computers. Lync Server Management Shell command-line management tool, which is based on the Windows PowerShell command-line interface. It provides a rich command set for administration of all aspects of the product, and enables Lync Server administrators to automate repetitive tasks using a familiar tool. While the IM and presence features are automatically installed in every Lync Server deployment, you can choose whether to deploy conferencing, Enterprise Voice, and remote user access, to tailor your deployment to your organization’s needs.

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  • SQL SERVER – Parsing SSIS Catalog Messages – Notes from the Field #030

    - by Pinal Dave
    [Note from Pinal]: This is a new episode of Notes from the Field series. SQL Server Integration Service (SSIS) is one of the most key essential part of the entire Business Intelligence (BI) story. It is a platform for data integration and workflow applications. The tool may also be used to automate maintenance of SQL Server databases and updates to multidimensional cube data. In this episode of the Notes from the Field series I requested SSIS Expert Andy Leonard to discuss one of the most interesting concepts of SSIS Catalog Messages. There are plenty of interesting and useful information captured in the SSIS catalog and we will learn together how to explore the same. The SSIS Catalog captures a lot of cool information by default. Here’s a query I use to parse messages from the catalog.operation_messages table in the SSISDB database, where the logged messages are stored. This query is set up to parse a default message transmitted by the Lookup Transformation. It’s one of my favorite messages in the SSIS log because it gives me excellent information when I’m tuning SSIS data flows. The message reads similar to: Data Flow Task:Information: The Lookup processed 4485 rows in the cache. The processing time was 0.015 seconds. The cache used 1376895 bytes of memory. The query: USE SSISDB GO DECLARE @MessageSourceType INT = 60 DECLARE @StartOfIDString VARCHAR(100) = 'The Lookup processed ' DECLARE @ProcessingTimeString VARCHAR(100) = 'The processing time was ' DECLARE @CacheUsedString VARCHAR(100) = 'The cache used ' DECLARE @StartOfIDSearchString VARCHAR(100) = '%' + @StartOfIDString + '%' DECLARE @ProcessingTimeSearchString VARCHAR(100) = '%' + @ProcessingTimeString + '%' DECLARE @CacheUsedSearchString VARCHAR(100) = '%' + @CacheUsedString + '%' SELECT operation_id , SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1))) AS LookupRowsCount , SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1))) AS LookupProcessingTime , CASE WHEN (CONVERT(numeric(3,3),SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1))))) = 0 THEN 0 ELSE CONVERT(bigint,SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1)))) / CONVERT(numeric(3,3),SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1)))) END AS LookupRowsPerSecond , SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@CacheUsedSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@CacheUsedString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@CacheUsedSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@CacheUsedString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@CacheUsedSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@CacheUsedString) + 1))) AS LookupBytesUsed ,CASE WHEN (CONVERT(bigint,SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1)))))= 0 THEN 0 ELSE CONVERT(bigint,SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@CacheUsedSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@CacheUsedString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@CacheUsedSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@CacheUsedString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@CacheUsedSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@CacheUsedString) + 1)))) / CONVERT(bigint,SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1)))) END AS LookupBytesPerRow FROM [catalog].[operation_messages] WHERE message_source_type = @MessageSourceType AND MESSAGE LIKE @StartOfIDSearchString GO Note that you have to set some parameter values: @MessageSourceType [int] – represents the message source type value from the following results: Value     Description 10           Entry APIs, such as T-SQL and CLR Stored procedures 20           External process used to run package (ISServerExec.exe) 30           Package-level objects 40           Control Flow tasks 50           Control Flow containers 60           Data Flow task 70           Custom execution message Note: Taken from Reza Rad’s (excellent!) helper.MessageSourceType table found here. @StartOfIDString [VarChar(100)] – use this to uniquely identify the message field value you wish to parse. In this case, the string ‘The Lookup processed ‘ identifies all the Lookup Transformation messages I desire to parse. @ProcessingTimeString [VarChar(100)] – this parameter is message-specific. I use this parameter to specifically search the message field value for the beginning of the Lookup Processing Time value. For this execution, I use the string ‘The processing time was ‘. @CacheUsedString [VarChar(100)] – this parameter is also message-specific. I use this parameter to specifically search the message field value for the beginning of the Lookup Cache  Used value. It returns the memory used, in bytes. For this execution, I use the string ‘The cache used ‘. The other parameters are built from variations of the parameters listed above. The query parses the values into text. The string values are converted to numeric values for ratio calculations; LookupRowsPerSecond and LookupBytesPerRow. Since ratios involve division, CASE statements check for denominators that equal 0. Here are the results in an SSMS grid: This is not the only way to retrieve this information. And much of the code lends itself to conversion to functions. If there is interest, I will share the functions in an upcoming post. If you want to get started with SSIS with the help of experts, read more over at Fix Your SQL Server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Notes from the Field, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Backup and Restore, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: SSIS

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  • Help Prevent Carpal Tunnel Problems with Workrave

    - by Matthew Guay
    Whether for work or leisure, many of us spend entirely too much time on the computer everyday.  This puts us at risk of having or aggravating Carpal Tunnel problems, but thanks to Workrave you can help to divert these problems. Workrave helps Carpal Tunnel problems by reminding you to get away from your computer periodically.  Breaking up your computer time with movement can help alleviate many computer and office related health problems.  Workrave helps by reminding you to take short pauses after several minutes of computer use, and longer breaks after continued use.  You can also use it to keep from using the computer for too much You time in a day.  Since you can change the settings to suit you, this can be a great way to make sure you’re getting the breaks you need. Install Workrave on Windows If you’re using Workrave on Windows, download (link below) and install it with the default settings. One installation setting you may wish to change is the startup.  By default Workrave will run automatically when you start your computer; if you don’t want this, you can simply uncheck the box and proceed with the installation. Once setup is finished, you can run Workrave directly from the installer. Or you can open it from your start menu by entering “workrave” in the search box. Install Workrave in Ubuntu If you wish to use it in Ubuntu, you can install it directly from the Ubuntu Software Center.  Click the Applications menu, and select Ubuntu Software Center. Enter “workrave” into the search box in the top right corner of the Software Center, and it will automatically find it.  Click the arrow to proceed to Workrave’s page. This will give you information about Workrave; simply click Install to install Workrave on your system. Enter your password when prompted. Workrave will automatically download and install.   When finished, you can find Workrave in your Applications menu under Universal Access. Using Workrave Workrave by default shows a small counter on your desktop, showing the length of time until your next Micro break (30 second break), Rest break (10 minute break), and max amount of computer usage for the day. When it’s time for a micro break, Workrave will popup a reminder on your desktop. If you continue working, it will disappear at the end of the timer.  If you stop, it will start a micro-break which will freeze most on-screen activities until the timer is over.  You can click Skip or Postpone if you do not want to take a break right then. After an hour of work, Workrave will give you a 10 minute rest break.  During this it will show you some exercises that can help eliminate eyestrain, muscle tension, and other problems from prolonged computer usage.  You can click through the exercises, or can skip or postpone the break if you wish.   Preferences You can change your Workrave preferences by right-clicking on its icon in your system tray and selecting Preferences. Here you can customize the time between your breaks, and the length of your breaks.  You can also change your daily computer usage limit, and can even turn off the postpone and skip buttons on notifications if you want to make sure you follow Workrave and take your rests! From the context menu, you can also choose Statistics.  This gives you an overview of how many breaks, prompts, and more were shown on a given day.  It also shows a total Overdue time, which is the total length of the breaks you skipped or postponed.  You can view your Workrave history as well by simply selecting a date on the calendar.   Additionally, the Activity tab in the Statics pane shows more info about your computer usage, including total mouse movement, mouse button clicks, and keystrokes. Conclusion Whether you’re suffering with Carpal Tunnel or trying to prevent it, Workrave is a great solution to help remind you to get away from your computer periodically and rest.  Of course, since you can simply postpone or skip the prompts, you’ve still got to make an effort to help your own health.  But it does give you a great way to remind yourself to get away from the computer, and especially for geeks, this may be something that we really need! Download Workrave Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Switch to the Dvorak Keyboard Layout in XPAccess Your MySQL Server Remotely Over SSHHow to Secure Gaim Instant Messenger traffic at Work with SecureCRT and SSHConnect to VMware Server Console Over SSHDisclaimers TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional StockFox puts a Lightweight Stock Ticker in your Statusbar Explore Google Public Data Visually The Ultimate Excel Cheatsheet Convert the Quick Launch Bar into a Super Application Launcher Automate Tasks in Linux with Crontab Discover New Bundled Feeds in Google Reader

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