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• Issue with VMWare vSphere and NFS: re occurring apd state

  - by Bastian N.

  I am experiencing issues with VMWare vSphere 5.1 and NFS storage on 2 different setups, which result in an "All Path Down" state for the NFS shares. This first happened once or twice a day, but lately it occurs much more frequent, as specially when Acronis Backup jobs are running. Setup 1 (Production): 2 ESXi 5.1 hosts (Essentials Plus) + OpenFiler with NFS as storage Setup 2 (Lab): 1 ESXi 5.1 host + Ubuntu 12.04 LTS with NFS as storage Here is an example from the vmkernel.log: 2013-05-28T08:07:33.479Z cpu0:2054)StorageApdHandler: 248: APD Timer started for ident [987c2dd0-02658e1e] 2013-05-28T08:07:33.479Z cpu0:2054)StorageApdHandler: 395: Device or filesystem with identifier [987c2dd0-02658e1e] has entered the All Paths Down state. 2013-05-28T08:07:33.479Z cpu0:2054)StorageApdHandler: 846: APD Start for ident [987c2dd0-02658e1e]! 2013-05-28T08:07:37.485Z cpu0:2052)NFSLock: 610: Stop accessing fd 0x410007e4cf28 3 2013-05-28T08:07:37.485Z cpu0:2052)NFSLock: 610: Stop accessing fd 0x410007e4d0e8 3 2013-05-28T08:07:41.280Z cpu1:2049)StorageApdHandler: 277: APD Timer killed for ident [987c2dd0-02658e1e] 2013-05-28T08:07:41.280Z cpu1:2049)StorageApdHandler: 402: Device or filesystem with identifier [987c2dd0-02658e1e] has exited the All Paths Down state. 2013-05-28T08:07:41.281Z cpu1:2049)StorageApdHandler: 902: APD Exit for ident [987c2dd0-02658e1e]! 2013-05-28T08:07:52.300Z cpu1:3679)NFSLock: 570: Start accessing fd 0x410007e4d0e8 again 2013-05-28T08:07:52.300Z cpu1:3679)NFSLock: 570: Start accessing fd 0x410007e4cf28 again As long as the issue occurred once or twice a day it really wasn't a problem, but now this issue has impact on the VMs. The VMs get slow or even hang, resulting in a reset through vCenter in the production environment. I searched the web extensively and asked in forums, but till now nobody was able to help me. Based on blog posts and VMWare KB articles I tried the following NFS settings: Net.TcpipHeapSize = 32 Net.TcpipHeapMax = 128 NFS.HartbeatFrequency = 12 NFS.HartbeatMaxFailures = 10 NFS.HartbeatTimeout = 5 NFS.MaxQueueDepth = 64 Instead of NFS.MaxQueueDepth = 64 I already tried other settings like NFS.MaxQueueDepth = 32 or even NFS.MaxQueueDepth = 1. Unfortunately without any luck. It would be great if someone could help me on this issue. It is really annoying. Thanks in advance for all the help. [UPDATE] As I explained in the comment below, here is the network setup: On the production setup the NFS traffic is bound to a separate VLAN with ID 20. I am using a HP 1810 24 Port Switch. The OpenFiler system is connected to the VLAN with 4 Intel GbE NICs with dynamic LACP. The ESXis both have 4 Intel GbE NICs using 2 static LACP trunks containing 2 NICs each. One pair is connected to the regular LAN and the other one to the VLAN 20. And here is a screenshot of the vSwitch: Switch configuration: Port configuration: On the lab setup its a single Intel NIC on each side without VLAN, but with different IP subnet.

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• Issue with Netgear GS108T Managed Switch and Jumbo Frames

  - by Richie086

  I recently purchased a Netgear GS108T managed switch and I am trying to configure jumbo packets between my NAS (Thecus N4100Pro), PC and managed switch. I should mention the fact that I was able to use jumbo frames between my PC and NAS before I purchased the switch without issue. My Desktop has a wired gigabit NIC (Intel 82579V Gigabit) and has the ability to configure jumbo frames (see pic) that are either 9014 bytes or 4088 bytes. I choose 9014 bytes for the jumbo frame size My NAS supports jumbo frames as well, and is configured to use 9014 as the frame size. When I go into my Netgear managed switch and set the frame size to 9014 on the ports I am using for my PC and NAS. See image As soon as I hit apply in the web interface, I loose my connection to the SMB shares on my NAS and I can no longer connect to the web admin interface for my NAS. The really strange thing is I can ping my NAS via the ping command, but when I try to connect to the web interface on port 80 or port 443 the page never loads. I did a scan from my PC to my NAS using nmap and I can see the following ports open PORT STATE SERVICE 22/tcp open ssh 80/tcp open http 111/tcp open rpcbind 139/tcp open netbios-ssn 443/tcp open https 445/tcp open microsoft-ds 631/tcp open ipp 2000/tcp open cisco-sccp 2049/tcp open nfs 3260/tcp open iscsi 49152/tcp open unknown MAC Address: 00:14:FD:15:00:44 (Thecus Technology) Read data files from: C:\Program Files (x86)\Nmap Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 211.97 seconds Raw packets sent: 1 (28B) | Rcvd: 1 (28B) Anyone have any idea what is going on here? Why is nmap able to detect the ports are open and listening for http, https and file sharing but I cant connect when all devices have jumbo packets enabled? Stranger still - I did a packet capture using wireshark while the nmap scan was running and filtered so I only saw converstations between my PC and my NAS. Here are the packet details from my scan Only 4 packets over 5k bytes? What is going on here? Do I not need to configure jumbo frame sizes on the switch? I have an internet connection from my pc to the switch to my router - I just cannot connect to my NAS. I just checked on my iPhone and I am able to open my NAS web admin interface without issue on my iPhone! WTF!!!!!! Let me know if you need more details..

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• How to grow to be global sysadmin of an organization?

  - by user64729

  Bit of a non-technical question but I have seen questions of the career development type on here before so hopefully it is fine. I work for a fast growing but still small organization (~65 employees). I have been their external sysadmin for a while now, looking after hosted Linux servers and infrastructure. In the past 12 months I have been transforming into the internal sysadmin for our office too. I'm currently studying Cisco CCNA to cover the demands of being an internal sysadmin and looking after the office LAN, routers, switches and VPNs. Now they want me to look after the global sysadmin function of the organization as a whole. The organization has 3 offices in total, 2 in the UK and 1 in the US. I work in one of the UK offices. The other offices are primarily Windows desktops with AD domain shops. My office is primarily a Linux shop with a file-server and NFS/NIS (no AD domain for the Windows desktops yet but it's in the works). Each other office has a sysadmin which in theory I am supposed to supervise but in reality each is independent. I have a very competent junior sysadmin working with me who shares the day-to-day tasks and does some of the longer term projects with my supervision. My boss has asked me how to grow from being the external sysadmin to the global sysadmin. I am to ponder this and then report back to him on how to achieve this. My current thoughts are: Management training or professional development - eg. reading books such as "Influencer" and "7 Habits". Also I feel I should take steps to improving communication skills since a senior person is expected to talk and speak out more often. Learn more about Windows and Active Directory - I'm an LPI-certified guy and have a lot of experience in Linux (Ubuntu or desktop, Debian/Ubuntu as server). Since the other offices are mainly Windows-domains it makes sense to skill-up in that area so I can understand what the other admins are talking about. Talk to previous colleagues who have are are in this role already - to try and get the benefit of their experience. Produce an "IT Roadmap" or similar that maps out where we want the organization to be and when, plotted out over the next couple of years with regards to internal and external infrastructure. I have produced a "Security roadmap" already which does cover some of these things. I guess this can summed up as "thinking more strategically"? I'd appreciate comments from anyone who has been through a similar situation, thanks.

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• Enterprise Tape Backup solutions

  - by Tom O'Connor

  I'm currently attempting to re-architect a backup solution where I'm working. We've got 2 NAS devices, one in the office, one in the datacentre. The servers in the DC back up to the DC NAS, which is then replicated to the Office NAS. The office NAS exports shares as CIFS and NFS, this bit is fine. At some point, I'll have to expand our storage capacity, currently we've got about 1.4TB of storage space, which is about 96% full. Previously, the tape backup was a script that ran tar a few times and squirted data onto a tape. It worked, but was by no means a perfect solution. Restores are a bit of a pest, adding new data to the backup requires editing the script as root. It's just all a bit non-ideal. I've been evaluating a number of "enterprise" ready backup solutions, such as Yosemite Backup from Barracuda, Acronis Backup/Restore, and something from Arkeia. In the process of evaluating these, I've found 2 big problems. Not all of them allow backup of mounted devices (such as a NFS mounted NAS) Many of these applications don't like our tape device. For the most part, (1) is essential. Our NAS has a feeble processor and can't run applications like backup agents. I suspect that the biggest problem is the tape device, which is a HP C7438A DAT72 connected via USB. Questions: Has anyone else got an USB DAT72 device working with similar software? Is there a better way to back up data from an "appliance" NAS device on which you can't run an agent? Would I be totally out of my mind to specify a cheap HP or Dell server with a couple of 1TB hard disks, and a SAS card to then talk to an HP Ultrium (or similar) device? The biggest drawback to this would be cost (400ish for the server, 200 for the SAS connectivity and 1700 for a LTO4 device) Notes: I'd love to be able to say that I'd get rid of tapes entirely, and use some form of hard disk backup. In a previous job, we had LaCie USB drives, which were decidedly unreliable.

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• Internet connection sharing between Windows XP and Windows 7

  - by Dave

  I bought my lil sister's netbooks for Christmas and I've been having a heck of a time trying to get Internet Connection Sharing to work. The host computer is a Windows XP box and it uses a US Cellular 3G modem dongle thingy to set it's Internet access. Additionally I have a hard wire plugged into the LAN1 port of the router described below. (I tried the WAN port out of desperation but things didn't seem happy that way.) Additionally they have a linksys router (can't remember specific model number, I will find this out) that I was using to take advantage of it's wireless capabilities. Originally thought about updating the router to use dd-wrt, but after reading the instructions it looked like to much of a pita (had to downgrade firmware, then install dd-wrt) to set up, eventually I caved, out of desperation, and ended up successfully installing dd-wrt on the router. I have DHCP turned off on the router, actually all I could select was DHCP forwarder. The netbooks both have windows 7 starter installed on them. Initially, I had the networks joined to a homegroup but I dropped that and everyone is able to see everyone in their respective network explorers. When I turn on Internet Connection Sharing on the host, its IP on the LAN changed to 192.168.0.1, so I arbitrarily decided to assign the router to port 192.168.0.100. When I connect the netbooks they get IPs dynamically. As I stated before, everyone can see everyone in the network explorer, and shares can be accessed. The weird thing is that everyone can ping the router but they cannot ping each others IPs. The status on the netbooks says that there is no Internet Connectivity. Another thing I tried was manually setting the DNS servers on the netbooks to the DNS servers that the host computer has. The funny thing is when I ping an outside domain such as google.com the IP address resolves, however I get no responses from the pings. When I tried plugging the host into the WAN port I could ping the router, nor could I access the router's web access admin. Another thing I tried was turning off the firewall on the netbooks and the firewall off on the host computer for the LAN connection, and they still could not ping each other. Also I thought I should be able to start a remote desktop connection but I couldn't do that either, I also checked to make sure that computers would in fact accept a request for remote desktop connections.

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• How can Windows XP/7 users cleanly connect to Mac OS X Server 10.9.4 Mavericks with Active Directory integration?

  - by JakeGould

  I’m a Linux/Unix systems admin who also manages a Macintosh server infrastructure & there is a lone Mac Mini in the mix running 10.9.4 that I would like Windows XP & Windows 7 users to connect to with little or no hassle. The problem? Windows users can’t seem to even get to the point of a password prompt yet connect. Mind you this server replaced a Mac OS X 10.6.8 server that had issues, but never had issues with Windows users connected. The gist of this post is: The tons of different messages out there about Mac OS X 10.9.4 Samba support are mind-numbingly confusing. Can anyone share some solid specifics here? I’ve read pieces like this one here that suggest turning off file sharing & then adding a share with AFP/SMB enabled would work. But the suggestion seems to apply to 10.8. And from what I know a lot has changed in Samba support in 10.9 let alone the iterations to 10.9.4. Then I found this great tutorial here that explains things step-by-step. Which seems like it should work, but the problem is the example given applies to a local user created on the Mac when I would like users in an Active Directory group—which the Mac is bound to—access the Mac Mini shares. There are also tons of great tips here on MacWindows.com but nothing seems solid to the issue I am facing. So from what I am reading these are my options: Local User Versus Active Directory: Setup a common local user on the Mac OS X 10.9.4 server to be used for Samba sharing since Active Directory won’t work. Is this really the case? Because loss of AD integration is a major pain. Do Extended File Attributes Get Retained from Windows Users: If this were to work, how do extended attributes come into play? Loss of metadata & related info is not an option. How Fragile is Any of this to Updates: How does any of this shake out with Mac OS X updates as well as Windows updates? Installing Official, Open Source Samba: Would upgrading the Samba install on the server to the official open source Samba via a package like SMBUp or via the Hombrew method described here help or make the issue worse? I fully understand there have historically been issues in mixed environments, but nowadays Windows users connecting to a Mac seem to have a truly hellish road ahead of them. Unless I am missing something?

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• How to configure a tun interface on Linux for SSH port forwarding?

  - by sarshad

  I am trying to forward port 139 from a Windows machine to my Ubuntu SSH server on a tun interface with the ip address 10.0.0.1. This is so that I can access the windows shares on the machine on my Ubuntu server, through the reverse tunnel. I can forward ports to 127.0.0.1, but not to 10.0.0.1. On windows I am using the Tunnelier ssh client. On my Ubuntu server, the following message is printed in auth.log: Received disconnect from 124.109.51.154: 11: Server denied request for client-side server-2-client forwarding on 10.0.0.1:139. So far i have tried the following settings: GatewayPorts yes PermitTunnel yes AllowTcpForwarding yes in the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file, but it did not work. I set up the tun like this: sudo tunctl -t loc_0 -u myusername sudo ifconfig loc_0 inet 10.0.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up The settings in the Tunneler ssh client should not matter because I can forward port 139 successfully to the Microsoft Loopback Adapter on a Windows machine running the WinSSHD server. Versions: Windows is XP SP3, Ubuntu is 10.10. Update: I tried to forward the port to a number greater than 1024 mentioning the IP address of the tun, and it successfully connected but the forwarding was done on 127.0.0.1 instead of the tun's IP address 10.0.0.1. So there are two separate problems now, when connecting from the Windows machine: 1) Forwarding on ports less than 1024 is probably being denied. How can we allow that on the server? 2) Forwarding is done only on 127.0.0.1 even if I mention 10.0.0.1 which is the tun's IP address. Another attempt: I also tried to forward port 22 of a Linux machine to the tun's port 55567. It showed success. But when I tried to ssh into that port using both local addresses, on the Linux machine in its debug display I got the error Connection failed: no route to host when using 127.0.0.1 to connect and simply Connection refused when using the tun's IP address. So the tun is not getting the forwarded port no matter we connect from a Windows client or a Linux client.

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• what can cause a folder to become indestructible?

  - by JustJeff

  I have a directory that I want to delete, but windows (xp sp3) is giving me the run-around and the folder is now effectively indestructible. Attempts to open the folder, either via explorer or cmd.exe are met with 'd:/temp/foo Is Not Accessible. Access is denied'. Attempts to delete the folder result in 'Cannot delete foo: The directory is not empty' So I can't delete it because supposedly it's not empty, but windows won't let me in it for some reason, so I can't clean it out first. There's nothing in it of consequence, and basically I just want to delete it at this point. Thinking that some other process must have a lock on it, I used the SysInternals 'handles' and Process Explorer to look for open handles with the directory name. These turned up no matches. (The directory name is not actually 'foo', it is something more unique but 'foo' is easier to type here). I put the machine through a restart, and the problem persists. I did a search for the folder name with regedit, to see what other apps might be aware of it. No match. The properties dialog was mildly interesting. The Read-Only attribute is 'semi-checked', i.e., the grayish check mark you get when some parts are and some parts aren't. Naturally I immediately unchecked this, and tried to delete the folder. No go. Opening properties again reveals the gray check mark next to Read-Only has returned. All the stats, size, size on disk, files, folders, all these are zero. There do not appear to be any shares on the folder, so that's not it either. Finally, I tried opening the partition's properties, and running the Tools/Error Checking utility. This didn't turn up any problems either. Fwiw, this directory was created by [a popular gui zip tool] when I tried to unpack a tar-and-zipped archive created on another system with command line utils. The archive was definitely corrupt, but I've never seen such a file do anything worse than crash the zip app, and certainly never leave permanent glitches in the file system. So what else can possibly be going on to make this folder behave this way?

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• Microsoft Office 2003 document (Excel and Word) intermitently, takes 30 seconds to load

  - by Julio Nobre

  I am trying to figure out why a simple .XLS EXCEL workbook is taking, randomly, 30 seconds to open. Before answering: Please, bear mind the following: Problem symptoms Hanging is intermitent and it takes exactly 30 seconds; During hanging there is no cpu or disk activity; It only happens during document load. Every runs smooth after that; Windows Explorer.exe hangs on folder, but all other folders, system and applications are still responsive; There are no consecutive hangings. I have to wait for while to reproduce this behaviour; All samples documents are located on a local drive (C:\BPI); The no document has has macros and have any addins usage; The problem does occurs on others files extensions like .PDF, for example; Office 2003 is being used for several years; The computer is running Windows XP; Computer has several network mapped drives, all addressed to main file server; Recently, main fileserver was replaced by Windows 2011 SBS Standard Edition What I have done so far I have traced machine Explorer.exe, using Process Monitor, added Duration column, and filtered by Duration 1. That's is how I found that hanging was taking exactly 30 seconds. For further information, please refer to Oliver Salzburg tutorial. Using Process Monitor, I have also figured out than five operations were taking most of sample collecting duration. Looking at sample image below, column Operation below you will notice that one single operation was taking 29 seconds; I have tried different documents (.xls and .doc), all of them smaller than 30 KB; I have, temporarily, removed all shortcuts on User Document's folder that were pointing to network drives or shares; I have runned CCleaner to fix registry issues; I made sure that there were no external links on tested workbook or word documents; I have reproduced this behaviour for hours; I have extensivelly researched for hours on the web; Process Monitor's collected and filtered data

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• How to enjoy DVD on Apple iPad

  - by user44251

  I believe many people spent a sleepless night yesterday waiting for the new Apple Tablet to come, just a few days ago or perhaps longer I noticed fierce debate about it, its name, size, capacity, processor, main features, price etc. And now, they can take a long breath with the new Apple Tablet named iPad officially released on 28, January, 2010 (Beijing Time). But I know a new battle just begins. iPad, sounds somewhat like iPod and it really shares some similarities in terms of shape like smart, light and portable. It has a 9.7-inch, LED-backlit, IPS display with a remarkable precise Multi-Touch screen. And yet, at just 1.5 lbs and 0.5 inches thin, it's easy to carry and use everywhere. It can greatly facilitates your experience with the web, emails, photos and videos. Right now, it can run almost 140.000 of the apps on the Apple store. It can even run the apps you have downloaded for your iPhone or iPod touch. But so far, I haven't seen any possibility that it can work with DVD, probability there is no built-in DVD-ROM or DVD player which can play DVD directly. As Apple iPad states, the video formats supported are MPEG-4 (MP4, M4V), H.264, MOV etc and audio formats accepted are AAC, Proteceted AAC, MP3, AIFF and WAV etc, those are formats that are commonly used with iMac. This could really a hard nut to crack if you want to watch your favourite DVD on this magic Apple iPad. But don't worry, there is still way out, you just need a few steps for ripping and importing DVD movies to Apple iPad with a simple application DVD to iPad converter What's on DVD to iPad Converter for Mac DVD to iPad converter for Mac is a powerful and professional application designed for the newly released Apple iPad which can rip, convert your DVD contents to Apple iPad compatible MPEG-4 (MP4, M4V), H.264, MOV etc, and other popular file formats like AVI, WMV, MPG, MKV, VOB, 3GP, FLV etc can also be converted so that you can put on your portable devices like iPod, iPhone, iRiver, BlackBerry etc. Besides, it can also extract audio from DVD videos and save as MP3, AIFF, AAC, WAV etc. Mac DVD to iPad converter has also been enhanced that can run both on PowerPC and Intel (Snow Leopard included). It can offer versatile editing features which allows you to make your own DVD videos. For example, you can cut your DVD to whatever length you like by Trim, crop off unwanted parts from DVD clips by Crop, add special effect like Gray, Emboss and Old film to make your videos more artistic. Besides, its built-in merging feature and batch mode allows you to join several DVD clips into a single one and do batch conversion. And more features can be expected if you afford a few minutes to try.

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• Network switching issues with MacOS 10.7?

  - by Denis

  I'm having a wired problem and hope somebody can tip me, what way should I dig to. I'm using MacBookPro with Lion 10.7.3 both at my working place & at home. At working place, we have a domain-based network with 802.1x authorization (more than 400 computers) and to connect it I'm using Ethernet cable. IP range is 10.10.2.*. All network settings are setup automatically by DHCP. Also, in settings, I have Network Account Server setup in the User&Groups Settings for my work Domain server - and it is available only from corporate network. At home, I have an ADSL router, that shares Internet connection by WiFi in NAT mode. I'm using WiFi to connect it. Router gives out addresses from 192.168.1.* range and all settings are also set up by router's DHCP. So, my problem is the following. When I come back home from the office, I open my MacBook and AirPort automatically connects my WiFi network. After this, for about 1 minute I'm able to browse sites & ping hosts successfully. But after this minute, network connection is broken down. All pings return time-out. trace route to google.com stops on 192.168.1.1 (which is my router). This lasts for 3-4 minutes. After that network connection is automatically repaired and all pings go smoothly again. At the same time, when my MacBook return timeouts, I can successfully ping any host from my wife's MacBook - so this doesn't look like router issue. When I come to the office, I don't have any issues and Internet connection is available & stable moments after ethernet cable plugged in. Do anybody has any clues about this? What should I monitor & what settings look for resolving this issue? Please, ask, what additional information should I provide. Hoping for good advice & thanks in advance!

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• VPN Connection Causes Internal LAN Connection Loss with Server

  - by sleepisfortheweak

  I've tried configuring basic PPTP VPN at my small business using a number of different tutorials. As far as I can tell, the actual VPN connection worked fine, but upon connecting a client, the Server 'disappears' from the internal LAN. The RRAS service must be stopped before the connection is restored. My Setup: The network is simply a DSL Gateway/Router to the outside functioning as NAT/Firewall/DHCP. The server is a Win Server 2008 machine at fixed IP 192.168.1.200. The server has 1 NIC, so I used the 'custom' option when configuring RRAS. The RRAS settings should be default except that I've disabled ports for connection types I'm not using and reduced PPTP ports to 10. I've also created an address pool and disabled DHCP packet forwarding. The server only functions as a File Share and now a VPN Server. Local LAN computers all have mapped network shares to the server authenticated based on Local User/Group setup on the server. The Problem: The moment a client connects through VPN, the server 'disappears' from the local network. All mapped drives disconnect and there is no response to a ping 192.168.1.200. Even if the client disconnects, the server does not re-appear at that address until the RRAS service is stopped. I've Tried: Using an Address Pool inside and outside the local subnet. Using DCHP Relay Checking Inbound/Outbound filters (none enabled) The fact that nothing I've tried has had any effect, and that I can connect and successfully obtain an IP tells me that it's something more fundamental I'm missing. My gut tells me that it's something to do with the second IP address added by the VPN client somehow taking over the interface or traffic from the local LAN accidently getting routed to the VPN client instead of handled at the server once RRAS has become 'active' when a client connects. Hopefully this may be obvious to someone with real IT experience. I've been doing this a while and almost never been stumped. I'm starting to think it might actually be something tricky since my setup is pretty basic yet refuses to work. I'll be happy to include more info if this doesn't ring any bells right away for anyone. Thanks

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• How to run a restricted set of programs with Administrator privileges without giving up Admin acces (Win7 Pro)

  - by frLich

  I have a shared system, running Windows7 X64, restricted to a 'standard user' with no password. Not everyone who has access to the system has the administrator password. This works rather well, except for some applications - specially the unlock-applications for encrypted hard drives/USB flash drives. The specific ones either require Administrator access (eg. Seagate Blackarmor) or simply fail without it -- since these programs are sending raw commands to a device, this is to be expected. I would like to be able to add the hashes of these particular programs to a whitelist, and have them run as administrator without needing any prompts. Since these are by definition on removable media, I can't simply use a filename or even a path. One of the users who shares the system can be considered 'crafty', so anything which temporarily grants administrator rights to an user account is certain to cause problems. What i'd like to be able to do: 1) Create an admin account that can only run programs from a whitelist (or, failing that, from a directory) I can't find a good way to do this: As far as I can tell, SRP applies equally to ALL users? Even if I put a "Deny" token on all directories on the system, such that new directories would inherit it, it could still potentially run things from the mounted USB devices. I also don't know whether it's possible to create a new directory that DOESN'T inherit from the parent, that would lake the deny token, and provide admin access. 2) Find a lightweight service that will run these programs in its local context Windows7 seems to block cross-privilege level communication by default, and I haven't found such for windows 7. One example seems to be "sudo" (http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~nfriess/sudo/) but because it uses a WLNOTIFY hook, it won't work under Vista nor Windows7 Non-Solutions: - RunAs: Requires administrator password! (but everyone calls it "sudo" anyway) - RunAs /savecred: Nice idea, but appears to be completely insecure. - RUNASSPC - Same concept as RunAs, uses "encrypted" files with credentials, but checks in user-space. - Scheduled Tasks - "Fixed" permissions make this difficult, and doesn't support interactive processes even if it did. - SuRun: From Google: "Surun uses its own Windows service that adds the user to the group of administrators during program start and removes him automatically from that group again"

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• Which hardware to VM ratio for Build-Server virtualization?

  - by Martin

  Let's start with saying that I'm a total noob wrt. to server virtualization. That is, I use VMs often during development, but they're simple desktop machine things for me. Now to my problem: We have two (physical) build servers, one master, one slave running Jenkins to do daily tasks and build (Visual C++ Builds) our release packages for our software. As such these machines are critical to our company, because we do lot's releases and without a controlled environment to create them, we can't ship fixes. (And currently there's no proper backup of these machines in place, because they do not hold any data as such - it just would be a major pain to setup them again should they go bust. (But setting up backup that I'd know would work in case of HW failure would even be more pain, so we have skipped that until now.)) Therefore (and for scaling purposes) we would like to go virtual with these machines. Outsourcing to the cloud is not an option, not at all, so we'll have to use on-premises hardware and VM hosts. Each Build-Server (master or slave) is a fully configured (installs, licenses, shares in case of the master, ...) Windows Server box. I would now ideally like to just convert the (two) existing physical nodes to VM images and run them. Later add more VM slave instances as clones of the existing ones. And here begin my questions: Should I go for one VM per one hardware-box or should I go for something where a single hardware runs multiple VMs? That would mean a single point of failure hardware wise and doesn't seem like a good idea ... or?? Since we're doing C++ compilation with Visual Studio, I assume that during a build the hardware (processor cores + disk) will be fully utilized, so going with more than one build-node per hardware doesn't seem to make much sense?? Wrt. to hardware options, does it make any difference which VM software we use (VMWare, MS, Virtualbox, ... ?) (We're using Windows exclusively for our builds.) Regarding budget: We have a normal small company (20 developers) budget for this. ;-) That is, if it's going to cost a few k$ it's going to cost. If it's free - the better. I strongly prefer solutions where there's no multi-k$ maintenance costs per year.

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• How to run a restricted set of programs with Administrator privileges without giving up Admin acces (Win7 Pro)

  - by frLich

  I have a shared system, running Windows7 X64, restricted to a 'standard user' with no password. Not everyone who has access to the system has the administrator password. This works rather well, except for some applications - specially the unlock-applications for encrypted hard drives/USB flash drives. The specific ones either require Administrator access (eg. Seagate Blackarmor) or simply fail without it -- since these programs are sending raw commands to a device, this is to be expected. I would like to be able to add the hashes of these particular programs to a whitelist, and have them run as administrator without needing any prompts. Since these are by definition on removable media, I can't simply use a filename or even a path. One of the users who shares the system can be considered 'crafty', so anything which temporarily grants administrator rights to an user account is certain to cause problems. What i'd like to be able to do: 1) Create an admin account that can only run programs from a whitelist (or, failing that, from a directory) I can't find a good way to do this: As far as I can tell, SRP applies equally to ALL users? Even if I put a "Deny" token on all directories on the system, such that new directories would inherit it, it could still potentially run things from the mounted USB devices. I also don't know whether it's possible to create a new directory that DOESN'T inherit from the parent, that would lake the deny token, and provide admin access. 2) Find a lightweight service that will run these programs in its local context Windows7 seems to block cross-privilege level communication by default, and I haven't found such for windows 7. One example seems to be "sudo" (http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~nfriess/sudo/) but because it uses a WLNOTIFY hook, it won't work under Vista nor Windows7 Non-Solutions: - RunAs: Requires administrator password! (but everyone calls it "sudo" anyway) - RunAs /savecred: Nice idea, but appears to be completely insecure. - RUNASSPC - Same concept as RunAs, uses "encrypted" files with credentials, but checks in user-space. - Scheduled Tasks - "Fixed" permissions make this difficult, and doesn't support interactive processes even if it did. - SuRun: From Google: "Surun uses its own Windows service that adds the user to the group of administrators during program start and removes him automatically from that group again"

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• XNA Notes 007

  - by George Clingerman

  Every week I keep wondering if there’s going to be enough activity in the community to keep doing these notes on a weekly basis and every week I’m reminded of just how awesome and active the XNA community is. There’s engines being made, tutorials being created, games being crafted. There’s information being shared, questions being answered and then there’s another whole community around the Xbox LIVE Indie Games themselves. It’s really incredibly to just watch all that’s going on and I’m glad I’m playing a small part in all of this. So here’s what I noticed happening in the XNA community last week. If there’s things I’m missing, always feel free to let me know. I love learning about new corners of the XNA community that I wasn’t aware of or just have been missing! XNA Developers: Uditha Bandara held an XNA Game Development Workshops at Singapore Universities http://uditha.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/xna-game-development-workshops-at-singapore-universities-event-update/ Binary Tweed gives his talks about Indie City and gives his opinion on the false promise of digital distribution http://www.develop-online.net/news/37053/OPINION-The-false-promise-of-digital-distribution Kris Steele posts his Trivia or Die postmortem http://www.krissteele.net/blogdetails.aspx?id=246 @MadNinjaSkills (James Johnston) posts his feelings on testing for XBLIG http://www.ezmuze.co.uk/101 Simon (@DDReaper) posts hints and tips for XNA developers to help get the size of their projects down http://twitter.com/#!/DDReaper/status/38279440924545024 http://xna-uk.net/blogs/darkgenesis/archive/2011/02/17/look-at-the-size-of-that-thing.aspx Michael B. McLaughlin proving why he should be an XNA MVP posts the list of commonly used value types in XNA games http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/02/17/list-of-commonly-used-value-types-in-xna-games.aspx http://twitter.com/#!/mikebmcl/status/38166541354811392 Paul Powell (@ITSligoPaul) posts about a common sprite batch as a game service http://itspaulsblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/xna-common-sprite-batch-as-game-service.html @SigilXNA (John Defenbaugh) posts his new level editor video for the sequel to Opac’s Journey http://twitter.com/SigilXNA/statuses/36548174373982209 http://twitter.com/#!/SigilXNA/status/36548174373982209 http://youtu.be/QHbmxB_2AW8 @jwatte updates kW Animation for XNA 4.0 http://www.enchantedage.com/xna-animation @DSebJ posts Blender to SunBurn http://twitter.com/#!/DSebJ/status/36564920224976896 http://dsebj.evolvingsoftware.com/?p=187 Ads and WP7 Games - @mechaghost shares his revenue data for his ad based games http://www.occasionalgamer.com/2011/02/09/ads-and-wp7-games/ Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): Steven Hurdle posts day 100 of his quest to find a fantastic XBLIG purchase every day http://writingsofmassdeduction.com/2011/02/17/day-100-radiangames-ballistic/ Xbox 360 Indie Game Buying Guide - 12 games for $60 including several Xbox LIVE Indie games! (although if the XNA community was asked we could have recommended 60 games for $60...) http://www.indiegamemag.com/xbox360-indie-games-buying-guide/ The best selling Xbox LIVE Indie games of 2010 http://www.1up.com/news/xbox-live-most-popular-games I’d buy that for a dollar! - the California Literary Review points out a few gems on the XBLIG marketplace (and other places) where you can game on the cheap. http://calitreview.com/14125 Armless Octopus Episode 39 - The Indie Gem Octocast http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/02/17/armless-octocast-episode-39-the-indie-gem-octocast/ Ska Studios posts a plethora of updates http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/11/good-morning-gato-49/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/14/vampire-smile-valentines/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/16/the-dishwasher-vs-finds-a-home/ Kotaku posts about the Xbox LIVE Indie Game that makes you go Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew http://kotaku.com/#!5760632/the-game-that-makes-you-go-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew GameMarx continues to be active and doing a ton for the XBLIG community reviews and Top 5 indie games of the week 2/4-2/10 http://www.gamemarx.com/video/the-show/22/ep-9-february-11-2010.aspx a new podcast Xbox Indie New Releases http://twitter.com/#!/gamemarx/status/36888849107910656 http://www.gamemarx.com/news/2011/02/13/a-new-podcast-xbox-indie-new-releases.aspx @MasterBlud uploads Indocalypse XBLIG Collections #2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzCZSv075mc&feature=youtu.be&a http://twitter.com/#!/MasterBlud/status/37100029697064960 Just Press Start interviews Michael Hicks from MichaelArts, 18 year old creator of Honor in Vengeance http://justpressstart.net/?p=465 Achievement Locked interviews Kris Steele of FunInfused Games http://xboxindies.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/interview-fun-infused-games/ XNA Game Development: XNA -UK launches their XAP test service to help the XNA community http://xna-uk.net/blogs/news/archive/2011/02/18/xna-uk-xap-test-service-now-live.aspx Transmute shows off a video of the standard character editor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqH6gErG948&feature=youtu.be Microsoft Tech Student introduces their first tech student of the month.  Meet Daniel Van Tassel from the University of Utah and learn how he created an Xbox LIVE Indie Game using XNA Studio http://blogs.msdn.com/b/techstudent/archive/2010/12/22/introducing-our-first-tech-student-of-the-month-daniel-van-tassel.aspx XNA for Silverlight Developers Part 3 - Animation (transforms) http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-3-Animation-transforms.aspx XNA for Silverlight Developers Part 4 - Animation (frame based) http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-4-Animation-frame-based.aspx @suhinini tweets about an XNA Sprite Font generation tool http://twitter.com/#!/suhinini/status/36841370131890176 http://www.nubik.com/SpriteFont/ XNATouch 1.5 is out and in it’s words is faster, simpler, more reliable and has the XNA 4.0 API http://monogame.codeplex.com/releases/view/60815 IndieCity is hosting marketing workshops for Indie Developers (UK and US) http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/75197/457654.aspx#457654 New York Students - Learn XNA and Silverlight for Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7 http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/72753/456964.aspx#456964 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/andrewparsons/archive/2011/01/13/learn-to-build-your-own-games-for-xbox-360-and-windows-phone-7.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/andrewparsons/archive/2011/01/13/build-a-game-in-48-hours-win-a-kinect-or-windows-phone-7.aspx Extra Credits: Videogame Music http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2019-Videogame-Music Steve Pavlina posts an article with useful information for all XNA/XBLIG developers http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2011/02/completion-vs-perfection/

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• Setup Remote Access in Windows Home Server

  - by Mysticgeek

  One of the many awesome features of Windows Home Server, is the ability to access your server and other computers on your network remotely. Today we show you the steps to enable Remote Access to your home server from anywhere you have an Internet connection. Remote Access in Windows Home Server has a lot of great features like uploading and downloading files from shared folders, accessing files from machines on your network, and controling machines remotely (on supported OS versions). Here we take a look at the basics of setting it up, choosing a domain name, and verifying you can connect remotely. Setup Remote Access in Windows Home Server Open the Windows Home Server Console and click on Settings. Next select Remote Access, it is off by default, just click the button to turn it on. Wait while your router is configured for remote access, when it’s complete click Next. Notice that it will enable UPnP, if you don’t wish to have that enabled, you can manually forward the correct ports. If you have any problems with the router being automatically configured, we’ll be taking a look at a more detailed troubleshooting guide in the future. The router is successfully configured, and we can continue to the next process of configuring our domain name. The Domain Name Setup Wizard will start. Notice you will need a Windows Live ID to set it up –which is typically your hotmail address. If you don’t already have one, you can get one here. Type in your Live ID email address and password and click Next… Agree to the Home Server Privacy Statement and the Live Custom Domains Addendum. If you’re concerned about privacy and want to learn more about the domain addendum, make sure to read about it before agreeing. There is nothing abnormal to point out about either statement, but if this is your first time setting it up, it’s good to review the information.   Now choose a name for the domain. You should select something that is easy to remember and identifies your home server. The name can contain up to 63 characters, numbers, letters, and hyphens…and must begin and end with a letter or number. When you have the name figured out click the Confirm button. Note: You can only register one domain name per Live ID. If the name isn’t already taken, you’ll get a confirmation message indicating it’s god to go. The wizard is complete and you can now access the home server from the URL provided. A few other things to point out after you’ve set it up…under Domain Name click on the Details button… Which pulls up the domain detail information and you can refresh the data to verify everything is working correctly. Or you can click the Configure button and then change or release your current domain name. Under Web site settings, you can change you site page headline to whatever you want it to be. Accessing Home Server Remotely After you’ve gotten everything setup for your home server domain, you can begin to access it when you’re away from home. Simply type in the domain address you created in the previous steps. The start page is rather boring…and to start accessing your data, click the Log On button in the upper right hand corner. Then enter in your home server credentials to gain access to your files, folders, and network computers. You won’t be able to log in with your administrator user account however, to protect security of your network. Once you’re logged in, you’ll be able to access different parts of your home server shares and network computers. Conclusion Now that you have Remote Access setup, you should be able to access and manage your files easily. Being able to access data from your home server remotely is great when you need to get certain files while on the road. The web UI is pretty self explanatory, works best in IE as ActiveX is required, and is smooth and easy to work with. In future articles we’ll be covering a lot more regarding remote access, including more of the available features, troubleshooting connection issues, and enabling access for other users. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips GMedia Blog: Setting Up a Windows Home ServerHow to Remote Desktop to the Actual Server Console on Windows 2003Use Windows Vista Aero through Remote Desktop ConnectionAccess Your MySQL Server Remotely Over SSHShare Ubuntu Home Directories using Samba 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 Penolo Lets You Share Sketches On Twitter Visit Woolyss.com for Old School Games, Music and Videos Add a Custom Title in IE using Spybot or Spyware Blaster When You Need to Hail a Taxi in NYC Live Map of Marine Traffic NoSquint Remembers Site Specific Zoom Levels (Firefox)

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• SQLAuthority News – Meeting SQL Friends – SQLPASS 2011 Event Log

  - by pinaldave

  One of the biggest reason I go to SQLPASS is that my friends are going there too. There are so many friends with whom I often talk on Facebook and Twitter but I rarely get time to meet them as well talk with them. One thing I am usually sure that many fo them will be for sure attend SQLPASS. This is one event which every SQL Server Enthusiast should attend. Just like everybody I had pleasant time to meet many of my SQL friends. There were so many friends that I met and I did not click photo. There were so many friends who clicked photo in their camera and I do not have them. Here are 1% of the photos which I have. If you are not in the photo, it does not mean I have less respect to our friendship. Please post link to our photo together :) I was very fortunate that I was able to snap a quick photograph with Pinal Dave with Dr. David DeWitt. I stood outside of the hall waiting for Dr. to show up and when he was heading down from convention center I requested him if I can have one photo for my memory lane and very politely he agreed to have one. It indeed made my day! Pinal Dave with Dr. David DeWitt Every single time I met Steve, I make sure I have one photo for my memory. Steve is so kind every single time. If you know SQL and do not know Steve Jones, you do not know SQL (IMHO). Following is the photograph with Michael McLean. More details about this photo in future blog post! Pinal Dave, Michael McLean, and Rick Morelan Arnie always shares his wisdom with me. I still remember when I very first time visited USA, I was standing alone in corner and Arnie walked to me and introduced to every single person he know. Talking to Arnie is always pleasure and inspiring. Arnie Rowland and Pinal Dave I am now published author and have written two books so far. I am fortunate to have Rick Morelan as Co-author of both of my books. He is great guy and very easy to become friends with. I am very much impressed by him and his kindness during book co-authoring. Here is very first of our photograph together at SQLPASS. Rick Morelan and Pinal Dave Diego Nogare and I have been talking for long time on twitter and on various social media channels. I finally got chance to meet my friend from Brazil. It was excellent experience to meet a friend whom one wants to meet for long time and had never got chance earlier. Buck Woody – who does not know Buck. He is funny, kind and most important friends of every one. Buck is so kind that he does not hesitate to approach people even though he is famous and most known in community. Every time I meet him I learn something. He is always smiling and approachable. Pinal Dave and Buck Woddy Rushabh Mehta is current SQL PASS president and personal friend. He has always smiling face and tremendous love for SQL community. I often wonder where he gets all the time for all the time and efforts he puts in for community. I never miss a chance to meet and greet him. Even though he is renowned SQL Guru and extremely busy person – every single time I meet him he always asks me – “How is Nupur and Shaivi?” He even remembers my wife and daughters name. I am touched. Rushabh Mehta and Pinal Dave Nigel Sammy has extremely well sense of humor and passion from community. We have excellent synergy while we are together. The attached photo is taken while I was talking to him on Seattle Shoreline about SQL. Pinal Dave and Nigel Sammy Rick Morelan wanted my this trip to be memorable. I am vegetarian and I told him that I do not like Seafood. Well, to prove the point, he took me to fantastic Seafood restaurant in Seattle and treated me with mouth watering vegetarian dishes. I think when I go to Seattle next time, I am going to make him to take me again to the same place. Rick, Rushabh, Pinal and Paras Well, this is a short summary of few of the friends I met at Seattle. What is the life without friends, eh? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL PASS, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC Review

  - by Ben Griswold

  A few years back I started dallying with test-driven development, but I never fully committed to the practice. This wasn’t because I didn’t believe in the value of TDD; it was more a matter of not completely understanding how to incorporate “test first” into my everyday development. Back in my web forms days, I could point fingers at the framework for my ignorance and laziness. After all, web forms weren’t exactly designed for testability so who could blame me for not embracing TDD in those conditions, right? But when I switched to ASP.NET MVC and quickly found myself fresh out of excuses and it became instantly clear that it was time to get my head around red-green-refactor once and for all or I would regretfully miss out on one of the biggest selling points the new framework had to offer. I have previously written about how I learned ASP.NET MVC. It was primarily hands on learning but I did read a couple of ASP.NET MVC books along the way. The books I read dedicated a chapter or two to TDD and they certainly addressed the benefits of TDD and how MVC was designed with testability in mind, but TDD was merely an afterthought compared to, well, teaching one how to code the model, view and controller. This approach made some sense, and I learned a bunch about MVC from those books, but when it came to TDD the books were just a teaser and an opportunity missed.  But then I got lucky – Jonathan McCracken contacted me and asked if I’d review his book, Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC, and it was just what I needed to get over the TDD hump. As the title suggests, Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC takes a different approach to learning MVC as it focuses on testing right from the very start. McCracken wastes no time and swiftly familiarizes us with the framework by building out a trivial Quote-O-Matic application and then dedicates the better part of his book to testing first – first by explaining TDD and then coding a full-featured Getting Organized application inspired by David Allen’s popular book, Getting Things Done. If you are a learn-by-example kind of coder (like me), you will instantly appreciate and enjoy McCracken’s style – its fast-moving, pragmatic and focused on only the most relevant information required to get you going with ASP.NET MVC and TDD. The book continues with the test-first theme but McCracken moves away from the sample application and incorporates other practical skills like persisting models with NHibernate, leveraging Inversion of Control with the IControllerFactory and building a RESTful web service. What I most appreciated about this section was McCracken’s use of and praise for open source libraries like Rhino Mocks, SQLite and StructureMap (to name just a few) and productivity tools like ReSharper, Web Platform Installer and ASP.NET SQL Server Setup Wizard.  McCracken’s emphasis on real world, pragmatic development was clearly demonstrated in every tool choice, straight-forward code block and developer tip. Whether one is already familiar with the tools/tips or not, McCracken’s thought process is easily understood and appreciated. The final section of the book walks the reader through security and deployment – everything from error handling and logging with ELMAH, to ASP.NET Health Monitoring, to using MSBuild with automated builds, to the deployment  of ASP.NET MVC to various web environments. These chapters, like those prior, offer enough information and explanation to simply help you get the job done.  Do I believe Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC will turn you into an expert MVC developer overnight?  Well, no.  I don’t think any book can make that claim.  If that were possible, I think book list prices would skyrocket!  That said, Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC provides a solid foundation and a unique (and dare I say necessary) approach to learning ASP.NET MVC.  Along the way McCracken shares loads of very practical software development tips and references numerous tools and libraries. The bottom line is it’s a great ASP.NET MVC primer – if you’re new to ASP.NET MVC it’s just what you need to get started.  Do I believe Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC will give you everything you need to start employing TDD in your everyday development?  Well, I used to think that learning TDD required a lot of practice and, if you’re lucky enough, the guidance of a mentor or coach.  I used to think that one couldn’t learn TDD from a book alone. Well, I’m still no pro, but I’m testing first now and Jonathan McCracken and his book, Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC, played a big part in making this happen.  If you are an MVC developer and a TDD newb, Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC is just the book for you.

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• Big Data – Role of Cloud Computing in Big Data – Day 11 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned the importance of the NewSQL. In this article we will understand the role of Cloud in Big Data Story What is Cloud? Cloud is the biggest buzzword around from last few years. Everyone knows about the Cloud and it is extremely well defined online. In this article we will discuss cloud in the context of the Big Data. Cloud computing is a method of providing a shared computing resources to the application which requires dynamic resources. These resources include applications, computing, storage, networking, development and various deployment platforms. The fundamentals of the cloud computing are that it shares pretty much share all the resources and deliver to end users as a service.  Examples of the Cloud Computing and Big Data are Google and Amazon.com. Both have fantastic Big Data offering with the help of the cloud. We will discuss this later in this blog post. There are two different Cloud Deployment Models: 1) The Public Cloud and 2) The Private Cloud Public Cloud Public Cloud is the cloud infrastructure build by commercial providers (Amazon, Rackspace etc.) creates a highly scalable data center that hides the complex infrastructure from the consumer and provides various services. Private Cloud Private Cloud is the cloud infrastructure build by a single organization where they are managing highly scalable data center internally. Here is the quick comparison between Public Cloud and Private Cloud from Wikipedia:   Public Cloud Private Cloud Initial cost Typically zero Typically high Running cost Unpredictable Unpredictable Customization Impossible Possible Privacy No (Host has access to the data Yes Single sign-on Impossible Possible Scaling up Easy while within defined limits Laborious but no limits Hybrid Cloud Hybrid Cloud is the cloud infrastructure build with the composition of two or more clouds like public and private cloud. Hybrid cloud gives best of the both the world as it combines multiple cloud deployment models together. Cloud and Big Data – Common Characteristics There are many characteristics of the Cloud Architecture and Cloud Computing which are also essentially important for Big Data as well. They highly overlap and at many places it just makes sense to use the power of both the architecture and build a highly scalable framework. Here is the list of all the characteristics of cloud computing important in Big Data Scalability Elasticity Ad-hoc Resource Pooling Low Cost to Setup Infastructure Pay on Use or Pay as you Go Highly Available Leading Big Data Cloud Providers There are many players in Big Data Cloud but we will list a few of the known players in this list. Amazon Amazon is arguably the most popular Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider. The history of how Amazon started in this business is very interesting. They started out with a massive infrastructure to support their own business. Gradually they figured out that their own resources are underutilized most of the time. They decided to get the maximum out of the resources they have and hence  they launched their Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) service in 2006. Their products have evolved a lot recently and now it is one of their primary business besides their retail selling. Amazon also offers Big Data services understand Amazon Web Services. Here is the list of the included services: Amazon Elastic MapReduce – It processes very high volumes of data Amazon DynammoDB – It is fully managed NoSQL (Not Only SQL) database service Amazon Simple Storage Services (S3) – A web-scale service designed to store and accommodate any amount of data Amazon High Performance Computing – It provides low-tenancy tuned high performance computing cluster Amazon RedShift – It is petabyte scale data warehousing service Google Though Google is known for Search Engine, we all know that it is much more than that. Google Compute Engine – It offers secure, flexible computing from energy efficient data centers Google Big Query – It allows SQL-like queries to run against large datasets Google Prediction API – It is a cloud based machine learning tool Other Players Besides Amazon and Google we also have other players in the Big Data market as well. Microsoft is also attempting Big Data with the Cloud with Microsoft Azure. Additionally Rackspace and NASA together have initiated OpenStack. The goal of Openstack is to provide a massively scaled, multitenant cloud that can run on any hardware. Thing to Watch The cloud based solutions provides a great integration with the Big Data’s story as well it is very economical to implement as well. However, there are few things one should be very careful when deploying Big Data on cloud solutions. Here is a list of a few things to watch: Data Integrity Initial Cost Recurring Cost Performance Data Access Security Location Compliance Every company have different approaches to Big Data and have different rules and regulations. Based on various factors, one can implement their own custom Big Data solution on a cloud. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about various Operational Databases supporting Big Data. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• XNA Notes 005

  - by George Clingerman

  Another week and another crazy amount of activity going on in the XNA community. I’m fairly certain I missed over half of it. In fact, if I am missing things, make sure to email me and I’ll try and make sure I catch it next week! ([email protected]). Also, if you’ve got any advice, things you like/don’t like about the way these XNA Notes are going let me know. I always appreciate feedback (currently spammers are leaving me the nicest comments so you guys have work to do!) Without further ado, here’s this week’s notes! Time Critical XNA News The XNA Team Blob reminds us that February 7th is the last day to submit XNA 3.1 games to peer review! http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2011/01/31/7-days-left-to-submit-xna-gs-3-1-games-on-app-hub.aspx XNA MVPS Chris Williams kicks off the marketing campaign for our book http://geekswithblogs.net/cwilliams/archive/2011/01/28/143680.aspx Catalin Zima posts the comparison cheat sheet for why Angry Birds is different than Chickens Can’t Fly http://www.amusedsloth.com/2011/02/comparison-cheat-sheet-for-chickens-cant-fly-and-angry-birds/ Jim Perry congratulates the developers selected by Game Developer Magazine for Best Xbox LIVE Indie Games of 2010 http://machxgames.com/blog/?p=24 @NemoKrad posts his XNAKUUG talks for all to enjoy http://twitter.com/NemoKrad/statuses/33142362502864896 http://xna-uk.net/blogs/randomchaos/archive/2011/02/03/xblig-uk-2011-january-amp-february-talk.aspx George  (that’s me!) preps for his XNA talk coming up on the 8th http://twitter.com/clingermangw/statuses/32669550554124288 http://www.portlandsilverlight.net/Meetings/Details/15 XNA Developers FireFly posts the last tutorial in his XNA Tower Defense tutorial series http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/26442/451460.aspx#451460 http://xnatd.blogspot.com/2011/01/tutorial-14-polishing-game.html @fredericmy posts the main difference when porting a game from Windows Phone 7 to Xbox 360 http://fairyengine.blogspot.com/2011/01/main-differences-when-porting-game-from.html @ElementCy creates a pretty rad video of a MineCraft type terrain created using XNA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Waw1f7wnl9I Andrew Russel gets the first XNA badge on gamedev.stackexchange http://twitter.com/_AndrewRussell/statuses/32322877004972032 http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/badges?tab=tags And his funding for ExEn has passed $7000 only $3000 to go http://twitter.com/_AndrewRussell/statuses/33042412804771840 Subodh Pushpak blogs about his Windows Phone 7 XNA talk http://geekswithblogs.net/subodhnpushpak/archive/2011/02/01/windows-phone-7-silverlight--xna-development-talk.aspx Slyprid releases the latest version of Transmute and needs more people to test http://twitter.com/slyprid/statuses/32452488418299904 http://forgottenstarstudios.com/ SpynDoctorGames celebrates the 1 year anniversary of Your Doodles Are Bugged! Congrats! http://twitter.com/SpynDoctorGames/statuses/32511689068908544 Noogy (creator of Dust the Elysian Tail) prepares his conversion to XNA 4.0 http://twitter.com/NoogyTweet/statuses/32522008449253376 @philippedasilva posts about the Indiefreaks Game Framework v0.2.0.0 Input management system http://twitter.com/philippedasilva/statuses/32763393957957632 http://indiefreaks.com/2011/02/02/behind-smart-input-system-feature/ Mommy’s Best Games debates what to do about High Scores with their new update http://mommysbest.blogspot.com/2011/02/high-score-shake-up.html @BinaryTweedDeej want to know if there’s anything the community needs to make XNA games for the PC. Give him some feedback! http://twitter.com/BinaryTweedDeej/status/32895453863354368 @mikebmcl promises to write us all a book (I can’t wait to read it!) http://twitter.com/mikebmcl/statuses/33206499102687233 @werezompire is going to live, LIVE, thanks to all the generosity and support from the community! http://twitter.com/werezompire/statuses/32840147644977153 Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG) Making money in Xbox 360 indie game development. Is it possible? http://www.bitmob.com/articles/making-money-in-xbox-360-indie-game-development-is-it-possible @AlejandroDaJ posts some thoughts abut the bitmob article http://twitter.com/AlejandroDaJ/statuses/31068552165330944 http://www.apathyworks.com/blog/view.php?id=00215 Kobun gets my respect as an XBLIG champion. I’m not sure who Kobun is, but if you’ve every read through the comment sections any time Kotaku writes about XBLIGs you’ll see a lot of confusion, disinformation in there. Kobun has been waging a secret war battling that lack of knowledge and he does it well. Also he’s running a pretty kick ass site for Xbox LIVE Indie Game reviews http://xboxindies.teamkobun.com/ @radiangames releases his last Xbox LIVE Indie Game...for now http://bit.ly/gMK6lE Playing Avaglide with the Kinect controller http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqAYbHww53o http://www.joystiq.com/2011/01/30/kinect-hacks-take-to-the-skies-with-avaglide/ Luke Schneider of Radiangames interviewed in Edge magazine http://www.next-gen.biz/features/radiangames-venture Digital Quarters posts thoughts on why XBLIG’s online requirement kills certain genres http://digitalquarters.blogspot.com/2011/02/thoughts-why-xbligs-online-requirement.html Mommy’s Best Games shares the news that several XBLIGs were featured in the March 2011 issue of Famitsu 360 http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/33455/451487.aspx#451487 NaviFairy continues with his Indie-Game-A-Day http://gaygamer.net/2011/02/indie_game_a_day_epic_dungeon.html http://gaygamer.net/2011/02/indie_game_a_day_break_limit_r.html and more every day...that’s kind of the point! Keep your eye on this series! VVGTV continues with it’s awesome reviews/promotions for XBLIGs http://vvgtv.com/ http://vvgtv.com/2011/02/03/iredia-atrams-secret-xblig-review-2/ http://vvgtv.com/2011/02/02/poopocalypse-coming-soon-to-xblig/ ….and even more, you get the point. Magicka is an Indie Game doing really well on Steam AND it’s made using XNA http://www.magickagame.com/ http://twitter.com/Magickagame/statuses/32712762580799488 GameMarx reviews Antipole http://www.gamemarx.com/reviews/73/antipole-is-vvvvvvery-good.aspx Armless Octopus review Alpha Squad http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/01/28/xbox-indie-review-alpha-squad/ An interesting article about Kodu that Jim Perry found http://twitter.com/MachXGames/statuses/32848044105924608 http://www.develop-online.net/news/36915/10-year-old-Jordan-makes-games-The-UK-needs-more-like-her XNA Game Development Sgt. Conker posts about the Natur beta, a new book and whether you can make money with XBLIG http://www.sgtconker.com/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/a-new-book-on-the-block-and-a-new-natur-beta/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/making-money-in-xbox-360-indie-game-development-is-it-possible/ Tips for setting up SVN http://bit.ly/fKxgFh @bsimser found tons of royalty free music and soundfx for your XNA Games http://twitter.com/bsimser/statuses/31426632933711872 Post on the new features in the next Sunburn Editor http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/fivesidedbarrel/archive/2011/01/28/new-editor-features-prefabs-components-and-more.aspx @jasons_novaleaf posts source code for light pre-pass optimizations for #xna http://twitter.com/jasons_novaleaf/statuses/33348855403642880 http://jcoluna.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/xna-4-0-light-pre-pass-optimization-round-one/ I’ve been learning about doing an A.I. for turn based games and this article was a great resource. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1535/designing_ai_algorithms_for_.php?print=1

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• SQL SERVER – SSIS Parameters in Parent-Child ETL Architectures – Notes from the Field #040

  - by Pinal Dave

  [Notes from Pinal]: SSIS is very well explored subject, however, there are so many interesting elements when we read, we learn something new. A similar concept has been Parent-Child ETL architecture’s relationship in SSIS. Linchpin People are database coaches and wellness experts for a data driven world. In this 40th episode of the Notes from the Fields series database expert Tim Mitchell (partner at Linchpin People) shares very interesting conversation related to how to understand SSIS Parameters in Parent-Child ETL Architectures. In this brief Notes from the Field post, I will review the use of SSIS parameters in parent-child ETL architectures. A very common design pattern used in SQL Server Integration Services is one I call the parent-child pattern.  Simply put, this is a pattern in which packages are executed by other packages.  An ETL infrastructure built using small, single-purpose packages is very often easier to develop, debug, and troubleshoot than large, monolithic packages.  For a more in-depth look at parent-child architectures, check out my earlier blog post on this topic. When using the parent-child design pattern, you will frequently need to pass values from the calling (parent) package to the called (child) package.  In older versions of SSIS, this process was possible but not necessarily simple.  When using SSIS 2005 or 2008, or even when using SSIS 2012 or 2014 in package deployment mode, you would have to create package configurations to pass values from parent to child packages.  Package configurations, while effective, were not the easiest tool to work with.  Fortunately, starting with SSIS in SQL Server 2012, you can now use package parameters for this purpose. In the example I will use for this demonstration, I’ll create two packages: one intended for use as a child package, and the other configured to execute said child package.  In the parent package I’m going to build a for each loop container in SSIS, and use package parameters to pass in a value – specifically, a ClientID – for each iteration of the loop.  The child package will be executed from within the for each loop, and will create one output file for each client, with the source query and filename dependent on the ClientID received from the parent package. Configuring the Child and Parent Packages When you create a new package, you’ll see the Parameters tab at the package level.  Clicking over to that tab allows you to add, edit, or delete package parameters. As shown above, the sample package has two parameters.  Note that I’ve set the name, data type, and default value for each of these.  Also note the column entitled Required: this allows me to specify whether the parameter value is optional (the default behavior) or required for package execution.  In this example, I have one parameter that is required, and the other is not. Let’s shift over to the parent package briefly, and demonstrate how to supply values to these parameters in the child package.  Using the execute package task, you can easily map variable values in the parent package to parameters in the child package. The execute package task in the parent package, shown above, has the variable vThisClient from the parent package mapped to the pClientID parameter shown earlier in the child package.  Note that there is no value mapped to the child package parameter named pOutputFolder.  Since this parameter has the Required property set to False, we don’t have to specify a value for it, which will cause that parameter to use the default value we supplied when designing the child pacakge. The last step in the parent package is to create the for each loop container I mentioned earlier, and place the execute package task inside it.  I’m using an object variable to store the distinct client ID values, and I use that as the iterator for the loop (I describe how to do this more in depth here).  For each iteration of the loop, a different client ID value will be passed into the child package parameter. The final step is to configure the child package to actually do something meaningful with the parameter values passed into it.  In this case, I’ve modified the OleDB source query to use the pClientID value in the WHERE clause of the query to restrict results for each iteration to a single client’s data.  Additionally, I’ll use both the pClientID and pOutputFolder parameters to dynamically build the output filename. As shown, the pClientID is used in the WHERE clause, so we only get the current client’s invoices for each iteration of the loop. For the flat file connection, I’m setting the Connection String property using an expression that engages both of the parameters for this package, as shown above. Parting Thoughts There are many uses for package parameters beyond a simple parent-child design pattern.  For example, you can create standalone packages (those not intended to be used as a child package) and still use parameters.  Parameter values may be supplied to a package directly at runtime by a SQL Server Agent job, through the command line (via dtexec.exe), or through T-SQL. Also, you can also have project parameters as well as package parameters.  Project parameters work in much the same way as package parameters, but the parameters apply to all packages in a project, not just a single package. Conclusion Of the numerous advantages of using catalog deployment model in SSIS 2012 and beyond, package parameters are near the top of the list.  Parameters allow you to easily share values from parent to child packages, enabling more dynamic behavior and better code encapsulation. If you want me to take a look at your server and its settings, or if your server is facing any issue we can Fix Your SQL Server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Notes from the Field, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• XNA Notes 002

  - by George Clingerman

  This past week (much like every week in the XNA community) was filled with things happening and people doing cool things (and getting noticed for doing cool things!). You can definitely tell there are some Xbox LIVE Indie game developers starting to make some names for themselves. Can’t wait to name drop them at bars. Me- “Oh you played Game X? Yeah, I know the guy that made that. Pretty cool guy.” Yeah, I’ll be THAT guy.   Time Critical XNA News 30 days left to submit XBLIGs made in XNA Game Studio 3.1 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2011/01/08/30-days-left-to-submit-xna-gs-3-1-games-to-app-hub.aspx Jeromy Walsh wants you to know his XNA 4.0 Winter Workshop starting soon, go get signed up! And the forum is now LIVE on GameDev.net http://gamedevelopedia.com/ http://tinyurl.com/4gg2cfv The XNA Team Per Nick Gravelyn, Aaron Stebner’s blog post is a must read for icons on Windows Phone http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/72022/439597.aspx#439597 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astebner/archive/2010/10/01/10070507.aspx Shawn Hargreaves writes about Sprite Billboards in a 3D world http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2011/01/12/spritebatch-billboards-in-a-3d-world.aspx XNA MVPs Andy “The ZMan” Dunn wants YOU to come to the MVP Summit and run a 5K http://www.indiegameguy.com/blogs/zman/archive/2010/12/26/come-to-the-mvp-summit-and-run-a-5k-yes-you.aspx Jim Perry updates his forum signature just to make it clear that he’s not speaking for Microsoft or giving official information (LOL, thanks Jim, now if only people will take the time to read that...) XNA MVP | Please use the Forum Search and read the Forum FAQs | My posts are not official info http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/70849/439613.aspx#439613 XNA Developers Robert Boyd (@werezombie) working hard at converting his RPG engine used to make Breath of Death VII and Chtulu Saves the World to XNA 4.0. If you haven’t done the upgrade yet yourself, might be useful to read back through his tweets and recent forum posts to see the problems/solutions he’s encountered. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/71834/438099.aspx#438099 http://www.twitter.com/werezompire SpynDoctorGames is in the final phase before the release of Your Doodles are Bugged for the PC! Going to be interesting to watch as more XNA game developers explore the PC game market for their games. http://twitter.com/SpynDoctorGames/statuses/24503173217521664 http://www.spyn-doctor.de @DrMistry shares some details of his next title YoYoYo http://www.mstargames.co.uk/mistryblogmain/35-genblog/177-a-new-year-a-new-game-and-maybe-a-new-approach.html Travis Woodward (@RabidLionGames) has a blog post coming this weekend on Farseer and Mario-like platformer movement. http://twitter.com/RabidLionGames/statuses/24992762021548032 http://www.rabidlion.com/ S4G Interview with Radiangames http://n4g.com/news/679492/s4g-interview-with-radiangames XBLAratings.com interviews Steve Flores (@DragonDivide) developer of Alpha Squad http://www.xblaratings.com/developer-qaa/3621-alpha-squad-developer-interview XBox LIVE Indie Games If you haven’t been reading the roundups on IndieGames by NaviFairy on GayGamer, you’ve been missing out! http://gaygamer.net/2011/01/xbox_indie_review_roundup_1112.html Armless Octopus posts the Top 20 Games of 2010 Part 1 http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/01/10/top-20-xbox-live-indie-games-of-2010-part-1/ Armless Octopus posts the Top 20 Games of 2010 Part 2 http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/01/12/top-20-xbox-live-indie-games-of-2010-%E2%80%93-part-2/ Xbox LIVE Indie Game Reviews http://www.gamemarx.com/ Don’t forget to be following @XboxHornet . That’s a great way to snag free copies of Xbox LIVE Indie Games http://twitter.com/XboxHornet/statuses/24471103808208896 http://www.xboxhornet.com/wordpress/ Xbox LIVE Indie Game Review posts the top 20 Xbox 360 LIVE Indie Games of 2010 http://www.xbox-360-community-games-reviews.com/top-20-best-xbox-360-live-indie-games-of-2010/ VVGtv to Stream #XBLIG Again! Help out if you can. http://vvgtv.com/2011/01/07/vvgtv-to-stream-xblig-again/ Indie Gamer Magazine Issue 14 has a look at the Xbox LIVE Winter Indie Game Uprisiing http://www.indiegamemag.com/issue14/ XNA Game Development Andrew Russell announced and asked for help in his development of ExEn: XNA for iPhone, Android and Silverlight http://rockethub.com/projects/752-exen-xna-for-iphone-android-and-silverlight App Hub forums letting you down? Don’t forget about StackOverflow and the game development specific version gamedev.stackexchange http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/xna http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/xna Transmute gets an update from Aaron Foley (@slyprid) and you can now add and visually edit parallax layers to your 2D tile game. http://twitpic.com/3nudj0 http://twitter.com/slyprid/statuses/23418379574448128 http://forgottenstarstudios.com/Transmute/default.html Webcomics Weekly #75 touches on some feelings I’ve seen people try to express (myself included) when talking about game development and what types of games should be released for XBLIG http://www.pvponline.com/2011/01/05/webcomics-weekly-75-sour-oats/ Setting up a new PC for XNA development? Here’s a site that helps you quickly build a installer for all the most common applications developers use. http://ninite.com/ Fun wew thread on the XNA forums asking XBLIG/XNA developers just what their Top 10 favorite video games of all time are. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/107.aspx Christopher Hill (@Xalterax) stumbled across an entire community that does nothing but create box art. This is a great potential resource for Xbox LIVE Indie Game developers to get some awesome box art for their games. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/46582/441451.aspx#441451 http://www.vgboxart.com/browse/plat/360/ Don’t forget about the XNA Wiki, fantastic community resource (and roll up those sleeves and contribute already!) http://xnawiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

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• Silverlight Cream for January 11, 2011 -- #1024

  - by Dave Campbell

  1,000 blogposts is quite a few, but to die-hard geeks, 1000 isn't the number... 1K is the number, and today is my 1K blogpost! I've been working up to this for at least 11 months. Way back at MIX10, I approached some vendors about an idea I had. A month ago I contacted them and others, and everyone I contacted was very generous and supportive of my idea. My idea was not to run a contest, but blog as normal, and whoever ended up on my 1K post would get some swag... and I set a cut-off at 13 posts. So... blogging normally, I had some submittals, and then ran my normal process to pick up the next posts until I hit a total of 13. To provide a distribution channel for the swag, everyone on the list, please send me your snail mail (T-shirts) and email (licenses) addresses as soon as possible.   I'd like to thank the following generous sponsors for their contributions to my fun (in alphabetic order): and Rachel Hawley for contributing 4 Silverlight control sets First Floor Software and Koen Zwikstra for contributing 13 licenses for Silverlight Spy and Sara Faatz/Jason Beres for contributing 13 licenses for Silverlight Data Visualization controls and Svetla Stoycheva for contributing T-Shirts for everyone on the post and Ina Tontcheva for contributing 13 licenses for RadControls for Silverlight + RadControls for Windows Phone and Charlene Kozlan for contributing 1 combopack standard, 2 DataGrid for Silverlight, and 2 Listbox for Silverlight Standard And now finally...in this Issue: Nigel Sampson, Jeremy Likness, Dan Wahlin, Kunal Chowdhurry, Alex Knight, Wei-Meng Lee, Michael Crump, Jesse Liberty, Peter Kuhn, Michael Washington, Tau Sick, Max Paulousky, Damian Schenkelman Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Demystifying Silverlight Dependency Properties" Dan Wahlin WP7: "Using Windows Phone Gestures as Triggers" Nigel Sampson Expression Blend: "PathListBox: making data look cool" Alex Knight From SilverlightCream.com: Using Windows Phone Gestures as Triggers Nigel Sampson blogged about WP7 Gestures, the Toolkit, and using Gestures as Triggers, and actually makes it looks simple :) Jounce Part 9: Static and Dynamic Module Management Jeremy Likness has episode 9 of his explanation of his MVVM framework, Jounce, up... and a big discussion of Modules and Module Management from a Jounce perspective. Demystifying Silverlight Dependency Properties Dan Wahlin takes a page from one of his teaching opportunities, and shares his knowledge of Dependency Properties with us... beginning with what they are, defining them in code, and demonstrating their use. Customizing Silverlight ChildWindow Style using Blend Kunal Chowdhurry has a great post up about getting your Child Windows to match the look & feel of the rest of youra app... plus a bunch of Blend goodness thrown in. PathListBox: making data look cool File this post by Alex Knight in the 'holy crap' file along with the others in this series! ... just check out that cool Ticker Style Path ListBox at the top of the blog... too cool! Web Access in Windows Phone 7 Apps Wei-Meng Lee has the 3rd part of his series on WP7 development up and in this one is discussing Web Access... I mean *discussing* it... tons of detail, code, and explanation... great post. Prevent your Silverlight XAP file from caching in your browser. Michael Crump helps relieve stress on Silverlight developers everywhere by exploring how to avoid caching of your XAP in the browser... (WPFS) MVVM Light Toolkit: Soup To Nuts Part I Jesse Liberty continues his Windows Phone from Scratch series with a new segment exploring Laurent Bugnion's MVVMLight Toolkit beginning with acquiring and installing the toolkit, then proceeds to discuss linking the View and ViewModel, the ViewModel Locator, and page navigation. Silverlight: Making a DateTimePicker Peter Kuhn attacks a problem that crops up on the forums a lot -- a DateTimePicker control for Silverlight... following the "It's so simple to build one yourself" advice, he did so, and provides the code for all of us! Windows Phone 7 Animated Button Press Michael Washington took exception to button presses that gave no visual feedback and produced a behavior that does just that. Using TweetSharp in a Windows Phone 7 app Tau Sick demonstrates using TweetSharp to put a twitter feed into a WP7 app, as he did in "Hangover Helper"... all the instructions from getting Tweeetshaprt to the code necessary. Bindable Application Bar Extensions for Windows Phone 7 Max Paulousky has a post discussing some real extensions to the ApplicationBar for WP7.. he begins with a bindable application bar by Nicolas Humann that I've missed, probably because his blog is in French... and extends it to allow using DelegateCommand. How to: Load Prism modules packaged in a separate XAP file in an OOB application Damian Schenkelman posts about Prism, AppModules in separate XAPs and running OOB... if you've tried this, you know it's a hassle.. Damian has the solution. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Backup Your Windows Home Server Off-Site with Asus Webstorage

  - by Mysticgeek

  Windows Home Server lets you backup machines on your network easily. But what about backing up the server data? Today we take a look at ASUS WebStorage for Windows Home Server, which provides you with secure off-site backup for WHS. To use the ASUS WebStorage service you’ll need to sign up for a free account. It offers 1GB of free storage, then you can purchase an unlimited backup package for $39.99 for a year subscription. Note: They also offer online storage for individual PCs as well. Install ASUS WebStorage for WHS Browse to your shared folders on the server and open the Add-Ins folder and copy over the WHSConnectorSetup2.2.4.088.msi file (link below) then close out of the folder. Now launch Windows Home Server Console from one of the computers on your network, click Settings, then Add-ins. Under Available Add-ins click the Available tab and you’ll see the Asus WebStorage installer file we just copied over. Click the Install button. Installation kicks off and when it’s complete, you’ll need to close out of the console and reconnect. Using ASUS WebStorage WHS Connector  When you reconnect to WHS Console, scroll over to the ASUS WebStorage icon and click on Settings. Now log into your ASUS account… Now select the folders you want to backup to the WebStorage service. Select the radio button next to Enable to initialize the backup process… The backup process begins. You can change which folders are backed up simply by disabling the backup process, uncheck the folder(s), then enable the backup again. ASUS WebStorage Site After you have files backed up to the ASUS site, log into your account, and your presented with an overview of the amount of storage you’re using. It also shows what type of files are taking certain amounts of space.   You can browse through your backed up files and folders. It allows you to share and sync backed up data as well. Navigate to the file you want and you can easily download it by clicking on it, or share it out by clicking the share link below it. If you choose to share it, you’re provided with a link to the file to send out to other users.   Conclusion Users of Windows Home Server have been looking for an inexpensive cloud backup solution for quite some time. There are services such as JungleDisk, KeepVault, Wuala…etc. These services probably do a better job, but can start getting expensive once you start uploading a GBs of data. Another disappointment of ASUS WebStorage is you can only backup your WHS shares (from what we’ve been able to determine), it’s an “all or nothing” type of thing. You cannot go in and select individual files and folders. The initial upload speeds can be a bit slow as well, although that might have something to do with limited upload speeds on the DSL connection we used to test it. Retrieving your data from the ASUS site is a breeze though, and all the data files are organized quite well. The WHS Addin is very easy to install and use. If you’re looking for an off-site solution to backup your WHS data, you can test out ASUS WebStorage for free with a 1GB limit. This is good for testing the service and it might be exactly what you’re looking for. Other users may want a more advanced solution like KeepVault or CloudBerry…which is a front end for Amazon S3 storage. Download ASUS WebStorage WHS Addin Other WHS Offsite Backup Solutions CloudBerry, JungleDisk, KeepVault, Wuala Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Restore Files from Backups on Windows Home ServerGMedia Blog: Setting Up a Windows Home ServerCreate A Windows Home Server Home Computer Restore DiscRemove a Network Computer from Windows Home ServerShare Ubuntu Home Directories using Samba 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 Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow

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