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• How to Upgrade Your Netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like more features and flash in Windows on your netbook?  Here’s how you can easily upgrade your netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium the easy way. Most new netbooks today ship with Windows 7 Starter, which is the cheapest edition of Windows 7.  It is fine for many computing tasks, and will run all your favorite programs great, but it lacks many customization, multimedia, and business features found in higher editions.  Here we’ll show you how you can quickly upgrade your netbook to more full-featured edition of Windows 7 using Windows Anytime Upgrade.  Also, if you want to upgrade your laptop or desktop to another edition of Windows 7, say Professional, you can follow these same steps to upgrade it, too. Please note: This is only for computers already running Windows 7.  If your netbook is running XP or Vista, you will have to run a traditional upgrade to install Windows 7. Upgrade Advisor First, let’s make sure your netbook can support the extra features, such as Aero Glass, in Windows 7 Home Premium.  Most modern netbooks that ship with Windows 7 Starter can run the advanced features in Windows 7 Home Premium, but let’s check just in case.  Download the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor (link below), and install as normal. Once it’s installed, run it and click Start Check.   Make sure you’re connected to the internet before you run the check, or otherwise you may see this error message.  If you see it, click Ok and then connect to the internet and start the check again. It will now scan all of your programs and hardware to make sure they’re compatible with Windows 7.  Since you’re already running Windows 7 Starter, it will also tell you if your computer will support the features in other editions of Windows 7. After a few moments, the Upgrade Advisor will show you want it found.  Here we see that our netbook, a Samsung N150, can be upgraded to Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate. We also see that we had one issue, but this was because a driver we had installed was not recognized.  Click “See all system requirements” to see what your netbook can do with the new edition. This shows you which of the requirements, including support for Windows Aero, your netbook meets.  Here our netbook supports Aero, so we’re ready to go upgrade. For more, check out our article on how to make sure your computer can run Windows 7 with Upgrade Advisor. Upgrade with Anytime Upgrade Now, we’re ready to upgrade our netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium.  Enter “Anytime Upgrade” in the Start menu search,and select Windows Anytime Upgrade. Windows Anytime Upgrade lets you upgrade using product key you already have or one you purchase during the upgrade process.  And, it installs without any downloads or Windows disks, so it works great even for netbooks without DVD drives. Anytime Upgrades are cheaper than a standard upgrade, and for a limited time, select retailers in the US are offering Anytime Upgrades to Windows 7 Home Premium for only $49.99 if purchased with a new netbook.  If you already have a netbook running Windows 7 Starter, you can either purchase an Anytime Upgrade package at a retail store or purchase a key online during the upgrade process for $79.95.  Or, if you have a standard Windows 7 product key (full or upgrade), you can use it in Anytime upgrade.  This is especially nice if you can purchase Windows 7 cheaper through your school, university, or office. Purchase an upgrade online To purchase an upgrade online, click “Go online to choose the edition of Windows 7 that’s best for you”.   Here you can see a comparison of the features of each edition of Windows 7.  Note that you can upgrade to either Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate.  We chose home Premium because it has most of the features that home users want, including Media Center and Aero Glass effects.  Also note that the price of each upgrade is cheaper than the respective upgrade from Windows XP or Vista.  Click buy under the edition you want.   Enter your billing information, then your payment information.  Once you confirm your purchase, you will directly be taken to the Upgrade screen.  Make sure to save your receipt, as you will need the product key if you ever need to reinstall Windows on your computer. Upgrade with an existing product key If you purchased an Anytime Upgrade kit from a retailer, or already have a Full or Upgrade key for another edition of Windows 7, choose “Enter an upgrade key”. Enter your product key, and click Next.  If you purchased an Anytime Upgrade kit, the product key will be located on the inside of the case on a yellow sticker. The key will be verified as a valid key, and Anytime Upgrade will automatically choose the correct edition of Windows 7 based on your product key.  Click Next when this is finished. Continuing the Upgrade process Whether you entered a key or purchased a key online, the process is the same from here on.  Click “I accept” to accept the license agreement. Now, you’re ready to install your upgrade.  Make sure to save all open files and close any programs, and then click Upgrade. The upgrade only takes about 10 minutes in our experience but your mileage may vary.  Any available Microsoft updates, including ones for Office, Security Essentials, and other products, will be installed before the upgrade takes place. After a couple minutes, your computer will automatically reboot and finish the installation.  It will then reboot once more, and your computer will be ready to use!  Welcome to your new edition of Windows 7! Here’s a before and after shot of our desktop.  When you do an Anytime Upgrade, all of your programs, files, and settings will be just as they were before you upgraded.  The only change we noticed was that our pinned taskbar icons were slightly rearranged to the default order of Internet Explorer, Explorer, and Media Player.  Here’s a shot of our desktop before the upgrade.  Notice that all of our pinned programs and desktop icons are still there, as well as our taskbar customization (we are using small icons on the taskbar instead of the default large icons). Before, with the Windows 7 Starter background and the Aero Basic theme: And after, with Aero Glass and the more colorful default Windows 7 background.   All of the features of Windows 7 Home Premium are now ready to use.  The Aero theme was activate by default, but you can now customize your netbook theme, background, and more with the Personalization pane.  To open it, right-click on your desktop and select Personalize. You can also now use Windows Media Center, and can play-back DVD movies using an external drive. One of our favorite tools, the Snipping Tool, is also now available for easy screenshots and clips. Activating you new edition of Windows 7 You will still need to activate your new edition of Windows 7.  To do this right away, open the start menu, right-click on Computer, and select Properties.   Scroll to the bottom, and click “Activate Windows Now”. Make sure you’re connected to the internet, and then select “Activate Windows online now”. Activation may take a few minutes, depending on your internet connection speed. When it is done, the Activation wizard will let you know that Windows is activated and genuine.  Your upgrade is all finished! Conclusion Windows Anytime Upgrade makes it easy, and somewhat cheaper, to upgrade to another edition of Windows 7.  It’s useful for desktop and laptop owners who want to upgrade to Professional or Ultimate, but many more netbook owners will want to upgrade from Starter to Home Premium or another edition.  Links Download the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Windows Team Blog: Anytime Upgrade Special with new PC purchase Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 Home Premium EditionAnother Blog You Should Subscribe ToMysticgeek Blog: Turn Vista Home Premium Into Ultimate (Part 3) – Shadow CopyUpgrade Ubuntu from Breezy to DapperHow to Upgrade the Windows 7 RC to RTM (Final Release) 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 Get Your Delicious Bookmarks In Firefox’s Awesome Bar Manage Photos Across Different Social Sites With Dropico Test Drive Windows 7 Online Download Wallpapers From National Geographic Site Spyware Blaster v4.3 Yes, it’s Patch Tuesday

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• More Great Improvements to the Windows Azure Management Portal

  - by ScottGu

  Over the last 3 weeks we’ve released a number of enhancements to the new Windows Azure Management Portal.  These new capabilities include: Localization Support for 6 languages Operation Log Support Support for SQL Database Metrics Virtual Machine Enhancements (quick create Windows + Linux VMs) Web Site Enhancements (support for creating sites in all regions, private github repo deployment) Cloud Service Improvements (deploy from storage account, configuration support of dedicated cache) Media Service Enhancements (upload, encode, publish, stream all from within the portal) Virtual Networking Usability Enhancements Custom CNAME support with Storage Accounts All of these improvements are now live in production and available to start using immediately.  Below are more details on them: Localization Support The Windows Azure Portal now supports 6 languages – English, German, Spanish, French, Italian and Japanese. You can easily switch between languages by clicking on the Avatar bar on the top right corner of the Portal: Selecting a different language will automatically refresh the UI within the portal in the selected language: Operation Log Support The Windows Azure Portal now supports the ability for administrators to review the “operation logs” of the services they manage – making it easy to see exactly what management operations were performed on them.  You can query for these by selecting the “Settings” tab within the Portal and then choosing the “Operation Logs” tab within it.  This displays a filter UI that enables you to query for operations by date and time: As of the most recent release we now show logs for all operations performed on Cloud Services and Storage Accounts.  You can click on any operation in the list and click the “Details” button in the command bar to retrieve detailed status about it.  This now makes it possible to retrieve details about every management operation performed. In future updates you’ll see us extend the operation log capability to apply to all Windows Azure Services – which will enable great post-mortem and audit support. Support for SQL Database Metrics You can now monitor the number of successful connections, failed connections and deadlocks in your SQL databases using the new “Dashboard” view provided on each SQL Database resource: Additionally, if the database is added as a “linked resource” to a Web Site or Cloud Service, monitoring metrics for the linked SQL database are shown along with the Web Site or Cloud Service metrics in the dashboard. This helps with viewing and managing aggregated information across both resources in your application. Enhancements to Virtual Machines The most recent Windows Azure Portal release brings with it some nice usability improvements to Virtual Machines: Integrated Quick Create experience for Windows and Linux VMs Creating a new Windows or Linux VM is now easy using the new “Quick Create” experience in the Portal: In addition to Windows VM templates you can also now select Linux image templates in the quick create UI: This makes it incredibly easy to create a new Virtual Machine in only a few seconds. Enhancements to Web Sites Prior to this past month’s release, users were forced to choose a single geographical region when creating their first site.  After that, subsequent sites could only be created in that same region.  This restriction has now been removed, and you can now create sites in any region at any time and have up to 10 free sites in each supported region: One of the new regions we’ve recently opened up is the “East Asia” region.  This allows you to now deploy sites to North America, Europe and Asia simultaneously.  Private GitHub Repository Support This past week we also enabled Git based continuous deployment support for Web Sites from private GitHub and BitBucket repositories (previous to this you could only enable this with public repositories).  Enhancements to Cloud Services Experience The most recent Windows Azure Portal release brings with it some nice usability improvements to Cloud Services: Deploy a Cloud Service from a Windows Azure Storage Account The Windows Azure Portal now supports deploying an application package and configuration file stored in a blob container in Windows Azure Storage. The ability to upload an application package from storage is available when you custom create, or upload to, or update a cloud service deployment. To upload an application package and configuration, create a Cloud Service, then select the file upload dialog, and choose to upload from a Windows Azure Storage Account: To upload an application package from storage, click the “FROM STORAGE” button and select the application package and configuration file to use from the new blob storage explorer in the portal. Configure Windows Azure Caching in a caching enabled cloud service If you have deployed the new dedicated cache within a cloud service role, you can also now configure the cache settings in the portal by navigating to the configuration tab of for your Cloud Service deployment. The configuration experience is similar to the one in Visual Studio when you create a cloud service and add a caching role.  The portal now allows you to add or remove named caches and change the settings for the named caches – all from within the Portal and without needing to redeploy your application. Enhancements to Media Services You can now upload, encode, publish, and play your video content directly from within the Windows Azure Portal.  This makes it incredibly easy to get started with Windows Azure Media Services and perform common tasks without having to write any code. Simply navigate to your media service and then click on the “Content” tab.  All of the media content within your media service account will be listed here: Clicking the “upload” button within the portal now allows you to upload a media file directly from your computer: This will cause the video file you chose from your local file-system to be uploaded into Windows Azure.  Once uploaded, you can select the file within the content tab of the Portal and click the “Encode” button to transcode it into different streaming formats: The portal includes a number of pre-set encoding formats that you can easily convert media content into: Once you select an encoding and click the ok button, Windows Azure Media Services will kick off an encoding job that will happen in the cloud (no need for you to stand-up or configure a custom encoding server).  When it’s finished, you can select the video in the “Content” tab and then click PUBLISH in the command bar to setup an origin streaming end-point to it: Once the media file is published you can point apps against the public URL and play the content using Windows Azure Media Services – no need to setup or run your own streaming server.  You can also now select the file and click the “Play” button in the command bar to play it using the streaming endpoint directly within the Portal: This makes it incredibly easy to try out and use Windows Azure Media Services and test out an end-to-end workflow without having to write any code.  Once you test things out you can of course automate it using script or code – providing you with an incredibly powerful Cloud Media platform that you can use. Enhancements to Virtual Network Experience Over the last few months, we have received feedback on the complexity of the Virtual Network creation experience. With these most recent Portal updates, we have added a Quick Create experience that makes the creation experience very simple. All that an administrator now needs to do is to provide a VNET name, choose an address space and the size of the VNET address space. They no longer need to understand the intricacies of the CIDR format or walk through a 4-page wizard or create a VNET / subnet. This makes creating virtual networks really simple: The portal also now has a “Register DNS Server” task that makes it easy to register DNS servers and associate them with a virtual network. Enhancements to Storage Experience The portal now lets you register custom domain names for your Windows Azure Storage Accounts.  To enable this, select a storage resource and then go to the CONFIGURE tab for a storage account, and then click MANAGE DOMAIN on the command bar: Clicking “Manage Domain” will bring up a dialog that allows you to register any CNAME you want: Summary The above features are all now live in production and available to use immediately.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using them today.  Visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. One of the other cool features that is now live within the portal is our new Windows Azure Store – which makes it incredibly easy to try and purchase developer services from a variety of partners.  It is an incredibly awesome new capability – and something I’ll be doing a dedicated post about shortly. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• updating from windows 8 to windows 8.1 give me error 0x101 0x2000c and driver irql not less or equal on clean install

  - by user1143745

  i'm trying to update my hp dv6-6156sl running win 8 to win 8.1. When i try to update the os with all kept when it configures devices (around 55%) i get a bsod with driver irql not less or equal error and windows revert back to my previous windows 8 showing at the end 0x101 0x2000c error. So i tried a clean install to see if i could fix it but i still get the same driver irql not less or equal error (on ntoskrnl.exe) I tried to edit bios settings to see if there's something to disable but like almost all hp laptops it is locked so i can only enable virtualization, select boot order and change gpu between fixed or dinamic (none of these worked) i found the dmp file with the error of the update: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2219086/setupmem.dmp How can i fix this?

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• WF4 - Display workflow design in asp.net and highlight an activity

  - by jikan_the_useless

  i need to display current status of a document approval workflow task in asp.net web page with a specific activity highlighted. i have seen the visual workflow tracker example (in wf&wcf samples) but i have two issues, 1-i have to render workflow in asp.net not in a wpf app. 2-i don't need to display current status with workflow running, all activities that need to highlighted are the one that require user input. e.g. "waiting for approval from department head" etc. if i could just convert the workflow xaml to jpg after highlighting a specific activity by activity id that created a bookmark and waiting to resume the bookmark it would do the work.

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• Conheça a nova Windows Azure

  - by Leniel Macaferi

  Hoje estamos lançando um grande conjunto de melhorias para a Windows Azure. A seguir está um breve resumo de apenas algumas destas melhorias: Novo Portal de Administração e Ferramentas de Linha de Comando O lançamento de hoje vem com um novo portal para a Windows Azure, o qual lhe permitirá gerenciar todos os recursos e serviços oferecidos na Windows Azure de uma forma perfeitamente integrada. O portal é muito rápido e fluido, suporta filtragem e classificação dos dados (o que o torna muito fácil de usar em implantações/instalações de grande porte), funciona em todos os navegadores, e oferece um monte de ótimos e novos recursos - incluindo suporte nativo à VM (máquina virtual), Web site, Storage (armazenamento), e monitoramento de Serviços hospedados na Nuvem. O novo portal é construído em cima de uma API de gerenciamento baseada no modelo REST dentro da Windows Azure - e tudo o que você pode fazer através do portal também pode ser feito através de programação acessando esta Web API. Também estamos lançando hoje ferramentas de linha de comando (que, igualmente ao portal, chamam as APIs de Gerenciamento REST) para tornar ainda ainda mais fácil a criação de scripts e a automatização de suas tarefas de administração. Estamos oferecendo para download um conjunto de ferramentas para o Powershell (Windows) e Bash (Mac e Linux). Como nossos SDKs, o código destas ferramentas está hospedado no GitHub sob uma licença Apache 2. Máquinas Virtuais ( Virtual Machines [ VM ] ) A Windows Azure agora suporta a capacidade de implantar e executar VMs duráveis/permanentes ??na nuvem. Você pode criar facilmente essas VMs usando uma nova Galeria de Imagens embutida no novo Portal da Windows Azure ou, alternativamente, você pode fazer o upload e executar suas próprias imagens VHD customizadas. Máquinas virtuais são duráveis ??(o que significa que qualquer coisa que você instalar dentro delas persistirá entre as reinicializações) e você pode usar qualquer sistema operacional nelas. Nossa galeria de imagens nativa inclui imagens do Windows Server (incluindo o novo Windows Server 2012 RC), bem como imagens do Linux (incluindo Ubuntu, CentOS, e as distribuições SUSE). Depois de criar uma instância de uma VM você pode facilmente usar o Terminal Server ou SSH para acessá-las a fim de configurar e personalizar a máquina virtual da maneira como você quiser (e, opcionalmente, capturar uma snapshot (cópia instantânea da imagem atual) para usar ao criar novas instâncias de VMs). Isto te proporciona a flexibilidade de executar praticamente qualquer carga de trabalho dentro da plataforma Windows Azure.   A novo Portal da Windows Azure fornece um rico conjunto de recursos para o gerenciamento de Máquinas Virtuais - incluindo a capacidade de monitorar e controlar a utilização dos recursos dentro delas.  Nosso novo suporte à Máquinas Virtuais também permite a capacidade de facilmente conectar múltiplos discos nas VMs (os quais você pode então montar e formatar como unidades de disco). Opcionalmente, você pode ativar o suporte à replicação geográfica (geo-replication) para estes discos - o que fará com que a Windows Azure continuamente replique o seu armazenamento em um data center secundário (criando um backup), localizado a pelo menos 640 quilômetros de distância do seu data-center principal. Nós usamos o mesmo formato VHD que é suportado com a virtualização do Windows hoje (o qual nós lançamos como uma especificação aberta), de modo a permitir que você facilmente migre cargas de trabalho existentes que você já tenha virtualizado na Windows Azure.  Também tornamos fácil fazer o download de VHDs da Windows Azure, o que também oferece a flexibilidade para facilmente migrar cargas de trabalho das VMs baseadas na nuvem para um ambiente local. Tudo o que você precisa fazer é baixar o arquivo VHD e inicializá-lo localmente - nenhuma etapa de importação/exportação é necessária. Web Sites A Windows Azure agora suporta a capacidade de rapidamente e facilmente implantar web-sites ASP.NET, Node.js e PHP em um ambiente na nuvem altamente escalável que te permite começar pequeno (e de maneira gratuita) de modo que você possa em seguida, adaptar/escalar sua aplicação de acordo com o crescimento do seu tráfego. Você pode criar um novo web site na Azure e tê-lo pronto para implantação em menos de 10 segundos: O novo Portal da Windows Azure oferece suporte integrado para a administração de Web sites, incluindo a capacidade de monitorar e acompanhar a utilização dos recursos em tempo real: Você pode fazer o deploy (implantação) para web-sites em segundos usando FTP, Git, TFS e Web Deploy. Também estamos lançando atualizações para as ferramentas do Visual Studio e da Web Matrix que permitem aos desenvolvedores uma fácil instalação das aplicações ASP.NET nesta nova oferta. O suporte de publicação do VS e da Web Matrix inclui a capacidade de implantar bancos de dados SQL como parte da implantação do site - bem como a capacidade de realizar a atualização incremental do esquema do banco de dados com uma implantação realizada posteriormente. Você pode integrar a publicação de aplicações web com o controle de código fonte ao selecionar os links "Set up TFS publishing" (Configurar publicação TFS) ou "Set up Git publishing" (Configurar publicação Git) que estão presentes no dashboard de um web-site: Ao fazer isso, você habilitará a integração com o nosso novo serviço online TFS (que permite um fluxo de trabalho do TFS completo - incluindo um build elástico e suporte a testes), ou você pode criar um repositório Git e referenciá-lo como um remote para executar implantações automáticas. Uma vez que você executar uma implantação usando TFS ou Git, a tab/guia de implantações/instalações irá acompanhar as implantações que você fizer, e permitirá que você selecione uma implantação mais antiga (ou mais recente) para que você possa rapidamente voltar o seu site para um estado anterior do seu código. Isso proporciona uma experiência de fluxo de trabalho muito poderosa.   A Windows Azure agora permite que você implante até 10 web-sites em um ambiente de hospedagem gratuito e compartilhado entre múltiplos usuários e bancos de dados (onde um site que você implantar será um dos vários sites rodando em um conjunto compartilhado de recursos do servidor). Isso te fornece uma maneira fácil para começar a desenvolver projetos sem nenhum custo envolvido. Você pode, opcionalmente, fazer o upgrade do seus sites para que os mesmos sejam executados em um "modo reservado" que os isola, de modo que você seja o único cliente dentro de uma máquina virtual: E você pode adaptar elasticamente a quantidade de recursos que os seus sites utilizam - o que te permite por exemplo aumentar a capacidade da sua instância reservada/particular de acordo com o aumento do seu tráfego: A Windows Azure controla automaticamente o balanceamento de carga do tráfego entre as instâncias das VMs, e você tem as mesmas opções de implantação super rápidas (FTP, Git, TFS e Web Deploy), independentemente de quantas instâncias reservadas você usar. Com a Windows Azure você paga por capacidade de processamento por hora - o que te permite dimensionar para cima e para baixo seus recursos para atender apenas o que você precisa. Serviços da Nuvem (Cloud Services) e Cache Distribuído (Distributed Caching) A Windows Azure também suporta a capacidade de construir serviços que rodam na nuvem que suportam ricas arquiteturas multicamadas, gerenciamento automatizado de aplicações, e que podem ser adaptados para implantações extremamente grandes. Anteriormente nós nos referíamos a esta capacidade como "serviços hospedados" - com o lançamento desta semana estamos agora rebatizando esta capacidade como "serviços da nuvem". Nós também estamos permitindo um monte de novos recursos com eles. Cache Distribuído Um dos novos recursos muito legais que estão sendo habilitados com os serviços da nuvem é uma nova capacidade de cache distribuído que te permite usar e configurar um cache distribuído de baixa latência, armazenado na memória (in-memory) dentro de suas aplicações. Esse cache é isolado para uso apenas por suas aplicações, e não possui limites de corte. Esse cache pode crescer e diminuir dinamicamente e elasticamente (sem que você tenha que reimplantar a sua aplicação ou fazer alterações no código), e suporta toda a riqueza da API do Servidor de Cache AppFabric (incluindo regiões, alta disponibilidade, notificações, cache local e muito mais). Além de suportar a API do Servidor de Cache AppFabric, esta nova capacidade de cache pode agora também suportar o protocolo Memcached - o que te permite apontar código escrito para o Memcached para o cache distribuído (sem que alterações de código sejam necessárias). O novo cache distribuído pode ser configurado para ser executado em uma de duas maneiras: 1) Utilizando uma abordagem de cache co-localizado (co-located). Nesta opção você aloca um percentual de memória dos seus roles web e worker existentes para que o mesmo seja usado ??pelo cache, e então o cache junta a memória em um grande cache distribuído.  Qualquer dado colocado no cache por uma instância do role pode ser acessado por outras instâncias do role em sua aplicação - independentemente de os dados cacheados estarem armazenados neste ou em outro role. O grande benefício da opção de cache "co-localizado" é que ele é gratuito (você não precisa pagar nada para ativá-lo) e ele te permite usar o que poderia ser de outra forma memória não utilizada dentro das VMs da sua aplicação. 2) Alternativamente, você pode adicionar "cache worker roles" no seu serviço na nuvem que são utilizados unicamente para o cache. Estes também serão unidos em um grande anel de cache distribuído que outros roles dentro da sua aplicação podem acessar. Você pode usar esses roles para cachear dezenas ou centenas de GBs de dados na memória de forma extramente eficaz - e o cache pode ser aumentado ou diminuído elasticamente durante o tempo de execução dentro da sua aplicação: Novos SDKs e Ferramentas de Suporte Nós atualizamos todos os SDKs (kits para desenvolvimento de software) da Windows Azure com o lançamento de hoje para incluir novos recursos e capacidades. Nossos SDKs estão agora disponíveis em vários idiomas, e todo o código fonte deles está publicado sob uma licença Apache 2 e é mantido em repositórios no GitHub. O SDK .NET para Azure tem em particular um monte de grandes melhorias com o lançamento de hoje, e agora inclui suporte para ferramentas, tanto para o VS 2010 quanto para o VS 2012 RC. Estamos agora também entregando downloads do SDK para Windows, Mac e Linux nos idiomas que são oferecidos em todos esses sistemas - de modo a permitir que os desenvolvedores possam criar aplicações Windows Azure usando qualquer sistema operacional durante o desenvolvimento. Muito, Muito Mais O resumo acima é apenas uma pequena lista de algumas das melhorias que estão sendo entregues de uma forma preliminar ou definitiva hoje - há muito mais incluído no lançamento de hoje. Dentre estas melhorias posso citar novas capacidades para Virtual Private Networking (Redes Privadas Virtuais), novo runtime do Service Bus e respectivas ferramentas de suporte, o preview público dos novos Azure Media Services, novos Data Centers, upgrade significante para o hardware de armazenamento e rede, SQL Reporting Services, novos recursos de Identidade, suporte para mais de 40 novos países e territórios, e muito, muito mais. Você pode aprender mais sobre a Windows Azure e se cadastrar para experimentá-la gratuitamente em http://windowsazure.com.  Você também pode assistir a uma apresentação ao vivo que estarei realizando às 1pm PDT (17:00Hs de Brasília), hoje 7 de Junho (hoje mais tarde), onde eu vou passar por todos os novos recursos. Estaremos abrindo as novas funcionalidades as quais me referi acima para uso público poucas horas após o término da apresentação. Nós estamos realmente animados para ver as grandes aplicações que você construirá com estes novos recursos. Espero que ajude, - Scott   Texto traduzido do post original por Leniel Macaferi.

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• Anunciando: Grandes Melhorias para Web Sites da Windows Azure

  - by Leniel Macaferi

  Estou animado para anunciar algumas grandes melhorias para os Web Sites da Windows Azure que introduzimos no início deste verão.  As melhorias de hoje incluem: uma nova opção de hospedagem adaptável compartilhada de baixo custo, suporte a domínios personalizados para websites hospedados em modo compartilhado ou em modo reservado usando registros CNAME e A-Records (o último permitindo naked domains), suporte para deployment contínuo usando tanto CodePlex e GitHub, e a extensibilidade FastCGI. Todas essas melhorias estão agora online em produção e disponíveis para serem usadas imediatamente. Nova Camada Escalonável "Compartilhada" A Windows Azure permite que você implante e hospede até 10 websites em um ambiente gratuito e compartilhado com múltiplas aplicações. Você pode começar a desenvolver e testar websites sem nenhum custo usando este modo compartilhado (gratuito). O modo compartilhado suporta a capacidade de executar sites que servem até 165MB/dia de conteúdo (5GB/mês). Todas as capacidades que introduzimos em Junho com esta camada gratuita permanecem inalteradas com a atualização de hoje. Começando com o lançamento de hoje, você pode agora aumentar elasticamente seu website para além desta capacidade usando uma nova opção "shared" (compartilhada) de baixo custo (a qual estamos apresentando hoje), bem como pode usar a opção "reserved instance" (instância reservada) - a qual suportamos desde Junho. Aumentar a capacidade de qualquer um desses modos é fácil. Basta clicar na aba "scale" (aumentar a capacidade) do seu website dentro do Portal da Windows Azure, escolher a opção de modo de hospedagem que você deseja usar com ele, e clicar no botão "Salvar". Mudanças levam apenas alguns segundos para serem aplicadas e não requerem nenhum código para serem alteradas e também não requerem que a aplicação seja reimplantada/reinstalada: A seguir estão mais alguns detalhes sobre a nova opção "shared" (compartilhada), bem como a opção existente "reserved" (reservada): Modo Compartilhado Com o lançamento de hoje, estamos introduzindo um novo modo de hospedagem de baixo custo "compartilhado" para Web Sites da Windows Azure. Um website em execução no modo compartilhado é implantado/instalado em um ambiente de hospedagem compartilhado com várias outras aplicações. Ao contrário da opção de modo free (gratuito), um web-site no modo compartilhado não tem quotas/limite máximo para a quantidade de largura de banda que o mesmo pode servir. Os primeiros 5 GB/mês de banda que você servir com uma website compartilhado é grátis, e então você passará a pagar a taxa padrão "pay as you go" (pague pelo que utilizar) da largura de banda de saída da Windows Azure quando a banda de saída ultrapassar os 5 GB. Um website em execução no modo compartilhado agora também suporta a capacidade de mapear múltiplos nomes de domínio DNS personalizados, usando ambos CNAMEs e A-records para tanto. O novo suporte A-record que estamos introduzindo com o lançamento de hoje oferece a possibilidade para você suportar "naked domains" (domínios nús - sem o www) com seus web-sites (por exemplo, http://microsoft.com além de http://www.microsoft.com). Nós também, no futuro, permitiremos SSL baseada em SNI como um recurso nativo nos websites que rodam em modo compartilhado (esta funcionalidade não é suportada com o lançamento de hoje - mas chagará mais tarde ainda este ano, para ambos as opções de hospedagem - compartilhada e reservada). Você paga por um website no modo compartilhado utilizando o modelo padrão "pay as you go" que suportamos com outros recursos da Windows Azure (ou seja, sem custos iniciais, e você só paga pelas horas nas quais o recurso estiver ativo). Um web-site em execução no modo compartilhado custa apenas 1,3 centavos/hora durante este período de preview (isso dá uma média de $ 9.36/mês ou R$ 19,00/mês - dólar a R$ 2,03 em 17-Setembro-2012) Modo Reservado Além de executar sites em modo compartilhado, também suportamos a execução dos mesmos dentro de uma instância reservada. Quando rodando em modo de instância reservada, seus sites terão a garantia de serem executados de maneira isolada dentro de sua própria VM (virtual machine - máquina virtual) Pequena, Média ou Grande (o que significa que, nenhum outro cliente da Windows azure terá suas aplicações sendo executadas dentro de sua VM. Somente as suas aplicações). Você pode executar qualquer número de websites dentro de uma máquina virtual, e não existem quotas para limites de CPU ou memória. Você pode executar seus sites usando uma única VM de instância reservada, ou pode aumentar a capacidade tendo várias instâncias (por exemplo, 2 VMs de médio porte, etc.). Dimensionar para cima ou para baixo é fácil - basta selecionar a VM da instância "reservada" dentro da aba "scale" no Portal da Windows Azure, escolher o tamanho da VM que você quer, o número de instâncias que você deseja executar e clicar em salvar. As alterações têm efeito em segundos: Ao contrário do modo compartilhado, não há custo por site quando se roda no modo reservado. Em vez disso, você só paga pelas instâncias de VMs reservadas que você usar - e você pode executar qualquer número de websites que você quiser dentro delas, sem custo adicional (por exemplo, você pode executar um único site dentro de uma instância de VM reservada ou 100 websites dentro dela com o mesmo custo). VMs de instâncias reservadas têm um custo inicial de $ 8 cents/hora ou R$ 16 centavos/hora para uma pequena VM reservada. Dimensionamento Elástico para Cima/para Baixo Os Web Sites da Windows Azure permitem que você dimensione para cima ou para baixo a sua capacidade dentro de segundos. Isso permite que você implante um site usando a opção de modo compartilhado, para começar, e em seguida, dinamicamente aumente a capacidade usando a opção de modo reservado somente quando você precisar - sem que você tenha que alterar qualquer código ou reimplantar sua aplicação. Se o tráfego do seu site diminuir, você pode diminuir o número de instâncias reservadas que você estiver usando, ou voltar para a camada de modo compartilhado - tudo em segundos e sem ter que mudar o código, reimplantar a aplicação ou ajustar os mapeamentos de DNS. Você também pode usar o "Dashboard" (Painel de Controle) dentro do Portal da Windows Azure para facilmente monitorar a carga do seu site em tempo real (ele mostra não apenas as solicitações/segundo e a largura de banda consumida, mas também estatísticas como a utilização de CPU e memória). Devido ao modelo de preços "pay as you go" da Windows Azure, você só paga a capacidade de computação que você usar em uma determinada hora. Assim, se o seu site está funcionando a maior parte do mês em modo compartilhado (a $ 1.3 cents/hora ou R$ 2,64 centavos/hora), mas há um final de semana em que ele fica muito popular e você decide aumentar sua capacidade colocando-o em modo reservado para que seja executado em sua própria VM dedicada (a $ 8 cents/hora ou R$ 16 centavos/hora), você só terá que pagar os centavos/hora adicionais para as horas em que o site estiver sendo executado no modo reservado. Você não precisa pagar nenhum custo inicial para habilitar isso, e uma vez que você retornar seu site para o modo compartilhado, você voltará a pagar $ 1.3 cents/hora ou R$ 2,64 centavos/hora). Isto faz com que essa opção seja super flexível e de baixo custo. Suporte Melhorado para Domínio Personalizado Web sites em execução no modo "compartilhado" ou no modo "reservado" suportam a habilidade de terem nomes personalizados (host names) associados a eles (por exemplo www.mysitename.com). Você pode associar múltiplos domínios personalizados para cada Web Site da Windows Azure. Com o lançamento de hoje estamos introduzindo suporte para registros A-Records (um recurso muito pedido pelos usuários). Com o suporte a A-Record, agora você pode associar domínios 'naked' ao seu Web Site da Windows Azure - ou seja, em vez de ter que usar www.mysitename.com você pode simplesmente usar mysitename.com (sem o prefixo www). Tendo em vista que você pode mapear vários domínios para um único site, você pode, opcionalmente, permitir ambos domínios (com www e a versão 'naked') para um site (e então usar uma regra de reescrita de URL/redirecionamento (em Inglês) para evitar problemas de SEO). Nós também melhoramos a interface do usuário para o gerenciamento de domínios personalizados dentro do Portal da Windows Azure como parte do lançamento de hoje. Clicando no botão "Manage Domains" (Gerenciar Domínios) na bandeja na parte inferior do portal agora traz uma interface de usuário personalizada que torna fácil gerenciar/configurar os domínios: Como parte dessa atualização nós também tornamos significativamente mais suave/mais fácil validar a posse de domínios personalizados, e também tornamos mais fácil alternar entre sites/domínios existentes para Web Sites da Windows Azure, sem que o website fique fora do ar. Suporte a Deployment (Implantação) contínua com Git e CodePlex ou GitHub Um dos recursos mais populares que lançamos no início deste verão foi o suporte para a publicação de sites diretamente para a Windows Azure usando sistemas de controle de código como TFS e Git. Esse recurso fornece uma maneira muito poderosa para gerenciar as implantações/instalações da aplicação usando controle de código. É realmente fácil ativar este recurso através da página do dashboard de um web site: A opção TFS que lançamos no início deste verão oferece uma solução de implantação contínua muito rica que permite automatizar os builds e a execução de testes unitários a cada vez que você atualizar o repositório do seu website, e em seguida, se os testes forem bem sucedidos, a aplicação é automaticamente publicada/implantada na Windows Azure. Com o lançamento de hoje, estamos expandindo nosso suporte Git para também permitir cenários de implantação contínua integrando esse suporte com projetos hospedados no CodePlex e no GitHub. Este suporte está habilitado para todos os web-sites (incluindo os que usam o modo "free" (gratuito)). A partir de hoje, quando você escolher o link "Set up Git publishing" (Configurar publicação Git) na página do dashboard de um website, você verá duas opções adicionais quando a publicação baseada em Git estiver habilitada para o web-site: Você pode clicar em qualquer um dos links "Deploy from my CodePlex project" (Implantar a partir do meu projeto no CodePlex) ou "Deploy from my GitHub project"  (Implantar a partir do meu projeto no GitHub) para seguir um simples passo a passo para configurar uma conexão entre o seu website e um repositório de código que você hospeda no CodePlex ou no GitHub. Uma vez que essa conexão é estabelecida, o CodePlex ou o GitHub automaticamente notificará a Windows Azure a cada vez que um checkin ocorrer. Isso fará com que a Windows Azure faça o download do código e compile/implante a nova versão da sua aplicação automaticamente.  Os dois vídeos a seguir (em Inglês) mostram quão fácil é permitir esse fluxo de trabalho ao implantar uma app inicial e logo em seguida fazer uma alteração na mesma: Habilitando Implantação Contínua com os Websites da Windows Azure e CodePlex (2 minutos) Habilitando Implantação Contínua com os Websites da Windows Azure e GitHub (2 minutos) Esta abordagem permite um fluxo de trabalho de implantação contínua realmente limpo, e torna muito mais fácil suportar um ambiente de desenvolvimento em equipe usando Git: Nota: o lançamento de hoje suporta estabelecer conexões com repositórios públicos do GitHub/CodePlex. Suporte para repositórios privados será habitado em poucas semanas. Suporte para Múltiplos Branches (Ramos de Desenvolvimento) Anteriormente, nós somente suportávamos implantar o código que estava localizado no branch 'master' do repositório Git. Muitas vezes, porém, os desenvolvedores querem implantar a partir de branches alternativos (por exemplo, um branch de teste ou um branch com uma versão futura da aplicação). Este é agora um cenário suportado - tanto com projetos locais baseados no git, bem como com projetos ligados ao CodePlex ou GitHub. Isto permite uma variedade de cenários úteis. Por exemplo, agora você pode ter dois web-sites - um em "produção" e um outro para "testes" - ambos ligados ao mesmo repositório no CodePlex ou no GitHub. Você pode configurar um dos websites de forma que ele sempre baixe o que estiver presente no branch master, e que o outro website sempre baixe o que estiver no branch de testes. Isto permite uma maneira muito limpa para habilitar o teste final de seu site antes que ele entre em produção. Este vídeo de 1 minuto (em Inglês) demonstra como configurar qual branch usar com um web-site. Resumo Os recursos mostrados acima estão agora ao vivo em produção e disponíveis para uso imediato. Se você ainda não tem uma conta da Windows Azure, você pode inscrever-se em um teste gratuito para começar a usar estes recursos hoje mesmo. Visite o O Centro de Desenvolvedores da Windows Azure (em Inglês) para saber mais sobre como criar aplicações para serem usadas na nuvem. Nós teremos ainda mais novos recursos e melhorias chegando nas próximas semanas - incluindo suporte para os recentes lançamentos do Windows Server 2012 e .NET 4.5 (habilitaremos novas imagens de web e work roles com o Windows Server 2012 e NET 4.5 no próximo mês). Fique de olho no meu blog para detalhes assim que esses novos recursos ficarem disponíveis. Espero que ajude, - Scott P.S. Além do blog, eu também estou utilizando o Twitter para atualizações rápidas e para compartilhar links. Siga-me em: twitter.com/ScottGu Texto traduzido do post original por Leniel Macaferi.

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• Meet the New Windows Azure

  - by ScottGu

  Today we are releasing a major set of improvements to Windows Azure.  Below is a short-summary of just a few of them: New Admin Portal and Command Line Tools Today’s release comes with a new Windows Azure portal that will enable you to manage all features and services offered on Windows Azure in a seamless, integrated way.  It is very fast and fluid, supports filtering and sorting (making it much easier to use for large deployments), works on all browsers, and offers a lot of great new features – including built-in VM, Web site, Storage, and Cloud Service monitoring support. The new portal is built on top of a REST-based management API within Windows Azure – and everything you can do through the portal can also be programmed directly against this Web API. We are also today releasing command-line tools (which like the portal call the REST Management APIs) to make it even easier to script and automate your administration tasks.  We are offering both a Powershell (for Windows) and Bash (for Mac and Linux) set of tools to download.  Like our SDKs, the code for these tools is hosted on GitHub under an Apache 2 license. Virtual Machines Windows Azure now supports the ability to deploy and run durable VMs in the cloud.  You can easily create these VMs using a new Image Gallery built-into the new Windows Azure Portal, or alternatively upload and run your own custom-built VHD images. Virtual Machines are durable (meaning anything you install within them persists across reboots) and you can use any OS with them.  Our built-in image gallery includes both Windows Server images (including the new Windows Server 2012 RC) as well as Linux images (including Ubuntu, CentOS, and SUSE distributions).  Once you create a VM instance you can easily Terminal Server or SSH into it in order to configure and customize the VM however you want (and optionally capture your own image snapshot of it to use when creating new VM instances).  This provides you with the flexibility to run pretty much any workload within Windows Azure.   The new Windows Azure Portal provides a rich set of management features for Virtual Machines – including the ability to monitor and track resource utilization within them.  Our new Virtual Machine support also enables the ability to easily attach multiple data-disks to VMs (which you can then mount and format as drives).  You can optionally enable geo-replication support on these – which will cause Windows Azure to continuously replicate your storage to a secondary data-center at least 400 miles away from your primary data-center as a backup. We use the same VHD format that is supported with Windows virtualization today (and which we’ve released as an open spec), which enables you to easily migrate existing workloads you might already have virtualized into Windows Azure.  We also make it easy to download VHDs from Windows Azure, which also provides the flexibility to easily migrate cloud-based VM workloads to an on-premise environment.  All you need to do is download the VHD file and boot it up locally, no import/export steps required. Web Sites Windows Azure now supports the ability to quickly and easily deploy ASP.NET, Node.js and PHP web-sites to a highly scalable cloud environment that allows you to start small (and for free) and then scale up as your traffic grows.  You can create a new web site in Azure and have it ready to deploy to in under 10 seconds: The new Windows Azure Portal provides built-in administration support for Web sites – including the ability to monitor and track resource utilization in real-time: You can deploy to web-sites in seconds using FTP, Git, TFS and Web Deploy.  We are also releasing tooling updates today for both Visual Studio and Web Matrix that enable developers to seamlessly deploy ASP.NET applications to this new offering.  The VS and Web Matrix publishing support includes the ability to deploy SQL databases as part of web site deployment – as well as the ability to incrementally update database schema with a later deployment. You can integrate web application publishing with source control by selecting the “Set up TFS publishing” or “Set up Git publishing” links on a web-site’s dashboard: Doing do will enable integration with our new TFS online service (which enables a full TFS workflow – including elastic build and testing support), or create a Git repository that you can reference as a remote and push deployments to.  Once you push a deployment using TFS or Git, the deployments tab will keep track of the deployments you make, and enable you to select an older (or newer) deployment and quickly redeploy your site to that snapshot of the code.  This provides a very powerful DevOps workflow experience.   Windows Azure now allows you to deploy up to 10 web-sites into a free, shared/multi-tenant hosting environment (where a site you deploy will be one of multiple sites running on a shared set of server resources).  This provides an easy way to get started on projects at no cost. You can then optionally upgrade your sites to run in a “reserved mode” that isolates them so that you are the only customer within a virtual machine: And you can elastically scale the amount of resources your sites use – allowing you to increase your reserved instance capacity as your traffic scales: Windows Azure automatically handles load balancing traffic across VM instances, and you get the same, super fast, deployment options (FTP, Git, TFS and Web Deploy) regardless of how many reserved instances you use. With Windows Azure you pay for compute capacity on a per-hour basis – which allows you to scale up and down your resources to match only what you need. Cloud Services and Distributed Caching Windows Azure also supports the ability to build cloud services that support rich multi-tier architectures, automated application management, and scale to extremely large deployments.  Previously we referred to this capability as “hosted services” – with this week’s release we are now referring to this capability as “cloud services”.  We are also enabling a bunch of new features with them. Distributed Cache One of the really cool new features being enabled with cloud services is a new distributed cache capability that enables you to use and setup a low-latency, in-memory distributed cache within your applications.  This cache is isolated for use just by your applications, and does not have any throttling limits. This cache can dynamically grow and shrink elastically (without you have to redeploy your app or make code changes), and supports the full richness of the AppFabric Cache Server API (including regions, high availability, notifications, local cache and more).  In addition to supporting the AppFabric Cache Server API, it also now supports the Memcached protocol – allowing you to point code written against Memcached at it (no code changes required). The new distributed cache can be setup to run in one of two ways: 1) Using a co-located approach.  In this option you allocate a percentage of memory in your existing web and worker roles to be used by the cache, and then the cache joins the memory into one large distributed cache.  Any data put into the cache by one role instance can be accessed by other role instances in your application – regardless of whether the cached data is stored on it or another role.  The big benefit with the “co-located” option is that it is free (you don’t have to pay anything to enable it) and it allows you to use what might have been otherwise unused memory within your application VMs. 2) Alternatively, you can add “cache worker roles” to your cloud service that are used solely for caching.  These will also be joined into one large distributed cache ring that other roles within your application can access.  You can use these roles to cache 10s or 100s of GBs of data in-memory very effectively – and the cache can be elastically increased or decreased at runtime within your application: New SDKs and Tooling Support We have updated all of the Windows Azure SDKs with today’s release to include new features and capabilities.  Our SDKs are now available for multiple languages, and all of the source in them is published under an Apache 2 license and and maintained in GitHub repositories. The .NET SDK for Azure has in particular seen a bunch of great improvements with today’s release, and now includes tooling support for both VS 2010 and the VS 2012 RC. We are also now shipping Windows, Mac and Linux SDK downloads for languages that are offered on all of these systems – allowing developers to develop Windows Azure applications using any development operating system. Much, Much More The above is just a short list of some of the improvements that are shipping in either preview or final form today – there is a LOT more in today’s release.  These include new Virtual Private Networking capabilities, new Service Bus runtime and tooling support, the public preview of the new Azure Media Services, new Data Centers, significantly upgraded network and storage hardware, SQL Reporting Services, new Identity features, support within 40+ new countries and territories, and much, much more. You can learn more about Windows Azure and sign-up to try it for free at http://windowsazure.com.  You can also watch a live keynote I’m giving at 1pm June 7th (later today) where I’ll walk through all of the new features.  We will be opening up the new features I discussed above for public usage a few hours after the keynote concludes.  We are really excited to see the great applications you build with them. Hope this helps, Scott

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• Enable Media Streaming in Windows Home Server to Windows Media Player

  - by Mysticgeek

  One of the cool features of Windows Home Server is the ability to stream photos, music, and video to other computers on your network. Today we take a look at how to enable streaming in WHS to Windows Media Player in Vista and Windows 7. Turn on Media Streaming on WHS To enable Media Streaming from Windows Home Server, open the Windows Home Server Console and click on Settings. Now in the Setting screen select Media Sharing, then in the right column under Media Library Sharing turn on Library Sharing for the folders you want to stream.   If you have a Windows 7 machine on your network make sure media streaming is enabled. You should then see the server under Other Libraries and can start streaming your media collection.   Stream Video to Media Player 11 Now let’s say you want to stream videos to another member of your household who’s using a Vista machine in another room through Windows Media Player 11. Open WMP and click on Library then Media Sharing. Now click the box next to Find media that others are sharing then click Ok. Now you should see the server listed under Library…where in this example it’s geekserver. Since we only enabled Video streaming for this example, we need to click on the category icon and select Video. Now you can scroll through the available videos… And start enjoying your favorite videos streamed from the server through WMP 11 on Vista. Of course you can use this method to stream photos and music as well, you just need to enable what you want to stream from the Home Server Console. You can also stream your media to Windows Media Center and Xbox which we will be covering soon. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Share Digital Media With Other Computers on a Home Network with Windows 7Fixing When Windows Media Player Library Won’t Let You Add FilesGMedia Blog: Setting Up a Windows Home ServerShare and Stream Digital Media Between Windows 7 Machines On Your Home NetworkInstalling Windows Media Player Plugin for Firefox TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Need to Come Up with a Good Name? Try Wordoid StockFox puts a Lightweight Stock Ticker in your Statusbar Explore Google Public Data Visually The Ultimate Excel Cheatsheet Convert the Quick Launch Bar into a Super Application Launcher Automate Tasks in Linux with Crontab

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• Windows 8.1 fresh install with Windows 8 licence

  - by typ1232

  I purchased Windows 8 online from Microsoft a while ago. Today Windows 8.1 was released as a free update to Windows 8 users over the Windows Store. I was planning to do a fresh install of Windows 8.1 to have a clean system again and UEFI support because I got new hardware since the Windows 8 installation. So my questions are: Where do I get the ISO installation medium for Windows 8.1 64-bit? I tried this microsoft site where I initially got my Windows 8 ISO from, but when entering my Windows 8 key in the Windows 8.1 installer, it says the key is wrong. Even if I get the ISO, will my old key work? I'm concerned because it didn't work in their installer (see previous point) Do they seriously want me to reinstall Windows 8 and after that upgrade to Windows 8.1 through their Store?!

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• “I could use a little help here” or “I can do it myself, thank you” for Cloud Projects

  - by BuckWoody

  Windows Azure allows you to write code in languages within the .NET stack, you can use Java, C++, PHP, NodeJS and others. Code is code - other than keeping things stateless, using a Web or Worker Role in Azure is not all that different from working with an on-premises system. However…. Working in a scalable, component-based stateless architecture that can use federated security is not all that common for many developers. Some are used to owning the server, scaling up, and state-full paradigms that have a single security domain. Making the transition whilst trying to create a new software application or even port a previous one can be daunting. Sure, we have absolutely tons of free training, kits, videos, online books and more to learn on your own, but some things like architecture can be pivotal as you move along. So the question is, should you just strike out on your own for a Cloud project, or get Microsoft Consulting Services or another partner to work with you on your first one? I use a few decision points to help guide the projects I assist in. Note: I’m a huge fan of having help that ends up giving you training and leaves you in charge. If you do engage with someone to help you, make sure you keep this clear and take more and more ownership yourself as the project progresses. How much time do you have? Usually the first thing I ask is about the timeline for the project. It doesn’t matter how skilled you are, if you have a short window to get things done it’s better to get help - especially if this is your first cloud project. Having someone that knows the platform well can save you amazing amounts of time. If you have longer, then start with the training in the link above and once you feel confident, jump in. How complex is the project? If there are a lot of moving parts, it’s best to engage a partner. The reason is that certain interactions - particularly things like Service Bus or Data Integration  - can be quite different than what you may have encountered before. How many people do you have? I have a “pizza rule” about projects I’ve used in my career - if it takes over two pizzas to feed everyone on the project, it’s too big and will fail. That being said, one developer and a one-week deadline does not a good project make, usually. It’s best to have at least one architect (or someone in that role) guiding the project along, and at least two developers to work on a cloud project. That’s a generalization of course, since I’ve seen great software on Azure with one developer writing code all by herself, but for more complex projects, more (to a point) is better. The nice thing about bringing on a partner is that you don’t have to hire them full time - they help you and then they go away. How critical is the project? There’s no shame in using some help. If the platform is new, if the project is large and complex, and if it is critical to the business, you should engage a partner. That’s regardless of Cloud or anything else - get some help. You don’t want to hit your company’s bottom line in a negative way, but you have to innovate and get them a competitive advantage. Do your research, make sure the partner is qualified to help you, and get it done. Don’t let these questions scare you off. There are lots of projects you can implement on Windows and SQL Azure with nothing other than the Software Development Kit (SDK) that you get for free with Windows Azure. And assistance comes in many forms - sometimes just phone support, a friend you can ask. Microsoft Consulting Services or any of our great partners. You can get help on just the architecture piece or have them show you how to write the code. They’ll get involved as little or as much as you like.

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• FREE Windows Azure evening in London on April 15th including FREE access to Windows Azure

  - by Eric Nelson

  [Did I overdo the use of FREE in the title? :-)] April 12th to 16th is Microsoft Tech Days – 5 days of sessions on Visual Studio 2010 through to Windows 7 Phone Series. Many of these days are now full (Tip - Thursday still has room if rich client applications is your thing) but the good news is the development community in the UK has pulled together an awesome series of “fringe events” during April in London and elsewhere in the UK. There are sessions on Silverlight, SQL Server 2008 R2, Sharepoint 2010 and … the Windows Azure Platform. The UK AzureNET user group is planning to put on a great evening and AzureNET will be giving away hundreds of free subscriptions to the Windows Azure Platform during the evening. The subscription includes up to 20 Windows Azure Compute nodes and 3 SQL Azure databases for you to play with over the 2 weeks following the event. This is a great opportunity to really explore the Windows Azure Platform in detail – without a credit card! Register now! (and you might also want to join the UK Fans of Azure Community while I have your attention) FYI The Thursday day time event includes an introduction to Windows Azure session delivered by my colleague David – which would be an ideal session to attend if you are new to Azure and want to get the most out of the evening session. 7:00pm: See the difference: How Windows Azure helped build a new way of giving Simon Evans and James Broome (@broomej) They will cover the business context for Azure and then go into patterns used and lessons learnt from the project....as well as showing off the app of course! 8:00pm: UK AzureNET update 8:15pm: NoSQL databases or: How I learned to love the hash table Mark Rendle (@markrendle) In this session Mark will look at how Azure Table Service works and how to use it. We’ll look briefly at the high-level Data Services SDK, talk about its limitations, and then quickly move on to the REST API and how to use it to improve performance and reduce costs. We’ll make-up some pretend real-world problems and solve them in new and interesting ways. We’ll denormalise data (for fun and profit). We’ll talk about how certain social networking sites can deal with huge volumes of data so quickly, and why it sometimes goes wrong. Check out the complete list of fringe events which covers the UK fairly well:

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• Certification Notes: 70-583 Designing and Developing Windows Azure Applications

  - by BuckWoody

  It’s time for another certification, and we’ve just release the 70-583 exam on Windows Azure. I’ve blogged my “study plans” here before on other certifications, so I thought I would do the same for this one. I’ll also need to take exam 70-513 and 70-516; but I’ll post my notes on those separately. None of these are “brain dumps” or any questions from the actual tests - just the books, links and notes I have from my studies. I’ll update these references as I’m studying, so bookmark this site and watch my Twitter and Facebook posts for when I’ll update them, or just subscribe to the RSS feed. A “Green” color on the check-block means I’ve done that part so far, red means I haven’t. First, I need to refresh my memory on some basic coding, so along with the Azure-specific information I’m reading the following general programming books: Introducing Microsoft .NET (Pro-Developer): http://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Microsoft-Pro-Developer-David-Platt/dp/0735619182/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1296339237&sr=1-1 Head First C#, 2E: A Learner's Guide to Real-World Programming with Visual C# and .NET: http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-2E-Real-World-Programming/dp/1449380344/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1296339176&sr=8-1 Microsoft Visual C# 2008 Step by Step : http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Visual-2008-Step/dp/0735624305/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1296339208&sr=1-1 c The first place to start is at the official site for the certification. That’s here: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Exam.aspx?ID=70-583&Locale=en-us c On that page you’ll find several resources, and the first you should follow is the “Save to my learning” so you have a place to track everything. Then click the “Related Learning Plans” link and follow the videos and read the documentation in each of those bullets. There are six areas on the learning plan that you should focus on - make sure you open the learning plan to drill into the specifics. c Designing Data Storage Architecture (18%) Books I’m Reading: Links: My Notes: c Optimizing Data Access and Messaging (17%) Books I’m Reading: Links: My Notes: c Designing the Application Architecture (19%) Books I’m Reading: Links: My Notes: c Preparing for Application and Service Deployment (15%) Books I’m Reading: Links: My Notes: c Investigating and Analyzing Applications (16%) Books I’m Reading: Links: My Notes: c Designing Integrated Solutions (15%) Books I’m Reading: Links: My Notes:

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• Certification Notes: 70-583 Designing and Developing Windows Azure Applications

  - by BuckWoody

  Last Updated: 02/01/2011 It’s time for another certification, and we’ve just release the 70-583 exam on Windows Azure. I’ve blogged my “study plans” here before on other certifications, so I thought I would do the same for this one. I’ll also need to take exam 70-513 and 70-516; but I’ll post my notes on those separately. None of these are “brain dumps” or any questions from the actual tests - just the books, links and notes I have from my studies. I’ll update these references as I’m studying, so bookmark this site and watch my Twitter and Facebook posts for when I’ll update them, or just subscribe to the RSS feed. A “Green” color on the check-block means I’ve done that part so far, red means I haven’t. First, I need to refresh my memory on some basic coding, so along with the Azure-specific information I’m reading the following general programming books: Introducing Microsoft .NET (Pro-Developer): link   Head First C#, 2E: A Learner's Guide to Real-World Programming with Visual C# and .NET: link Microsoft Visual C# 2008 Step by Step: link  c The first place to start is at the official site for the certification. link c On that page you’ll find several resources, and the first you should follow is the “Save to my learning” so you have a place to track everything. Then click the “Related Learning Plans” link and follow the videos and read the documentation in each of those bullets. There are six areas on the learning plan that you should focus on - make sure you open the learning plan to drill into the specifics. c Designing Data Storage Architecture (18%) Books I’m Reading: Links: My Notes: c Optimizing Data Access and Messaging (17%) Books I’m Reading: Links: My Notes: c Designing the Application Architecture (19%) Books I’m Reading: Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform: link Links: My Notes: c Preparing for Application and Service Deployment (15%) Books I’m Reading: Links: My Notes: c Investigating and Analyzing Applications (16%) Books I’m Reading: Links: My Notes: c Designing Integrated Solutions (15%) Books I’m Reading: Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform (2nd mention) Links: My Notes:

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• Microsoft Management Console stops working when I add snap-in to it

  - by JayaprakashReddy

  I have Windows 7 Ultimate OS. I'm opening mmc.exe as administrator and trying add Certificates or any other snap-in, then while loading that snap-in MMC breaks and displays following message and after that it closes automatically once I click on close button on that message. What could be the problem? I did following to fix the problem but couldn't succeed any of these: I tried to repair the OS I repaired files using this method Even repaired the installation using this link Update: *@oldskool: Here is the debug process output:* Sorry its a long output text. 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\mmc.exe', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\ntdll.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\kernel32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\KernelBase.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\gdi32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\user32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\lpk.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\usp10.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\msvcrt.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\mfc42u.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\ole32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\rpcrt4.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\oleaut32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\odbc32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\advapi32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\sechost.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\mmcbase.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\shlwapi.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\uxtheme.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\duser.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\imm32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\msctf.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\odbcint.dll', Binary was not built with debug information. 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\dui70.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\winsxs\x86_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.7600.16661_none_420fe3fa2b8113bd\comctl32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\shell32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\cryptbase.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\urlmon.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\wininet.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\iertutil.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\crypt32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\msasn1.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\clbcatq.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\mmcndmgr.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\dwmapi.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\oleacc.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\cryptsp.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\rsaenh.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\RpcRtRemote.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\mlang.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\xmllite.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\version.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\apphelp.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\msi.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin\mscormmc.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\mscoree.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\winsxs\x86_microsoft.vc80.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.4927_none_d08a205e442db5b5\msvcr80.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\azroleui.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\atl.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\secur32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\netutils.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\dsrole.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\logoncli.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\dsuiext.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\ntdsapi.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\ws2_32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\nsi.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\activeds.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\adsldpc.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\Wldap32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\mpr.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\netapi32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\srvcli.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\wkscli.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\certmgr.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\certcli.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\CertEnroll.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\cryptui.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\ncrypt.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\bcrypt.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\wintrust.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\imagehlp.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\sspicli.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\aclui.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\IPHLPAPI.DLL', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\winnsi.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\slc.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\comsnap.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\mfc42.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\mycomput.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\devmgr.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\setupapi.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\cfgmgr32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\devobj.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\devrtl.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\newdev.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\dmdskmgr.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\dmutil.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\dmdskres.dll', Binary was not built with debug information. 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\dmdskres2.dll', Binary was not built with debug information. 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\gpedit.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\dssec.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\authz.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\dfscli.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\samcli.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\gpapi.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\framedynos.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\wtsapi32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\ipsmsnap.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\winipsec.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\userenv.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\profapi.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\ipsecsnp.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\polstore.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\localsec.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\wdc.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\pdh.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\pdhui.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\comdlg32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\credui.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\wevtapi.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\pla.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\tdh.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\winsta.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\utildll.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\browcli.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\vdmdbg.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\pmcsnap.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\winspool.drv', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\puiapi.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\wsecedit.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\scecli.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\filemgmt.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\SqlManager.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\winsxs\x86_microsoft.vc80.mfc_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.4053_none_cbf21254470d8752\mfc80u.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\winsxs\x86_microsoft.vc80.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.4927_none_d08a205e442db5b5\msvcp80.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\winsxs\x86_microsoft.vc80.atl_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.4053_none_d1c738ec43578ea1\ATL80.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\winsxs\x86_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_5.82.7600.16661_none_ebfb56996c72aefc\comctl32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\winsxs\x86_microsoft.vc80.mfcloc_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.4053_none_03ca5532205cb096\mfc80ENU.dll', Binary was not built with debug information. 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\Resources\1033\SqlManager.rll', Binary was not built with debug information. 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\msxml6.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Binn\SqlManager.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'mmc.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\wbem\wbemcntl.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file The thread 'Win32 Thread' (0xf74) has exited with code 0 (0x0). Unhandled exception at 0x774d35e3 in mmc.exe: 0xC0000374: A heap has been corrupted.

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• Announcing: Great Improvements to Windows Azure Web Sites

  - by ScottGu

  I’m excited to announce some great improvements to the Windows Azure Web Sites capability we first introduced earlier this summer.  Today’s improvements include: a new low-cost shared mode scaling option, support for custom domains with shared and reserved mode web-sites using both CNAME and A-Records (the later enabling naked domains), continuous deployment support using both CodePlex and GitHub, and FastCGI extensibility.  All of these improvements are now live in production and available to start using immediately. New “Shared” Scaling Tier Windows Azure allows you to deploy and host up to 10 web-sites in a free, shared/multi-tenant hosting environment. You can start out developing and testing web sites at no cost using this free shared mode, and it supports the ability to run web sites that serve up to 165MB/day of content (5GB/month).  All of the capabilities we introduced in June with this free tier remain the same with today’s update. Starting with today’s release, you can now elastically scale up your web-site beyond this capability using a new low-cost “shared” option (which we are introducing today) as well as using a “reserved instance” option (which we’ve supported since June).  Scaling to either of these modes is easy.  Simply click on the “scale” tab of your web-site within the Windows Azure Portal, choose the scaling option you want to use with it, and then click the “save” button.  Changes take only seconds to apply and do not require any code to be changed, nor the app to be redeployed: Below are some more details on the new “shared” option, as well as the existing “reserved” option: Shared Mode With today’s release we are introducing a new low-cost “shared” scaling mode for Windows Azure Web Sites.  A web-site running in shared mode is deployed in a shared/multi-tenant hosting environment.  Unlike the free tier, though, a web-site in shared mode has no quotas/upper-limit around the amount of bandwidth it can serve.  The first 5 GB/month of bandwidth you serve with a shared web-site is free, and then you pay the standard “pay as you go” Windows Azure outbound bandwidth rate for outbound bandwidth above 5 GB. A web-site running in shared mode also now supports the ability to map multiple custom DNS domain names, using both CNAMEs and A-records, to it.  The new A-record support we are introducing with today’s release provides the ability for you to support “naked domains” with your web-sites (e.g. http://microsoft.com in addition to http://www.microsoft.com).  We will also in the future enable SNI based SSL as a built-in feature with shared mode web-sites (this functionality isn’t supported with today’s release – but will be coming later this year to both the shared and reserved tiers). You pay for a shared mode web-site using the standard “pay as you go” model that we support with other features of Windows Azure (meaning no up-front costs, and you pay only for the hours that the feature is enabled).  A web-site running in shared mode costs only 1.3 cents/hr during the preview (so on average $9.36/month). Reserved Instance Mode In addition to running sites in shared mode, we also support scaling them to run within a reserved instance mode.  When running in reserved instance mode your sites are guaranteed to run isolated within your own Small, Medium or Large VM (meaning no other customers run within it).  You can run any number of web-sites within a VM, and there are no quotas on CPU or memory limits. You can run your sites using either a single reserved instance VM, or scale up to have multiple instances of them (e.g. 2 medium sized VMs, etc).  Scaling up or down is easy – just select the “reserved” instance VM within the “scale” tab of the Windows Azure Portal, choose the VM size you want, the number of instances of it you want to run, and then click save.  Changes take effect in seconds: Unlike shared mode, there is no per-site cost when running in reserved mode.  Instead you pay only for the reserved instance VMs you use – and you can run any number of web-sites you want within them at no extra cost (e.g. you could run a single site within a reserved instance VM or 100 web-sites within it for the same cost).  Reserved instance VMs start at 8 cents/hr for a small reserved VM.  Elastic Scale-up/down Windows Azure Web Sites allows you to scale-up or down your capacity within seconds.  This allows you to deploy a site using the shared mode option to begin with, and then dynamically scale up to the reserved mode option only when you need to – without you having to change any code or redeploy your application. If your site traffic starts to drop off, you can scale back down the number of reserved instances you are using, or scale down to the shared mode tier – all within seconds and without having to change code, redeploy, or adjust DNS mappings.  You can also use the “Dashboard” view within the Windows Azure Portal to easily monitor your site’s load in real-time (it shows not only requests/sec and bandwidth but also stats like CPU and memory usage). Because of Windows Azure’s “pay as you go” pricing model, you only pay for the compute capacity you use in a given hour.  So if your site is running most of the month in shared mode (at 1.3 cents/hr), but there is a weekend when it gets really popular and you decide to scale it up into reserved mode to have it run in your own dedicated VM (at 8 cents/hr), you only have to pay the additional pennies/hr for the hours it is running in the reserved mode.  There is no upfront cost you need to pay to enable this, and once you scale back down to shared mode you return to the 1.3 cents/hr rate.  This makes it super flexible and cost effective. Improved Custom Domain Support Web sites running in either “shared” or “reserved” mode support the ability to associate custom host names to them (e.g. www.mysitename.com).  You can associate multiple custom domains to each Windows Azure Web Site.  With today’s release we are introducing support for A-Records (a big ask by many users). With the A-Record support, you can now associate ‘naked’ domains to your Windows Azure Web Sites – meaning instead of having to use www.mysitename.com you can instead just have mysitename.com (with no sub-name prefix).  Because you can map multiple domains to a single site, you can optionally enable both a www and naked domain for a site (and then use a URL rewrite rule/redirect to avoid SEO problems). We’ve also enhanced the UI for managing custom domains within the Windows Azure Portal as part of today’s release.  Clicking the “Manage Domains” button in the tray at the bottom of the portal now brings up custom UI that makes it easy to manage/configure them: As part of this update we’ve also made it significantly smoother/easier to validate ownership of custom domains, and made it easier to switch existing sites/domains to Windows Azure Web Sites with no downtime. Continuous Deployment Support with Git and CodePlex or GitHub One of the more popular features we released earlier this summer was support for publishing web sites directly to Windows Azure using source control systems like TFS and Git.  This provides a really powerful way to manage your application deployments using source control.  It is really easy to enable this from a website’s dashboard page: The TFS option we shipped earlier this summer provides a very rich continuous deployment solution that enables you to automate builds and run unit tests every time you check in your web-site, and then if they are successful automatically publish to Azure. With today’s release we are expanding our Git support to also enable continuous deployment scenarios and integrate with projects hosted on CodePlex and GitHub.  This support is enabled with all web-sites (including those using the “free” scaling mode). Starting today, when you choose the “Set up Git publishing” link on a website’s “Dashboard” page you’ll see two additional options show up when Git based publishing is enabled for the web-site: You can click on either the “Deploy from my CodePlex project” link or “Deploy from my GitHub project” link to walkthrough a simple workflow to configure a connection between your website and a source repository you host on CodePlex or GitHub.  Once this connection is established, CodePlex or GitHub will automatically notify Windows Azure every time a checkin occurs.  This will then cause Windows Azure to pull the source and compile/deploy the new version of your app automatically.  The below two videos walkthrough how easy this is to enable this workflow and deploy both an initial app and then make a change to it: Enabling Continuous Deployment with Windows Azure Websites and CodePlex (2 minutes) Enabling Continuous Deployment with Windows Azure Websites and GitHub (2 minutes) This approach enables a really clean continuous deployment workflow, and makes it much easier to support a team development environment using Git: Note: today’s release supports establishing connections with public GitHub/CodePlex repositories.  Support for private repositories will be enabled in a few weeks. Support for multiple branches Previously, we only supported deploying from the git ‘master’ branch.  Often, though, developers want to deploy from alternate branches (e.g. a staging or future branch). This is now a supported scenario – both with standalone git based projects, as well as ones linked to CodePlex or GitHub.  This enables a variety of useful scenarios.  For example, you can now have two web-sites - a “live” and “staging” version – both linked to the same repository on CodePlex or GitHub.  You can configure one of the web-sites to always pull whatever is in the master branch, and the other to pull what is in the staging branch.  This enables a really clean way to enable final testing of your site before it goes live. This 1 minute video demonstrates how to configure which branch to use with a web-site. Summary The above features are all now live in production and available to use immediately.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using them today.  Visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. We’ll have even more new features and enhancements coming in the weeks ahead – including support for the recent Windows Server 2012 and .NET 4.5 releases (we will enable new web and worker role images with Windows Server 2012 and .NET 4.5 next month).  Keep an eye out on my blog for details as these new features become available. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• Windows 8 Live Accounts and the actual Windows Account

  - by Rick Strahl

  As if Windows Security wasn't confusing enough, in Windows 8 we get thrown yet another curve ball with Windows Live accounts to logon. When I set up my Windows 8 machine I originally set it up with a 'real', non-live account that I always use on my Windows machines. I did this mainly so I have a matching account for resources around my home and intranet network so I could log on to network resources properly. At some point later I decided to set up Windows Live security just to see how changes things. Windows wants you to use Windows Live Windows 8 logins are required in order for the Windows RT account info to work. Not that I care - since installing Windows 8 I've maybe spent 10 minutes with Windows RT because - well it's pretty freaking sucky on the desktop. From shitty apps to mis-managed screen real estate I can't say that there's anything compelling there to date, but then I haven't looked that hard either. Anyway… I set up the Windows Live account to see if that changes things. It does - I do get all my live logins to work from Live Account so that Twitter and Facebook posts and pictures and calendars all show up on live tiles on the start screen and in the actual apps. That's nice-ish, but hardly that exciting given that all of the apps tied to those live tiles are average at best. And it would have been nice if all of this could be done without being forced into running with a Windows Live User Account - this all feels like strong-arming you into moving into Microsofts walled garden… and that's probably what it's meant to do. Who am I? The real problem to me though is that these Windows Live and raw Windows User accounts are a bit unpredictable especially when it comes to developer information about the account and which credentials to use. So for example Windows reports folder security like this: Notice it's showing my Windows Live account. Now if I go to Edit and try to add my Windows user account (rstrahl) it'll just automatically show up as the live account. On the other hand though the underlying system sees everything as my real Windows account. After I switched to a Windows Live login account and I have to login to Windows with my Live account, what do you suppose this returns?Console.WriteLine(Environment.UserName); It returns my raw Windows user account (rstrahl). All my permissions, all my actual settings and the desktop console altogether run under that account. If I look in TaskManager (or Process Explorer for me) I see: Everything running on the desktop shell with my login running under my Windows user account. I suppose it makes sense, but where is that association happening? When I switched to a Windows Live account, nowhere did I associate my real account with the Live account - it just happened. And looking through the account configuration dialogs I can't find any reference to the raw Windows account. Other than switching back I see no mention anywhere of the raw Windows account - everything refers to the Live account. Right then, clear as potato soup! So this is who you really are! The problem is that in some situations this schizophrenic account behavior gets a bit weird. Today I was running a local Web application in IIS that uses Windows Authentication - I tried to log-in with my real Windows account login because that's what I'm used to using with WINDOWS freaking Authentication through IIS. But… it failed. I checked my IIS settings, my apps login settings and I just could not for the life of me get into the site with my Windows username. That is until I finally realized that I should try using my Windows Live credentials instead. And that worked. So now in this Windows Authentication dialog I had to type in my Live ID and password, which is - just weird. Then in IIS if I look at a Trace page (or in my case my app's Status page) I see that the logged on account is - my Windows user account. What's really annoying about this is that in some places it uses the live account in other places it uses my Windows account. If I remote desktop into my Web server online - I have to use the local authentication dialog but I have to put in my real Windows credentials not the Live account. Oh yes, it's all so terribly intuitive and logical… So in summary, when you log on with a Live account you are actually mapped to an underlying Windows user. In any application if you check the user name it'll be the underlying user account (not sure what happens in a Windows RT app or even what mechanism is used there to get the user name info).  When logging on to local machine resource with user name and password you have to use your Live IDs even if the permissions on the resources are mapped to your underlying Windows account. Easy enough I suppose, but still not exactly intuitive behavior…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Windows   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Windows Ce 6.0 loses Windows credentials when viewing a web site that's running on Windows 2008 server

  - by gnomixa

  When a user views a web page (with integrated Windows authentication) on WindowsCE 6.0 device, the authentication is lost sporadically. The page being viewed is running on Windows 2008 server. We never had the same issue with Windows 2003 server. The credentials were being asked once and cached for a certain time. My question is: has anything changed in Windows 2008 that doesn't pass the credentials the same way to WindowsCE? The only variable in this scenario is the web server OS - Windows 2003 vs WIndows 2008. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

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• Azure - Part 4 - Table Storage Service in Windows Azure

  - by Shaun

  In Windows Azure platform there are 3 storage we can use to save our data on the cloud. They are the Table, Blob and Queue. Before the Chinese New Year Microsoft announced that Azure SDK 1.1 had been released and it supports a new type of storage – Drive, which allows us to operate NTFS files on the cloud. I will cover it in the coming few posts but now I would like to talk a bit about the Table Storage.   Concept of Table Storage Service The most common development scenario is to retrieve, create, update and remove data from the data storage. In the normal way we communicate with database. When we attempt to move our application over to the cloud the most common requirement should be have a storage service. Windows Azure provides a in-build service that allow us to storage the structured data, which is called Windows Azure Table Storage Service. The data stored in the table service are like the collection of entities. And the entities are similar to rows or records in the tradtional database. An entity should had a partition key, a row key, a timestamp and set of properties. You can treat the partition key as a group name, the row key as a primary key and the timestamp as the identifer for solving the concurrency problem. Different with a table in a database, the table service does not enforce the schema for tables, which means you can have 2 entities in the same table with different property sets. The partition key is being used for the load balance of the Azure OS and the group entity transaction. As you know in the cloud you will never know which machine is hosting your application and your data. It could be moving based on the transaction weight and the number of the requests. If the Azure OS found that there are many requests connect to your Book entities with the partition key equals “Novel” it will move them to another idle machine to increase the performance. So when choosing the partition key for your entities you need to make sure they indecate the category or gourp information so that the Azure OS can perform the load balance as you wish.   Consuming the Table Although the table service looks like a database, you cannot access it through the way you are using now, neither ADO.NET nor ODBC. The table service exposed itself by ADO.NET Data Service protocol, which allows you can consume it through the RESTful style by Http requests. The Azure SDK provides a sets of classes for us to connect it. There are 2 classes we might need: TableServiceContext and TableServiceEntity. The TableServiceContext inherited from the DataServiceContext, which represents the runtime context of the ADO.NET data service. It provides 4 methods mainly used by us: CreateQuery: It will create a IQueryable instance from a given type of entity. AddObject: Add the specified entity into Table Service. UpdateObject: Update an existing entity in the Table Service. DeleteObject: Delete an entity from the Table Service. Beofre you operate the table service you need to provide the valid account information. It’s something like the connect string of the database but with your account name and the account key when you created the storage service on the Windows Azure Development Portal. After getting the CloudStorageAccount you can create the CloudTableClient instance which provides a set of methods for using the table service. A very useful method would be CreateTableIfNotExist. It will create the table container for you if it’s not exsited. And then you can operate the eneities to that table through the methods I mentioned above. Let me explain a bit more through an exmaple. We always like code rather than sentence.   Straightforward Accessing to the Table Here I would like to build a WCF service on the Windows Azure platform, and for now just one requirement: it would allow the client to create an account entity on the table service. The WCF service would have a method named Register and accept an instance of the account which the client wants to create. After perform some validation it will add the entity into the table service. So the first thing I should do is to create a Cloud Application on my VIstial Studio 2010 RC. (The Azure SDK 1.1 only supports VS2008 and VS2010 RC.) The solution should be like this below. Then I added a configuration items for the storage account through the Settings section under the cloud project. (Double click the Services file under Roles folder and navigate to the Setting section.) This setting will be used when to retrieve my storage account information. Since for now I just in the development phase I will select “UseDevelopmentStorage=true”. And then I navigated to the WebRole.cs file under my WCF project. If you have read my previous posts you would know that this file defines the process when the application start, and terminate on the cloud. What I need to do is to when the application start, set the configuration publisher to load my config file with the config name I specified. So the code would be like below. I removed the original service and contract created by the VS template and add my IAccountService contract and its implementation class - AccountService. And I add the service method Register with the parameters: email, password and it will return a boolean value to indicates the result which is very simple. At this moment if I press F5 the application will be established on my local development fabric and I can see my service runs well through the browser. Let’s implement the service method Rigister, add a new entity to the table service. As I said before the entities you want to store in the table service must have 3 properties: partition key, row key and timespan. You can create a class with these 3 properties. The Azure SDK provides us a base class for that named TableServiceEntity in Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient namespace. So what we need to do is more simply, create a class named Account and let it derived from the TableServiceEntity. And I need to add my own properties: Email, Password, DateCreated and DateDeleted. The DateDeleted is a nullable date time value to indecate whether this entity had been deleted and when. Do you notice that I missed something here? Yes it’s the partition key and row key I didn’t assigned. The TableServiceEntity base class defined 2 constructors one was a parameter-less constructor which will be used to fill values into the properties from the table service when retrieving data. The other was one with 2 parameters: partition key and row key. As I said below the partition key may affect the load balance and the row key must be unique so here I would like to use the email as the parition key and the email plus a Guid as the row key. OK now we finished the entity class we need to store onto the table service. The next step is to create a data access class for us to add it. Azure SDK gives us a base class for it named TableServiceContext as I mentioned below. So let’s create a class for operate the Account entities. The TableServiceContext need the storage account information for its constructor. It’s the combination of the storage service URI that we will create on Windows Azure platform, and the relevant account name and key. The TableServiceContext will use this information to find the related address and verify the account to operate the storage entities. Hence in my AccountDataContext class I need to override this constructor and pass the storage account into it. All entities will be saved in the table storage with one or many tables which we call them “table containers”. Before we operate an entity we need to make sure that the table container had been created on the storage. There’s a method we can use for that: CloudTableClient.CreateTableIfNotExist. So in the constructor I will perform it firstly to make sure all method will be invoked after the table had been created. Notice that I passed the storage account enpoint URI and the credentials to specify where my storage is located and who am I. Another advise is that, make your entity class name as the same as the table name when create the table. It will increase the performance when you operate it over the cloud especially querying. Since the Register WCF method will add a new account into the table service, here I will create a relevant method to add the account entity. Before implement, I should add a reference - System.Data.Services.Client to the project. This reference provides some common method within the ADO.NET Data Service which can be used in the Windows Azure Table Service. I will use its AddObject method to create my account entity. Since the table service are not fully implemented the ADO.NET Data Service, there are some methods in the System.Data.Services.Client that TableServiceContext doesn’t support, such as AddLinks, etc. Then I implemented the serivce method to add the account entity through the AccountDataContext. You can see in the service implmentation I load the storage account information through my configuration file and created the account table entity from the parameters. Then I created the AccountDataContext. If it’s my first time to invoke this method the constructor of the AccountDataContext will create a table container for me. Then I use Add method to add the account entity into the table. Next, let’s create a farely simple client application to test this service. I created a windows console application and added a service reference to my WCF service. The metadata information of the WCF service cannot be retrieved if it’s deployed on the Windows Azure even though the <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true"/> had been set. If we need to get its metadata we can deploy it on the local development service and then changed the endpoint to the address which is on the cloud. In the client side app.config file I specified the endpoint to the local development fabric address. And the just implement the client to let me input an email and a password then invoke the WCF service to add my acocunt. Let’s run my application and see the result. Of course it should return TRUE to me. And in the local SQL Express I can see the data had been saved in the table.   Summary In this post I explained more about the Windows Azure Table Storage Service. I also created a small application for demostration of how to connect and consume it through the ADO.NET Data Service Managed Library provided within the Azure SDK. I only show how to create an eneity in the storage service. In the next post I would like to explain about how to query the entities with conditions thruogh LINQ. I also would like to refactor my AccountDataContext class to make it dyamic for any kinds of entities.   Hope this helps, Shaun   All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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• Pay in the future should make you think in the present

  - by BuckWoody

  Distributed Computing - and more importantly “-as-a-Service” models of computing have a different cost model. This is something that sounds obvious on the surface but it’s often forgotten during the design and coding phase of a project. In on-premises computing, we’re used to purchasing a server and all of the hardware infrastructure and software licenses needed not only for one project, but several. This is an up-front or “sunk” cost that we consume by running code the organization needs to perform its function. Using a direct connection over wires you’ve already paid for, we don’t often have to think about bandwidth, hits on the data store or the amount of compute we use - we just know more is better. In a pay-as-you-go model, however, each of these architecture decisions has a potential cost impact. The amount of data you store, the number of times you access it, and the amount you send back all come with a charge. The offset is that you don’t buy anything at all up-front, so that sunk cost is freed up. And financial professionals know that money now is worth more than money later. Saving that up-front cost allows you to invest it in other things. It’s not just that you’re using things that now cost money - it’s that the design itself in distributed computing has a cost impact. That can be a really good thing, such as when you dynamically add capacity for paying customers. If you can tie back the cost of a series of clicks to what a user will pay to do so, you can set a profit margin that is easy to track. Here’s a case in point: Assume you are using a large instance in Windows Azure to compute some data that you retrieve from a SQL Azure database. If you don’t monitor the path of the application, you may not know what you are really using. Since you’re paying by the size of the instance, it’s best to maximize it all the time. Recently I evaluated just this situation, and found that downsizing the instance and adding another one where needed, adding a caching function to the application, moving part of the data into Windows Azure tables not only increased the speed of the application, but reduced the cost and more closely tied the cost to the profit. The key is this: from the very outset - the design - make sure you include metrics to measure for the cost/performance (sometimes these are the same) for your application. Windows Azure opens up awesome new ways of doing things, so make sure you study distributed systems architecture before you try and force in the application design you have on premises into your new application structure.

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• Windows Workflow Foundation 4 (WF4) ReHosting

  - by Russ Clark

  I've been looking at the possibility of ReHosting a WF4 Workflow to be used to debug running Workflows. All the posts and samples I've seen regarding WF4 Rehosting are using a WPF application to initially Host the Workflow, and then use the WorkflowDesigner in ReHosting it. Is there any way to Rehost a Workflow that was hosted in a non WPF application, like ASP.Net MVC?

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• Download, Install, and Update Metro-Style Apps from the Windows Store in Windows 8

  - by Lori Kaufman

  The Windows Store is similar to the app stores for Apple iOS and Android devices and Windows phones. It allows you to buy and download both free and paid Metro-style apps for Windows 8. When you purchase an app from the Windows Store, it can be installed on up to five Windows PCs or tablets. A Microsoft email account is also required to download and install apps from the Windows store. NOTE: How-To Geek has released a Geek Trivia app for Windows 8. For more information about the app and for a link to download it, see our article. This article shows you how to download, install, and update Metro-style apps from the Windows Store. We also show you how to uninstall an app from the Metro Start screen. Why Enabling “Do Not Track” Doesn’t Stop You From Being Tracked HTG Explains: What is the Windows Page File and Should You Disable It? How To Get a Better Wireless Signal and Reduce Wireless Network Interference

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• Windows Azure Virtual Machine Test Drive Kit

  - by Clint Edmonson

  The public preview of hosted Virtual Machines in Windows Azure is now available to the general public. This platform preview enables you to evaluate our new IaaS and Enterprise Networking capabilities. Once you have registered for the 90 Day Free Trial and created a new account, you can access the preview directly at this link: https://account.windowsazure.com/PreviewFeatures If you’ve been to any of my presentations lately, you’ll know that I’m fired up about these new offerings. As I’ve worked through some scenarios for myself and with my customers, I’ve been collecting the resources that helped me to ramp up. Here’s a collection of links to the items I’ve found most useful: Core Resources Digital Chalk Talk Videos – detailed technical overviews of the new Windows Azure services and supporting technologies as announced June 7, including Virtual Machines (IaaS Windows and Linux), Storage, Command Line Tools http://www.meetwindowsazure.com/DigitalChalkTalks Scenarios Videos on You Tube – “how to” guides, including “Create and Manage Virtual Networks”, “Create & Manage SQL Database”, and many more http://www.youtube.com/user/windowsazure Windows Azure Trust Center - provides a comprehensive of view of Windows Azure and security and compliance practices http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/trust-center/ MSDN Forums for Windows Azure http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/preview-support/ Microsoft Knowledge Base article Microsoft server software support for Windows Azure Virtual Machines Videos Deep Dive into Running Virtual Machines on Windows Azure Windows Azure Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks Windows Azure IaaS and How It Works Deep Dive into Windows Azure Virtual Machines: From the Cloud Vendor and Enterprise Perspective An Overview of Managing Applications, Services, and Virtual Machines in Windows Azure Monitoring and Managing Your Windows Azure Applications and Services Overview of Windows Azure Networking Features Hybrid Will Rule: Options to Connect, Extend and Integrate Applications in Your Data Center and Windows Azure Business Continuity in the Windows Azure Cloud Linux on Windows Azure Blogs Understanding Windows Azure Virtual Machines An Overview of Windows Azure Virtual Network Virtual Machines and Windows Running SQL Server in a Windows Azure Virtual Machine Support for Linux Virtual Machines on Windows Azure

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• Remote Debug Windows Azure Cloud Service

  - by Shaun

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/shaunxu/archive/2013/11/02/remote-debug-windows-azure-cloud-service.aspxOn the 22nd of October Microsoft Announced the new Windows Azure SDK 2.2. It introduced a lot of cool features but one of it shocked most, which is the remote debug support for Windows Azure Cloud Service (a.k.a. WACS).   Live Debug is Nightmare for Cloud Application When we are developing against public cloud, debug might be the most difficult task, especially after the application had been deployed. In order to minimize the debug effort, Microsoft provided local emulator for cloud service and storage once the Windows Azure platform was announced. By using local emulator developers could be able run their application on local machine with almost the same behavior as running on Windows Azure, and that could be debug easily and quickly. But when we deployed our application to Azure, we have to use log, diagnostic monitor to debug, which is very low efficient. Visual Studio 2012 introduced a new feature named "anonymous remote debug" which allows any workstation under any user could be able to attach the remote process. This is less secure comparing the authenticated remote debug but much easier and simpler to use. Now in Windows Azure SDK 2.2, we could be able to attach our application from our local machine to Windows Azure, and it's very easy.   How to Use Remote Debugger First, let's create a new Windows Azure Cloud Project in Visual Studio and selected ASP.NET Web Role. Then create an ASP.NET WebForm application. Then right click on the cloud project and select "publish". In the publish dialog we need to make sure the application will be built in debug mode, since .NET assembly cannot be debugged in release mode. I enabled Remote Desktop as I will log into the virtual machine later in this post. It's NOT necessary for remote debug. And selected "advanced settings" tab, make sure we checked "Enable Remote Debugger for all roles". In WACS, a cloud service could be able to have one or more roles and each role could be able to have one or more instances. The remote debugger will be enabled for all roles and all instances if we checked. Currently there's no way for us to specify which role(s) and which instance(s) to enable. Finally click "publish" button. In the windows azure activity window in Visual Studio we can find some information about remote debugger. To attache remote process would be easy. Open the "server explorer" window in Visual Studio and expand "cloud services" node, find the cloud service, role and instance we had just published and wanted to debug, right click on the instance and select "attach debugger". Then after a while (it's based on how fast our Internet connect to Windows Azure Data Center) the Visual Studio will be switched to debug mode. Let's add a breakpoint in the default web page's form load function and refresh the page in browser to see what's happen. We can see that the our application was stopped at the breakpoint. The call stack, watch features are all available to use. Now let's hit F5 to continue the step, then back to the browser we will find the page was rendered successfully.   What Under the Hood Remote debugger is a WACS plugin. When we checked the "enable remote debugger" in the publish dialog, Visual Studio will add two cloud configuration settings in the CSCFG file. Since they were appended when deployment, we cannot find in our project's CSCFG file. But if we opened the publish package we could find as below. At the same time, Visual Studio will generate a certificate and included into the package for remote debugger. If we went to the azure management portal we will find there will a certificate under our application which was created, uploaded by remote debugger plugin. Since I enabled Remote Desktop there will be two certificates in the screenshot below. The other one is for remote debugger. When our application was deployed, windows azure system will open related ports for remote debugger. As below you can see there are two new ports opened on my application. Finally, in our WACS virtual machine, windows azure system will copy the remote debug component based on which version of Visual Studio we are using and start. Our application then can be debugged remotely through the visual studio remote debugger. Below is the task manager on the virtual machine of my WACS application.   Summary In this post I demonstrated one of the feature introduced in Windows Azure SDK 2.2, which is Remote Debugger. It allows us to attach our application from local machine to windows azure virtual machine once it had been deployed. Remote debugger is powerful and easy to use, but it brings more security risk. And since it's only available for debug build this means the performance will be worse than release build. Hence we should only use this feature for staging test and bug fix (publish our beta version to azure staging slot), rather than for production.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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• Expose NativeActivity Variables to Workflow Designer

  - by sixlettervariables

  I've got a NativeActivity which contains an Activity body. The purpose of this activity is to expose a resource for the duration of the child activity as a Variable. The problem I've encountered is it appears the Variable cannot be used outside the activity. I'll use StreamReader as an example resource. ResourceActivity.cs: [Designer(typeof(ResourceActivityDesigner))] public sealed class ResourceActivity : NativeActivity { [RequiredArgument] public InArgument<string> Path { get; set; } [Browsable(false), EditorBrowsable(EditorBrowsableState.Never)] public Activity Body { get; set; } [Browsable(false), EditorBrowsable(EditorBrowsableState.Never)] public Variable<StreamReader> Resource { get; set; } public ResourceActivity() { this.Resource = new Variable<StreamReader> { Default = null, Name = "reader" }; } protected override void CacheMetadata(NativeActivityMetadata metadata) { if (this.Path != null) metadata.AddArgument(this.Path); if (this.Body != null) metadata.AddChild(this.Body); if (this.Resource != null) metadata.AddVariable(this.Resource); } protected override void Execute(NativeActivityContext context) { this.Resource.Set(context, new StreamReader(this.Path.Get(context))); context.ScheduleActivity(this.Body, new completionCallback(Done), new FaultCallback(Faulted)); } private void Done(NativeActivityContext context, ActivityInstance instance) { var reader = this.Reader.Get(context); if (reader != null) reader.Dispose(); } private void Faulted(NativeActivityFaultContext context, Exception ex, ActivityInstance instance) { var reader = this.Reader.Get(context); if (reader != null) reader.Dispose(); } } I cannot view "Resource" or "reader" in the Variables list in the Workflow Designer. Am I missing something in CacheMetadata?

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• How to (pre)start xamlx workflow service

  - by rwwilden

  Related to this question. I have a xamlx workflow service that loads part of its definition from a database when it runs (using ActivityXamlServices.Load). Reason for this is that I need versioning, see the related question. I'll use WCF routing to direct calls to the right service. The part that I load dynamically contains a Receive activity. However, this activity is 'invisible' as long as the workflow doesn't start because the part of the workflow I load from the database is only loaded when the workflow starts. So from the outside it appears as if there is no Receive activity in the workflow. Apart from not being able to generate a contract for the workflow service, I can't call the service either. My first attempt was to do a soap call with the right contract on the workflow service. However, the runtime doesn't automagically activate my workflow in that case. So the question is, how do I start a workflow that is hosted inside IIS? Regards, Ronald

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