And it’s here!
I’m going to excerpt Brian Harry’s blog since he already said it so well:
Today, we released the final update to the Lab Management features for the Visual Studio 2010 product family. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post with a bunch of details on the Lab Management capabilities and also explained recent licensing changes. Today I am announcing that the final bits are now available for download to licensed customers. Here are some useful links: Knowledge Base Article describing the update Lab Management Trial page with lots of useful content and links The patch you need to install on your clients and servers As I mentioned in my previous post (referenced above), this update also includes all TFS fixes that have been made since TFS 2010 released. This is a great update to install even if you don’t use Lab Management today. Not only will it enable Lab Management for you to try, it will provide you quite a few TFS fixes/improvements.
Today, we released the final update to the Lab Management features for the Visual Studio 2010 product family. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post with a bunch of details on the Lab Management capabilities and also explained recent licensing changes.
Today I am announcing that the final bits are now available for download to licensed customers. Here are some useful links:
Knowledge Base Article describing the update
Lab Management Trial page with lots of useful content and links
The patch you need to install on your clients and servers
As I mentioned in my previous post (referenced above), this update also includes all TFS fixes that have been made since TFS 2010 released. This is a great update to install even if you don’t use Lab Management today. Not only will it enable Lab Management for you to try, it will provide you quite a few TFS fixes/improvements.
I’m installing everything on my Lab Management rig this afternoon.
Also remember that Lab Management is now included for all customers who have Visual Studio Test Professional 2010 with MSDN, or Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN. I posted some more details here a few weeks back on these changes, along with a video recording of my keynote demo where I showcased some of the capabilities of Lab Management.
Last month the Team Foundation Server team released the first Community Technology Preview (CTP) showcasing integration between Project Server 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010. This integration will enable the Project Management Office (PMO) to see a consolidated view of the progress and resource availability across all software development projects in Team Foundation Server 2010. Software teams using Team Foundation Server 2010 can choose to manage their projects using a formal process or an agile process and flow their status and schedule updates into Project Server and Project Managers can preview changes as they flow in, track the work at a high-level and provide live updates to their stakeholders.
Unfortunately, the CTP download is a whopping 26 files weighing in at over 20GB. The good news is that this is because everything is available in a pre-configured HyperV virtual machine (VM), so once you have the VM there’s not much left to configure to begin kicking the tires on this release and sending us feedback. But I’ve written the following instructions to make it easier for you to batch download all of the files required for this release.
Downloading the virtual machine and associated files: I suggest using a download manager for these files since they are very large. My download manager of choice is Free Download Manager. You can use your own favorite download manager, but you may need to adapt the instructions below as appropriate.
Once you download the release, follow the instructions on the download details page for extracting it, adding it within Hyper-V, and running the four walkthroughs which showcase the functionality enabled by this integration. The download details page will also refer you to the file called “Virtual Machine Setup Guide.dox” which is included in the list of files you downloaded above.
Want to learn more? If you are interested in learning more about the Project Server and Team Foundation Server integration then I would encourage you to attend our upcoming TechNet Webcast with the product team (register here). Finally, I’m spinning up an early adopter program that you can self-nominate for here (nominations will be open until August 25). This program will give you access to additional training material, direct interaction with the product group, and more.
This morning at the VSLive! keynote we announced two things I’m really excited about:
1) Visual Studio 2010 Lab Management will officially release (“RTM”) later this month (by the end of August 2010). For folks following along at home, you may remember that Lab Management was still in a “Release Candidate” state when we RTM’d the rest of the Visual Studio 2010 functionality back in April. It’s a very comprehensive set of functionality, and we wanted to take a few more months to make sure we had it right before officially releasing. Well the wait is almost over…
2) The other huge piece of news is that if you own Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN or Visual Studio Test Professional 2010 with MSDN, then you already own the Lab Management functionality! This is a change from the previously announced licensing model which would have required that you pay per VM Host that you were deploying your virtual machines onto. Now we’ve removed all of those costs and the associated licensing complexity. As long as each user who works with Lab Management has Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN or Visual Studio Test Professional 2010 with MSDN, then those users are already covered to work with Lab Management. Pretty sweet deal!
So what, exactly, is Visual Studio 2010 Lab Management? In its simplest sense, Lab Management extends the capability of Team Foundation Server 2010 to provide a way of managing a virtual lab for development and testing.
Lab Management can help you fully automate your build-deploy-test workflow. Let’s break that down:
Finally, an important part of what we’re enabling here is the ability to capture actionable bugs when a test fails. In addition to capturing video recordings, event logs, IntelliTrace files, system information, and other such information about the test environment, Lab Management enables a tester to snapshot the entire environment at a point in time. When a bug is created, a shortcut to that snapshot can be included. When the developer gets the bug, they just open that snapshot to be taken to the state of the environment where the bug has been reproduced. No more “no repro” or “It works on my machine!”
You can watch the VSLive! 2010 Day 2 keynote, which includes more information about why this release is important as well as a product demonstration by yours truly, using the player below:
To understand more about the logical architecture employed by Lab Management, or the workflows it enables, visit http://archive.speakflow.com/vs2010testing/.
You can watch these videos to see it in action: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/lab_management/archive/2010/02/11/visual-studio-lab-management-videos.aspx
You can get a trial VM here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=195885. For now this is still the Release Candidate build but will be updated with the RTM build as soon as it is available.
Lastly, here’s the main Lab Management web site for even more info: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/solutions/software-quality/lab-management
My book includes a chapter on Lab Management as well, and if you follow that link you’ll find a hyperlink to the Manual Testing chapter which is available as a free download.
Happy testing!
I am pleased to announce that the RTM version of the Visual Studio 2010 virtual machine, along with sample data and hands-on-labs for key application lifecycle management (ALM) scenarios, is now available.
This virtual machine (VM) includes Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010, and a sample application along with sample data which supports 9 hands-on-labs. This VM includes everything you need to learn and/or deliver demonstrations of many of my favorite application lifecycle management (ALM) capabilities in Visual Studio 2010. This VM is available in the virtualization platform of your choice (Hyper-V, Virtual PC 2007 SP1, and Windows [7] Virtual PC). Hyper-V is highly recommended because of the performance benefits and snapshotting capabilities.
This virtual machine is based on trial software which will expire on December 15, 2010. Another updated virtual machine will be posted before that date.
Please note that if you were using the RC version of this VHD, it expired June 30, 2010. Please download the newest version which includes RTM bits and a few fit-and-finish updates to the hands-on-labs and sample data. Also note that this VM does not include Visual Studio Lab Management 2010 capabilities. The Lab Management team has released a separate VHD which has this capability.
Tailspin Toys The sample application we are using in this virtual machine is a simple ASP.NET MVC 2 storefront called Tailspin Toys. Tailspin Toys sells model airplanes and relies on the application lifecycle management capabilities of Visual Studio 2010 to help them build, test, and maintain their storefront.
Hands-on-Labs / Demo Scripts The 9 hands-on-labs / demo scripts which accompany this virtual machine cover several of the core capabilities of conducting application lifecycle management with Visual Studio 2010. Each document can be used by an individual in a self-paced hands-on-lab capacity, to learn how to perform a given set of tasks, or used by a presenter to deliver a demonstration or classroom-style training.
Software quality:
Software architecture:
Software Configuration Management:
These labs can be downloaded here.
How to use this virtual machine: For your convenience, the same virtual machine has been ported to three different virtualization platforms. For instructions on how to use this virtual machine, please download “Working with the Visual Studio 2010 Virtual Machine.docx.” This guidance will help you get started with the virtual machine using the virtualization technology of your choice (Hyper-V, Virtual PC 2007, or Windows [7] Virtual PC). It also includes the username and password for this virtual machine.
This image will effectively stop working on December 15, 2010 when the trial software (SQL Server, Visual Studio, Team Foundation Server) stops working. You will also receive Windows activation messages while using this VM – this is because of the way Windows Server 2008 trial behaves and is to be expected, so you can ignore / cancel these activation dialogs when prompted. If you want to get rid of these activation warnings you can activate the image using your own product key (e.g. from your MSDN Subscription). You may want to do the same for the copy of Office which is installed, since it will be limited to 25 launches.
Downloading the virtual machine: I suggest using a download manager for these files since they are very large. My download manager of choice is Free Download Manager. You can use your own favorite download manager, but you may need to adapt the instructions below as appropriate.
The download details pages contain more information on each of these releases.
Download details pages:
Visual Studio 2010 RTM (Hyper-V)
Visual Studio 2010 RTM (Windows [7] Virtual PC)
Visual Studio 2010 RTM (Virtual PC 2007 SP1)
You can also download and install all of the Visual Studio 2010 trial software for yourself by downloading the installers from here.
Happy downloading! Please send feedback / questions to VSKitFdbk@Microsoft.com.
I recently had the great opportunity to support the launch of Visual Studio 2010 by embarking upon a 4-week roadshow through South Africa and Europe (plus 1 unplanned additional week in England due to the volcanic ash cloud!).
I promised that I would upload my slide decks, so here they are. I also used my SpeakFlow presentation on software testing a bit in lieu of slides. But fair warning: about 80% of my talks were based on demos, so the slides in and of themselves don’t really tell a complete story. Instead, I would encourage you to watch the recordings of my sessions from TechDays in The Netherlands. You can view all of the recordings on Channel 9 at the following locations:
And finally, you can run just about all of the demos I delivered during my roadshow by downloading the VHD and hands-on-labs I posted in April. I’m hard at work producing an RTM version of these materials, but for now everything in that VHD will continue to work until June 30, 2010.
I hope you enjoy the materials!
Recently I had the great pleasure to co-author my first book, along with Martin Woodward, Mickey Gousset, and Ajoy Krishnamoorthy. The book is titled Professional Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio 2010, and is now available.
This book is designed to cover the breadth of capabilities in the Visual Studio 2010 family of products (including Team Foundation Server 2010) which are targeted at application lifecycle management. In no particular order, the chapter list includes:
An Introduction to Software Architecture
Top-down Design with Use Case Diagrams, Activity Diagrams, and Sequence Diagrams
Top-down Design with Component and Class Diagrams
Analyzing Applications Using Architecture Explorer
Using Layer Diagrams
An Introduction to Software Development
Unit Testing with the Unit Test Framework
Managed Code Analysis and Code Metrics
Profiling and Performance
Database Development, Testing, and Deployment
An Introduction to IntelliTrace
An Introduction to Software Testing
Web Performance and Load Testing
Manual Testing (click for free sample chapter)
Coded User Interface Testing
Lab Management
Introduction to Team Foundation Server
Team Foundation Architecture
Team Foundation Version Control
Branching and Merging
Team Foundation Build (click for free sample chapter)
An Introduction to Project Management
Process Templates
Using Reports, Portals, and Dashboards
Agile Planning Using Planning Workbooks
Process Template Customizations
The two hyperlinks above will take you to full sample chapters in PDF format that you can read for free in order to get a sense for the style of the book.
Since this is a breath book, and there are a TON of capabilities to cover (even in 700 pages), don’t expect the book to cover everything you will ever need in order to become an expert on these technologies. Instead, think of this as a moderately deep look at the capabilities that you might want to adopt from across Visual Studio 2010 family, along with detailed walkthroughs, screenshots, and a sprinkling of best practices and things to be aware of as you start thinking about adopting these tools.
This was a labor of love and I hope you’ll enjoy reading the book and using what I firmly believe is the best ever release of Visual Studio!
Brian
June 28 2010 Update: The RC bits expire June 30, 2010, making the original post below obsolete. I have posted a new virtual machine and hands-on-labs based on RTM bits. To download the latest virtual machine please click here.
Back in December we posted a set of virtual machines pre-configured with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2, Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2, and 7 hands-on-labs. I am pleased to announce that today we are shipping an updated set of virtual machines using the Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate bits, a brand new sample application, and 9 hands-on-labs.
This VM includes everything you need to learn and/or deliver demonstrations of many of my favorite application lifecycle management (ALM) capabilities in Visual Studio 2010. This VM is available in the virtualization platform of your choice (Hyper-V, Virtual PC 2007 SP1, and Windows [7] Virtual PC). Hyper-V is highly recommended because of the performance benefits and snapshotting capabilities.
Hands-on-Labs / Demo Scripts The 9 hands-on-labs / demo scripts which accompany this virtual machine cover several of the core capabilities of conducting application lifecycle management with Visual Studio 2010. Each document can be used by an individual in a hands-on-lab capacity, to learn how to perform a given set of tasks, or used by a presenter to deliver a demonstration or classroom-style training.
Note that this VM does not include Visual Studio Lab Management 2010 capabilities, but you can download a separate VHD to work with that capability.
These labs can be downloaded here. They will also be making their way into the March refresh of the Visual Studio 2010 Training Kit.
This image will effectively stop working on June 30, 2010 when the Visual Studio 2010 RC stops working. We will provide an RTM-based set of virtual machines and labs before then. You will also receive Windows activation messages while using this VM – this is because of the way Windows Server 2008 trial behaves and is to be expected, so you can ignore / cancel these activation dialogs when prompted. If you want to get rid of these activation warnings you can activate the image using your own product key (e.g. from your MSDN Subscription). You may want to do the same for the copy of Office which is installed, since it will be limited to 25 launches.
Visual Studio 2010 RC (Hyper-V)
Visual Studio 2010 RC (Windows [7] Virtual PC)
Visual Studio 2010 RC (Virtual PC 2007 SP1)
You can also download and install all of the Release Candidate software for yourself by downloading the installers from here.
4 weeks, 7 countries, 25+ sessions, 1 suitcase…
It’s a long time to be on the road, but I’ll be doing what I love – talking about what’s new in Visual Studio 2010 for application lifecycle management. Here’s my schedule so far. If you live in or near any of these places you should come on out! You can follow the links in the table below for event registration.
At every event I will be talking about software testing with Visual Studio 2010. At a few venues I’ll also be talking about some of the other ALM capabilities of Visual Studio 2010 (TFS, architecture, debugging, Team Build, etc.). The only thing I love more than talking about this stuff is meeting people who are interested in using it. I hope to see you there!
This post is about the Visual Studio 2010 testing tools. I promise. But first, a bit of back story… skip to “Testing with Visual Studio 2010” if you don’t care about the back story. Go on, I don’t mind.
Over the last year or so I’ve been struggling to come up with a great way of describing the new software testing paradigms we are enabling with Visual Studio 2010. In my day job as a technical evangelist I get to interact with a wide range of audiences, each with a different set of interests in Visual Studio 2010 as a solution for software testing. A manual tester, a software developer, a project manager, and a CIO are all going to have their own preconceptions about testing tools, and will bring along their own expectations and questions when consuming the content I deliver.
Our software testing story with Visual Studio 2010 is very rich. Case in point, I contributed about 300 pages to a new book on Professional Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio 2010, and truth be told I could have written another 1000 pages if I had the time. How do you condense all of that material into a presentation format that is (usually) delivered in 30-, 60-, or 90-minute chunks?
My original solution to addressing these varying demands was to have an arsenal of PowerPoint presentations that I could open up depending on the situation. Sometimes, especially when visiting customers in the field, I would only learn about the makeup of my audience a few minutes before the presentation. I would just grab the right set of slides and start presenting. But this approach can be unwieldy, and requires that I maintain (and be able to present on a moment’s notice) multiple PowerPoint presentations. And as much as I love PowerPoint, it tends to create a rigid, linear approach towards delivering presentations that can be boring for both the audience and the presenter. There had to be a better way…
I had seen a few presentations delivered at MIX which were presented completely with Microsoft Deep Zoom. The presenters could zoom in and out, pan around, and tell their entire story all without the “context reset” of changing slides. This was perfect! But how do I create one of these? I borrowed some time with Nishant Kothary, a colleague of mine on the MIX team who pioneered the Website Named Desire Deep Zoom that he used to present with at MIX. Nishant was very helpful in describing how you can generate Deep Zoom with Microsoft Expression, but there were some limitations in the approach that I would have to code around – including the ability to embed videos in the Deep Zoom composition, which I decided was critical for showing off testing with Visual Studio 2010.
So I posed the problem to a local software firm – SharpLogic Software – that I knew had a lot of experience with Microsoft Silverlight. Two weeks later, we had built a prototype of a Deep Zoom presentation showcasing software testing with Visual Studio 2010. Over the last few months we have been iterating on the design, adding features, and going through the usual legal hurdles. What follows is the result of this effort… this has forever changed the way I think about delivering presentations. I hope you enjoy it. Note that SharpLogic has even spun off a new business, SpeakFlow, where you can create your own such presentations.
This Deep Zoom is designed to help presenters tell the story of software testing with Visual Studio 2010. This includes concepts such as manual testing, actionable bugs, “no more no repro,” lab management, the build-deploy-test workflow, rich reporting, and more!
This presentation is based on Microsoft Deep Zoom and is designed to provide the following benefits over traditional linear presentations:
· Go deep, or stay high-level: Depending on what your audience craves you can either focus on a high-level story or drill deep into product demonstrations.
· Context retention: In between each “deep zoom” you can always remind your audience of the bigger picture by bouncing back to the high-level context view.
· Inline videos: Each concept includes product demonstrations which can be used to supplement your storytelling experience.
Or you can run it locally by extracting the offline version (127MB).
The offline version is nice when your Internet connection might be slow, since the videos can take some time to load.
Some tips:
Videos in this Deep Zoom are based on beta 2, but the concepts are fundamentally identical to RTM. As time permits I’ll update the videos for RTM.
I hope you enjoy it!
The instructions in this blog post are meant to accompany 10-4 Episode 41: Downloading and Installing the Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate. Please view that video for additional context, including a step-by-step walkthrough for installing the Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 Release Candidates.
I suggest using a download manager for these files since they are very large. My download manager of choice is Free Download Manager. You can use your own favorite download manager, but you may need to adapt the instructions below as appropriate.
Note that the ISO’s for Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio Ultimate are are multi-part RAR files. After you download these files run the first file in each set (the EXE) and it will extract the ISO file for you.
Download links for other Visual Studio 2010 SKU’s (e.g. Agents, Test Professional, etc.) can be found here.