Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 and the ALM Virtual Machine

re: Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 and the ALM Virtual Machine

Brian Keller — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 17:08:48 GMT

Sam, thanks for the nice words and constructive feedback. It's certainly worth considering. I have steered away from using "real" user stories / test case definitions simply because it's a religious topic (there are lots of opinions on the "right" way to write these) and that's not something that the VM is designed to teach. Part of the beauty of TFS is that it lends itself to letting teams work in a style that suits them, so where it's not required to get prescriptive, I have tried to avoid doing so for fear of sending a message that this is "the way" to use TFS.

Richer check-in data would certainly be nice. I have to figure out how much work that would be, though. To be honest, having to maintain these VMs and labs with every quarterly update that Visual Studio / Team Foundation Server is shipping now is proving to be a lot of work. :-)

re: Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 and the ALM Virtual Machine

Sam — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 20:29:26 GMT

I've been playing around with these ALM VMs for awhile for our training purposes and it'd be really nice if the data in the TFS Work items was more representative of real world data. The fact that the work items and test cases are so weak it makes it harder to show my TFS users these demos without having to constantly caveat the labs. It would also be nice if the Team Builds had real data show code changes and work items opened and closed between builds. Again nice job...but please round out the work items and spend the time filling out the scenarios. It takes forever too download and set these up for our users so I appreciate the work that's gone into creating them...it just feels like you've covered 90% but left out the best 10%.

re: Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 and the ALM Virtual Machine

Brian Keller — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 05:10:41 GMT

Julien, it's live now: http://aka.ms/vs11almvm

re: Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 and the ALM Virtual Machine

Julien P. — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 09:53:36 GMT

Hi Brian,

Any chance we can get the virtual machine without the update ? I'm concern about when the updated one will be available (I'd be very gratefull to have a version for Friday)

Thanks in advance.

re: Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 and the ALM Virtual Machine

Brian Keller — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 16:19:12 GMT

The build controller should work now.

re: Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 and the ALM Virtual Machine

Thanks for the Update — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 09:42:45 GMT

Does the build controller work in the new VSALM or does it still think its on the old VM?

Regards

re: Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 and the ALM Virtual Machine

Wes MacDonald — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 15:20:35 GMT

@Abul,

When SP2 for SharePoint 2010 is released maybe we'll get it on WS2012

See support.microsoft.com/.../2724471

Maybe by that time we'll be asking for SP2013 ;)

re: Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 and the ALM Virtual Machine

Brian Keller — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 00:45:07 GMT

@Abul,

Not this time, no. I had considered it, but I need to use SP2010 use for some of the Update 1 scenarios and SP2010 is currently not supported on WS2012.

re: Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 and the ALM Virtual Machine

Abul — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 00:38:39 GMT

Thanks Brian. Any chance when you release your new VM it will be based on SRV 2012 and SQL 2012?

re: Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 and the ALM Virtual Machine

Brian Keller — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 00:35:25 GMT

@Abul,

I should have known that question was coming. :-)

Nothing too major. Some examples off the top of my head include that UAC is disabled, all users are Administrators, Windows Update is disabled (but I recommend always running the VM offline so it shouldn't be a security risk even if the updates go stale), that sort of thing. Also, most work items only contain enough detail to support the hands-on-labs / demo scripts. You won't see detailed descriptions for instance, although that sort of information would usually be vital for a real developer to understand what they need to dev.