bharry's WebLog

Tool to automate VM setups for Lab

bharry — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 05:36:00 GMT

One of the cool new capabilities in the 2010 wave of products is Lab Management. It allows you to easily manage a pool of virtual machines and automate deployment and testing of your applications. Lab Management allows you do define "Environments" - collections of virtual machine templates that define your application deployment architecture. For example, a 3 tier environment would have a client, a mid tier and a data tier VM template. Once you have an environment, you can easily and repeatabily deploy builds of your software onto it and run automate or manual tests.

However, getting a proper environment configured can be a fair amount of work. Preparing all the VMs takes a lot of steps and a lot of time. Accounts need to be set up for talking to TFS. Lab, deployment and test agent software needs to be installed. A bunch of Windows settings need to be adjusted (screen saver turned off, IE popups (like auto complete, etc) need to be disabled, and more). It can take many hours to get it all done and it's easy to miss a step.

To help with this, we are working on a tool that will automatically prepare your VM templates for you. The first pre-release of the tool is now available on CodePlex here: http://vslabmgmt.codeplex.com/. You'll find the documentation for it on the CodePlex site.

We expect to have it finished and ready for broad use by the time the 2010 products are released.

I think you'll find this tool to be a really big timesaver for you. Let us know if you have any feedback.

Brian

The Japanese version of Visual Studio Beta 2 is now available to MSDN subscribers

bharry — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:12:00 GMT

The products available include:

Visual Studio Team System 2010 Ultimate Beta2 – Iso Image
Visual Studio Team System 2010 Ultimate Beta2 – Web Installer
Visual Studio Team System 2010 Team Foundation Server Beta2 – Iso Image
.NET Framework 4 Beta2 Full LanguagePack (x86, x86_x64, x86_ia64)
.NET Framework 4 Beta2 Client Profile LanguagePack (x86, x86_x64, x86_ia64)

We also have Japanese translated documentation available:

VS Beta2 Japanese Documentation: http://msdn.microsoft.com/ja-jp/library/52f3sw5c(VS.100).aspx
.NET Framework 4 Beta2 Documentation:http://msdn.microsoft.com/ja-jp/library/w0x726c2(VS.100,classic).aspx

Please provide feedback on our Connect site at: http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudioJapan/

The product downloads will be available for non-MSDN subscribers on November 11th. I’ll blog the download links when I have them.

Thanks,

Brian

Sharepoint log files growing out of control

bharry — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:45:00 GMT

As part of the Beta 2 evaluation process, I've seen a couple of reports of customers having problems with Sharepoint log files growing out of control - gigabytes in just a few minutes. Needless to say, it fills up disks and creates all kinds of havoc. While I don't know the root cause, we have found a bunch of useful information about it and a solution to make it stop. I've included that info here in hopes of making it more readily available.

All the cases I've seen so far fill the log file with messages starting with "The previous instance of the timer job "

Here's a forum thread on the issue:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointadmin/thread/e6db3ae1-48c1-4d0d-9461-bd249f7c2453

And here's a blog post on how to fix it:

http://blogs.msdn.com/josrod/archive/2007/12/12/clear-the-sharepoint-configuration-cache-for-timer-job-and-psconfig-errors.aspx

Hope this is helpful,

Brian

Beta 2 survey is available

bharry — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:27:00 GMT

As part of our efforts to collect as much feedback on Beta 2 as we can, we've posted a survey that we hope you'll fill out. It's 11 multiple choice questions and 3 free form answer questions. If you've had a chance to try Beta 2, please take the time to fill out the survey. If you've already given me performance feedback on my blog, you don't have to give all the detail again - all the info goes to the same place: you could just say "see bharry's blog" if you want.

https://mscuillume.smdisp.net/Collector/Survey.ashx?Name=D10G1

Please pass on the news to anyone you know who's had a chance to use Beta 2.

Thanks,

Brian

Performance of VS Beta 2

bharry — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:16:00 GMT

I'm starting to get very mixed messages about people's satisfaction with performance in Beta 2. Clearly performance in Beta 1 was bad. We knew that. We did a lot of work in Beta 2 to make it better and I've heard a lot of people comment on how much better Beta 2 is. At the same time, I'm hearing some people say they are very unhappy about Beta 2 performance. We really need to understand the source of that unhappiness if we are to have any hope of doing anything about it.

We're working on a Beta 2 survey that will go out within the next week and are adding some questions about satisfaction with performance. It will take a week or two to get statistically meaningful data. In the mean time, I'm absolutely interested in pursuing anecdotal stories. If you have good or bad experiences with Beta 2 performance, let me know about them. Tell me what features you were using, what about the performance was good/bad, what kind of system you are running it on, etc. Also, if you don't mind, please give me your contact information so we can follow up with you with additional questions and possibly solutions to try. You can send me email from the email link on my blog page if you are uncomfortable posting contact info publicly. We've set up an internal alias that I can forward all issues to and have someone investigate them.

It's very important to us that we get this right and that our customers be very happy with the release. I'm eager to hear your feedback.

Thank you very much!

Brian

Managing your work with TFS and Telerik

bharry — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:15:00 GMT

Check out Telerik's new tool for managing work on TFS. It's got a task board, iteration planning tools, and some generally cool query/filter capabilities. They've just released a version that works with TFS 2010 Beta 2. I saw a demo late last week and it looks really good. And best of all, it's a free add on. I highly recommend you check it out.

Brian

Support for VS 2010 Beta 2

bharry — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:57:00 GMT

As you may know, we are offering a "go-live" agreement for Beta 2. As part of that, we are making support available. Of course news groups and other avenues are available but I mean a live person on the phone helping you (assuming the hours match up - standard US business hours). Sorry, we can't support 24x7 until the product ships.

I was just checking on the status of TFS support and was told it is indeed up and running. Here is how you get connected:

Customer sends email to mailto:vsgolive@microsoft.com

We respond back to them asking for enough information from them to create an Access ID

We batch the requests together daily and send them to be entered in the system for an Access ID (this process can take up to 10 business days).

Once we get the Access IDs back we send email back to the customer with information on how to get in touch with us if they needed assistance.

As you can see, there is some delay in data entry in the process. As such, if you are going to put Beta 2 of TFS on your production server, I recommend you send mail early and don't wait until you have a problem :)

Jeff Beehler wrote a longer post on the "go-live" program if you want to read more.

Brian

Going Live with Beta 2

bharry — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:57:00 GMT

Jeff Beehler wrote a good post on what it means to "go-live" on Beta 2 and steps you need to take in order to get support. The only thing I'd add to his post is a little tempering of "high standards of quality". I want everyone to understand that it is a Beta. If you are going to go live on it, you need to be prepared to live with some bugs. Last I checked the TFS product still has about 300 known bugs to fix after Beta 2 and we are doing another test pass right now that will yield more bugs to fix.

Just yesterday we were having a discussion with our MVPs about a bug where bulk saving work items (like from Excel) where there are multiple different types of work items in the list will cause gaps in the assigned work item IDs. It's annoying to see your work items numbered 1, 3, 7, 8, 10, etc instead of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 but causes no real harm. It's a known bug and will be fixed before release. However there was an interesting discussion about how this kind of thing could cause some customers to "lose confidence" in the Beta.

My feedback is if annoying things like this will cause you much consternation, don't go live on the Beta. There's a lot of cool stuff in the Beta and I believe that you'll benefit tremendously from using it but be prepared to live with working around or turning a blind eye to some defects. It is a Beta, after all, not a released product. We'll have worked out the remaining issues by the time we release. The Beta is an opportunity for you to help make sure that the product will work very smoothly in your environment and your scenarios by the time we are done.

Brian

More resources for 2010 Beta 2

bharry — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:31:00 GMT

We've been working on a bunch of training content - videos, labs, etc to help you get up to speed on the 2010 wave of products. Check out http://r.ch9.ms/vs2010b2f for videos and a like to the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 Training Kit download.

Brian

Beta 2 documentation survey

bharry — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:18:00 GMT

It's probably a bit early yet. But once you've had a change to play with Beta 2 and look at the docs, the doc team here at MS would like some feedback from you so that they know where to focus their remaining work. They've created a survey to help them collect your feedback.

Brian

Beta 2 is now available to the public

bharry — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:26:00 GMT

All the great stuff you've been reading about for the past few days is now available for you to try out. Check out:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=151797

Brian

Upgrading from TFS 2005/2008 to TFS 2010

bharry — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:09:00 GMT

Lots of people are trying out TFS 2010 now and they want to import their 2005/2008 data. Here are some good things to know as you think through this:

The TFS installation guide is a great resource in helping you understand your upgrade options:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=2d531219-2c39-4c69-88ef-f5ae6ac18c9f

First a little advice on the "upgrade decision tree": Are you upgrading the server and planning to use the upgraded server as your new production server? Or are you upgrading it just to kick the tires but will keep using your 2005/2008 server for a while longer.

If you are doing a "trial upgrade", you will want to get new hardware (physical or virtual), back up your databases and restore them on the new hardware, then install TFS 2010 and point it at the new databases. You will also need to change the TFS database "stamp" on the clone. All TFS instances have a GUID that identifies them (regardless of what url you use to access them). Your clients will get very confused if there are two TFS instances with the same GUID. You can use the "tfsconfig PrepareClone /sqlinstance /databasename" command to change the GUID on a 2010 project collection. You will also want to disable Sharepoint and Reporting Services on the trial upgrade (using either the upgrade wizard or the admin console after the fact). You won't want 2 TFS servers pointing to the same Sharepoint and Reporting Services servers and cloning them too is probably more than most of you will want to tackle.

If you are doing a "production upgrade", you need to decide whether or not you want to use the same hardware or move to new hardware as part of the upgrade. Regardless, you don't need to (and don't want to) reset the TFS GUID stamp because you are decomissioning the "old" server and you want all your clients to recognize the new server as the same.

If you've installed a TFS 2010 server and later want to merge a TFS 2005/2008 server into it, you can do that. When you are done, your TFS 2010 server will have a new Team Project Collection with all of the TFS 2005/2008 data in it. To add a TFS 2005/2008 server to an existing TFS 2010 server use a command like this (replacing the data source with your data source and the collection name with the target collection name).

Tfsconfig import /connectionString:”Data Source=DT01;Initial Catalog=TfsIntegration;Integrated Security=SSPI" /collectionName:UpgradedCollection

Once you've upgraded your TFS 2005/2008 instance to a TFS 2010 Team Project Collection, you can contine to use it pretty much as you had before. However, you will find that a bunch of TFS 2010 features won't work with it. That's because the process template used to create projects on TFS 2005/2008 does not include the contructs (test cases, bug form features, etc) that TFS 2010 needs to enable its full feature set. To enable many of the TFS 2010 features, you will need to update the process template for previously created Team Projects. If you have not customized your process at all (e.g. you use the out of the box MSF Agile process template), we've provided some scripts to automate the updates. If you have customized your process, you will need to apply the updates manually. Allen has written a blog post that covers the Process Template upgrades and refers to the scripts:

http://blogs.msdn.com/allclark/archive/2009/10/13/enabling-new-application-lifecycle-management-features-for-visual-studio-2010-beta-2-in-upgraded-team-projects.aspx

Lastly, if you are upgrading, it's likely you have people still using clients from previous versions. You'll want to make sure you read this post I wrote the other day: http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2009/10/19/tfs-2010-compatibility-with-older-clients.aspx

Bryan Krieger has also written some posts on upgrading: http://blogs.msdn.com/bkrieger/archive/2009/10/21/team-foundation-server-2010-upgrade.aspx

I hope this helps,

Brian

TFS 2010 Compatibility with Older Clients

bharry — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:09:00 GMT

We've worked hard to make sure TFS 2010 is usable from all clients that can access TFS 2005 and 2008 in order to make your upgrade to TFS 2010 easier. Unfortunately, the changes in 2010 are significant enough it will require patches/updates to older clients to work fully. The follow post explains the compatibility philosophy and details the issues you might run into.

http://blogs.msdn.com/teams_wit_tools/archive/2009/10/19/compatibility-matrix-for-2010-beta-2-team-foundation-server-to-team-explorer-2008-and-2005.aspx

The patch for VS 2008 Team Explorer clients is available now here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=cf13ea45-d17b-4edc-8e6c-6c5b208ec54d

An update for the MSSCCI provider will be available in mid-November and an update for VS 2005 clients will be available in the 2010 launch timeframe.

Brian

Learning about VS 2010 Beta 2

bharry — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:02:13 GMT

There’s going to be a ton of content coming out over the next few days and weeks to help you understand what all is in the 2010 release and how to get started with it. One great source of information is Channel 9. Brian has already put up one new video on installing and getting started with the Beta:

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/10-4/10-4-Episode-33-Downloading-and-Installing-Visual-Studio-2010-Beta-2/

I’ve posted quite a few posts on the TFS 2010 feature set and now that Beta 2 is out there, I will get off my duff and finish the last few – covering reporting, version control and build automation.

Installing - http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2009/10/01/tfs-2010-for-sourcesafe-users.aspx

Project management - http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2009/05/19/tfs-2010-project-management.aspx

Work item tracking - http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2009/05/18/tfs-2010-work-item-tracking.aspx

Setup, Admin & Ops - http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2009/04/30/tfs-2010-admin-operations-setup-improvements.aspx

Important 2010 concepts - http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2009/04/19/team-foundation-server-2010-key-concepts.aspx

Brian

VS 2010 Licensing Changes

bharry — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:34:00 GMT

The big news, along with the announcement of VS 2010 Beta 2 availability, are all the licensing changes that go along with it. I won’t go into all of them here because it’s pretty long. I just want to communicate the philosophy and the high points. Our pre-sales web sites will have more detailed information for you.

Over the past several years we’ve gotten feedback that the VS/VSTS/TFS SKU line up was too complicated and it is unclear what is the right thing to buy. We’ve also gotten feedback that people want a long term successor to SourceSafe that modernized the team development environment even for very small teams.

The result is a significant shakeup in the line-up. The proliferation of “role” and VS SKUs has been simplified down to 4 basic developer choices:

Express
Professional
Premium
Ultimate

Each includes everything in the lower edition and then adds more. Pro, Premium and Ultimate can come with MSDN. We also offer “Test Elements” for testers that don’t need to write code. TFS remains available as a stand alone product but the server and a CAL is also included in MSDN subscriptions with VS Pro, Premium and Ultimate. Further the stand-alone TFS price is being significantly reduced.

To help transition people from the products they currently own, we are also including a program called the “Ultimate Upgrade” which will allow most users to upgrade a level in the SKU hierarchy at no charge when we launch.

Again, there are a lot of details in the licensing changes that I won’t try to cover. I’ll cover some more TFS licensing details in the next month or two.

Here's a good published document on some of the changes: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/newsroom/developer/factsheets/VS2010PackagingFS.docx

Brian