David Aiken : VSMMD

Visual Studio Team System Management Model Designer Power Tool (TSMMD) Ships

daiken — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 04:22:00 GMT

Visual Studio Team System Management Model Designer Power Tool (TSMMD) v2.0 CTP is now live at http://www.codeplex.com/dfo.

This project has two deliverables.

First is the Visual Studio Team System Management Model Designer Power Tool (TSMMD). TSMMD is a tool for modeling line-of-business health scenarios and the associated instrumentation. The tool includes guidance packages that generate platform instrumentation (called Instrumentation Helpers) and validators to confirm that application source code contains instrumentation defined in the Health Model. The tool can then be used to generate Management Packs for System Center Operations Manager 2007.

Second is the Management Guide that contains prescriptive guidance on building highly manageable applications on the Microsoft Windows platform.

TSMMD is in an early stage of development. It was developed to help raise the Architect and Developer awareness of the needs of the ITPRO.

patterns & practices is releasing this CTP with a level of functionality to enable the end-to-end adoption and consumption of the health modeling scenario from Architecture to IT.

We need your feedback. Is the tooling correct? What did we get right and where did we fall short?

New features include:

Improved model and user experience.
Limited support for Enterprise Library Logging.
Native support for model export to System Center Operations Manager Management Packs.
Support for existing applications through MSIL scanning for Event Log, Performance Counter, WMI and Enterprise Library instrumentation.

Please download the TSMMD right now and starting giving feedback.

THIS POSTING IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITH NO WARRANTIES, AND CONFERS NO RIGHTS, CONTENTS MAY BE HOT

Keith Pleas shows Design for Operations

daiken — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 08:43:57 GMT

Not long after my appearance on .NET Rocks - my good friend Keith appears on show 100 of .Net Rocks TV - http://www.dnrtv.com/ - talking about and demonstrating the TSMMD. Check out the show and, yes go and watch the other 99 episodes too.

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VSTSMMD requirements

daiken — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 01:57:26 GMT

Not long ago, I posted about the new version of the Management Model Designer. One thing I did not post was the requirements, and since I've been asked a few times now, I thought I best blog it.

The designer will require VSTS2008 (yes that is Team System as in Team Architect, Team Developer etc). It will not run in Pro or Std. The designer also has a dependency on the Guidance Automation Extensions (GAX).

Hope this helps.

THIS POSTING IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITH NO WARRANTIES, AND CONFERS NO RIGHTS NOR WAS IT WRITTEN IN A FACTORY PRODUCING NUTS

New Year = Models, Code Discovery and Management Pack Generation

daiken — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 00:17:48 GMT

Some of you may have already seen the existing Management Model Designer from http://www.codeplex.com/dfo or seen the channel 9 screen casts The DFO Show - Designing a Health Model with the Visual Studio Management Model Designer or The DFO Show - Implementing a Health Model with the Visual Studio Management Model Designer.

Well we've been working hard on a new version which will CTP in the next few weeks.

Remember the previous version of the tool allowed you to design a health model, then generate the instrumentation code that implemented it. The new version has some pretty significant new features.

Discovery of Existing Instrumentation Code, will allow you to bring into the model any instrumentation code you already have in your application. It doesn't matter if its event log messages, performance counters, WMI events or even Enterprise Library. The designer will find it. You don't even need the source, as the scanner uses the IL!

Generation of a System Center Operations Manager 2007 Management Pack means you no longer have to hand craft a management pack for your model. You simply hit a button and out drops a management pack. You can import this management pack directly into Operations Manager and without change Operations Manager will find all instances of your application and begin monitoring.

The new designer also defines more meaningful entities such as web sites, services, etc. which links to the automated discovery in Operations Manager.

Couple the 2 new big features together, and you end up with the capability of discovering instrumentation in your app, mapping this into a health model, and generating a fully operation management pack. With the existing instrumentation generation, you can now turn your application into something that can easily monitored and maintained once deployed.

Watch out for an update and link to download when its released in a few weeks time.

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Love for the VSMMD @ TechEd

daiken — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 20:38:31 GMT

For me, TechEd 07 is almost over - I've finished my speaking duties, now its just networking, hanging out at the TLC and attending some sessions. (and catching up with emails). Some good news appeared in my mailbox this morning, after our session DEV...(read more)

Visual Studio Management Model Designer on Channel 9

daiken — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 06:51:53 GMT

Today I posted the 2nd of 2 short screencasts on using the Visual Studio Management Model Designer (VSMMD).

The first screencast shows how you can use the tool to design a management model. The second screencast shows how you can use the model to generate implementation code.

Our first big test for customers is in 12 days time when we present a new version of my Design for Operations workshop. The workshop covers the entire end-to-end lifecycle of building a manageable application, from concepts, model design, instrumentation, handling configuration via group policy and WMI and providing a administration surface using Windows PowerShell and MMC. Finally, this accumulates in a System Center Operations Manager Management Pack being constructed.

Many of the sessions this time around are being presented by some superstars from the product teams - this I am very much looking forward to as its always good to hear things form the horses mouth so to speak.

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Announcing the Visual Studio Management Model Designer VSMMD

daiken — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 01:31:00 GMT

Today we got one step closer to building manageable applications. On codeplex, right now, is the bright shiney new Visual Studio Management Model Designer.

The designer, available on Codeplex at http://www.codeplex.com/dfo , is built upon the Visual Studio DSL. The designer allows Architects to describe a health model including defining Managed Entities, Aspects and Health State Indicators, as well as specifying abstract and concrete implementations for multiple trust levels.

Furthermore the health model can be used to auto-generate the actual .net implementation code for writing events and performance counters. This will significantly reduce the amount of developer effort required to build manageable applications.

Confused?

There is also a 300+ page guide on how to use the tool and design for operations in general which will be available next week.

Although the tool is a prototype/CTP, it is fully functional and can be used today to make your applications more manageable.

THIS POSTING IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITH NO WARRANTIES, AND CONFERS NO RIGHTS