Dave Glover "Down Under (Oz)"

.NET Framework 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit (for VS2008 SP1 and Fx 3.5 SP1)

The .NET Framework 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit includes presentations, hands-on labs, demos, and event materials. This content is designed to help you learn how to utilize the .NET 3.5 Enhancement features including: ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Dynamic Data, ASP.NET AJAX History, ASP.NET Routing, ADO.NET Data Services, ADO.NET Entity Framework, WCF 3.5 SP1, and the .NET Framework Client Profile.

You can find it at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=355c80e9-fde0-4812-98b5-8a03f5874e96&displaylang=en

Cheers Dave

Australian Teched 2008 Session Listing available at...

I've been asked this a couple of times over the last few days so I thought it might be useful to blog it locations.

You can find the current session list at https://aunz.msteched.com/au/public/sessions.aspx

Cheers Dave

FTP7 for Windows Server 2008 RTM is released!

Ok, suspect I'm not the only one that missed this especially if you mostly live in the developer world...  There is an update to the FTP server that ships in the box with Windows Server 2008 - yup surprise surprise, it's called FTP 7 and it's available as a separate download, integrates nicely with IIS 7 Administration snapin, supports the idea of host headers, great for wide carding your sites on the same IP Address and supports FTP/SSL plus more!!

Anyway a great posting available at http://blogs.msdn.com/robert_mcmurray/archive/2008/02/27/ftp7-for-windows-server-2008-rtm-is-released.aspx

and you'll almost certainly need to configure your firewall see http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/309/configuring-ftp-firewall-settings/ and if behind a NAT gateway then open up port 21 etc...

Cool, give it whirl now Anthony!!

Cheers Dave

Designed for Windows Mobile® Software Application Handbooks

This is almost a bookmark for me as this is the best source of Windows Mobile dev guidelines I''ve found to date.  Hope useful to you too:)

http://www.qualitylogic.com/certprograms/windowsmobile_handbook.html

Cheers Dave

Coming to Melbourne soon! Microsoft Virtual Earth Platform and MapPoint Web Service - Meet the Experts

The Microsoft Virtual Earth team are holding an event on 31^st July 2008 in Melbourne office (level 5, 4 Freshwater Place, Melbourne) to provide you with all the information you require to integrate Virtual Earth into your business offering. Never before has it been so easy for companies to track assets, find customers, manage a mobile sales force & engineers or make sure customers find you before they find a competitor!

Gain real insight into how map-enabling business applications can help create customer satisfaction and an optimised organisation. If you are a technologist you'll be amazed at just how easy it is to access and integrate Virtual Earth into an existing environment. Developers should not miss this opportunity to hear from Johannes Kebeck, one of the world's leading experts on the Virtual Earth platform.

The agenda will consist of:

• Informative sessions; you will hear from customers and partners who have utilised Virtual Earth as well as technical presentations and the latest updates from Virtual Earth.
• A masterclass from Johannes Kebeck highlighting useful tips and tricks for developers, ensuring you get the most out of the Virtual Earth platform.
• A valuable opportunity to network with other partners and developers as well as members of the Virtual Earth team.
• The day will run from 11.30am until 5.30pm and we do hope you can join us.

Places are limited so if you do wish to register please do so asap click here to register

Cheers Dave

Developing Applications for your Zune with XNA 3.0

Huh, now this is well cool!!

See http://blogs.msdn.com/cykho/archive/2008/05/25/zune-game-trailer.aspx

Microsoft migrates MSDN and TechNet on Hyper-V virtual machines

As mentioned at my ADNUG Hyper-V session we are hosting MSDN and TechNet sites on Hyper-V - cool!!

Check out Microsoft migrates MSDN and TechNet on Hyper-V virtual machines for more info!!

Cheers Dave

Oh Yeah Finally built a Vista Media Centre with PAF

Like Sands Through The Hour Glass

Well it's been awhile since my first blog "My Experiences setting up Windows Media Center 2005" posting on setting up a Media Centre and a bit of water has passed since, Vista SP1 released etc...  I had a moderatey stable set up for Windows XP Media Centre but Vista came along and of course the system had to be upgraded and tbh the motherboard was never really quite up to it, mostly issues with power management, standby, resume etc, and I'd be well pushed to say that it had high PAF (Partner Acceptance Factor)

All I Want Is A USB2 Dual Digital Tuner That, Ummm, Works!!

For a couple of reasons, mostly to do with my existing HTPC case config and changes to new Motherboard layouts for expansion slots, moves away from AGP etc, I needed to go with an external USB Digital Tuner... 

I did some digging around, tried a few external tuners (most were pretty crap) and I ended up purchasing (AU$128) the DigitalNow TinyTwin Dual Digital USB Tuner http://digitalnow.com.au/product_pages/TinyTwin.html from a review and recommendation off http://www.xpmediacentre.com.au and I couldn't be happier, it picks up all channels (I live in Melbourne), channels that were an issue for the Hauppauge Nova-t 500, notably ABC 1 & 2 work just fine with this turner with only the occasional frame skipped and yes it's a Dual channel tuner and runs nice and cool!!  It ships with both 32 & 64 bit drivers, both sets of drivers are stable.

HD is great, no issues with recording etc, did spot on some forum that someone had hooked up two of these tuners and was recording 4 channels over USB2 without bandwidth issues  - note, this wasn't with Vista Media Centre as not a supported config yet.

I did follow the recommendation to power the USB Tuner with a powered USB hub as I did spotted a few skipped frames when powered directly off the motherboard USB connector.

Vista 32 Bit or 64 Bit

I opted for 32 bit Vista Sp1 as I wanted DivX/Media Center Support which for now is 32 bit only - bar the somewhat shaky 64bit DivX libraries which blue screened my system.  Interestingly enough the official www.divx.com codec is a bit sluggish on Vista SP1 and it was suggested I try Koepi's XviD Codec, yes it's very good, fast, stable etc, nice!!

I did originally built the system on 64bit and it was rock solid bar the DivX bit...

The Motherboard I Never Had

I also picked up the new Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H (http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2758) motherboard and it just rocks - everything built on to the motherboard you'd want for a media centre and it cost AU$115 from www.cpl.net.au, yup, about the price of a standalone graphics card.

I've installed an AMD 5200+ CPU and when recording two channels and playing back a recording it hits around 30% usage - max, when just recording two channels with this USB turner the CPU runs at about 15%.

I've 2 x 7200 SATA hard drives installed

Bit's on the motherboard that I wanted were:-

• Optical SPDIF Out for hooking up to a 5.1 Receiver - and the sound quality for the Optical SPDIF is grand!!
• Integrated ATI Radeon HD3200-based graphics (DX10)
  • On board graphics with enough power to drive Blueray videos - so no additional graphics card required - not that I've tried Blueray...
  • I installed 2 x 1 gig sticks of PC-6400 (800 mhz) RAM, the Vista 32 bit Graphics Perf Ratings is 3.6 for both desktop and 3d/gaming graphics, not bad for a integrated graphics chip, no fan, no noise etc
  • I've allocated 256 MB of Ram to graphics - yes shared memory model
  • The ATI graphics card driver is stable, nice colour depth on my Hitachi plasma hooked up via DVI
• Built in HDMI, DVI and VGA Video out - I run DVI to my plasma
• USB2, Ethernet etc...
• eSATA

There is a great review on uncle Tomshardware at http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-780g-chipset,1785.html, actually the article is about the new "AMD's New 780G Chipset Has Powerful GPU" but the Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H motherboard is the reference board for the article!!

Oh I Love It When You Tweak Me There!!

I did a standard install of Vista with integrated SP1, loaded up the chipset, graphics, network drivers from the supplied motherboard CD, updated the ATI Graphics Driver from the AMD site and updated to the latest network driver from http://Realtek.com.tw as the driver supplied on the install CD bluescreened the system and the Windows Update supplied version caused intermittent issues - the latest driver off the Realtec site is rock solid!!

The hotfixes for the guide to operate correctly in Australia are integrated in to Vista SP1 but you need to activate then with two registry updates - see http://www.xpmediacentre.com.au/community/downloads.php?do=file&id=182, then reboot.

Going All Green

AMD Quiet'n'Cool works well, standby, resume is flawless (I run the system with S3 power management enabled, so fans etc all shut down in standby mode, so nice and quiet in standby and minimumal power usage.

The Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H is rated as one of the greenist motherboards on the market - I'm running the AMS 5200+ which runs at 68 watts, if I had my money again, I'd go for the new AMD AM2+ 45 watt range.

Most of the heat generated by the system is from the disk drives - I have two drives, one for the OS and a second for the TV Recordings, when I'm feeling a little more flush I'm gonna try out the Western Digital GreenPower Family of drives they claim 40% less energy usage - see http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/greenpower/family.asp?language=en, there is also a bit of a discussion on these drives at http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/greenpower/family.asp?language=en.

Why Don't You Back Me Up Baby

Yeah yeah, I know, backing systems up is for other people, but do check out the Vista "Backup Status and Configuration" Tool found on the Systems Tools Menu, you can backup the complete system to one DVD and should you need to repair/recover your system then this is going to save a LOT of time!!

Happy Bunny

All up very happy with this set up, it's just works and most integrated system I've set up and I like that!!

Setting up Windows Server 2008 Core and Remote Hyper-V Management

Virtualization provides real benefits for dev/test/production, reducing physical server count, cost, provided isolated environments, problem duplication etc...  Today we have Virtual PC, Virtual Server providing software virtualiztion and soon we'll have Windows Server 2008 Hyper-v virtualiztion which provides type 1 hardware virtualization - see https://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/solutions.mspx for our overall virtualization strategy.  You can get the latest release candidate of Hype-v from http://connect.microsoft.com.

The general recommendation for running Hyper-v Windows Server 2008 based  Virtualization solutions is to run it on the Windows Server Core, two great reasons, first less software surface area to be attacked and secondly it reduces the likelihood of having to patch the host system, important as you don't want to be restarting a host system that is potentially supporting a number of important production guest systems...

Configuring Windows Server Core

So being the curious lad I am I decided to fire up Windows Server 2008 Standard Core and see what was involved in configuring a core system.  First observation is that it installs unbelievably quickly, got it started up, got logged in as administrator and then was confronted with a command prompt, ummm, ok what now, somewhat scary for a guy whose used to discovering how a system work via a GUI !!

With a bit of digging around I found the following useful resources to get me started with configuring the system

Server Core Installation Option of Windows Server 2008 Step-By-Step Guide or Windows Server 2008 Step-by-Step Guides  

Ok the above was fine but a little tedious so with a bit more digging around I stumbled across CoreConfigurator, ah now we're talking, a simple VB app (no .NET Fx on Server Core) app with a UI that allows you to set up the firewall to allow remote GUI management to connect, network config, install features, join a domain etc.  I first installed CoreConfigurator a handy client system and copied the files from it's install directory on to Server Core and was off, so if you are not a command line kinda person then definitely worth checking Core Configurator, thanks Guy!!

Power Management Configuration

Given the system I set up is not going to be heavily used then wanted to make sure the power config was set up as I like, mostly that the disks power down within a reasonable time, to do this you need to use the Powercfg command line - see Powercfg Command-Line Options, found it easy to put these commands in to a batch file.  From the Server Core command prompt you can fire up notepad to amend as required!!

Ok, so now I had Server Core ready, willing and waiting I wanted to configure new virtual machines using the Hyper-V, I installed the Hyper-V Management MMC Snapin on to a Vista SP1 client that was in the same domain as Core Server connected as admin and was away setting up Hyper-V... 

Too easy:)

That said, it's quite possible that you wont have your management client and Core Server in the same domain so there are a great set of how to articles on connecting the Hyper-V management client in various scenarios, check out the "How to Articles" on remote managing Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 Core from John Howard's blog here.

Enlightenment

Don't forget to enlighten your guest Operating Systems, there are Integration Services for XP SP3, Vista 32 Bit, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 32 & 64 bit and SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 SP1.  The Integration Services adds in the VMBus and the VSC (Virtualization Service Client) for Disk, Network, Display IO and significantly ups IO performance.

Virtualization Team Blog

Definitely worth keeping an eye on the Virtualization Team Blog at http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/ for a stack of tips, tricks and announcements!!

Have fun!!

Cheers Dave

MS Press Books Discount (May 2008, Australia) Available via your User Group Leader

Tania Netterfield our Partner Account Manager for CPLS (Certified Partner for Learning Solutions) as asked if we could blog, it looks to be a great kickoff offer so if you are after a MS Press book or two then check out www.mspress.com.au

To help us launch the Store during the month of May we've created a special User Group Members offer of 50% discount on all books on the site.

Some of the great advantages of www.mspress.com.au include:

• Express delivery
• Competitive pricing
• Easy Keyword Search facility
• Latest titles and Books of the Month
• Large inventory
• Newsletter sign-up

And until the end of May on www.mspress.com.au

• All User Group Members will receive a 50% discount by using this Code at Checkout - ask for the discount code from your user group leader
• Plus go in the draw for a chance to win an XBOX by providing feedback on the site

We are planning to keep improving the site in the future and I'll keep you updated as these improvements are made.

Cheers Dave

Cumulative update for Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Web Developer Express 2008 is available

Check out http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/KB946581, Web Dev related....

Just loaded up and yes they are worthwhile fixes - as with life, your mileage may vary!!

Cheers, Dave

Great session at MIX on RESTful Services and WCF

see http://sessions.visitmix.com/ and search for session T01, titled "Creating a RESTful API with WCF, it's focused on the newly released developer APIs for http://MySpace.com.

see http://Developer.myspace.com and http://RestChest.com - the RestChess site has the demo code shown in the session and it's well cool!!

Cheers Dave

Hooking up my Turtlebeach Audiotron to Windows Server 2008

My Audiotron continues to be one of my favourite household gadgets, it's a Win CE device (Win CE 3x, I think) and streams music off a Windows File Share, the device must be nearly 10 years old and was built in a less hostel era when security models were simpler.  Alas Turtlebeach don't make these devices any more, but I know there are a lot of them kicking around and have spotted various postings on getting them to play with Windows Server 2003 and Vista, but none for Windows Server 2008, so surprise surprise getting it to work was a combination of Windows Vista and Server 2003 tweaks. 

Getting the Audiotron to communicate with more modern operating systems such as Windows Vista or Windows Serer 2008 requires relaxing some security settings which could make the system more vulnerable to attack, so the you need to be aware of potential risks, so buyer/tweaker beware and this does not represent in any shape or form best practices but the risk profile for my home server is minimal (lol, no this is not an invitation:) )!!  I stream the music files to the Audiotron using a network of Netcomm Ethernet over Powerline adapters as I found them way more reliable than wifi.

I made the following changes mostly around negotiating security levels using a combination of the Local Security Policy Manager and Regedit - see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=17936 plus the references below for more information on the mechanics of making these changes.  It would probably a good idea to Export (backup) your registry before making these changes...

Required settings:-

1. Microsoft Network Server: Digitally Sign Communications (always): Disable
2. Microsoft Network Server: Digitally Sign Communications (if client agrees): Enable
3. Network Security: Do not store LAN Manager Hash value on next password change: Disable
4. Network Security: LAN Manager Authentication Level: Send LM & NTLM - use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated

I rebooted the server, reset the password for the Audiotron user in active directory - a mandatory step!!  Checked all the Audiotron device security settings, set the the user name in @ format, ie audiotron@mydomain.local, cycled the power on the device and it magically connected to the file share and it rebuilt the music catalogue - yeh hah, I'm a happy chappy:)

Some useful reference resources are:-

1. http://support.turtlebeach.com/site/kb_ftp/114415241.asp
2. http://www.sturmnet.org/blog/archives/2007/04/30/audiotron-with-vista-file-server/
3. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/823659

Hope this helps someone!!

Cheers Dave

Australia Heroes Launch Wave 2008: What's new for Services Development in Visual Studio 2008 and .Net Fx 3.5

The objective for this session was to outline the updated support in Visual Studio 2008, .NET Framework 3.5 and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) for the RESTful "Web Programming Model" and to compare and contrast it with the SOAP Services Model.

As promised, I've put the slides and the REST and Syndication demo code samples on my shiny new skydrive here.

Additional resources...

1. As mentioned, definitely worthwhile check out the "bible" for RESTful Web Services at http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596529260/, plenty of samples including .NET code snippets.
2. http://www.developer.com/net/article.php/10916_3695436_1
3. Jonas Follesoe's (Norwegian RD) blog at http://jonas.follesoe.no/PermaLink,guid,4934d96f-12fe-42ce-a3e7-306374b35d2c.aspx for his most excellent demo (in Melbourne) integrating the worlds of smartclient and web with JSON serialisation support in .NET Fx 3.5.  Many thanks Jonas!!

Cheers Dave

Free e-book offer for Windows Server 2008 and Powershell

In case you missed this there is a free download for the following books:-

1. Introducing Windows Server 2008 by Mitch Tulloch with the Microsoft Windows Server Team (ISBN: 9780735624214) This e-book covers Windows Server virtualization, managing Windows Server 2008, Active Directory, Terminal Services, and failover clustering.
2. Microsoft Windows PowerShell Step by Step by Ed Wilson (ISBN: 9780735623958) This e-book includes an overview of Windows PowerShell, using Windows PowerShell cmdlets, and leveraging PowerShell providers.

at https://www.microsoft.com/learning/windowsserver2008/default.mspx

The e-book will load up in the browser, from IE, click "Page -> Save as" to save the PDF file locally...

Enjoy!!!!

Cheers Dave