Official MSDN Subscriptions Blog : VS 2008

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 files are also now available

SubscriptionsBlogger2 — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:38:00 GMT

From Top Subscriber Downloads list on lower left of http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/default.aspx

of from: http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/downloads/default.aspx?PV=18:100:ALL:en:ALL for the English files, although many languages are avalailable if you change the language filters.

VS 2008 launch information for MSDN Subscribers, as well as Download Manager issues - new DLM expected later today

SubscriptionsBlogger2 — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 20:10:00 GMT

As you may have seen on blog and forum posts, Microsoft is using two content delivery networks for delivery of bits to MSDN and TechNet Subscribers with the intent that this will increase availability and reliability of downloads and balance loads between the systems during the high demand periods following last weeks VS 2008 launch.

In the first week of the VS2008 launch, there have been roughly 35,000 successful downloads from Akamai and another 30,000 successful downloads of Visual Studio editions from the classic MSDN Subscriber Downloads platform.

Combined bandwidth for the two systems has hit 10 GB/sec. We have been monitoring the health of the systems against the loads and added additional products to one or the other or both in response to system health and reliability.

We have had the Akamai delivery mechanism in place since April 2007 but had not had the level of usage or reporting of access issues that we saw last week with the VS2008 issues. Many of the issues appear to be Vista specific, so the increase in issues likely correlates with increases in Vista adoption.

A new FTM was also launched in October/November timeframe for use with the classic Subscriber Downloads system. That new version addressed some Vista specific issues as well as other items in advance of the VS2008 and other high visibility launch waves.

We have been working with the Akamai team since issues came up last week with the VS2008 launch. They released a patch of one painful issue within hours of it being identified.

We continued to work with the Akamai team over the Thanksgiving Holiday weekend and they have a new version of the Akamai Download Manager that we expect will be launched today - addressing another five or six issues - mostly related to Vista and IE7 usability.

We know of at least one more issue that they are continuing to work on related to pausing and restarting downloads after an extended time window has gone by. This will likely require another DLM client install (ActiveX) as well to resolve. No ETA on this yet.

We are expecting that the version coming out later today addresses five or six issues related to download success on Vista and/or IE7. As additional issues come to our attention, we add them to the Top Subscriber Downloads FAQ as known issues and include solutins or work arounds if we have them.

Updates on Akamail DLM Issues - one patch already out. New version coming to address other issues.

SubscriptionsBlogger2 — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 06:48:00 GMT

Akamai has been actively working on patches for the various issues we/you have identified when attempting to access VS 2008 files from Top Subscriber Downloads.

They rolled out one small patch on Wednesday, November 21 that addressed the issue where the DLM was deleting the file when the user download window expired. Following that rollout, once a users time window expires they will need to log back in to Subscriptions and the download should resume from where it had stopped.

Akamai has also developed patches that will come out in a new version of the Akamai Download Manager. These should address the following issues:

IE7 and Vista proxy server with blank IP address causing IE to crash
Vista issues saving to a location other than My Documents
When the DLM is closed it is not possible to get back to it

The new version of the Akamai Dowload Manager addressing the above issues is being tested and we hope to give the go ahead to push it out early next week.

Pop ups must still be allowed to start the downloads.