Whilst upgrading our Lab Management system we lost the SC-VMM DB. This has meant we needed to recreate environments we already have running on Hyper_V hosts but were unknown to TFS. If they were not network isolated this is straight forward, just recompose the environment (after clear out the XML in the VM descriptions fields). However if they are network isolated and running, then you have do play around a bit. ...

Another post from Rik Fixing Lab Manager environments with brute force following our Lab Management upgrade

Rik has done a post on creating VMs for Lab management to follow up on the one I did yesterday on our Lab upgrade.

Background We have been successfully using our TFS Lab Management system for a while. However, we have noticed an issue that when deploying environments the performance of the system slowed. This was down to I/O congestion between our servers and the SAN that provided their main VM storage because the library store and the hyper-v host servers all shared the same SAN. Also we had the need to start to create environments using Windows 8 and Server 2012. This is not possible using System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 or Hyper-V hosted on earlier than Windows 2012. ...

Yesterday two new ALM Ranger projects shipped, practical guidance on the use of Microsoft Fakes (which I worked on) and for Team Foundation Server (TFS) Disaster Recovery avoidance, planning and step-step recovery walkthroughs for the worst case scenarios. Also updates for the Coded UI test tooling guide and the TFS Upgrade guide were released.. For more details see below to follow the links to the Ranger blogs and CodePlex to download the materials. ...

About a year ago I wrote a post ‘Now that VS11 has a fake library do I still need Typemock Isolator to fake out SharePoint?’. Well this discussion becomes relevant for more people as with Visual Studio 2012.2 (currently available as a CTP) the Microsoft Fakes move from the Ultimate SKU to the Premium SKU. From my experience the Ultimate SKU is not present on too many developer’s PCs. It is most commonly found on the PCs of the team leads, software architects or test developers (managing coded UI/load testing etc. efforts). If a team was historically going to use Microsoft Fakes then they had to buy more Ultimate SKUs; as what is the point of a unit test using a mocking framework that only part of the team can run? ...

Whilst at the MVP Summit in Redmond last week there were MVP2MVP sessions, these are much like DDD conferences we have in the UK, sessions delivered by MVPs on their experiences and products they offer. One of the most interesting I saw last week was VS Anywhere. This is an extension to Visual Studio that allows distributed pair programming. This far more than desktop sharing in Skype or Lync, think more like the concurrent document editing in Office 365. ...

TFS Lab Management can be a good way to manage your development and test environments, providing a means to more easily store, deploy and snapshot environments. Problem is they are not magic, you need to create the virtual machines you will use. You can use tools such the ALM Rangers VM Factory to speed this process, but you still need the source ISOs to create the VMs. Until the release of System Center 2012 SP1 (and TFS 2012 QU1) Lab Management did not support Windows 8 or Server 2012. This was a limitation with the System Center 2008 Virtual Machine Manager. But with the release of these new versions you now have no excuse not to have a look at TFS Lab Management for even your most cutting edge projects. And remember you are licensed Lab Management (including SC-VMM for the sole use of TFS Lab Management) as part of your TFS 2012 MSDN license. ...

I have recently been battling running a command line tool within a Wix 3.6 installer. I eventually got it going but learnt a few things. Here is a code fragment that outlines the solution. <Product ………> ……… loads of other Wix bits <!—Next we define the actual CustomAction that does the work. This needs to be deferred (until after the files are installed) and set to not be impersonated so runs as the same elevated account as the rest of the MSIExec actions. (assuming your command line tool needs admin rights –> <CustomAction Id=“SilentLaunch” BinaryKey=“WixCA” DllEntry=“CAQuietExec” Execute=“deferred” Return=“check” Impersonate=“no” /> <!—Finally we set where in the install sequence the CustomActions and that they are only called on a new install Note that we don’t tidy up the actions of this command line tool on a de-install –> NOT Installed NOT Installed ...

Typemock have released a new version of Isolator (7.3) that addresses some problems they have been having with Visual Studio 2012 and Windows 8 Resolved all issues concerning the breaking MS update Boosted performance across the board (up to 44% faster) Enhanced SmartRunner UI Improved mocking capabilities Better integration with .NET development ecosystem You can download this release, or a free trial if you don’t have an Isolator license, from the Typemock site ...