Also see Part 2 on how to address gotcha’s in this process When using Release Management there is a good chance you will want to run test suites as part of your automated deployment pipeline. If you are using a vNext PowerShell based pipeline you need a way to trigger the tests via PowerShell as there is no out the box agent to do the job. Step 1 - Install a Test Agent The first step is to make sure that the Visual Studio Test Agent is installed on the box you wish to run the test on....

A few days in and I have solved the few problems I have had Can apply update Security Update for Windows 10 for x64-based Systems (KB3074683) My system tried to apply the KB3074683 patch a couple of time, rolling it back each time. A search of the forums found the answer to this one. As in the forum post I have an Nvidia video card, in fact it caused the problems during the update, so the fix was to delete the UpdatusUser registry entry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionProfileList....

I have just done an in place upgrade on my Lenovo W520 from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10. Something I had not tried during the beta programme, sticking to running Windows 10 in VMs (mostly on Azure). I have to say the process was pretty smooth. I only hit one issue, and this was the usual NVidia Optimus problems I saw installing Windows 8 and 8.1. This is what happened...

If you are using basic PowerShell scripts as opposed to DSC with Release Management there are a few gotcha’s I have found. You cannot pass parameters Lets look at a sample script that we would like to run via Release Manager param ( $param1 ) write-verbose -verbose "Start" write-verbose -verbose "Got var1 \[$var1\]" write-verbose -verbose "Got param1 \[$param1\]" write-verbose -verbose "End" In Release Manager we have the following vNext workflow...

With the release of Visual Studio 2015 there are some significant changes to Visual Studio and TFS licensing, you can find the details of Brian Harry’s blog. These changes can make a serious change in what you need to purchase for different roles, so it could well be worth a look.