I ran into an issue today that I could find very little information on so I figured I would put this out on the blogsphere in case it might help someone else.

I recently upgrade my Exchange server to Exchange 2007.  I access it through ISA Server 2006 using Outlook Anywhere most of the time from a machine that is not joined to the domain.

I thought everything was up and working fine until I went to create a outlook contact for the first time since the upgrade.  It would not let me save the contact and gave me a message indicating “Outlook must be online to complete this operation”.  I was online.  In fact I was online and receiving email.

I found out you can start outlook with the /rpcdiag flag to give some information as to what is going on with connectivity.

This dialog would show 3–4 Directory operations spun up and either connecting or disconnected.

At first I thought it was an issue with how I had published it in ISA Server but eventually gave up on that as I was essentially server publishing port 443 direct to the Exchange server.

I found one article that alluded to a similar problem that talked about setting up a remembered password in Vista for all machines with a particular domain name.  Didn’t sound like a great idea but got me to thinking that it could possibly be an authentication problem with the Active Directory box. The directory request was traveling from Outlook, to the Exchange Servers RPC over HTTP connector and then having to leave the box to hit the AD box.  Could it be an issue with double hop impersonation?  Still not sure but as a test I installed the Active Directory role on my Exchange 2007 box and voila the problem went away.

Sunday, November 02, 2008 8:22:41 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)         Comments [0]  

Windows Home Server is the best of hardware I have purchased in a long time.  What amazes me is that almost no one knows about it!

I was chatting with Rocky Lhotka and Brian Randell at the VSLive Las Vegas reception and talk turned to backups.  We all acknowledged how well Acronis TrueImage has worked in the past.  I mentioned that while I was using the Enterprise edition at work to backup the desktops of all my developers the bloom was off the rose and I was disappointed with some significant limitations in their centralized management.

I then went on to fill them in on how my personal backup strategy has evolved.  Depending on the machine I have up to three backup strategies.

1. Everything in my house is backed up to Windows Home Server. This thing is brilliant.  The backup is better than what is offering with Microsoft Data Protection Manager for corporations!  It will automatically back up every connected PC in your house to your home server.  The backups are de-duplicated so you can backup a large number of machines in a fairly small space.  The machines in my house have around 2TB of storage in total but as the image below shows I currently use about 501MB to back them all up!

When it comes time to restore the data you have two choices.  You can mount the backup image as a drive letter and restore individual files OR if the machine has cratered you can boot from a CD and restore the machine with a bare metal restore!  Two tips here

• If you have any special network or disk drivers Windows Home will put a folder at the root your backup that contains any non-standard drivers.  At restore time just mount the backup on another machine in the house.  Copy that folder to a USB key and then connect the USB key while booting from the Windows Home Server restore CD.  It will automatically load the extra drivers and go on it’s way restoring your machine!
• Sometimes this isn’t enough to get it to restore.  In my case I was using a Lenovo x200 with an external DVD to restore.  Come to find out there is a newer Windows Home Server Restore CD.  SP1 does not install it but you can go out and download it from Connect.  Read more about it here.  I have only had to use this improved CD once I suspect due to lack of an internal CD/DVD drive on my x200.

2. Now that my home server is going such a great job backing up all the machines in my house how do I backup the home server?  SP1 offers an option to back it up to an external drive however in the case of a break-in or fire I would prefer that a redundant copy of my data reside somewhere outside the home. Most of the online backup options like Mozy and Carbonite don’t have options for Windows Home Server.  Internally it is Windows Server and Carbonite doesn’t support this platform and Mozy wants you to purchase their Business product.  I looked at KeepVault which is an online backup service for Windows Home Server but it was so bloody slow I finally gave up.  My solution, JungleDisk.  They have a beta of a Windows Home Server specific backup utility that integrates into the console and allows you to select what folders to backup, how much bandwidth to use, etc.  Uses Amazon S3 on the backend which isn’t cheap, my 157GB or so runs about $30/month, but is the best solution I have found to date.

3. I travel quite a lot and for my laptop need something that is constantly backing up my data and allows me to restore a lost piece of data wherever I am.  I started out using the aforementioned Carbonite but got frustrated with it lack of options and at the time lack of Vista support.  I moved to Mozy and have been happy ever since.  Mozy is setup to automatically backup whatever folders you choose whenever the machine is idle.  When you need to restore you just go to My Computer, double click on the Mozy Home Remote Backup icon to mount the backup, navigate the folder structure and grabs the files you need.

Saturday, November 01, 2008 12:39:59 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)         Comments [1]  

Windows Home Server is the best of hardware I have purchased in a long time.  What amazes me is that almost no one knows about it!

I was chatting with Rocky Lhotka and Brian Randell at the VSLive Las Vegas reception and talk turned to backups.  We all acknowledged how well Acronis TrueImage has worked in the past.  I mentioned that while I was using the Enterprise edition at work to backup the desktops of all my developers the bloom was off the rose and I was disappointed with some significant limitations in their centralized management.

I then went on to fill them in on how my personal backup strategy has evolved.  Depending on the machine I have up to three backup strategies.

1. Everything in my house is backed up to Windows Home Server. This thing is brilliant.  The backup is better than what is offering with Microsoft Data Protection Manager for corporations!  It will automatically back up every connected PC in your house to your home server.  The backups are de-duplicated so you can backup a large number of machines in a fairly small space.  The machines in my house have around 2TB of storage in total but as the image below shows I currently use about 501MB to back them all up!

When it comes time to restore the data you have two choices.  You can mount the backup image as a drive letter and restore individual files OR if the machine has cratered you can boot from a CD and restore the machine with a bare metal restore!  Two tips here

• If you have any special network or disk drivers Windows Home will put a folder at the root your backup that contains any non-standard drivers.  At restore time just mount the backup on another machine in the house.  Copy that folder to a USB key and then connect the USB key while booting from the Windows Home Server restore CD.  It will automatically load the extra drivers and go on it’s way restoring your machine!
• Sometimes this isn’t enough to get it to restore.  In my case I was using a Lenovo x200 with an external DVD to restore.  Come to find out there is a newer Windows Home Server Restore CD.  SP1 does not install it but you can go out and download it from Connect.  Read more about it here.  I have only had to use this improved CD once I suspect due to lack of an internal CD/DVD drive on my x200.

2. Now that my home server is going such a great job backing up all the machines in my house how do I backup the home server?  SP1 offers an option to back it up to an external drive however in the case of a break-in or fire I would prefer that a redundant copy of my data reside somewhere outside the home. Most of the online backup options like Mozy and Carbonite don’t have options for Windows Home Server.  Internally it is Windows Server and Carbonite doesn’t support this platform and Mozy wants you to purchase their Business product.  I looked at KeepVault which is an online backup service for Windows Home Server but it was so bloody slow I finally gave up.  My solution, JungleDisk.  They have a beta of a Windows Home Server specific backup utility that integrates into the console and allows you to select what folders to backup, how much bandwidth to use, etc.  Uses Amazon S3 on the backend which isn’t cheap, my 157GB or so runs about $30/month, but is the best solution I have found to date.

3. I travel quite a lot and for my laptop need something that is constantly backing up my data and allows me to restore a lost piece of data wherever I am.  I started out using the aforementioned Carbonite but got frustrated with it lack of options and at the time lack of Vista support.  I moved to Mozy and have been happy ever since.  Mozy is setup to automatically backup whatever folders you choose whenever the machine is idle.  When you need to restore you just go to My Computer, double click on the Mozy Home Remote Backup icon to mount the backup, navigate the folder structure and grabs the files you need.

Saturday, November 01, 2008 12:32:24 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)         Comments [0]  

A lot of folks are confused about the differences here.

Azure Storage

Essential storage services in the cloud.  Provides a core set of non-relational storage and processing abstractions at massive scale.  Azure is built from the ground up for the cloud.

Sql Services

Rich database services in the cloud.

Extends the power of sql server in a scalable way to the cloud. SQL Services is based on a SQL Server foundation.  It adds to the standard platform a lot of innovation in scale, HA, lights out operation, etc.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008 2:42:36 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)         Comments [0]   .NET Architecture

Sitting in the ASP.NET 4.0 session.  What a confusing road map with arrows going every different direction.

From what I can tell.  They are putting their formal releases going forward on www.asp.net and interim drops on codeplex at www.codeplex.com/aspnet.  The latter location is intended to be more cutting edge and sneak peek oriented.  Full source code will be provided along with road maps around thoughts and priorities.  They are currently getting around 1100 downloads a day.  They released new bits to codeplex today including a new ASP.NET Ajax Preview 3, Dynamic Data and MVC.

ASP.Net investments in dev10 include rollups of existing previews.

FX4.0 maintains a high compatibility bar with FX 3.5.  VS10 support multi-targeting to  FX4.0 or FX 3.5.

ClientIds can now be managed by the control developers for the rendered clientid.  Mangling is gone!!!

Removes the need to use CSS adapters.  Defers to CSS stytles and bypasses existing style properties. Supports non-table based HTML rendering for all controls.

URL Routing for web forms.  Friendly url handling for standard web-forms.

Viewstate can now be disabled on page and enabled on only specific controls. 

ASP.NET Ajax innovation for RIA.  Appealling to JavaScript developers is a goal.  Want to also provide support for the page developer.  IntelliSense for jQuery will be included.

Databinding will include client-side binding using REST or Web Services.

ASP.NET Ajax toolkit will be moved into ASP.NET proper and include new controls.  The script libraries will be centralized and broken up for performance.

ASP.NET Dynamic Data has enhanced filtering with auto complete, search filters and cascading filters.  Enhanced meta-data will also include control over column ordering.

Monday, October 27, 2008 1:42:01 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)         Comments [0]  

Check this out: http://blog.seanalexander.com/2008/10/27/NetFlixBringingInstantStreamingToPCAndIntelMacsViaSilverlight2.aspx

NetFlix announced usage of SilverLight2 for high quality DVD experience streaming.  Very cool.  The SilverLight streaming of the DNC that Vertigo did was spectacular and will look great for movies.

Monday, October 27, 2008 12:59:00 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)         Comments [0]  

I don’t get it.  I admit I can’t understand where Microsoft is going with Windows Azure.

There are two issues as I see it. 

1. Small to medium sized business who will be attracted to the pay as you go model will have to learn and re-architect their applications to sit on the Microsoft SQL Services model.  It won’t be an easy road. Everything they have learned about databases by and large goes out the window and they must do a significant retraining on how to work with a database with no transactions, etc. At least they announced Join support! While they are doing that they will also have to be learning the ins and outs of using the new Windows Azure as their deployment mechanism.  It is going to be a tough road for many of them.

2. Large business is interested because they:

• Want to try and minimize their rocketing data center costs.  Interested in leveraging the IP Microsoft is building around energy and cost efficient hosting.
• Are interested in lower cost mechanisms for doing geo-scaleout without having to build the physical presence around the world.
• Love the ability to dynamically increase scale without large up front capital expense with the associated long lead times.

However large business is not going to be willing to place their revenue stream into the hands of a single source vendor.  Once I write my software to the proprietary Microosft SQL Services I have no where else I can run the software. Yeah, yeah if I architect and factor my design I can limit the impact of the lockin but the issue still stands.  Am I willing to bet the revenue stream of my company on a single source solution that I can’t have another vendor host for me and I cannot run inside my firewall?  This isn’t just a Microsoft issue.  I see the same issue with Amazon Web Services and their SimpleDB service.  It is fairly proprietary and I can’t run it inside my firewall.

I was hoping that Amazon with the release of EC2 for Windows would put some pressure on Microsoft to release a full version of SQL Server instead of the crippled entity based model that is more a copy of Amazon’s SimpleDB.  However if you take a close look at the pricing it falls apart.  While .125/hour for a windows instance is quite price competitive once you add SQL Server standard it jumps to anywhere from $1.10 to $2.40/hour!  If you need authentication services also then it caps out at $3.20/hour!  While $0.125/hour only translates to ~$91/month the SQL Instance bumps up to more than ~$800/month!  No longer price competitive whatsoever. 

What is a developer to do?

Monday, October 27, 2008 12:36:58 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)         Comments [1]   .NET Architecture

We are doing it again!  Seattle CodeCamp is coming back to the DigiPen campus on November 15–16, 2008.  Check out https://seattle.codecamp.us for more information.

Monday, October 20, 2008 8:57:25 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)         Comments [0]  

As Conference Chair for VSLive Las Vegas, to be held October 13–17, this time at the Mirage Hotel right on the strip, it is my pleasure to lead the second "re-tooled"  VSLive event, and to invite you all to participate as speakers.

What does re-tooled mean?: for the remaining VSLive 2008 shows, we are making a concerted effort to break with long-standing formulas around tracks, content and, in some cases, format.  Rather than forcing all content to fit within 3 or 4 tracks/topic areas, we are instead pushing for a variety of content covering a variety of subjects relevant to Microsoft developers of all stripes.  We are also creating an additional full day of sessions.  And with a "pay one price" registration model, all attendees will be able to attend any session. 

The end-result of these changes is new freedom and subject matter flexibility and 50% more breakout session content than in past years at our "regional" shows (including New York, Las Vegas and Austin). 

A general call for papers (CFP) has already been announced and closed, but I am taking this opportunity to solicit additional content from speakers who perhaps have not spoken at VSLive before. If you have already submitted proposals through the CFP channel, rest assured I will review those proposals and give them every consideration.  However, I would like to make a special appeal to those of you who haven't submitted, and even those who have, to submit additional sessions now. 

The most important thing is to pick topics that you're excited about and will enjoy presenting on.  Meanwhile, if you're looking for guidance, a set of major topics and sub-topics/tags that we hope to include is listed now on the conference's Web site at http://vslive.com/2008/lasvegas/.  Check out the full list on the Web site, but please know that if you have something really interesting that doesn't quite mesh with the topics listed there, that I have the discretion and the desire to accommodate you, provided the topic is likely to be well-received by attendees.

One thing that hasn't changed (yet) is the short timeframes we're working on.  I have been asked to finalize the session matrix this week.  But here's the thing: assuming you can craft descriptive session titles, that's all I really need from you right now (once selected, you'll be asked to produce full abstracts).  So take just a few minutes now and send me titles for a couple of sessions you'd love to present.

Please email content to vslive@vergentsoftware.com

Thanks!

Sunday, June 22, 2008 7:29:23 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)         Comments [0]  

Recently setup a new TFS2008 installation out in my colocation and had issues with the report and document nodes in my TFS projects not coming alive.  I had put the correct routes into my ISA Server but those other links weren’t working.

I had forgotten to update the wss and report servers names in the registration data on the application tier.

To get the registration data do a:

TFSReg /EXPORT reg.xml APPTIERSERVERNAME

Change the following values to the FQDN of your application tier:

ATMachineName

ReportsService

BaseReportsUrl

WssAdminService

BaseSiteUrl

There are a few settings in the registry also:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\TeamFoundation\ReportServer\80\Sites

Has BaseReportsService and BaseSiteUrl that also needs to be changed.

Finally clear your cache at (for vista):

c:\users\@username@\appdata\local\microsoft\team foundation\2.0

and delete the cache folder in that location.

Found a great article here somewhat after the fact: http://bloggingabout.net/blogs/mglaser/archive/2007/01/31/hosting-team-foundation-server-on-a-fully-qualified-domain-name-fqdn.aspx

Friday, March 14, 2008 10:01:05 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)         Comments [0]   VSTS