Blue Probe

ASP.NET application slow on VMWare

Ken — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:05:14 GMT

I read Encyclopedia Brown books when I was a kid. At the end of each story, the mystery was wrapped up nicely and each piece of the puzzle explained. This is not one of those stories.

While using VSTS for Testers, I discovered that 2 of the 10 VM's we had serving an ASP.NET application ran about 1/10 as fast as the others. Hmmm. Both were on one physical host. So here is what we did:

We moved a good server to the “bad VM host” and it still performed well. Then we moved one of the two bad servers to a “good VM host” and it started performing well. So we decided to test the second bad server again which still remained on the “bad host” and it started performing well.

We used to pull a trick on newbies telling them to press <ctrl>+<up arrow> to increase system speed. But that was just a joke - right?

CredentialsVerificationInfo.UserValidationData.ErrorCode of 1703

Ken — Thu, 29 May 2008 22:29:33 GMT

Our Web SSO ADFS solution stopped authenticating users. The CredentialsVerificationException caught a 1703. It was not one of the "standard" ones like 87=missing user name. The SA tracked back to AD errors and the following:

File Replication Service, by default, uses a randomly selected port to use for Remote Procedure Calls. Either AD or FRS started using a blocked port which caused domain authentication to fail. Solution: permanently disable the firewall.

On Vista, enable your Administrator account

Ken — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:39:39 GMT

By default the Admin account is disabled on Vista. The reason - this is more secure. My Vista laptop will sometimes take my password, flash a bunch of times, claim my id/pwd were invalid, and then totally lock out my account. This is even more secure (now no one can use the damn thing).

So, before this bites you, make sure you have another account with administrator privileges on your box so you can unlock that other id.

What I'm reading

Ken — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:53:34 GMT

Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5 by Omar AL Zabir

I'm sick of 600 page tomes that take the MSDN content and just add intro-style samples. Omar brings the saga of the PagesFlakes.com startup utilizing Ajax, ASP.NET 3.5, LINQ and Windows WF. Some things are out there for me (like Extenders) but the real- world aspect is breath of fresh air. Performance and measurement are strewn throughout. Examples of Omar's failures will hopefully save us time. Topics like Thirteen Production Disasters That Could Happen at Anytime are a treat.

Logging and instrumentation

Ken — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:25:59 GMT

When working on large systems with many interfaces and subsystems, problems often stem at those points of intersection. We have a ASP.Net UI that calls an Oracle Work Flow that calls a Web Service, and spins back until it reaches the UI. The UI was receiving an error message. So who to blame? The w/f or the w/s? Each group pointed the finger at the other. Worse yet, when we tried to set a breakpoint in our model office environment to debug the w/s, the breakpoint was not being trapped. Hmmm. We wrote a simple test app to call the w/s in MO. With this test app, the breakpoint was being hit. AH HA! w/f is not calling the MO w/s!

There was no logging or instrumentation within the w/s. If there was, it would be quite easy to determine if it was being called, and what message it was returning to the w/f. It's like the documentation joke. We'll do it after were done. There are certain features that we shouldn't save 'till the end.

The rise of configuration and the fall of intellisense

Ken — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 02:30:47 GMT

I've been trying work with load testing in VSTS for Testers against what I thought would be a nice simple application, the .NET Pet Shop 4.0 application. In trying to run the application I hit a Server Error in '/Web' Application - Configuration Error. It pointed to the ShoppingCartProvider section of the web.config. Stare as I would, nothing looked wrong. Debugging the code seemed even stranger as no true line of code produced the error. I started peeling back code, even adding my own profile provider to replace the shopping cart. The loading of the DAL assembly seemed to somehow trigger this. AH HA! the appSettings had this:

instead of this:

Here is where this stuff kills me. Sure I can switch between SQL Server and Oracle (which I do Wednesdays and Fridays), but I hate, absolutely HATE, that I loose the simple fact that if I had but one DAL this would have been a simple compiler error!

.NET Pet Shop 4.0 and Vista

Ken — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 02:05:50 GMT

My last post got me past the installer problem. But I ran into a few more. Here they are:

1) The install instructions say to just double click InstallDatabases.cmd to run it. However, that didn't work correctly. Open a cmd prompt, cd to that directory and run the cmd file from there.

2) Edit the web.config file. Some settings are self explanatory, but make sure of the following:

<add name="SQLProfileConnString" connectionString="Server=(local);Database=MSPetShop4Profile;Trusted_Connection=true;Connect Timeoout=10" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/>

<add name="SQLMembershipConnString" connectionString="Server=(local);Database=MSPetShop4Services;Trusted_Connection=true;Connect Timeoout=10" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/>

<add name="SQLConnString1" connectionString="Server=(local);Database=MSPetShop4Orders;Trusted_Connection=true;Connect Timeoout=10" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/>

<add name="SQLConnString2" connectionString="Server=(local);Database=MSPetShop4Orders;Trusted_Connection=true;Connect Timeoout=10" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/>

<add name="SQLConnString3" connectionString="Server=(local);Database=MSPetShop4;Trusted_Connection=true;Connect Timeoout=10" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/>

3) Start the MDTC service. If you don't, you'll receive an error during checkout.

Run an .msi installer file as Administrator

Ken — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 14:07:05 GMT

I was trying to install the .Net Pet Shop 4.0 on Windows Vista and kept getting the error: The source was not found, but some or all event logs could not be searched. Inaccessible logs: Security. There is no right click option, Run as administrator for .msi files. You can, however, run the CMD prompt as Admin, then the following:

msiexec /a "Microsoft .NET Pet Shop 4.0.msi"

Another useful command to crack open a .msi installer file:

msiexec /a "Microsoft .NET Pet Shop 4.0.msi" /qb TARGETDIR=c:\temp

Problem with the Belkin Flip KVM

Ken — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 13:02:21 GMT

I bought a KVM to open up some more room on my primary desk. Now I have my 1 Dell E207WFP (awesome wide screen - I'll never go back. I can't! I won't!) and 1 keyboard and mouse. Pushing the little Belkin Flip button swaps from my laptop to my server. Nice, however, when I boot up my Vista laptop, it detects the monitor as Unknown Monitor with a max resolution of 1,440 x 900 instead of the 1,680 x 1,050 that the E207WFP provides.

Solution: I swap out the monitor cable back to the laptop, boot, then swap it back to the KVM. Why don't I just swap in/out the monitor/keyboard/mouse and toss the Belkin?

As you mature as a developer...

Ken — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 15:48:52 GMT

We all have had classes on how to program. Language courses, algorithm courses, data base, web, etc. Along the way we pick up things. Note to younger devs: here is one that has been invaluable to me, and it comes with a red-faced story. On one project I sat in the same area as the network engineers. I lost connectivity to a DB server. In the past, as devs, we would announce this kind of thing out loud to let the others know "if you are trying to test now, forget it." So, I spoke up, "The network is down!". In my dev shop this was our catch-all for lost connectivity. A panicked Network Engineer jumped into my cube, "What! It's down? Are you sure?" - my lesson that day was twofold. 1) be specific as possible when articulating a problem. Do the leg work yourself. What debugging steps can you take? What can you ping? What can't you ping? Can you use another low level tool like OSQL, or DBPing to access your DB server? Lesson 2) learn from others those little debugging steps. Applications vary rarely stand on their own. Learn how to test the DB access, the network, an interface, a W/S outside of your application.

To put it another way, how do you look in the eyes of your Lead Dev or Architect if all you can report is, "the app is down"?