Tuesday, July 01, 2008
I wanted to thank Microsoft for awarding me with an MVP award for 2008. It is such an awesome program and an honor to be included in such a great group of professionals. I really appreciate the friendships and relationships that are a part of this prestigous program. Thanks again for the recognition and congratulations to all of the MVP award receipients.
Scott Lock
Friday, April 18, 2008
I finally got a Virtual Server 2005 VM running with my clients entire intranet SPS 2003 portal running. It took a bit of time to restore all 70GB of content data. What I have now is a 120 GB VM that is a great way to test the upgrade.
Here are some lessons learned:
1. VPC 2007 to Virtual Sever 2005 Does not always work as advertised - I started off this project with a baseline Windows 2003 VPC built on my laptop. The trick is that the VPC used specific IDE controller drivers based on the hardware configuration of my Dell Latitude 820. I tried to move this over as is but got the BSOD during reboot. After several failed attempts to fix the image, I ultimately had to rebuild the image on VS 2005.
2. Size Matters - When you build a new image, make sure you size it appropriately. Dynamic disks are great, but when you need to restore a 52GB database, you need to make sure you have at least that much space to do the restore. Fixed disks do the trick here, but how do you convert a disk that was already fixed at 64 GB? Easy...you download VM Resizer, epand the disk then use DiskPart to extend the partition. Worked like champ. One thing to note, if you are extending a VHD that you plan to keep as an IDE drive, make sure to keep it under the 127GB max size.
3. It makes a "Difference" - Use Differencing disks. Repeat. Use Differencing Disks. It's not easy to use undo disks on a VHD that is 120GB in size. Even on a SAN that's a lot of disk space. By building that baseline and using VS 2005 differencing disks, you can keep that baseline pristine and make changes to a seperate vhd.
4. Know Thy Version - If you follow Jeff Holliday's Blog Entry on Restoring SharePoint Production Servers to Test Servers it is very easy to actually restore the portal. What's the catch? You ABSOLUTELY need to make sure that WSS 2.0 and SPS 2003 are up to the same version. There were a few posts and comments from folks who got this error:
'SvrAdminPortalCreate_SecurityConfigurationSection_Text' is not a valid value for attribute 'TitleLocID'. It must be of enum type 'Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.LocStringId'
This was because there was a mismatch in version between the production source server and the test target servers. You can verify versions against this chart and install the appropriate hotfixes, patches, and service packs.
Hope that this helps someone along the way.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
I know this is bad form, but I have to try. Excella (my firm) is looking for great .Net developers in the D.C. metro area. If you are looking or know anyone else that is looking, please have them give me a shout.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
An odd thing happened to me after installing the Vista SP1 RTM. I have a laptop running Vista Ultimate. The OS was installed using my MVP Team Suite license. I use this machine as my primary development box. After installing Vista SP1 I had two interesting things show up on the desktop:
1. "Test Mode" showed up in each corner of the desktop - Run Bcdedit.exe /set TESTSIGNING OFF using an elevated prompt to turn off test for signed drivers.
2. "for testing purposes only." and build number - This one I am not sure why it has appeared in the corner. My previous version did not. The only thing I could find was a very lengthy step by step process which seemed way to complicated.
So I don't have the warm fuzzy feeling that I've been hearing everyone talk about after installing Vista SP1. I don't feel like I'm running the RTM build. The messages I see make me feel like its the RC. I hope there nothing else that I can't see broken. I didn't realize that I was signing up for the beta test!
I've been having an interesting time with the Vista SP1 install and Virtual PC 2007. After installing Vista SP1, I thought all was well. Assuming "Well" means that you now have "For testing purposes only" and the build number watermarked in the corner, but I'll save that for another post.
I was unfortunately at a client site when I went to start Virtual PC 2007 for the first time, post Vista SP1. Started okay but then as soon as I clicked on "New", all I got was an open task in the task bar but no window on the desktop. Hovering over the task bar item, I could see that the windows was blank according to the Vista thumbnail view.
I tried uninstalling Virtual PC, getting the latest bits, reinstalling...no good. I posted a message on the MVP Vista boards and got a response from Paul Adare, MVP Virtual Machines. (Thanks Paul!) He mentioned that he has heard that this was reported and suggested:
"Try deleting C:\Users\<user_name>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Virtual PC\options.xml and then starting VPC again."
That did the trick.
This is because the configuration is set to display the window in an area which is way out of the scope of the current viewable area. This may be due to switching between multiple dual monitor configurations and sleep mode?
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Lee Thé recenctly posted an article on SOA Governance based on coverage from the Enterprise Architecture Practioners Conference held last month in San Francisco. The article is an interesting conversation on how governance, EA, and SOA either work or fail together in todays enterprise IT space.
One of my favorite qoutes from the article was from Kyle Gabhart, director of the SOA technology division at Web Age Solution. When asked about how to make governance and reusability happen:
"Gabhart joked -- sort of -- that "the most effective governance tools I know are Excel and Visio." He said you have to build a dialogue about how to adapt/change/mold SOA to navigate the political structures, the people and the resources, using wikis, whiteboards, whatever it takes to foster that discussion. He added that a lot of valuable items are not reusable, such as paper plates, paper diapers and foam cups." - (Source: SOA Governance: 'Not Much' Success, Panelists Say, Application Development Trends, Feb 14, 2008)
I go through A LOT of diapers in my house and god knows that they are the last thing that I would consider reusable. Although paper plates are one of those things where I wonder if it takes less energy to manufacture and recycle 100 paper plates or run one load in the dishwasher?
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
To continue in the traditiion of trackbacks, and since I can't seem to find an orginal post in my body, I thought that I would share this one with you. Jason Follas psted a solution on how to get SQL Client, running on Vista, to use different credentials when connecting to a SQL Server using Windows Authentication. Basically, there are a ton of posts out there, but this is the ONLY one that that I could find that had the solution. Here's the link to the full explantion: Making SQL Server Management Server work on Windows Vista
Here's the solution - Create a "runas.exe" shortcut with the following configuration:
C:\Windows\System32\runas.exe /netonly /user:domainx\myusername
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Binn\VSShell\Common7\IDE\SqlWb.exe"
Works like a charm! Thank's Jason!
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Paul Stovell posted this
hillarious and true vision on platforms. Some may agree...some may choose to abstain.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
I recently had to update the TFS configuration settings to reflect a newly changed database server name. Merrick Chaffer's post on how to update TFS when the VM is renamed worked perfectly. I only updated the settings pertaining to the DB server. Saved me a ton of time trying to figure out why it's not working.
Thanks Merrick!
Thursday, October 04, 2007
I can't believe what I'm reading. Microsoft announced yesterday the details on the new Zune 2.0 hardware, features and supporting software. There are some good things coming...but...and I don't unsderstand why...they have missed the boat...again.
WHY CAN'T I DOWNLOAD MUSIC FROM ZUNE MARKETPLACE OVER WIFI?
WHY CAN'T I GET REAL VIDEO FROM ZUNE MARKETPLACE AND NOT JUST MUSIC VIDEOS?
I don't get it. I don't understand. I love my zune. I use it every day for at least 3 hours a day (Work, Gym). I really want it to compete, but community Cards is not going to get it done. And why do I care about wireless sync? You have to plug it in via USB cable anyways to charge it. How many people really splurged for the AC adapter?
I just can't believe it.