The Build Release and Deploy (BRD) Lite is a set of build process reference templates that allows you to quickly setup a real-world build process in your environment. Leveraging extensions from Community TFS Build Extensions, provides capabilities for your Team Foundation builds such as automatic compile, build version number customization, build packaging, code signing, basic deployment functionality, and environment configuration file management into your Team Foundation builds.

BRDLite2.0.xaml Process Template

The solution is divided in separate packages to give you the choice of selective downloads. The default download is the first of the listed packages:

• Hands-on Labs
• Build Templates

The release contains:

• BRDLite 2.0 for ASP.NET Build Template – VS2012
• BRDLite 2.0 Build Template – VS2012
• BRDLite 2.0-HOL-Extending Template- VS2012
• BRDLite 2.0 for SharePoint Build Template – VS2012
• BRDLite 2.0 Orchestrator Template – VS 2012
• BRDLite 2.0 Wrapper Template – VS 2012
• Working with BRDLite 2.0 for ASP.NET HOL – VS2012
• Working with BRDLite 2.0 for SharePoint HOL – VS2012

What can I expect from application monitoring

• Efficient troubleshooting of issues related to .NET based applications in all of your environments (QA, Stage, Pre-Prod and Production)
• Able to perform Server-Side and Client-Side Monitoring of your Applications
• Provide root-cause diagnostic information to your developers
• Support QA documenting application defects (bugs) and performance issues
• Integration with Team Foundation Server 2010/2012
• People and tools are crucial to avoiding disaster

Monitoring your .NET applications with SCOM 2012 is extremely easy and I definitely recommend doing so if you can, your operations team will thank you for making their lives easier supporting your application on their infrastructure.  TFS CALs are not required to access Team Foundation Server using Microsoft System Center Operations Manager.  This enables any of your operations staff to take operational issues encountered in production and raise them as issues to the development/engineering team, automatically creating a work item in Team Foundation Server.

Check on the health of your applications

View application performance

New Monitoring Capabilities in SCOM 2012 SP1

• Monitoring Windows Services Built on the .NET Framework (present in AVIcode, this is now possible again)
• Automatic Discovery of ASP.NET MVC3 and MVC4 Applications (System.Web.Mvc.dll is found in the /bin folder)
• New Transaction Types: MVC Pages and WCF Methods (Allows for more detailed settings for an application)
• Monitoring SharePoint 2010 Applications (Client-side .NET Application Performance Monitoring (APM) is not supported for SharePoint)
• Global Service Monitor – uses Windows Azure – Reports on availability, performance and function of web applications by scheduling and executing synthetic transactions (uses Visual Studio .webtests)

What’s new in SCOM 2012 SP1 for TFS 2010/2012

• Shipped as part of Operations Manager, included in the SP1 Media
• Improved security – synchronization account no longer requires TFS administrative rights
• Improved design of the Operational Issue WITD (Work Item Type Definition)
• Improved design of the configuration Wizard
• Introduced support for TFS Area Path
• Support for default Team Projects
• Synchronization for new APM alert types from IIS 8.0 web applications, WCF, Windows Services, and also for non-APM alerts
• Localization of Wizard UI and MP elements, and compatibility with localized versions of TFS
• Synchronize file attachments that can reside on a network file share or appended to TFS work items
• Automatically route and close alerts to TFS
• IT operations can open TFS work items directly from the Operations Manager console using built-in integration with TFS web UI

SCOM 2012 meet TFS 2010/2012

Sending operational issues from SCOM to TFS is incredibly easy.  Once the relationship is configured in SCOM 2012 in the management console (under TFS Work Item Synchronization).

TFS Work Item Synchronization

When an “Operational Issue” presents itself in the management console it can be “Assigned to Engineering” which effectively forwards it to TFS.  A special work item type “Operational Issue” was created in the Team Project during the TFS Work Item Synchronization configuration for this purpose.

Assigned To Engineering

Once in TFS the development/engineering team can “Acknowledge” the incident and then proceed to work on a resolution.

Accept and Acknowledge Incident

The operations team current status of the issue is updated to reflect that it has been acknowledged.

Operations Acknowledged

Conversion of APM events to IntelliTrace format

Allows for opening of APM exception events from Visual Studio as if the exception was captured during an IntelliTrace historical debugging session.

Download Intellitrace Capture

Features

• APM exception events can be saved in IntelliTrace file format directly from Application Diagnostics Window
• Traces are automatically attached to APM exception events and can be automatically added to TFS work items
• Developers can open traces using Visual Studio 2012 Ultimate Update 1

IntelliTrace Profiling Management Pack

Easily capture traces directly from the Operations Manager console, the management pack automatically deploys the IntelliTrace Collector to the designated servers.

Start IntelliTrace Collection

So much cool stuff in this release!

.NET Application Performance Monitoring

The Applications you are monitoring are shown below in the Operations Manager console under Authoring | Management Pack Template | .NET Application Performance Monitoring

Application Performance Monitoring

You are able to specify the components of your application you wish to monitor by selecting them in the following dialog, this also includes settings for server-side and client-side monitoring.

Application Monitoring Properties

You can see from the settings below you are able to enable “Performance Event Alerts” and “Exception Event Alerts”.

Application Monitoring Server-Side Defaults

If you venture into the “Advanced Settings” you will see you can configure the sensitivity threshold as well as specify the exception events you want to monitor:

• Security alerts
• Connectivity alerts
• Application failure alerts

You can also specify whether you want to monitor “All exceptions” or “Critical exceptions only”.

Application Monitoring – Server-Side Defaults – Advanced Settings

If you have any questions feel free to leave me a comment.  I recently delivered some presentations on this particular topic in Montreal and Ottawa and you can access my PowerPoint deck here.

If you are interested in finding out more about System Center 2012 SP1 here are some links you might find useful:

• System Center 2012 Licensing FAQ
• System Center 2012 Licensing Datasheet
• Microsoft System Center 2012 Home Page
• System Center 2012 Trial Download

The SharePoint Conference is over and I thought my head was going to explode!  This conference was packed full of information and details about the 2013 releases of SharePoint Online and SharePoint On-Premise (I know on-premise is not a real word).  274 sessions if I recall correctly

My first day of the conference I decided to write two beta exams (they were free so why not!):

• 071-331 Core Solutions of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 Preview
• 071-332 Advanced Solutions of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 Preview

These exams are more difficult (IMHO) than their previous versions and took me more time to complete.  Less multiple choice, the fact that the exam is harder is a good thing.

Here is a partial list of the reasons to upgrade that jumped out at me:

• 100% compatible with TFS 2012
• Deferred Upgrade
• Shredded Storage (better management of large binary objects like .docx, .pptx, etc.)
• Office Web Apps Read Mode does not require an Office CAL, to Edit Office documents in Office Web Apps requires an Office 2013 Standard or Professional Plus CAL.  External users* can read and edit documents in Office Web Apps for free, no Office CAL is required.
• User License Enforcement can now be controlled by AD Security Group membership (Standard, Enterprise, Project, Duet and WAC); Leverages claims-based authentication
• New Service Applications
•   PowerPoint Automation Services (similar to the conversion capabilities of Word Automation Services)
•   Work Management (collaboration between Exchange, Lync, Project Server and SharePoint Server)
•   Translation Services (cloud-based translation services)
•   App Management (Manage Apps)
• Request Management (route incoming requests through a rules engine)
• FAST Search for SharePoint and Search Server has been integrated in SharePoint Server.  They are no longer available as standalone products.
• SharePoint for Internet Sites is no longer available
• Disk I/O requirements have been reduced considerably
• Distributed Cache Service built on AppFabric Caching
• Performance Feature Improvements (Script on Demand, Minimal Download Strategy, Content Delivery Network)
• Access Services now has a SQL backend, supports new app model, polished look and feel
• Adopt Claims-based Authentication, Windows Classic-Mode is being deprecated, Enhancements to claims infrastructure
• Microsoft SharePoint Workspace replaced by SkyDrive Pro in Office 2013
• Yammer Enterprise now included with Office 365 Enterprise Plans for existing customers, cost for on-premise reduced to $3/user.
• Deferred Upgrade (completely backward compatible upgrade, upgrade can be deferred)
• eDiscovery Center – can discover content from various sources: Exchange, SharePoint and File Shares
• Community Sites provide a forum experience
• Web Content Management improvements (Design manager for branding your site, Managed navigation)
• CAL WAIVER FOR USERS ACCESSING PUBLICLY AVAILABLE CONTENT – CALs are not required to access content, information, and applications that you make publicly available to external users* over the Internet (i.e., not restricted to Intranet or Extranet scenarios).   See the “Product Use Rights” document – PUR.

Note*: External users means users that are not either your or your affiliates’ employees, or your or your affiliates’ onsite contractors or onsite agents

This is a copy of a slide from “Overview of SharePoint Licensing” by Sajan Parihar of Microsoft that was presented at SPC12

If you are looking for more information on SharePoint 2013 you can try some of these links:

• Explore SharePoint 2013 – Download the official eBook from Microsoft here
• SharePoint Server 2013 Software Prerequisites – Bill Baer’s blog post here
• Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Home Page – link here
• Downloadable Content for SharePoint 2013 – link here
• Test Lab Guides for SharePoint 2013 – link here
• Download SharePoint Server 2013 Trial – link here
• Office 365 Enterprise Trial – link here
• SharePoint blogs at Microsoft – link here
• SharePoint 2013 App Model overview – link here

I plan to post some more about SharePoint 2013, the least of which will be about TFS 2012 integration with SharePoint 2013.  Enjoy and hope you come back soon

I am certain this has been a long standing request from Visual Studio by the community, myself included.  If you’ve attempted this in the past with previous versions of Visual Studio you would have realized quickly that it wasn’t quite up to the task unless you heavily edited the recording that was produced.  It’s not that the Web Test would have failed but the fact that requests to pages named:

• blank.htm
• ScriptResx.ashx
• commandui.ashx

would have remained as part of the recording.

Previous versions of Visual Studio also would not recognize a Site Name as a Parameter either.

To get started you’ll need to ensure you have the following installed:

Visual Studio 2012 Ultimate (Web Performance Testing is an Ultimate Feature)

Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 CTP 4 Final (available here)

To verify you’ve got everything and you’re ready open Visual Studio 2012 and select Tools | Options | Web Performance Test Tools | Web Test | SharePoint and you should see the following:

I’ve already had to add an additional Pattern to the out of the box settings because one of the SharePoint sites I was recording was returning a blank.html page.

To get started create a New Project | Installed | Templates | Visual C# | Test | Web Performance and Load Test Project

If you don’t see the Template make sure the .NET Framework is set to either 4.0 or 4.5 so the template displays.

Once the project has been created Add a Web Performance Test to it and your web test will be added and Internet Explorer will be launched ready to record your actions.

While it is recording don’t be alarmed by all of the requests listed in the Web Test Recorder window, the requests for ScriptResx.ashx, blank.htm and others will be removed once the recording is stopped.

Let’s stop the recording and allow Visual Studio to process the web test recording

One of the things you’ll notice right away is that the site names have already been extracted for you:

• SiteName1=sp2010pillars
• SiteName2=Projects
• SiteName3=M300DigitalCamera

If you wanted drive the site names from a SiteNames.csv file you could easily add a data source to the web test and then perform a search and replace on {{SiteName1}} and replace it with {{Datasource1.SiteNames#csv.SiteName}}

I think you’ll find this extremely valuable for testing your SharePoint Server configurations, you can also easily configure an Extraction Rule on your individual requests to get values of SharePoint Calendar Dates and Items, List Items, Documents and others.

Let me know how you make out!

• QRProxy Service  qrproxy
• SAM Admin samadmin
• SAM Worker samworker

Dead Services: QRProxy Services, SAM Admin and SAM Worker

It should also be noted that these FAST Servers are NOT connected to the INTERNET.

The problem is the server is unable to perform Certificate Revocation Checking (CRL) checking and so the service times out — SharePoint Server suffers from the same issue if the server are not connected to the INTERNET.  The solution is discussed here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sambetts/archive/2012/10/03/psconfig-system-invalidoperationexception-cannot-start-the-service-spadmin-on-computer.aspx

You have a few options:

• Disable CRL Check
• Allow the server access to CRL.MICROSOFT.COM
• Edit the HOSTS file and point CRL.MICROSOFT.COM to 127.0.0.1

We opted for the 1st option.  After we disabled the check the service was able to start successfully.

Here is the error message we received before we disabled the Certificate Revocation Checking (CRL) check:

Verbose StartServices – Starting service – FASTSearchMonitoring

Error Utility.WriteException – Exception -  : Exception – Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.ServiceCommandException: Service ‘FAST Search for SharePoint Monitoring (FASTSearchMonitoring)’ cannot be started due to the following error: Cannot start service FASTSearchMonitoring on computer ‘.’. —> System.InvalidOperationException: Cannot start service FASTSearchMonitoring on computer ‘.’. —> System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion

This is a feature you can find in the latest release of Microsoft Test Manager included with Visual Studio Ultimate 2012, Visual Studio Premium 2012 or Visual Studio Test Pro 2012.  If you’re interesting in the entire feature comparison across editions you can see it here.

In the screenshot above I launched Microsoft Test Manager and connected to one of my Team Projects, you can see I have not created a Test Plan yet.

• Click the Add button in the toolbar to open the Add test plan dialog
• Enter the Plan name
• Select the appropriate Area path and Iteration
• Click the Add button

Select the Test Plan you just created and then click Select plan or Double Click on the name of the Test Plan to open the new plan.  Make sure you are on the Plan tab of the Testing Center as shown below

From the Plan tab right click the Plan Name you created and left click Explore.  This will start the Test Runner application which will snap to the left side of your desktop.

Before you press start you can configure some of the settings if you’d like by pressing the button shaped like a gear located in the bottom right hand corner of the window.

In my case I customized the setting for the screenshot annotation tool and set it to C:\Program Files (x86)\TechSmith\Snagit 11\Snagit32.exe

My favorite screen capture application/editor is Snagit, Test Runner comes set to use Paint Brush as default.

Now I can click Start which will starting the recording process and then I will launch a sample application and start my Exploratory Testing Session.

I launched IE 9 and entered the URL for the application which I want to start my testing session, when I find an issue I can start writing a description of the bug in the text editor.  You will notice that I can format the text and insert a screenshot as well if I want.  If I need to edit the screenshot I can simply double click it to launch my image editor (Snagit) so I can highlight/circle the exact location of the error on the web page.

If I want I can choose to Pause (Top Left Button) my recording session so my actions are not captured as part of the test recording.

Clicking Resume will start the recording again so I can continue my test session.  I will then click the Create bug in the Test Runner at which point the Test Runner will Pause.

Most of the information for the bug is populated for you, you will have to enter/edit the following fields:

• Title
• Assigned To
• Change Steps (select your relevant actions and observations)

Once you are done entering information required for the bug you can go ahead and press Save and create test to create the new bug.

Again most of the information for the test case is populated for you, you will have to enter/edit the following fields:

• Title
• Assigned To
• Expected Result

Once you’re done then press the Save and close button to resume your exploratory testing in test runner.

For this example we’ll just press the End testing button now which will return us to the Testing Center and show us the details of our current session.

Press Save and Close to return to the Test Plan.

That’s it!  If you have any comments please let me know.

System info

If you want to create easier to remember names for your VMs you could create some CNAMEs in your DNS so you can have a name like iis-01.dev.lab.tfs.domain.local instead of VSLM-58-62ff5f0e-3584-4fed-b726-5741bb62e659.domain.local of course this is quite a bit of effort if you have many environments and machines or recreate your environment.

Lab Center Environment

In my DNS Manager I have created a few subdomains as containers for virtual machine friendly names in Lab Management Environments.

DNS Manager | Subdomains

Now that I have those subdomains I just need a really easy method to create CNAMEs based on the computers in my environments so I can get entries like these created for me.

Alias (CNAME)

I created a Powershell Script to iterate through a Lab Environment for a Team Project. In Lab Center I have enabled the display of the ID column for the Environments which I will use later in the Lab URI.

Environments with ID

Here is a sample command-line:

.\CreateCnamesForLabEnvironment.ps1 -dnsServer ws08srv -flzone “domain.local” -aSuffix “lab.tfs.domain.local” -labUri “vstfs:///LabManagement/LabEnvironment/56″ -tpcUrl “http://localhost/tfs/DefaultCollection”

Here is the Powershell script, use at your own risk.  Let me know if you find it useful. 
The script ignores the machine configured as the Domain Controller in the environment as it has no external adapter defined. The script gets the internal computer name to use as the friendly name.


# CreateCnamesForLabEnvironment.ps1
# helper function
function isNullOrEmpty {
param (
[string] $str
)
if ([system.string]::IsNullOrEmpty($str))
{
return $true
}
else
{
return $false
}
}
# http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2010/09/13/manage-dns-in-a-windows-environment-by-using-powershell.aspx
function newcname {
param(
[string]$dnsServer,
[string]$flzone,
[string]$labComputer,
[string]$alias
)
## split the hostname from the FQDN
$server = $dnsServer -split "\."
$rr = [WmiClass]"\\$($server[0])\root\MicrosoftDNS:MicrosoftDNS_ResourceRecord"
##
## create CNAME
$text = "$alias IN CNAME $labComputer"
$rr.CreateInstanceFromTextRepresentation($dnsServer, $flzone, $text)
}

if (-not(isNullOrEmpty($computerName)))
{
if (-not(isNullOrEmpty($internalComputerName)))
{
Write-Host "Creating a CNAME for "$computerName
Write-Host "Alias (CNAME):"$alias
newcname $dnsServer $flzone $computerName $alias
}
}
}
}
else {
Write-Host "The Lab Environment specified is not running!"
Write-Host "Lab URI: "$labUri
Write-Host "Environment Name: "$labEnv.Name
Write-Host "Environment State: "$labEnv.StatusInfo.State
}


Log Name: Application
Source: Microsoft-SharePoint Products-SharePoint Server Search
Date: 22/06/2012 10:23:01 AM
Event ID: 2567
Task Category: Content Plugin
Level: Error
Keywords:
User: like10\_fs_cssaa
Computer: SPAPP-01.like10.local
Description:
Failed to connect to spfast-01.like10.local:13391 Failed to initialize session with document engine: Unable to resolve Contentdistributor

This error can happen for a few reasons (FAST Search Certificate expired) but in my case it was because after applying the updated April 2012 CU for SharePoint 2010 SP1 (Note: The revised package includes support for resolving issues found in the original April 2012 CU) the domain account running the SharePoint Server Search 14 service was changed from the Database Access Account (like10\_sp_ap_dac) to the Search Service Account (like10\_fs_cssaa) and because of this the new account no longer had permissions to the FAST Search Certificate and caused the connections to fail. You can verify this by checking for the following error being logged in the System Log:

Log Name: System
Source: Schannel
Date: 22/06/2012 10:29:17 AM
Event ID: 36870
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords:
User: SYSTEM
Computer: SPAPP-01.like10.local
Description:
A fatal error occurred when attempting to access the SSL client credential private key. The error code returned from the cryptographic module is 0x8009030d. The internal error state is 10003.

The fix for this is quite easy, you simply have to configure the Content SSA to use an SSL certificate for FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint again.

To verify the account name you need to configure go to Administrative Tools | Services and scroll down to the service named SharePoint Server Search 14 and check the user account named under Log On As which in this case was like10\_fs_cssaa.

SharePoint Server Search 14

I had already copied the files from the FAST Search Server to the SharePoint Server that I required to execute the Powershell command below. The instructions “Configure SSL enabled communication” covers all the steps if you’re looking for more detail.

On the SharePoint Server I opened a SharePoint 2010 Management Shell (as Administrator) and executed the following command:

PS D:\FASTSearch> .\SecureFASTSearchConnector.ps1 -certPath “D:\FASTSearch\FASTSearchCert.pfx” -ssaName “FAST Search Content SSA” -username “LIKE10\_fs_cssaa“
Enter the certificate password: ********
Installed certificate.
Updated acls on certificates private keys.
Your FAST Search Connector has been setup to use certificate, restarting osearch14.
Connection to contentdistributor spfast-01.like10.local:13391 successfully validated.

I’ll continue to step through enabling Kerberos Authentication for the following services:

• TFS 2010 Application Tier which consists of both the Web Services and Team Web Access

To find out the Service Account that is relevant to this exercise in your environment, logon (or RDP) to your TFS 2010 Application Tier and launch the Team Foundation Server Administration Console

Application Tier Summary

There are five entries here which are relevant and they are:

• Service Account
• Authentication
• Notification URL
• Server URL
• Web Access URL

The URLs using your friendly name should only be display in Notification URL and Web Access URL, the Server URL should be set to localhost unless you have specific reason.

In my example I am using a domain account named DOMAIN\tfsService and a friendly DNS Name of tfs.domain.local with that information I can create the SPN (Service Principal Name) by executing the following command:

• Setspn -S http/tfs.domain.local domain\tfsService

With that step completed I need to return to the Team Foundation Server Administration Console and modify the Application Tier Authentication Settings and change it from NTLM to Negotiate (Kerberos).  I do this in the Administration Console by selecting the Authemtication Settings Hyperlink on the far right side of the console.

After that is complete Launch Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager and select the Site which hosts your Team Foundation Server Website and under Management select Configuration Editor.  If you are running IIS 7.0 (Windows Server 2008) this management feature may not be installed, if that is the case you can get the feature as part of the Administration Pack 1.0 for IIS 7.0.

IIS Configuration Editor

Double click on the Configuration Editor and navigate to the following Section:

system.webServer/security/authentication/windowsAuthentication

You must set the following attributes to True:

• useAppPoolCredentials
• useKernelMode

Then under Actions on the far right select Apply.  Now from a remote machine use a web browser (IE, Firefox requires some manual configuration) to access the Team Web Access site at http://tfs.domain.local/tfs/web/.

Firefox

If Kerberos authentication is working correctly you will see Logon events in the security event logs on the TFS Application Tier with Event ID 4624. In the general tab for these events you should see the Security ID being logged onto the computer and the Logon Process used, which should display as Kerberos.

Event ID 4624 Logon Process: Kerberos

Successfully authenticated to Visual Studio 2010 Team Web Access using IE 9.x and FireFox 13.x.

Team Web Access (IE 9.x)

Team Web Access (Firefox 13.x)

Before you apply this patch you must ensure you’ve already applied Visual Studio 2008 SP1, and of course you must also have Team Explorer 2008 installed or this patch does not apply to you.

The forward compatibility update for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Team Foundation Server 2010 is also available.

These updates/patches apply to the following products

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1
• Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server Service Pack 1
• Microsoft Visual Studio Team Explorer Service Pack 1