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Using Friendly DNS Names in Visual Studio 2010 Lab Management

June 27, 2012 by Wes MacDonald 2 Comments


If you’ve spent some time with Lab Management, specifically where you’ve leveraged Network Isolation you will have noticed the nice fully qualified domain names assigned to the external network adapter identified in the diagram below as “Computer name:”. If you want to create easier to remember names for your VMs you could create some CNAMEs in your […]

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Lab Management, Team Foundation Server
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Patching TFS 2010 Build Agents and Test Agents

April 16, 2012 by Wes MacDonald 0 Comments


  A discussion recently arose over how to patch TFS 2010 Test Controllers and TFS 2010 Test Agents. TFS 2010 SP1 will not patch the Test Controller or Test Agent products.  In this example I have a virtual machine in my LAB which has both of the lab agents (workflow and testing) installed and configured. […]

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Lab Management, Team Foundation Server, Visual Studio 2010

How does the VMPrep Tool Apply Patches

November 4, 2011 by Wes MacDonald 0 Comments


  The VMPrep Tool for Visual Studio Lab Management 2010 is located on the MSDN Archive. Assuming your file-share is \\LabMgr, your layout should be as below \\LabMgr\AgentInstaller\ \\LabMgr\TFSInstaller\ \\LabMgr\PatchInstaller\ \\LabMgr\VMPrepTool\ All patches which need to be applied should be present in a folder. This folder should be indicated in the Applications.xml file (found inside […]

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Lab Management, Visual Studio 2010

DevTeach: Visual Studio 2010 Lab Management Session

November 4, 2011 by Wes MacDonald 0 Comments


  Yesterday afternoon I did a session on Visual Studio 2010 Lab Management (targeted at the ITPro).  If you are looking for the links that were on the resources slide from the PowerPoint deck.  I will post them here (plus a few more).  Visual Studio ALM MVP Etienne Tremblay from Montreal also sat in on […]

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Lab Management, Microsoft Test Manager, Team Build, Team Foundation Server, Visual Studio 2010
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The Visual Studio ALM Rangers have done it again!

June 20, 2011 by Wes MacDonald 1 Comment


  Looking for information on Visual Studio Lab Management well look no further, the TFS Rangers have released their Rangers Lab Management Guide to Codeplex. Congratulations to the entire team. This Visual Studio ALM Ranger project has the primary goal of delivering scenario based and hands-on lab guidance for the customization and deployment of Team […]

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Lab Management, Team Build, Team Foundation Server
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Ottawa IT/Code Camp Session Resources

April 16, 2011 by Wes MacDonald 0 Comments


  If you are attending my session today about Visual Studio Lab Management titled “Kill Bugs Faster and Build and Run Your Virtual Test Lab Using Microsoft Visual Studio Lab Management 2010” here are some resources to help you get up to speed. VHD Test Drive – Visual Studio Lab Management Lab Management (pre-release) 2010 […]

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Lab Management
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Ready to update System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 with SP1

April 5, 2011 by Wes MacDonald 1 Comment


  As you may remember Visual Studio 2010 Lab Management leverages SCVMM R2 2008 and now that SP1 has been released you can update your installation with all of the service pack goodness. Updates you should have already applied Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 SP1 […]

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Lab Management
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The lab service account available on this machine is not valid

April 1, 2011 by Wes MacDonald 0 Comments


  If you receive the following error chances are the lab service account on the domain has either expired or is locked out.  Here is the error you will receive on your test machines, selecting repair has no effect until the password/account issue is resolved: Cannot connect to the controller on ‘tfs.lab.local:6901’. The lab service […]

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Lab Management
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Network Isolation and Domain Joined Machines

February 9, 2011 by Wes MacDonald 4 Comments


  If you decide to build an environment in Lab Manager which has a server performing the domain controller role, when you are joining the machines to the domain make sure you don’t rename them.  If you do you will get “Additional Information” messages displayed about the state of those machines. Network isolation is complete. […]

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Lab Management, Visual Studio 2010
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If environment name contains a "," a suitable build agent cannot be found by the controller

February 7, 2011 by Wes MacDonald 1 Comment


If an environment is created in Microsoft Test Manager (MTM) in Lab Center and the name contains a “,” the build controller is unable to find an enabled build agent.  Once I renamed Calc (Fenced, Test) to Calc (Complete) the build was able to proceed. Do not bother trying to "Tag” the build agent to […]

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Lab Management, Microsoft Test Manager, Visual Studio 2010
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