Looking forward to another great event at TesTrek Toronto October 28-30!

In case you’re not aware of TesTrek, take a look at the details for this amazing QA conference!

I’m presenting a session on using cloud services for added testing agility:

Leveraging  Cloud Services for More Agile Testing

Complex testing environments are become the norm, yet so is the desire by testers to be able to respond to needs of the organization in a more agile way. Cloud services provide capabilities to testers to reduce time to testing through rapid environment creation, as well as the ability to set up and use variations on core environments to handle different client scenarios. In this session, we’ll talk through the application of cloud services to address the needs to testers, from manual and automated test, to stress/load testing, and we’ll demonstrate some of these concepts.

And my good friends at ObjectSharp will be delivering a 1/2 day workshop:

Workshop: Experience and Overcome the Challenges of Exploratory Testing

Instructors: David Lloyd, ObjectSharp Consulting, Debra Forsyth, ObjectSharp Consulting

Tuesday, October 29, 2013: 8:30 AM - 12:00 PM

Exploratory testing is said to be a mindset, a way of thinking, freestyle testing that liberates the tester to explore. However, there are obstacles and challenges related to this freestyle testing. Join this workshop to explore those obstacles hands on and learn how we can overcome them. Explore an application with known bugs and see if you can find them.

I hope you make it out to this event, and if you do, look me up!

Co-managing an Azure Account

Azure provides the ability to add “co-administrators” to a particular account. A co-administrator does not “own” the account, per se, but has the ability to provision azure services, just as the core administrator does.

In addition, customers can use this method to add multiple users to a single Azure subscription as co-administrators (whether that subscription is MSDN based or not)

To add another user as a co-administrator to an existing account:

1) Log into the Azure Management portal (https://manage.windowsazure.com) using your Microsoft ID

2) Click Subscriptions on the top menu, and then select Manage Administrators

3) Enter the MicrosoftID of the new co-administrator, and select the subscriptions you want them to be able to administer:

4) Once completed, the user will have the ability to select that subscription to manage, by checking it off under the subscriptions drop-down:

5) When creating new items, the user will have the option to specify which subscription the item should be created with, in the various “New” dialogs.

 

Using a “Generic” Microsoft ID to access Azure Benefits

Technically, there is no reason that a “generic” Microsoft ID will not allow any user that has it to access the management capabilities permitted to that ID. Again, this does not address any licensing related issues.

Accessing Resources provisioned from another user

There are many ways users can gain direct access to azure resources without using the management UI. Here’s some information that might be helpful:

• Cross Account Resources
• Many azure features cannot use resources that span different account when being created. While UI limits here may change in the future (see the Azure web site for info), at current, you cannot, for example, create an Azure VM on one account and have it stored in the storage account of another user.

• Virtual Machines
• Virtual machines can be accessed over the web using remote tools such as Remote Desktop and Powershell. This allows any user (notwithstanding licensing constraints) to access an Azure virtual machine for interactive use, management, etc.

• Storage
• Azure storage resources can be accessed directly via URL, and in some cases with the appropriate management keys, which can be obtained through the management UI.
• storage objects can be accessed directly through various tools, such as third party tools and the Azure Powershell, but still need to have the account details set up
• There are tools to copy/move and otherwise manipulate storage objects without using the management UI, but in almost all cases, you’ll need to have the right access keys

Included in these benefits are rights to use WIndows Azure for Dev and Test Scenarios.

Now, Dev and Test today is the #1 used workload for cloud computing across all different cloud service providers, and it makes great sense:

• You can rapidly provision new resources
• You don’t have to invest in new servers on premises to host these resources
• You pay as you go
• You can try things out that might not be “allowed” in your organization
• You can make use of network resources that your organization can’t spare
• You can leverage a whole new set of services that aren’t present inside your own org
• and many more reasons…

MSDN subscribers get great cloud benefits from Microsoft. As of October 3, 2013, these benefits include the following “credits” (think spending $$) per month that you can use on most anything in Azure, at reduced consumption rates. And you DO NOT NEED TO SUPPLY A CREDIT CARD for this.

Now, this is all wonderful, but what does it mean, how do you get started, and what are some of the scenarios for this.

Well, here’s a webcast (and deck) that I’ve put together to help explain all of this:

You can get to this video on Channel 9 at https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/cdndevs/CloudForDevTest

One of the ways that this can be accomplished is through the use of Excel.

First, some caveats:

• You need to have the rights to connect the databases mentioned below. This might involve increasing permissions for your user account on the SQL Server.
• The “log” is a rolling log, and does not have a complete history. You can repeat this procedure over a desired period of time to increase your accuracy

Start Excel, and go to the Data tab:

Select “From Other Sources”, and pick From SQL Server:

Type in the name of the SQL Server that TFS is using, and click Next…

Pick the “TFS_Configuration” database, and the table named “Command”, then click next:

Click Next once more, and then insert the data as a Table, and click OK:

You should see all of the details of every connection to TFS in a spreadsheet, which includes a bunch of details, like user alias, activities, and the “agent” .

This can help you with understanding users connecting, and even which "clients” they might be using when connecting.

A Complimentary Seminar for IT Managers and Team Leaders

Date & Time: Thursday September 26 - 9:00AM to 12:00PM

Location: 40 University Ave, Suite 1301, SW corner of University & Wellington, at St. Andrews subway stop

Join ObjectSharp’s Dave Lloyd, one of North America’s leading Microsoft MVPs for Application Life Cycle management, at this informative ‘How To’ session to learn:

• How to Build - Deploy - Test while you sleep
• How to provide traceability of SDLC Artifacts from user requirement to code
• How to provide project transparency and visibility without having to attend a status meeting
• How to provide real collaboration across your entire team - Developers, Analysts, QA, Project Leader and other key Stakeholders

Agenda:

• Arrival, Introductions
• The 5 “Pieces of Gold” that will improve your Application Development
• A Day in the Life of the Modern Software Development Team - Demonstration of collaborative and automated development using Microsoft Team Foundation Server
• A Practical Road Map to help YOU get there!
• End of Seminar

Register Now

or call Denise Faustino at ObjectSharp: 416-649-3690 x224

Here's the details:

https://www.meetup.com/Toronto-ALM-User-Group/events/137371392/

Understanding Dev/Test scenarios in Windows Azure and Team Foundation
Service at the Toronto ALM User's Group

Thursday, September 12, 2013, 5:30 PM, 

At ObjectSharp,

40 University
Avenue, Suite 1301, Toronto, ON (map)

43.646378
-79.384064

Windows Azure has evolved over the years, and now with the
Infrastructure Services (VMs) offered, it makes a lot of sense to leverage
Azure for creating development environments and running testing scenarios. In
this session, we’ll look at all of the pieces that contributed to using Azure
for development and testing, how you leverage your MSDN benefits to do it, and
how you can interoperate between Azure and Team Foundation Service.

For those that attended my session on "Tools for Teamwork", and for those that didn't ;), I've uploaded a more comprehensive deck than that which I presented at the session. It's pretty full with great information on Visual Studio 2012 and Update 2.

You can grab the deck here :  https://sdrv.ms/12xwxgD

As well, check out my list of resources for more pointers to great information on Visual Studio ALM: https://blogs.msdn.com/b/adamga/p/resources.aspx

If you went to DevTeach, would love to hear what you thought. If you didn't get a chance to go, you should check it out at https://www.devteach.com for more info.

Supercharge Your Environment

How do organizations meet enterprise-level expectations on compressed consumer timelines?

Systemgroup and Microsoft can show you how Windows Azure accelerates the development process to help meet the expectations of the business, and the attractive economics that accompany this new cloud-based model:

• No compromise solution: IT control with cloud benefits
• Agility:  Instant provisioning; elastic scaling
• Focus: No hardware management
• Leverage existing investments

A Toolkit for Success

Microsoft Windows Azure is a platform to choose for implementing cloud solutions, by enabling you to quickly build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters.

Join Systemgroup, a Microsoft Application Lifecycle Management Gold Partner at Microsoft’s downtown office, as we explore how using Windows Azure to host a combination of Team Foundation Server, SharePoint and Project Server can provide your development team with the tools to succeed.

Agenda



8:30 AM - Reception and Breakfast

9:00 AM - Feature Presentation

11:00 AM - Closing Remarks

Please join us on May 14, 8:30 -
11:00 AM

Space is limited at this event!
Reserve your seat today.

Systemgroup Consulting is a team of business and technology professionals who are passionate about helping clients realize their vision.

As an award-winning Microsoft Gold-Certified Partner, we are proud to offer our clients a complementary breadth of IT services in a client-centric, cooperative approach.

https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032549980&Culture=en-CA&community=0

https://blogs.msdn.com/b/adamga/p/resources.aspx