All things related to the Microsoft Application Development Platform https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/rickcau/feed.xml My ramblings as it relates to my experiences with the Microsoft Application Development Platform and other things... Tue, 16 Apr 2019 05:26:32 GMT en-US hourly 1 Accidentally deleted all my production data in Azure Table Storage!!! What now? https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/rickcau/accidentally-deleted-all-my-production-data-in-azure-table-storage-what-now Wed, 25 Apr 2018 22:58:53 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/rickcau/?p=135 But, none of these are intended to help with mass or accidental delete operations. I hope that last comment makes you think for a second.  I have seen many very large Enterprise customers be impacted by accidental delete operations.  Unfortunately, none of the replication options are going to help you with this.  Also, Microsoft has no magic tools to recover such data, as data deleted from a storage account is purged immediately, whether it’s Blobs, Files or Tables. Where does this leave us? All of us are familiar with traditional replication and backup features for VMs, SQL, files etc.  For Cloud solutions I think there are many variables that are super easy to overlook as we have many ways to approach the design.  Do we use Azure Tables, CosmosDB, MonogoDB, Service Bus, the list goes on and on. When it comes to Enterprise applications I am a huge fan of defining solutions, services and data using a tiered model.  Using a tiered model to define the criticality of each component helps determine which dependencies are business critical and which parts are not on the critical path.  I have seen folks use a 2 tiered model and some use a 4 tiered model.  At a minimum you should use 2 tiers.  Here are some short examples of how you might categorize components of your solution as Tier 1 if it does down. Tier 1 Data or Services
  • Widespread business stoppage with major financial impact
  • Company-wide productivity compromised
  • Risk of human health/environment
  • List can go on and on…
The point is that anything in Tier 1 is deemed as “business critical” so reliability, business continuity, RTO, RPO are very important. In my case, the data that was deleted in the Azure Table Storage was considered “business critical” but the data was never defined as Tier 1 data!  If it were defined as Tier 1 it would have forced the team to evaluate their options for various failure scenarios and they would have put a plan in-place for backup and restoring of such important Azure Table data. What options do we have for Azure Table Backup and Restore? There are many ways this can be approached so don’t think that the approaches I mention here are going to always be perfect for you.  You need to evaluate the situation and determine how you want to approach it.

AZCopy

AZCopy now has support for various copy operations to and from Azure Storage, include Azure Tables.  The following article explains all the various options and features that are exposed, I highly recommend reading it.  You can also download the latest version of AZCopy from the important references section of this post.

Azure PowerShell

Yes, it’s possible to do this via PowerShell if you want to explore this option would recommend you read the following article which was written before AZCopy had support for Azure Tables.

3rd Party Tools

There are several 3rd party tools that cover this space as well.  I will list a few of them here for reference Cerebrata – Azure Management Studio Eastfivecom – Automated backup of Azure Storage Tables and Blobs   Recommendations Leverage AZCopy in conjunction with Azure Automation and/or Azure Scheduler.   If your business needs are more complex you may need to consider a more comprehensive approach that requires use of various APIs, tools or services. Keep in mind that there are many ways to approach the triggering of the backup or restore.  You could leverage a logic app that triggers the backup or a service that polls the table storage then triggers the backup.  Or simply schedule the backup at a specific interval. Important References: Great blog post on Application Criticality levels Download the latest version of AZCopy Example of Automated backup of Table and Blob Storage    ]]> MS11-0811–some drop-down lists and combo boxes not appearing in IE 7– Fix Released Last night https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/rickcau/ms11-0811some-drop-down-lists-and-combo-boxes-not-appearing-in-ie-7-fix-released-last-night Thu, 03 Nov 2011 07:58:40 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/rickcau/2011/11/03/ms11-0811some-drop-down-lists-and-combo-boxes-not-appearing-in-ie-7-fix-released-last-night/ Many IE7 users have been impacted by this issue as documented in https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2628724.  The KB as updated last night and at the bottom of the article you can find the download links for each OS impacted by this.

Regards,

Rick

]]> Offshore/outsourcing woes? Are you concerned with code quality? https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/rickcau/offshoreoutsourcing-woes-are-you-concerned-with-code-quality Wed, 09 Feb 2011 09:39:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/rickcau/2011/02/09/offshoreoutsourcing-woes-are-you-concerned-with-code-quality/

Many businesses place all the burdens of code quality, efficient ALM practices and other very important tasks in the hands of the outsourcer/vendor.   This is clearly a trend that we are seeing across many customers and should be approached with caution as it exposes risk that might not be apparent. 

 

Companies that are proactively taking steps to be integration into the ALM (Application Life Cycle Management) process are seeing reduce costs and maximizing the business value of their application portfolios and ROI.   A common trend for these customers is the use of a shared TFS environment for offshore outsourcing or distributed development.  This model allows all teams to be closely integrated and provides management on both sides with the benefits of TFS.   One of the key features of TFS is the ability to customize the process template and reports.  The ability to run a “Code Churn or Quality Indicators” reports alone is justification to use such an approach.   When you see high “Code Churn”, these components expose more risk for failure!   The bottom-line is that by having a tightly integrated TFS environment, you can quickly identify problem areas and who’s taking on more work than they can produce; the list goes on and on.

Studies by the Standish Group found that over 70% of development projects were troubled or failed outright, an alarming statistic.  A majority of companies these days outsource some if not 100% of their application development.  Its common practice to put SLA’s in-place to reduce risks associated with code quality, security, ALM practices and other tasks.   The 70% failure statistic can be greatly reduced by having companies be more proactive and integrated into the ALM process and influence with training and other items.

   This of course requires additional investment and for Enterprise applications often leads to the best ROI.

What are you doing to ensure your vendors are following the 16 security practices as outlined by the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL)? 

What does this have to do with 16 security practices to improve the security of your applications?    In the Global Enterprise space, 1 in 3 of the Fortune 100 use RSA Archer eGRC Solutions.  The Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) is an industry-leading software assurance process and is now integrated into the RSA Archer eGRC Platform as an Authoritative Source.  If you take a look at the 16 security practices of the SDL you will quickly see from a security prospective alone why it’s very important to invest in the training practices that your vendors are following and to be tightly integrated with a TFS environment.  Don’t expect that your vendors will follow these practices; investing in proactive measures to reduce costs and maximize ROI is a necessity and this means you need to be consider with things like training, ALM practices and code quality practices.

 

 

]]> How Frameworks Can Kill Your Projects, and Patterns Can Prevent You from Getting Killed... https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/rickcau/how-frameworks-can-kill-your-projects-and-patterns-can-prevent-you-from-getting-killed Wed, 09 Feb 2011 09:07:15 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/rickcau/2011/02/09/how-frameworks-can-kill-your-projects-and-patterns-can-prevent-you-from-getting-killed/ Today it is common place for many projects to leverage frameworks to help expedite development and reduce maintenance.    The trend is for most projects utilize more than one framework and in many cases more than 5!  Statistically, all frameworks have at least 5 bugs and lots of frameworks get discontinued, these are all things that need to be considered.  Using a framework will force you to follow the rules.  It’s very possible that you would like to use the framework in a way that it was not originally designed to be used.  In other words, you need to implement a pattern that is not easy to implement with the framework.  Frameworks require you to order from the “lunch menu”.

 

The most important element to choosing a framework is to first have a good software architecture in-place and chose a framework that fits the software architecture.  Leading with software architecture will make the process of choosing a framework much easier.

 

I would encourage you to listen to Sander Hoogendoorn’s TechEd presentation on this topic, he has 20 years of experience developing frameworks.  His presentation will give you a new perspective on the pervasive use of frameworks we are seeing today.

How Frameworks Can Kill Your Projects, and Patterns Can Prevent You from Getting Killed

]]> Need training for your team or would like it for free??? https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/rickcau/need-training-for-your-team-or-would-like-it-for-free Mon, 07 Feb 2011 08:32:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/rickcau/2011/02/07/need-training-for-your-team-or-would-like-it-for-free/ I have been getting several requests for “free” training over the past months, so I wanted to make sure everyone is aware of the “free” and supplement training resources available, especially those that have a “Volume Licensing Agreement”. 

There are several benefits that come with having a “Volume Licensing Agreement” and the one benefit that is often overlooked for training are the “Software Assurance Benefits”.  The SA benefits will give you access to training vouchers and access to our E-Learning online environment.   Many Enterprise customers never use all their vouchers and many employees do not know how to leverage the vouchers or the E-Learning environment and resources.  I would encourage everyone to learn more about the SA benefits that can provide you and your teams with access to supplemental training at no cost. 

Many Enterprise customers have Portals setup to help educate their employees on how the company manages these benefits and how they can be leveraged.   If this is news to you then it would make sense for you to find out more about how these benefits are being managed by your company and how you and your team can leverage them. 

If you would like to just read more about these benefits, you can go here.   In addition to the above SA benefits, here’s a list of several free training resources and many of the links below provide access to lots of other free training materials. 

Topic

Office Training (2010, 2007 and 2003)

What’s new in SQL 2008

New Features of SQL 2008 Reporting Services

Developing Rich Experiences using .NET Framework 3.5 and VS 2008

Free hands-on labs

Windows Server AppFabric Training Kit

WCF, WWF, Eventing, Powershell, CardSpace, Transactional File System, Virtualizaton and High Performance Computing Virtual Training Series

]]> Lessons Learned - MS IT SharePoint 2010 upgrade project and FAST search deployment https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/rickcau/lessons-learned-ms-it-sharepoint-2010-upgrade-project-and-fast-search-deployment Thu, 03 Feb 2011 10:42:29 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/rickcau/2011/02/03/lessons-learned-ms-it-sharepoint-2010-upgrade-project-and-fast-search-deployment/ For those of you in the process or planning to upgrade to SharePoint 2010, here are some important lessons learned from our Microsoft IT team.

 

Documents just published by the MS IT department:

Initial Best Practices & Lessons Learned from Microsoft ITs SharePoint 2010 Upgrade

With its SharePoint 2010 deployment nearly complete, Microsoft IT has developed helpful perspective on what worked and what steps could have been performed better. The Microsoft IT SharePoint engineering team is sharing its experiences with you to help reduce planning, deployment, and management of a SharePoint 2010 migration project.

Initial Best Practices & Lessons Learned from Microsoft IT's SharePoint 2010 Upgrade

How Microsoft IT Deployed FAST Search for SharePoint 2010

As part of its migration to SharePoint 2010, Microsoft IT recently deployed FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 and the enterprise search service for its hosted environments. The goal was to provide an experience that is more efficient and effective for its end users. This video will cover some aspects about the implementation and support of the enterprise search farm, as well as the wins and benefits that FAST Search for SharePoint has provided not only to end-users, but also to MSIT.

How Microsoft IT Deployed FAST Search for SharePoint 2010

]]> Free Training Resources available via Software Assurance... https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/rickcau/free-training-resources-available-via-software-assurance Wed, 02 Feb 2011 16:32:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/rickcau/2011/02/02/free-training-resources-available-via-software-assurance/ I have been getting several requests for “free” training over the past months. One of the many benefits that I see being overlooked for training, are the benefits that are available via "Software Assurance" that come with "Volume Licensing".  I want to point this out because I see many Enterprise customers under utlizing this benefit.

The SA benefits will give you access to training vouchers and access to our E-Learning online environment. I see many customers never using all their training vouchers and many employees do not know how to leverage the vouchers or the E-Learning resources.

For those of you that are looking for creative ways to provide training to your teams with no additional cost, leveraging the SA benefits is definiately something worth exploring. You will need to reach out to the individuals within your organization that are responsible for handling the Microsoft Licensing Agreements. It's possible that you have someone in your organization that is responsible for supplimental learning and this might be the point person to discuss this with. If you or your company leverage Volume Licensing make sure you are utilizing these training benefits. 

To learn more about the SA benefits click here and for training vouchers click here and for E-Learning click here. In addition to the above SA benefits, here’s a list of several free training resources and many of the links below provide access to lots of free training materials.

Topic

Office Training (2010, 2007 and 2003)

What’s new in SQL 2008

New Features of SQL 2008 Reporting Services

Developing Rich Experiences using .NET Framework 3.5 and VS 2008

Free hands-on labs

Windows Server AppFabric Training Kit

WCF, WWF, Eventing, Powershell, CardSpace, Transactional File System, Virtualizaton and High Performance Computing Virtual Training Series
SharePoint 2010 Advanced Developer Training

Regards,

Rick

]]> Top Customer Misconceptions about Software Problems https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/rickcau/top-customer-misconceptions-about-software-problems Tue, 01 Feb 2011 12:36:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/rickcau/2011/02/01/top-customer-misconceptions-about-software-problems/ I have a close friend and co-worker that wrote a nice blog post on this topic.   I would highly encourage that you take look at the post.   I would like to make a few comments on item number 2 and 6 (Code or Architecture Review to correct performance issues) as these are areas that I see the most confusion with and are very important to understand.

I have snipped the two title topics from the above post to have provide context for my comments.

2- “We need a Code Review because our application has performance problems.”

6- “We need an Architecture Review because our application has performance problems.”

For some reason this seems to be a topic that many customers have a hard time understanding why a Code or Architecture Review shouldn’t be used to address performance issues.   It’s really simply, you can have quality code, but use of poor design patterns can lead to performance issues. I would say as much as 95% of all code reviews do not lead to performance gains.  The same holds true for Application or hardware Architecture, these choices can be great on paper, but when you factor in load and different usage patterns the choices could prove to be poor. 

I cannot stress how important it is to have your development team use a test driven development methodology and planning for and allocating ample time for performance and scalability testing.   Even if you are performing a large portion of your performance and scalability testing in-house, it’s always in your best interest to leverage a 3rd party or Microsoft Premier Lab Services for an unbiased prospective. When all the testing is done in-house there is high probability the numbers can be construed or altered in a way that appeases management. When you leverage a 3rd party for performance and scalability testing, you bring a fresh and unbiased set of experts to the table, which leads to metrics that are not skewed by politics.

To close this out, the message you should take away from this is a follows:

1. Don’t use “Code and Architecture Reviews” to correct performance issues. 

2. Establishing and delivering a well performing application starts early in the SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) and ample time needs to be factored into the SDLC for Performance and Scalability testing and don’t perform all the testing in-house leverage a 3rd party for an unbiased opinion.

]]> Make sure not to miss the upcoming free Windows Azure Webinars... https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/rickcau/make-sure-not-to-miss-the-upcoming-free-windows-azure-webinars Tue, 04 Jan 2011 08:15:37 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/rickcau/2011/01/04/make-sure-not-to-miss-the-upcoming-free-windows-azure-webinars/ I would like to share some useful and informative Webinars that cover the benefits, implications of – and best practices for adopting Windows Azure. The main objective of these Webinars is to help Business and Technical decision makers gain the necessary insights about Azure platform & Cloud strategy as the industry gains momentum in this computing space.

 

Please click on the link below to find out more:

 

https://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2010/12/27/don-t-miss-these-upcoming-free-windows-azure-webinar-series.aspx

]]> Didn't get a chance to attend the ALM Summit, here are the online sessions... https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/rickcau/didnt-get-a-chance-to-attend-the-alm-summit-here-are-the-online-sessions Mon, 13 Dec 2010 12:26:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/rickcau/2010/12/13/didnt-get-a-chance-to-attend-the-alm-summit-here-are-the-online-sessions/ For those of you that are practicing ALM and did not get a chance to attend the ALM Summit, here is a quick summary for the event and links to the online streamed sessions. 

 

Event Summary

This year was our first ALM Summit. The outbound marketing team worked with the engineering and product management teams with two main goals in mind:

 

1.     Bring key customers, analysts and luminaries together over three days to align views on ALM.

2.       Create a new wave of content for the field and our customers.

 

Targeting TDMs, the 3-day event included 21 sessions covering a wide range of topics. We attracted industry leaders as speakers to the event and brought key partners in the mix. We had great feedback with 98% of attendees indicating they would recommend the event to their peers in the future and a 165 NSAT score! 

 

As a result we decided to further scale and re-run the ALM Summit in FY12. The plans for the next summit will be available in Q3.

ALM Summit Site

alm-summit.com

 

Session Abstracts

alm-summit.com/almsummit/schedule.asp

 

Online Streamed Sessions

View at Microsoft Showcase

 

Key Speakers

Ken Schwaber

Scrum Alliance                         

Brian Henry

Technical Fellow            

Dave West

Forrester Research                         

Sam Guckenheimer

Microsoft   

Tony Scott

CIO, Microsoft

Speaker

Session Title

Downloads

Day 1

Ken Schwaber (scrum.org)

Keynote: Scrum: The 3rd Decade

The inventor of Scrum describes his collaboration with Microsoft to create the Professional Scrum Developer training for VS 2010 customers.

Watch video

David West (Forrester)

The State of ALM: An Industry View

Dave is full of insights and data about the state of agile adoption in the industry and Microsoft’s emerging leadership.  He is hilariously entertaining.   This is a must watch.

Watch video

Jamie Cool

Heterogeneous ALM Environments

Any customer who questions whether we are serious about 1st-class Java support in TFS should watch Jamie demo Team Explorer Everywhere.  He flips between Linux and Windows and demonstrates gated check-in catching errors in Java development on a mixed technology project.

Watch video

Tony Scott

Keynote: CIO Perspectives on Innovation

Watch video

John Szurek (Clear Channel)

]]>