20 Aug 2017

Docker on Windows Server 2016 – More Info, Please!

Docker, Prose
This is the 2nd post in the Docker on Windows Server 2016 series. Refer back to the initial post for links to all posts in the series.More Information, Please!Toward the end of last week word was starting to spread that we were getting knee-deep into a Docker evaluation. That is, we are at least trying to get knee-deep into the evaluation As one of the e-mail threads started to grow our CTO asked if I could answer some questions regarding Docker, how we intend to use it and some of the benefits we think we’ll get from making use of…
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16 Aug 2017

Docker on Windows Server 2016 – The Journey Begins!

Docker, Prose
Posts in this series:Docker on Windows Server 2016 – The Journey Begins (this post)Docker on Windows Server 2016 – More Info, Please!Docker on Windows Server 2016 – Who Supports It?Docker on Windows Server 2016 – Azure Container RegistryI am going to try something different…I have recently started an evaluation of Docker for Windows Server at work (with the help of my teammates across multiple teams) and we are learning a lot along the way.Typically, when I write a blog post, it is about something that I have learned, proven out, and/or put into action for some purpose or another. In…
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09 Aug 2017

Creating Your First VSTS Load Test

Azure DevOps, Performance Testing
A few weeks ago I gave a talk on Performance Testing with VSTS. Since I received so many questions during the talk, I thought I’d put together a series of blog posts on the subject. I hope to address some of the questions that were asked and will hopefully even answer a few that weren’t asked!At this time, I’m thinking the series of posts will include something along these lines:Creating Your First VSTS Load Test (this post) Setup Your VSTS Load Tests Even Faster!Installing the Cloud Load Test Agent On-Premises (video)Running VSTS Load Tests On-PremisesCreating VSTS Load Tests from an…
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21 Jul 2017

Performance Testing with VSTS

ALM, Azure DevOps, Performance Testing
Earlier today I gave a talk at this year’s Tulsa TechFest (love this conference!) on Performance Testing with VSTS On- and Off-Premises. In this session, covered the various types of load tests that can be executed with VSTS, including:URL-based TestsHTTP Archive TestsVisual Studio TestsJMeter TestsIn the demos that accompanied each of these test types, I showed where they could each be run in the cloud using VSTS and well as on-premises, also using VSTS (with the exception of JMeter which isn’t yet supported in all scenarios). I plan to cover each of these in a series of blog posts starting…
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30 May 2017

Deprecating XAML Builds in VSTS

Azure DevOps, Team Build, Team Foundation Build, Team Foundation Service
Last year, I wrote a post titled Hosted XAML Builds Ending Soon. Roughly nine months has passed since that post and, as of today, Microsoft has provided a bit more detail around their plans to deprecate the XAML build functionality within VSTS. Here’s an excerpt from the post:Deprecating XAML build support in future versionsTFS – In our next major TFS release, we will take the next big step in deprecating XAML Build support.  We will remove all support for XAML builds.  We will not ship updated installers and we will remove support for connecting XAML agents/controllers.  We will also be…
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11 Mar 2017

Visual Studio 2017 – A lot of new goodness!

Visual Studio 2017
On March 7th, 2017, Microsoft officially launched Visual Studio 2017. There were a lot of new features announced in Visual Studio 2017 and several partner-related announcements as well. While this blog post does not cover everything announced (that would be a rather large post!) it does provide you with a taste of what is available. If you’re curious about everything else that was talked about, you can watch the keynote and other sessions online at the Visual Studio 2017 Launch site. One of the first things you might notice is that there is a brand new Visual Studio icon (as…
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04 Feb 2017

TIP: Use Notepad++ to Count File Types

Azure DevOps, Tips
A few days ago I found myself wanting to figure out how many filenames being written to a log file were JavaScript files. One of the build tasks for an automated build (in VSTS) was logging the names of every file, recursively, beneath the source folder. In this case, there were a total of 15,475 lines written to the build log file. The question I needed to answer was, how many of these files are JavaScript files? While there are likely many ways to answer this question, I decided to make use of Notepad++ since I already had it installed…
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29 Jan 2017

MRU List in VSTS

Azure DevOps, Tips
Yesterday, I posted an article about Controlling Preview Features in VSTS. In that article, we saw how you could enable the new VSTS account landing page experience. Not only does this change the landing page experience but it also updates the icon in the upper left hand portion of the menu bar as shown below. Before the new experience: You can see the drop-down menu in the above screenshot for the “old” experience. You can also see the contents of the drop-down menu below, which includes a most-recently used (MRU) list of team projects. After the new experience: Once you…
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28 Jan 2017

Controlling Preview Features in VSTS

Azure DevOps
If you have signed in to Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) recently then you might have noticed a banner something like this one:In this case, it is letting you know that you can try out a new feature enabling an improved landing page experience for VSTS. If you enable this feature, you will get the new landing page experience the next time you navigate to the home page of your VSTS account.However, did you know that you can also disable preview features (while they are still in preview) as well as enable them? Adding to that, you can enable/disable preview…
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17 Nov 2016

Connect(); 2016 – Announcement Recap

Azure, Azure DevOps, Conferences, Events, General News, TFS 2017, Visual Studio 2017, VSTS, Xamarin
The second day of Connect(); 2016 wrapped up today. While there is one more day left, it is dedicated to on-line training. This means that pretty much all the planned announcements have been, well, announced ;-)If you’ve been watching Connect(); over the past couple of days you have likely come to the realization that, wow!, there was a lot of stuff demoed and talked about and a TON of announcements! To help you sort through some of the announcements, I’ve attempted to capture most of the highlights and related links below. If you were too busy watching and digesting all…
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