Feed: Neil Hutson - Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 for developers - AggScore: 76.3

Learn Windows Azure Event

Next week on Redmond Campus we are running a Windows Azure event hosted by Microsoft technical leaders Scott Guthrie, Dave Campbell, and Mark Russinovich.

This will provide a great recap of where we are on the Windows Azure Platform and you can either register to visit physically, on register to watch the stream on-line at the following location.

http://www.learnwindowsazureevent.com/

Windows Azure Tookkit for Social Games 1.1 RELEASED

Nathan on the team has just updated the Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games to version 1.1. This version is a significant step forward and enables developers to more easily and quickly build out their social games on the Windows Azure Platform.

The other big change he made in this release was to separate the core toolkit from the Tankster game based on your feedback and replace with 2 needed simpler samples,  Tic-Tac-Toe and Four in a Row. The Tankster game is now available separately as a sample built on top of the toolkit.

Key features of the kit include

• Sample Games: Tic-Tac-Toe and Four in a Row
• Game Invitations
• Leaderboards
• Game Friends
• User Profile
• Tests for both server and client code
• Reusable JavaScript libraries

Additional Links

• Documentation
  • Getting Started
  • Deployment
  • Architecture
• Related Posts
  • Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games Version 1.1
  • NOW AVAILABLE: Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games Version 1.1
  • Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games & Tankster Version 1.0
  • Architecture of Tankster – Introduction to Game Play (Part 1)
  • Architecture of Tankster– Scale (Part 2)

Windows Azure SDK ( November Update )

Today we released a simplified version of the Windows Azure SDK, with a number of new features, a HPC Scheduler SDK  and finally a Windows Azure Platform Training Kit which aligns with the new changes.

The major updates are as follows

• Streamlined publishing: This allows you to configure all aspects of deployments, such as Remote Desktop (RDP), without ever leaving Visual Studio.
• Multiple profiles: Your publish settings, build config, and cloud config choices will be stored in one or more publish profile MSBuild files.
• Team Build: The Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio 2010 now offer MSBuild command-line support to package your application and pass in properties.
• In-Place Updates: Visual Studio now allows you to make improved in-place updates to deployed services in Windows Azure.
• Enhanced Publishing Wizard: Overhaul of publishing experience to sign-in, configure the deployment, and review the summary of changes
• Automatic Credential Management Configuration: No longer need to manually create or manage a cert
• Multiple Subscription Deployment Management: Makes it easier to use multiple Windows Azure subscriptions by selecting the subscription you want to use when publishing within Visual Studio.
• Hosted Service Creation: Create new hosted services within Visual Studio, without having to visit the Windows Azure Portal.
• Storage Accounts: Create and configure appropriate storage accounts within Visual Studio (no longer need to do this manually)
• Remote Desktop Workflow: Enable by clicking a checkbox and providing a username/password – no need to create or upload a cert
• Deployment Configurations: Manage multiple deployment environment configurations
• Azure Activity Log: More information about the publish and virtual machine initialization status

The Windows Azure HPC Scheduler also allows for job scheduling and resource management, web-based job submission, parallel runtimes with support for MPI applications and WCF services and persistent state management of job queue and resource configuration.

For more details, please download the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit to get the details which now includes an option through Web Installer to make the download easier.

Windows Azure Umbraco Accelerator

We have just published a point release of the “Windows Azure Accelerator for Umbraco” which is designed to enable Umbraco applications to be easily deployed into the Windows Azure.

The accelerator has been designed to enable you to rapidly deploy Umbraco applications and updates to your application without redeploying a full Windows Azure Service Package. Included with the accelerator is a simple deployment client that can upload and a start an Umbraco site within Windows Azure in a matter of minutes.

You can get all the details and download the Accelerator at the following location

http://waacceleratorumbraco.codeplex.com/

SQLServer “Denali” keynote at TechED 2011

On Monday, Quentin Clark ( GM of SQL Engineering) presented a foundational session at TechED which focused on the Microsoft Data Platform with SQL Server “Denali” and took a look into some of our latest data tools with “Juneau”.

Juneau is pretty exciting because you can install it as a stand alone component, through the integrated VS 2010 installation, through web via Web Platform Installer (WebPI )or with the next release of Visual Studio. The Web PI option is pretty exciting. This means you can get your hands on just our tools without having to install SQL Server or Visual Studio, which should be really popular with web developers.

The second key piece of news is the new lite version of the database which is the “Denali” Express version. Top things include the ability to install as a small shared component instead of a service, it can be bundled with an app, fully supports T-SQL and is all combined within a single file.

A pointer to the foundational session can be found here.

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2011/FDN04

Visual Studio V.NEXT features shown at TechED 2011

Yesterday during the TechED 2011 North America Keynote, Cameron Skinner showed off a number of the new features which are coming in the next release of Visual Studio. In particular he drilled down into a number of new ALM capabilities and code editing features such as “Code Clone”.

During the foundational session which immediately followed the keynote Cameron went into a lot more details after the next release. Check out his session here

You can also double click on the player below to see it full screen.

Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS

If you every wanted to build iPhone applications which connected to the cloud to access storage services, your wish has been granted.

On Monday we released the “Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS” which is a toolkit for developers to make it easy to access Windows Azure storage services from native iOS applications. The toolkit can be used for both iPhone and iPad applications, developed using Objective-C and XCode.

The toolkit works in two ways – the toolkit can be used to access Windows Azure storage directly, or alternatively, can go through a proxy server. The proxy server code is the same code as used in the WP7 toolkit for Windows Azure (found here) and negates the need for the developer to store the Azure storage credentials locally on the device. If you are planning to test using the proxy server, you’ll need to download and deploy the server controls hosted on CodePlex.

The Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS is made available as an open source product under the Apache License, Version 2.0. You can get all the details here.

A Windows Azure  Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 is also available and can be found here.

Microsoft Office 365 for IT Professionals Jump Start

 http://bit.ly/Office365-JUMP

On May 24-26  we are hosting a free 3-day Jump Start training designed for IT Pros interested in learning more about preparing for and deploying Office 365. This is the first public training for IT Pros on Office 365.

The course will be streamed live from 10:00-am-4:00pm on all 3 days, and the recordings will be published later on TechNet Edge for later viewing.

This will provide an overview of Office 365, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync Online and top subject matter experts for each technology will be delivering the content.

You can register Now http://bit.ly/Office365-JUMP

The full agenda:

Day One — “Office 365 Platform” | May 24, 2011 | 10am-4pm PDT
Microsoft Office 365 Overview for IT Pros
Deploying Clients for Office 365
Administration & Automation using PowerShell
Identity and Access Solutions
Directory Synchronization

Day Two — “Exchange Online” | May 25, 2011 | 10am-4pm PDT
Exchange Online Overview for IT Pros
Exchange Online Administration
Staged Exchange Online Migration
Hybrid Options with Exchange Server & Exchange Online
Exchange Online Archiving & Compliance

Day Three — “Lync & SharePoint Online” | May 26, 2011 | 10am-4pm PDT
Lync Online Overview & Configuration for IT Pros
SharePoint Online Overview
SharePoint Online Administration
SharePoint Online Extensibility & Customization
Office 365 Deployment Overview

Microsoft Virtualization for VMWare IT Pros

Recently Symon Perriman and Corey Hynes presented two days of live sessions focused at helping VMWARE ITPRO’s to understand and implement Microsoft’s Virtualization technology.

This content has now been placed on TechNet EDGE in HD format for everybody to view. You can view the content through the following short link.

@MS_Virt @virtualization http://bit.ly/JSvidVM

TechED 2011 - Keynote Speakers Announced

We are excited to announce that two of our senior leaders, Corporate Vice President, Server and Tools Marketing, Robert Wahbe and Corporate Vice President, Visual Studio, Jason Zander, will come together to showcase a broad array of technology in the 2011 Tech·Ed Keynote. Both are great speakers, so looking forward to what they have to say.

Foundational Sessions at TechED North America

We have just published the foundational sessions for TechED 2011. These are demo heavy sessions which are delivered by key leaders in the company which directly follow the keynote and allow the audience to drill into a specific area and get a better cross company view. Last year we did 3, and this year we have increase the number to 6.

Click on the links to get more information.

Will Office 365 get you fired?

There was an interesting article this morning in InfoWorld, discussing whether moving from on premises Exchange, Sharepoint, Communications and Office to the cloud with Office 365 will put the IT Admin out of a job? The common belief has been that this would be true, but most IT Admins I speak to in smaller businesses want to get out of the disaster recovery business for all these areas and want to offer move value to the company. In fact, some say that they are so overwhelmed that they have not been able to offer some of the capabilities they would have liked from the products due to time.

Adam in the team presented at the Connections Conference earlier in the week and that was the summary of his talk.

Mr. Carter, however, was optimistic. His take was that modern admins will have plenty of work to do. If they're willing to evolve, they'll find that Office 365 still requires plenty of administration in many cases. But relieved of the added workload -- putting out fires, fighting with clustering, or dealing with hardware issues -- admins will instead have the opportunity to find ways to enhance the organization through IT. That is, these admins can make their people more productive so that ultimately it adds to the company's bottom line. Nobody who can do that will be looking for work in the near future.

For full details go to http://www.infoworld.com/d/microsoft-windows/will-office-365-get-you-fired-026

Microsoft Management Summit - Day 2 Keynote

Brad Anderson delivered another great keynote session on day 2 of the Microsoft Management Summit this week. You can see the recording on TechNet EDGE

The second day was all about the Consumerization of IT and showed some great demos for managing different non-Microsoft wireless devices using the new System Center Configuration Manager 2012 and how you can deploy apps to different environment in different ways depending on what device they are accessing.

February 2011 Windows Azure Training Kit Update

• We have just completed another release of the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit.   The Windows Azure Platform Training Kit includes hands-on labs, presentations, and samples to help developers understand how to build applications that utilize Windows Azure, SQL Azure, and the Windows Azure AppFabric.  

  The February 2011 update of the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit includes several updates and bug fixes for the hands-on labs.   Most of the updates were focused on supporting the new Windows Azure AppFabric February CTP and the new portal experience for AppFabric Caching, Access Control, and the Service Bus.    The specific content that was updated in this release includes:

• Hands-on Lab - Building Windows Azure Apps with the Caching service

• Hands-on Lab – Using the Access Control Service to Federate with Multiple Business Identity Providers

• Hands-on Lab – Introduction to the AppFabric Access Control Service V2

• Hands-on Lab - Introduction to the Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus Futures

• Hands-on Lab - Advanced Web and Worker Roles – fixed PHP installer script

• Demo Script – Rafiki PDC Keynote Demo

• The setup scripts for all hands-on labs and demo scripts have also been updated so that the content can easily be used on a machine running Windows 7 SP1.

The complete kit now includes 27 hands-on labs, 25 scripted demos, and 17 presentations. 

February 2011 Update

You can download the February update of the Windows Azure Platform Training kit from here: http://bit.ly/WAPTKFeb11.   You can browse to all of the HOLs here:  http://bit.ly/WAPTCFeb11.   

Finally, if you’re using the training kit or if you have feedback on the content, we would love to hear from you.   Please drop us an email at azcfeed@microsoft.com.

The process to take down Waledac

Just watched a great screencast on EDGE where Keith Combs interviews T.J. Campana and Richard Boscovich who talked about the legal process and technical involvement in the takedown of the Waledac botnet.

You can see the screencast here ( http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/Gg436433 )