Via virtualization.info 

Quoting from Megan Davis blog:

Many of you would like to know how Virtual Server is being used at Microsoft. Here's a response from Jeff Woolsey, Lead Program Manager for virtualization. Thanks Jeff!

Virtual Server is being used in a variety of ways at Microsoft, including for test and development and online training, such as Microsoft Learning.

- Test and Development
Virtual Server is used by test teams throughout Microsoft, including Exchange, SQL, SBS, MOM, and many others. This is because Virtual Server allows you to rapidly deploy test servers within virtual machines while minimizing hardware requirements. Also, Virtual Server makes debugging easier. Debugging typically requires that a test computer is attached to a developer’s computer via a serial cable. With Virtual Server there's no need for this. The process is as follows:

   1. Testers reproduce the issue in a virtual machine.
   2. The virtual machine is saved at the point the issue occurs.
   3. The virtual machine is copied to the developer’s computer.
   4. The developer connects the virtual machine to a debugger though a named pipe (a virtual serial port) and debugs the issue in the development environment.

- Production Use by Microsoft Learning
In the past year, Microsoft Learning has converted the majority of their online training from scripted Flash-type demos to live interactive training using Virtual Server. They started off slowly and have been ramping up with the increase in demand. Users log in and perform step-by-step interactive training with Virtual Server. On the back end, this is all done using virtual machines and Undo disks. When the customer logs in, an Undo disk is created for the session. When the user finished and logs out, the Undo disk is discarded and immediately the virtual machine is ready for the next user.

Benefits
Microsoft Learning is servicing more customers than ever. This is a production environment in use everyday: 30,143 attendees in January (972 attendees daily) alone with a 206,390 YTD. Because of the huge success of this program, Microsoft Learning is adding more hardware to increase the number of available labs.

Here are a few of the positive results they’ve seen…

The 90-minute lab sessions are the most popular.
Lab session use has gone up.
Time spent in the lab has gone up (averaging 75 minutes per lab now).
Customer satisfaction is up (way up!).

Customer Comments
I think this is the way IT was meant to be all along. Thank You Bill and company.
The implementation is entirely innovative and gives administrators like me a chance to experiment away from production systems.
Awesome. This is the type of thing IT training has needed for ages.
Excellent. Very useful hands on training. This module needs to be longer.
EXCELLENT! This is extremely useful hands on training.
Great! This is what admins who need to implement your products need. What about providing other training on SMS site design configurations, clusters etc.? A virtual lab setup like that will again help admins who are looking to implement this product.

Get it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=3508860C-2616-4B5A-BA00-353BE599A7B1&displaylang=en

Live Communications Server 2005 Service Pack 1 for Standard and Enterprise Editions

Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 with SP1 further improves business efficiencies by enabling information workers to communicate and share presence information with contacts in real time, through a security enhanced, enterprise-grade, integrated environment.

Overview

Live Communications Server 2005 SP1 improves on the features of Live Communications Server 2005 by extending the federation model, enhancing functionality, increasing security, and improving performance and infrastructure support. These improvements include:

• Tools to enable Public IM Connectivity; the ability to add contacts, send instant messages, and share presence information with users of the three main public IM service providers MSN, AOL and Yahoo!.
• Enhanced federation, which uses DNS-SRV resolution to simplify connecting to federation partners.
• New optional spim filters for better control of unsolicited instant messages.
• Support Microsoft Office Communicator 2005.
• Support for multiple tree Active Directory forests.
• Improved server API performance.

You can get specific information about this update in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article (897690): Description of Live Communications Server 2005 Service Pack 1.

Live Communications Server 2005 SP1 is available in two editions: Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition.

Live Communications Server 2005 SP1 for Standard Edition
Downloadable file name: LCS2005_SE_SP1_Upgrade.exe.

Consists of single, stand alone IM and presence server together on the same computer with an MSDE (Microsoft Desktop Engine) database for storing user data. It supports up to 15,000 concurrent users and is the appropriate choice in small deployments where enterprise-level capacity, availability and performance are not required.

Live Communications Server 2005 SP1 for Enterprise Edition
Downloadable file name: LCS2005_EE_SP1_Upgrade.exe.

Consists of a pool of servers connected to a separate, shared SQL Server database that supports up to 100,000 users. This two-tier architecture, delivers substantial improvements in availability, scalability, and performance than the Standard Edition.


Note:

• This upgrade is only for the English version of Live Communications Server 2005 Enterprise or Standard Editions.
• This service pack will not support the upgrading of MSDN versions of Live Communications Server 2005 Enterprise or Standard Editions.
• In order to update to Live Communications Server 2005 with SP1, you must update all servers within your Live Communications Server 2005 topology.
• Public IM Connectivity requires a per-user; per-month subscription license that is in addition to the Live Communication Server Client Access License (CAL).

System Requirements

·         Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2003

• This service pack requires the following program:
  Fully licensed version of Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 Enterprise or Standard Edition.
• Client Software Requirements:
  While Windows Messenger 5.1 supports basic presence and IM scenarios, the recommended client for Live Communications Server 2005 and public IM connectivity is Microsoft Office Communicator 2005. For more information, visit http://www.microsoft.com/office/livecomm/prodinfo/default.mspx

Via Rob Caron 

I just posted a new version (1.0.50428) of the Team Foundation Installation Guide for Beta 2. This version supersedes the version you’ll see on the Team Foundation Server DVD/CD.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E54BF6FF-026B-43A4-ADE4-A690388F310E&displaylang=en

Note   It may take a bit for this update to propagate to all download servers.

For now, it’s only available as a CHM file. I’ll post a PDF when it becomes available.

Fixed in this release:

• Team Foundation Installation Guide (Beta 2) Errata
• Added instructions for installing Team Build.
• Added guidance for adding users to appropriate security roles in Windows SharePoint Services & SQL Server Reporting Services.
• Added link to MSDN Subscriber Downloads for obtaining SQL Server April CTP.

Via Mike Gunderloy

• The BizTalk Wiki - A new site for resources of all types on BizTalk, hosted by PluralSight.

The webcast I presented on for CMS.RAPID is now available.

But firstly I must say: SORRY! For the nasty audio quality. For some reason the conference call didn’t mute everyone except the presenter (or the incoming/outgoing participant announcements) so it is a bit messy for the first 10 minutes; after that its all good :)

I did an overview of RAPID, and the RAPIDOrange site. After that there is a sneak preview of RAPIDBlue with mutlilingual coolness. The RAPIDBlue site isn’t finished yet but check out the webcast for a preview!

https://www119.livemeeting.com/rm/microsoft/view?id=MCMS-1&pw=HW35B8

 

 

Via KBAlertz.com

Via GotDotNet: Samples 

The CmsAuthorizationModule shipped with MCMS does not work properly when using a MCMS posting as login page. This module can be used as replacement for the out-of-the-box control and solves this problem. Get it Here

Via SPS, WSS and BPM - Bob Mixon's Blog 

It has been almost two weeks since I have posted in my blog; how time flies.

I returned from the DCI Portals, Collaboration and Content Management Conference in Phoenix with a fresh look at where this industry was in the past and where it is heading in the future. When I wasn't at the conference, I spent most of my leisure time enjoying the Scottsdale Plaza Resort; a very nice place and I recommend it to anyone staying in the Scottsdale Arizona area.

This week last week has consumed all of my time completing our BPM/Workflow product evaluation process. I took all of the information gathered over the past 6 weeks and compiled a factored matrix workbook. This was extremely time consuming because I took all information from each vendor, product specific information, vendor self scoring responses, our internal scoring responses and had to make sense of it all. As you may imagine, we gathered a wealth of information. To look at the information by itself, made it virtually impossible to see what vendor's product had the best feature match and overall solution for Stewart Title's needs. If you take anything away from reading this, it would be: "The final three products in our evaluation all have outstanding features and the ability to solve a variety of business process automation needs. Before you embark on your next development effort, ask yourself if the real competitor is ignorance." And I am not using the word ignorance in a disrespectful manner at all; I find that most do not take the time to learn about the options that are available to us.

If you recall in past posts, the final three products in our evaluation were Skelta, Ascentn and K2.net. The results of the factored matrix resulted in choosing the K2.net solution. Below I have summarized the results of our evaluation.

High-Level Details
	Skelta	Ascentn	K2.net
Criteria	(% of our specific requirements satisfied "out of the box")
Workflow Designer	20%	70%	67%
Workflow Administration	35%	75%	85%
Microsoft Exchange Server Integration	30%	30%	30%
SQL Server Integration	30%	30%	30%
Microsoft SharePoint Integration	75%	85%	85%
Server, OS and File System Integration	30%	30%	50%
Microsoft MSMQ Integration	30%	30%	30%
Workflow Action Support	65%	75%	90%
Workflow Engine Customization (.NET integration for engine and workflow action customization)	90%	90%	90%
Real-time Process Monitoring and Control	70%	70%	90%
Reporting	60%	65%	80%
General (support, support availability, maturity of product, product cost)	40%	40%	70%
Total Score	60%	70%	85%

Now that we have made our choice, the next step is to layout the deployment and implementation roadmap.  I am excited to get the K2.net product installed and begin learning how to best use it.  I will keep everyone up to date with the progress we make.

 

Via Mark Harrison 

Yesterday we hosted the UK RAPID partner community meeting and had some great discussions on both the current version and future developments. Great to get some demos of early developments of RAPID Membership and SharePoint integration.

We also got an impressive demo of Trinity Expert Systems's own workflow solution/designer which is driven by the BizTalk Human Workflow Services engine. We saw how this is currently being used for Freedom of Information workflow and SharePoint Document approval workflow.

Some exciting news is that Trinity have very kindly offered to freely share this workflow solution to the RAPID partner community and we have started discussions on how this should be packaged up, potentially as RAPID:Workflow.

Cameron Reilly of The Podcast Network (TPN) has just gotten some serious airplay (misquoted and all!)

They are doing extremely well, I think they had something like 60,000 podcast downloads in 1 month (that may not be the latest stats).

Go Hard!

Via cameron reilly 

I don't recall actually SAYING that, but...

... you can read it in this Tuesday's SMH and AGE.

Love it! – Downloadable from MSDN subscriber downloads - http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions

----

Visual SourceSafe 2005 Beta 2 (English)

Date Posted 4/12/2005 10:34:00 AM

File en_vss_2005_beta2.iso, ISO-9660 CD Image

Size 172.97 MB

Visual Studio 2005 Standard Beta 2 (English)

Date Posted 4/12/2005 10:34:00 AM

File en_vs_2005_std_dvd_beta2.iso, ISO-9660 CD Image

Size 2.85 GB

Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition Test Load Agent Beta 2 (English)

Date Posted 4/15/2005 11:52:00 AM

File en_vs_2005_test_load_agent_beta2.iso, ISO-9660 CD Image

Size 144.75 MB

Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Beta 2 (English)

Date Posted 4/12/2005 10:34:00 AM

File en_vs_2005_team_foundation_dvd_beta2.iso, ISO-9660 CD Image

Size 273.15 MB

Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite Beta 2 (English)

Date Posted 4/12/2005 10:34:00 AM

File en_vs_2005_team_suite_dvd_beta2.iso, ISO-9660 CD Image

Size 3.75 GB

Don’t you just love writing SPS queries in Notepad? No – check out the tool below.

Anyway – there is so much great stuff coming out of the SPS/WSS community lately.

It’s very exciting! 

---

After the SharePoint Query Builder Tool , i've just found a new query tool

One more for my personnal toolbox : Great !!!

Some very useful options :

• "keyword" search or "SQL Fulltext" search
• Show all the different XML packet : query/result/registration/...
• Syntax highlighting with ICSharpCode.TextEditor

So here the link : http://www.paraesthesia.com/blog/comments.php?id=594_0_1_0_C

(the ICSharpCode.TextEditor or the RichTextEditor givre me some idea for my CamlViewer, just have to find some time )

Related...

[Stramit's SharePoint Blog]

Via Service Station, by Aaron Skonnard 

The top 5 reasons why I'm falling in love with BizTalk:

 

1. BizTalk == XML messaging. BizTalk is the only shipping Microsoft technology that is truly built on an XML messaging foundation through and through. Even its internal publish/subscribe architecture is built on this foundation. The entire experience revolves around the transmission, processing, and translation of XML messages, resulting in powerful flexibility and simplified integration opportunities.
2. BizTalk == multi-transport. Despite the hype surrounding SOA and Web services, BizTalk is a technology grounded in reality. It realizes that enterprises don't have the luxury of throwing away existing investments (in order to republish them via Web services for instance) but rather must figure out ways to speak to existing applications. As a result, BizTalk makes it extremely simple to communicate over a variety of common transports/protocols that transcend difficult application boundaries.
3. BizTalk == loose-coupling. Thanks to #1-2, BizTalk also makes it possible to design applications that truly become loosely-coupled, a term often flung around but rarely accomplished. Making this a reality is simply the result of using XML the way it was always meant to be used. BizTalk enhances this through its simple and automated transformation (XSLT) engine, which can be applied at different layers of the system in order to reduce external assumptions. It's about not enforcing a single contract, but rather multiple external views of the system. BizTalk can even map between XML and non-XML formats through it's pipelining model when communicating with the outside.
4. BizTalk == extensibility. BizTalk offers numerous extensibility points through it's adapter and pipelining framework. For example, although XML validation often contradicts #3, many organizations are required to validate their messages at certain stages of processing. BizTalk recognizes this fact and simplifies the process of perform these tasks, unlike every Microsoft WS stack I have experience with to date.
5. BizTalk == contract-driven. Developers building BizTalk solutions begin by working with XML Schema to design the messages that will pass through the system. The entire application, and even the internal messaging infrastructure, is designed around these message contracts and their transformations. The need to use objects rarely comes up since the inherit nature of XML offers so much more flexibility.

 

What's funny about these points is that they contain all the various XML/WS buzz-words most of us are sick of hearing - in fact, I'm even having a hard time writing this. But BizTalk seems to bring them to life.

 

The main characteristic these points share is that BizTalk makes very few assumptions, period.

 

And notice that none of these points mention the term business process or orchestration. BizTalk offers significant value to the XML/WS developer even if they never author a single .odx.

 

In fact, I believe this list is compelling enough to make any XML developer fall in love with the underlying technology as long as they are willing to give BizTalk a chance.

 

And, no, the BizTalk team did not pay me to write this. ;-)

 

Cool – Dave’s second post!

He didn't mention what was causing the 404's on large imports

It was URLScan's rules blocking large requests from making their way to the MCMS server.

This was found by checking the URLScan log file (that isn't in the Win2k3 Event log but in another log file).

Nice stuff! Anyway the post is below:

Via David Adamson's Web Log

I recently inherited the administration of our Content Management Server 2002 environment which all became really interesting when at the same time the site imports broke!
Briefly, our environment consists of an authoring server on the internal LAN with a hardened production server externally for public viewing - probably a very standard situation. Incremental export .sdo files get shipped to the public server where they should be imported. Or they were being imported until a heap of changes caused the usually small sdo file to grow to over 150Mb and the import return 404 errors.

Checking the settings suggested in MS KB814744 HOW TO: Troubleshoot Site Deployment Issues in Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 provided no luck, so I ended up backing up the internal CMS database and restoring it to the external server as mentioned in the Best Practices section of this KB.
Based on this experience, I’ve noted a few tips for anyone trying this themselves in a similar environment.

After restoring the CMS database to an external server you may need to:

• Change the database owner using sp_changedbowner to map to a user on the new Sql Server instance
• Check the MCMS System account in SQL Server has the required privileges (db_ddladmin, db_datareader, db_datawriter roles or equivalent)

For MCMS

• In my instance, the production MCMS install had a later patch revision than the authoring server. I needed to run the MCMS Database Configuration Application (DCA) which prompted a database upgrade.
• Ensure that if you are running on a hardened server, the initial content management server administrator isn’t denied access to this computer from the network otherwise you won’t be able to authenticate them.

Launch SCA and check:

• Access Tab - check the appropriate Domain/Machines are in the Supported list
• Security Tab - If you are allowing "Guest on Site" (public internet site), change the guest login account to reflect the local anonymous IIS user account

Completing the above gave me a working site, so hopefully it might help out somebody else

Cool – new MCMS SDK is out.

Wouldn’t it be cool if they released a new demo! (Arpan if your listening – new demos please – I’ll even build them for you :) )

Via Mark Harrison

The MCMS 2002 SDK has undergone a major update and been republished on MSDN here.

The IT Professional and end-user content, is no longer on MSDN and is now here.

Christopher is a guru!

He knows lots and lots about SharePoin/WSS, BizTalk, .NET, MCMS and is an all round top bloke!

Check out his blog – below is the first post :)

Via cjwalker's WebLog 

• Have you tried to create a new Custom List then wanted to create a new instance elsewhere?
• Ever tried to create a Data View in one area that access a List created in the 'Home' Area?

I did - and it wasn't quite what I was hoping for or expected. Certainly life is easier under WSS.

Initially I was trying to create a bunch of lists to manage some data in the portal and to display this data in other portal Area's. So the initial design was to create the Custom Lists in the Home area and then create a Data View web part that displayed this data in new and interesting ways in different Area's throughout the portal. Sounded good in theory - certainly works easy enough in WSS. <insert sound effect for wrong answer in a game show>

Anyway, I looked further into it and the error seemed to stem from the Area not "knowing" about the List template since the sub-Area was using a different template to the Home Area. So I then tried (stay with me, this learning experience is going somewhere) saving the Custom List as a List Template and to create a new instance in the other Area. Crash and burn again! Can't do that either. So you can save it fine, but you can only create that same Custom List in Areas that use the same template - ahhh! So you can see all the different List Templates in the one List Template Gallery but when you go to a specific Area and try to Create a new List it will only show those Lists that were created in the same Area Template.

So the solution is that you need to create Custom Lists in an Area that uses the same template as the Area's you would like to use and display that List (if that makes sense). In my case I created a new "hidden" Area called PortalData (below Home) and just "Excluded it from the Portal Site Navigation" (in the Area Settings - Display). I then also changed the Settings so that any sub-Areas created below my PortalData area inherited the template, thus allow me to create and use the Custom Lists. This finally worked. I create sub-Areas from the same PortalData, and can move them around (drag & drop them in the Portal Site Map) to wherever I want them. You may also need to un-exclude them from Portal site navigation if they are not showing up in the top navigation bar.

All's well. Hopefully that saves at least one other person from hours of pain!

 

Can’t wait for the MCMS version to come out!

Via telerik product updates 

New Features:

• New Features:
• Dockable and Floating toolbars
• Multilevel Undo/Redo with Word-like action trails
• Multiple Editors with a single toolbar at the top of the page
• Context menus under Gecko-based browsers
• Adaptive buttons
• System modules
• Use external CSS files
• Full-screen Mode
• Zoom function
• Support for Form elements
• HTML Templates
• Easy Integration of the Spellchecker
• Client-side API
• Paste As HTML button
• Repeat Last Command button
• Dialogs can be easily created/modified
• Insert Date/Time tools
• Enhanced Image Manager

Written by Joe Schurman (SPS MVP)

TOC is:

Introduction.. 3

Purpose of this Document3

Context3

Test Objectives. 4

Test Strategy. 5

Approach.. 5

Responsibilities. 5

Schedule. 6

Test Environment6

Hardware Environment6

Software Environment6

Test Procedures. 6

Restoring a SharePoint Portal Site. 6

Restoring a SharePoint Portal Site using Virtual Server configuration.6

Restore a Portal Site from SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration.. 7

Restore a Portal Site from the SharePoint Portal Server Data Backup and Restore Program    8

Restoring a Windows SharePoint Services Site. 9

Restoring a SharePoint Document Library. 9

Restoring a Web Part Library. 10

Restoring SharePoint User Accounts. 11

Restoring the Index Server14

Restore data to a server with the same name. 14

Restore data to a server with a new name. 14

Restoring the Database Server14

Restore data to a server with the same name. 15

Restore data to a server with a new name. 15

Restoring Data to the SharePoint Environment16

Server farm — restore data to all servers on the farm... 16

Restore data to the Web server17

Restore data to the search server17

Load-Balance Service Testing. 17

Cluster Services Testing. 22

Appendix A: Company Name SPS/WSS Testing Logical Diagram... 24

SharePoint Portal Server - Testing Logic. 24

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Download it here

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Via SharePoint Blogs 

Here's a sweet test plan the covers backup and recovery in some detail.

-robot