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Showing posts from June, 2013

System Center 2012 R2 - Released to preview

Finally System Center 2012 R2 is available for preview download. You may download it here: download  Highlights Enabling hybrid cloud Windows Azure Pack Software networking (VPN-gateways) Improved storage features (VHDX, resize/shrink) Increasing  employee productivity Scaling and increased performance Windows Server 2012 R2 is also available for download here .

Desired State Configuration with Powershell

At TechEd North America 2013 Microsoft has shed some light on the upcoming release of Powershell Version 4. The big news is the DSC or Desired State Configuration feature. Though I should just make a few comments about it. What is it? With DSC you can apply a configuration to your servers/datacenter i matter of minutes from powershell. DSC does not have any dependencies of the underlying infrastructure, however it is a tool to configure it. The scope of the DSC can be a server, a collection of servers or other infrastructure items. How is it delivered? DSC support both PUSH and PULL configurations. You can apply an configuration with a script that targets specific objects (PUSH) or you can provide an URI to the configuration and the scoped selection and the targets will download the configuration from there (PULL) at scheduled intervals which also can be configured. If you use a PULL model, you must configure your target nodes with an URI and an UUID.  How do you writ

Microsoft Azure - Virtual machines with 30 GB disk

In Firstpoint we have been using Azure virtual instances for a while now. If you just started using Azure, you probably will not have the issue that we have been facing, however if you have sized your disk properly. Big disclaimer: use the procedure on your own risk! I’m not responsible if something breaks! The provided solution is as-is without warranty! Be warned. Background When we deployed VMs in Azure, the default OS-disk was deployed as a 30GB disk. Now with Windows Server 2012, that does not leave much for other things. The Azure console (read: web GUI) does not provide any way to expand or shrink beyond the boundaries of your initial sized VHD file. People have then been forced to download the VHD file after having deleted the VM and the "disk". After the file have been downloaded, you have to use a VHD tool to increase the size of the VHD. Then you have to upload the file to Azure again, create a new VHD file based on the newly uploaded file and finally crea

Lightswitch - HTMLclient

It has been to long since my last post. As everyone else I have had trouble with finding time to blog.  Recently I have been playing with the new Visual Studio Lightswitch (you can get update 2 here:  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38188 ). Why is it so cool, because it is pure HTML5 and will run in any modern browser being Mac, PC, tablet, IPAD, Iphone, Androd etc.  There are some nice posts out there to get you started, however I was looking for a way to on-the-fly created dropdown lists boxes (what we call ChoiceList in Lightswitch). I found this blogpost about someone else wondering about the same thing: http://www.datazx.cn/Fv7p5a/6x-DE/y10q2an129q/2q7xs6/6mdggtxi-id9i-f4ij-s8ms-i94bt9tfcjg423rsdfd.html That guy Huy is pretty awesome (he as an answer to almost every question), and I felt all hope was lost when he stated that it was not possible. Reading further down, I noticed this guy pointing me in the right d