Lamont Harrington's Blog

Last week, we officially launched the beta release of the Microsoft Web Platform, which includes the Microsoft Web Platform Installer (WebPI), and the Microsoft Web Application Installer (WebAI).

• The "Web Platform Installer" is a download manager that drastrically simplifies the download process and installation of the Microsoft Web Platform.
• The "Web Application Installer" enables the installation of several popular Open Source applications to run on top of Windows.

The installers are available for download from www.microsoft.com/web.

Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) version 4.5

Infrastructure Planning and Design guides have been updated with the introduction of Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) version 4.5.  Download the ensire IPD series or download the entire IPD series or download the individual guide.

This guide provides you with key information to bring your infrastructure up to date, saving you time and money.  Find out how App-V's HTTP streaming of virtual applications from an IIS server will impact your performance and scalability decisions.  Using App-V 4.5 with its many new features to strategically plan your application virtualization infrastructure can hep you avoid problems before they begin, allowing you to serve your customers more accurately and reliably.

Use these guides to determine the scope of the services to be provided and choose to partially or completely redesign your infrastructure. Have confidence in knowing that the steps in each phase are described in detail and that the necessary tools are provided to manage the process.

Join the Beta

Additional Infrastructure Planning and Design series guides are available as beta releases on the Connect Web site. They are open beta downloads. See below for instructions on how to access the beta guides.

To join the Infrastructure Planning and Design Beta, follow these steps:

1. Visit the Infrastructure Planning and Design Beta on the Microsoft Connect website.
2. Sign in using a valid Windows Live ID to continue to the invitations page.
3. Scoll down to Infrastructure Planning and Design.

If you have not previously registered with Microsoft Connect, you might be required to register before continuing with the invitation process.

The Best Practices Resource Center for SharePoint Server 2007 has been recently launched on our TechNet site.  The intent of the site is to provide a resource for guidance and best practices in efforts to avoid common pitfalls and keep your Office SharePoint Server 2007 environment available and performing well.  The best practices cited within the resource center is based on real-world experience from Microsoft Consulting Services and the SharePoint Product Team.

Version 1.4 of the SharePoint Server 2007 SDK and the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SDK has been released.

What's new in the 1.4 release of the SharePoint Server SDK?

• Installation enhancements: You now have a choice of installation path when you’re installing the SDK. Browse to your preferred folder during setup. The default installation path for the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server SDK is <%Program Files%>\2007 Office System Developer Resources.
• Start menu navigation: This release features a new Start menu shortcut for quick access to documentation (compiled HTML Help, or CHM for short) files and the Welcome Guide (ReadMe.htm), which is a landing page with links to all the tools and samples. In Windows Server 2003, click Start, Programs, 2007 Microsoft Office System Developer Resources, Office SharePoint Server 2007 SDK to open: MOSS 2007 Technical Articles and Visual How-Tos, Office Forms Server SDK Documentation, Office SharePoint Server SDK Documentation, Welcome Guide, Windows SharePoint Services SDK Documentation. In Windows Vista, click the Windows Vista Start button, All Programs, 2007 Microsoft Office System Developer Resources, Office SharePoint Server 2007 SDK to open: MOSS 2007 Technical Articles and Visual How-Tos, Office Forms Server SDK Documentation, Office SharePoint Server SDK Documentation, Welcome Guide, Windows SharePoint Services SDK Documentation.
• Offline experience improvements: All of the technical articles, visual how-to articles, and book excerpts are now packaged—plus the Excel Services and Excel 2007 Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 Job Submission Developer Guide—into one searchable CHM file. Browse offline for content published on MSDN out-of-band with the SDK. (Known issue: Several links in the MOSSSDK_TechArticles.chm and WSSSDK_TechArticles.chm do not work in a strictly offline scenario. Also, WMV file screencasts or downloads associated with articles are not packaged in the CHM, to keep the download size manageable. Workaround: Browse to the content on MSDN online; for ease-of-use, the CHM file table of contents is the same as the MSDN Library table of contents.
• New tools and samples.  

What's new in the 1.4 release of the WSS 3.0 SDK?

• Expanded documentation of backup and restore features.  This release contains greatly expanded documentation of backup and restore features, including a new top-level node, "Backing Up and Restoring." The node includes twelve articles, including "Overview of Backing Up and Restoring Data in Windows SharePoint Services," and four new "How To" topics.
• Complete documentation of Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Backup.  Object model reference documentation in the Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Backup namespace is complete, and code samples are provided for all critical types and members.
• New documentation of the administrative object model.  A new section, "The Administrative Object Model of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0," contains six new articles, and the "Administration" section has a new, extended code sample.
• Revised Web Part documentation.  The section that provides conceptual documentation of Web Parts has been completely restructured, and two walkthrough topics have been significantly revised and rewritten.
• More migration support.  A new section, "Selective Content Migration," contains three articles to support selective migration strategies. Additionally, additions and revisions have been made to existing topics in the "Content Migration Overview" section, and a large number of API reference topics that support migration and deployment scenarios have been completed in the SharePoint.Deployment namespace.
• Expanded and updated reference documentation.  You can find enhanced documentation of types and members in the SharePoint.Workflow and SharePoint.WorkflowActions namespaces, the People Web service, and three ActiveX controls.

I've just moved my blog feed over to FeedBurner.  For those of you out there who aggregate posts on this blog, please update to my new feed.  This blog still supports the original DasBlog-based syndication service so those who are currently aggregating shouldn't be affected at all.  But for new vistors who wish to aggregate, please use http://feeds.feedburner.com/LamontHarringtonsBlog as your new feed.

Came across this blog post by Dare Obasanjo, PM on the Windows Live Team, about our approach to data center management where he highlights a paper written by Michael Isard of Microsoft Research, called Autopilot: Automatic Data Center Management, which describes the technology that Windows Live and Live Search uses to manage their web server farms. 

The paper provides a high-level overview of AutoPilot, while Dare’s post goes into more of its practical implementation.  Both are definitely worth reading

The Patterns & Practices Team have recently released v1.0 of the web services security guide (in PDF format) that shows how to make the most out of WCF.  With end-to-end application scenarios, it shows you how to design and implement authentication and authorization in WCF. Learn how to improve the security of your WCF services through prescriptive guidance including guidelines, Q&A, practices at a glance, and step-by-step how tos. It's a collaborative effort between patterns & practices, WCF team members, and industry experts.

The guide has been released on CodePlex and is available for download.

An interesting panel discussion video was recently released to the TechEd Online Library that focuses on extending the role/disciplines of the Architect into the area of providing mentoring. 

Taken from the TechEd Online Library:

"There are many disciplines that a software architect must master in order to do the job: requirements definition, use cases, modeling, layering, object orientation, service orientation, methodologies, and so on. In addition, as we are typically project leaders, we are usually tasked with mentoring others on the team in the understanding, adoption and application of these disciplines. This panel discussion focuses on the use of blogs, social networking and other online tools and content repositories that can be used to enhance and deliver mentoring to architects, developers and project teams."

If you have a hi-bandwidth connection, click here to view the video.

If you have a low-bandwidth connection, click here to view the video.