The SQL Server team announced that they changed the name of Microsoft SQL Services to Microsoft SQL Azure.
The also said that there will be more Azure announcements next week at the Partners conference. Wild guess: pricing?
I’m looking for a way to create PDF files from an ASP.NET 3.5 app. Any recommendations?
Microsoft (like Google) does not talk much about it’s data centers so I was surprised to find a that a blog from the Microsoft Infrastructure Services team. The latest blog post briefly describe the newest data centers that are located in Chicago and Dublin and the fact that they will go live in July.
It’s also one of the first time that I see a description of their container strategy:
Two-thirds of the Chicago data center is optimized for housing containerized servers. Containers conserve energy and will help us realize new advancements in power efficiency with a PUE yearly average calculated at 1.22. These prepackaged units (with up to 1,800 to 2,500 servers each) can be wheeled into the facility and made operational within hours, so they represent important advances in the ability to quickly and efficiently provision capacity. The density inside the containers can exceed 10 times that of traditional data centers.
Here’s a picture of the Chicago data center:
A new version (July 2009 CTP) of the .NET Services SDK is now available.
What’s new?
(1) Windows 7 RC Support - .NET Services now supports Windows 7 RC, in addition to Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Vista. The July CTP Release SDK can be installed on machines running Windows 7 RC.
(2) Set-up - There are multiple improvements in the set-up experience, which make it quicker for developers to get started and take advantage of the benefits of .NET Services:
- One-click install.
- Integrated installer (combined UI/ unattended install) for both the SDK and the Client Redistributable.
- The SDK installer now also supports incremental upgrades.
(3) Workflow Service – As announced previously, after listening to customer feedback this service is being removed from .NET Services until further notice.
Here’s the announcement:
http://blogs.msdn.com/netservices/archive/2009/07/07/microsoft-net-services-july-2009-ctp-release.aspx
and the download link:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=38d8cf79-fc39-4aef-b3fd-ef280f2e9fa6&displaylang=en
The one thing I dislike about my Acer Aspire One Netbook is the anaemic battery life. My unit came with a 3-Cell 2200mAh battery and all I could get was 2 to 2 1/2 hours out of it so I bought a new 9-Cell 7800mAh battery on eBay and now look at this: more than 9 hours!!!
Of course the new battery is much larger then the original one. [Edit: 434g instead of 162g]
The way the battery is made, it tilts the Netbook just a little bit. You can also use the battery to hold the Netbook firmly.
Joey deVilla (The Accordion Guy from MSDN Canada) has started a crusade against Netbooks:
Fast Food Apple Pies and Why Netbooks Suck
Like I Said, Netbooks Suck
Netbooks, R.I.P.
Owning a Netbook, I feel like I should jump in and say that I love mine. Of course, I don’t use it as my main computer, I have another laptop. I use it on the road when I travel by airplane or train. I’m OK with the slow processing because I’m not programming on it full time. I use it to catch emails, read documents and watch movies while on the road. I use it to present when I don’t need a fully beefed up laptop. It’s light enough that carry it even if I don’t need to bring a laptop with me. Best of all, Windows 7 runs as fast as XP on it!
I guess it’s a matter of perception. If I go see this movie:
I don’t except to see this:
We do live in a giant zone of suck, blame it on advertising.
My only pet peeve if with the poor battery life of the 3-cell battery (more on this in another post).
Got an email via our local user group from Insofta, an ISV that sell Cover Commander, a utility to create nice software boxes and eBook covers images. I haven’t tried it but it’s dirt cheap and the results look great. You might want to look at it if you’re publishing software or eBooks.
Use this code to get 20% off: ICC-RRDJ-DUG
In the project I currently work on, none of the developers previously worked with Team Foundation Source Code and in a project where a build server is installed. I asked them to install Team Build Tray, a build notification tool that pops a toast when a build completes so they can be notified if it built successfully or not. BTW, there are many such tools, one is included in the TFS Power Tools.
That’s cool but I wanted to add more punch to it so I looked for an app that could display full screen the build results and I found TFS Build Wallboard and installed it on a computer near the dev team.
I wanted to add even more punch so I looked on the Internet for Homer Simpson WAV files where he would says “Woohoo!” and “Doh!” and modified the code to play the WAV files to add sound to the notifications and to change the background color for green when a build builds and red when a build fails.
OMG! The psychological aspect of the whole thing works like I never thought it would work. I know that in a perfect world, we should never have a failed build but in real life, it happens. So when we hear a loud “Doh!”, you can be sure that the error is fixed almost right away. Cool!
I had an issue where I couldn’t see the SQL Server 2000 (x32) performance counters on Windows Server 2003 x64. Looks like it’s an x32 on x64 issue.
To enable the x32 counters:
1) Stop the Performance Logs & Alerts service. Open up the registry editor (regedit.exe) and browse down to HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Sysmonlog.
3) Change the ImagePath from the default value to %SystemRoot%\syswow64\smlogsvc.exe. (This would launch the x32 service on starting the Counter logs)
4) Open the x32 Perfmon from Start - Run - %SystemRoot%\syswow64\perfmon.exe, & add the SQL counter objects to a Counter log.
5) Set the various parameters of the Counter log, & start it to collect the data.
To see the counters afterward, you need to use the x32 Perfmon by running this:
mmc /32 perfmon.msc
Love Bing but the background image takes too much bandwidth when you connect with a remote machine? You can disable it by clicking on the Help link at the bottom of the Bing pages.
You can then set the background image on and off.
You can also use this hyperlink: http://www.bing.com/?rb=0
The Bing image archive is available here: http://www.istartedsomething.com/bingimages/
Here’s a video tour of Bing features:
http://www.decisionengine.com/Default.html
Laurent Duveau has a great post listing Bing cool features:
http://weblogs.asp.net/lduveau/archive/2009/06/01/bing-com-new-decision-engine-by-microsoft.aspx
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