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New security capabilities in Operations Management Suite

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Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS) Log Analytics offers you the ability to derive deep and actionable insights across your IT environment, from the on-premises datacenter to the cloud. As part of Log Analytics, the Security and Audit solution gives you a holistic, data-driven approach to security.

Today we are announcing that we are increasing the value of Security and Audit solution by improving its user experience, extending its coverage and introducing new capabilities. Some of these changes are available today, while others will gradually roll out over the coming weeks. Today this benefit is available as part of public preview of OMS Log Analytics.

We see this as the beginning of a journey to provide a comprehensive hybrid Security and Audit solution that will span across any platform in any cloud. We will add capabilities over time and will harmonize this solution with other Microsoft security offerings. We are excited about getting your feedback and learning more about how you are using these new capabilities. Feel free to contact us anytime: omssecfeedback@microsoft.com.

Check out the details of these new additions below:

New dashboard

New dashboard

The entry point to the new Security and Audit solution is an expanded and updated dashboard. This dashboard is the home screen for everything related to security in OMS, designed to provide high-level insight into the security state of your servers. Key features include the ability to view all events from the past 24 hours, seven days or any other custom time frame. It can be accessed from the web or via OMS mobile apps.

The dashboard includes three parts:

Security Domains dashboards

Security Domain - Network

Security Domain - Identity

Security has many different domains, and each one has its own specifics and particular data sources. In this release, we introduce several new and updated domain dashboards:

  • Identity and Access: Presents security information relating to authentication and access control events
  • Networking: Highlights the security aspects of networking data based on information collected by the OMS WireData solution
  • Azure Security Center: Links to Azure Security Center, which provides enhanced security protection and detection for resources located in Azure
  • Malware Assessment: Links to the malware assessment solution that presents the status of the antimalware software on the different servers. In the future, the antimalware solution will be integrated into the Security and Audit solution and appear as another domain dashboard. More details on antimalware below.
  • Update Assessment: Links to the system update assessment solution

Notable issues

Notable issues

The notable issues area has a new look and feel as well as enhanced content. You will see that notable issues are now prioritized and sorted according to their importance. There are also several new monitored issues such as clear password logon and guest account activities. To help cope with data overload, this list includes most of the counters that were previously presented as tiles. We plan to add more issues to this list based on the growing number of data types that are collected by OMS.

Threat intelligence

Threat intelligence

Microsoft runs the biggest cloud services in the world, enabling us to achieve a unique view of the threat landscape. The insights we derive, informed by trillions of signals from billions of sources, create an intelligent security graph that we use to inform how we protect all endpoints, better detect attacks and accelerate our response. We know, for example, where attacks came from and able to identify malicious IP addresses. Our goal is to enable our customers to benefit from this knowledge to protect their resources.

Antimalware assessment

Antimalware

One of the most important tools to defend your systems is antimalware software. Building upon existing antimalware capabilities in OMS, the antimalware solution has been extended to enable:

Full coverage for Microsoft antimalware engines

The revised antimalware solution will have new detection capabilities and will be able to interrogate all Microsoft antimalware solutions such as System Center Endpoint Protection and Windows Defender. The solution will use their APIs to verify installation and interrogate the threat status.

Detect more antimalware engines via Windows Security Center

The new solution will also be able to detect all types of antimalware software using the Windows Security Center APIs. This covers most antimalware software that is running on Windows clients and Windows Servers that enabled their desktop experience. Datacenter and Standard editions of Windows Server 2016 will have Windows Security Center enabled by default. Using this mechanism, the solution will be able to detect the protection status of every antimalware that register its existence using this API which is the common practice by most antimalware vendors.

We will continue to invest in improving the antimalware solution and extending its coverage. We will add detection and status collection using more techniques for all commonly used antimalware vendors.

Going forward, the antimalware assessment solution will be folded into the Security and Audit solution and it will not be required to add both of them to workspaces.

The new threat intelligence section of the Security and Audit solution visualizes the possible attack patterns in several ways: the total number of servers with outbound malicious IP traffic, the malicious threat type and a map that shows where these IPs are coming from. You can interact with the map and click on the IPs for more information.

Yellow pushpins on the map indicate incoming traffic from malicious IPs. It is not uncommon for servers that are exposed to the internet to see incoming malicious traffic, but we recommend reviewing these attempts to make sure none of them was successful. These indicators are based on IIS logs, WireData and Windows Firewall logs.

Red pushpins on the map indicate outbound traffic from your servers to malicious IP addresses. This is less common and should be carefully examined. It means that someone or something on your servers is contacting suspicious destinations on the internet. This might be the result of a compromised machine communicating to a command and control center or exfiltration of data. Outbound traffic data is based on Windows Firewall and WireData logs.

The road ahead

This release is just the first step in our journey to provide a comprehensive hybrid Security and Audit solution for OMS customers. We are interested in hearing your feedback and suggestions. Our team is already working hard on several areas:

Harmonization with other Microsoft security offerings

Microsoft looks at security as a major focus area and strives to help our customers across all aspects of security. Microsoft has several security products to protect different types of workloads such as Azure Security Center, Advanced Threat Analytics and Office Advanced Threat Protection. We are working to bring these products closer together and increase their synergy.

Linux

Our team continues to work hard to ensure that Linux is a first class citizen in OMS. The existing OMS Linux agent already collects multiple types of authentication and authorization information. We will add this information to the existing dashboards and will extend the agent collection capabilities to cover more scenarios.

Third-party security solutions

There are many security vendors in the market and we want customers to be able to integrate them with their investments in OMS. We will continue to collaborate with vendors to extend our coverage, increasing our interoperability with other security products on all security domains.

Additional domain dashboards

The two new domain dashboard are just the first step in providing comprehensive visibility to all aspects of security. We plan to enhance the network and identity dashboards with further data and visualizations. At the same time will add more dashboards from different domains.

Additional malicious IP and geo-tagging

We will extend our malicious IP detection and geo-tagging to cover additional types of records, providing additional indicators of malicious or suspicious activities.

To get hands on experience with these features and capabilities, try Operations Management Suite for free.


Running Compiled Code on Azure ML in R and Python

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This post is by Max Kaznady, Data Scientist in the Microsoft Data Group.

Introduction

Azure ML automates a large number of machine learning tasks in the cloud, including scaling ML experiments and publishing trained models as a RESTful web service. ML models can be applied to data using Azure ML modules or using custom modules in which the user provides their own ML algorithm training and scoring implementations; the latter currently support R and Python, along with a large variety of open source libraries.

In addition, Azure ML has a built-in capability to run R and Python scripts in special R and Python script modules. Each Azure ML R and Python script module can take up to two dataframes as input, along with a zipped folder which contains other dependencies. The output is an optional dataframe along with a graphics device for any plots generated.

But what if your library or custom implementation is not available on Azure ML? If it’s written in R or Python then you can easily source it into one of the script modules using the “Script bundle (Zip)” handle shown in Figure 1.


Figure 1: Linking external dependencies to R and Python script modules.

But what if your code is written in a compiled language, such as C, C++ or even Fortran?

Execution

In this post, we focus on sourcing R and Python’s external dependencies, such as R libraries and Python modules, which are not already installed on Azure ML and require code compilation. Commonly the compiled code comes from a variety of other languages such as C, C++ and Fortran. One could also use this approach to wrap their compiled code with R or Python wrappers and run it on Azure ML.

To illustrate the process, we will build two MurmurHash modules from C++ for R and Python using the following two implementations on GitHub, and link them to Azure ML from a zipped folder:

https://github.com/hajimes/mmh3
https://github.com/cran/hashFunction

Hashing is a very fundamental technique in computer science. For example, MurmurHash underlies the implementation of Microsoft Research “Distributed Robust Algorithm for Count-based Learning” or DRACULA algorithm.

To simplify things, we can install both packages using ‘install.packages(“hashFunction”)’ for R and ‘pip install mmh3′ for Python. You can also git-clone each package and build from source. In order for the compiled code to run on Azure ML, one has to build these modules on 64-bit Windows 8.1 and higher operating system (or cross-compile from cloned source code). Before installing both packages, you should download and install the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler package. If you don’t have one installed already, a pop-up should appear during package installation prompting you to install one.

Below is an example of Python’s 32-bit MurmurHash top-level function, which is invoked from mmh3/mmh3module.cpp (line 39):


Figure 2: Sample MurmurHash entry point in Python module.

After installation, you can find the location of each package using .libPaths() command in R and “import site; site.getsitepackages()” in Python. My installed R package, using Microsoft R Open for RevolutionR Enterprise, is in

“C:/Users/maxkaz.NORTHAMERICA/Documents/Microsoft/MRO-for-RRE/8.0/R-3.2.2/library”

and for Python, using the Continuum Anaconda suite, is in

“C:/Users/maxkaz.NORTHAMERICA/AppData/Local/Continuum/Anaconda2/lib/site-packages”.

Next, you need to copy out the built packages from R and Python, which contain the DLLs (more specifically, the R and Python equivalents of DLLs) and create a zip archive for each.

Figures 3 and 4 show the contents of each of the R and Python .zip dependencies which I’m attaching to each R and Python Azure ML Script Module. Notice the separate .pyd file in PythonDep folder in Figure 4 which also needs to be copied separately.


Figure 3: Contents of RDep.zip.


Figure 4: Contents of PythonDep.zip.

Next, we need to test our experiment. The Azure ML test input is a simple Manual Input Module for strings “abc”, “abd” and “abe”, shown in Figure 5 and attached in Figure 8. We should see each R and Python script map each input string to the same bucket, because the algorithm referenced by each script is identical (albeit having different implementation). This is the very first module which is executed in the flow of execution in Figure 8. It is also replaced with Web service input module when the experiment is deployed as a RESTful web service.


Figure 5: Sample input data used to test the RESTful web service.

The sample R and Python code which is placed inside each R and Python Azure ML script module and uses the dependencies is shown in Figures 6 and 7.


Figure 6: Contents of R script module.


Figure 7: Contents of Python script module.

But what if we have dependencies which are inter-dependent, i.e. say I have another library which requires MurmurHash? Once we add the new location of the library path in R and Python, it propagates to all modules, i.e. any other modules which are sourced by the Azure ML R and Python code know where to find the newly-attached dependencies. It’s the same effect as modifying the R library path or the PYTHONPATH environment variable – we just do it from within the source code directly.

We can now publish the built modules on Azure ML as a RESTful web service and interact with the compiled code using a scalable cloud web service. The complete experiment is shown in Figure 8.


Figure 8: Complete Azure ML experiment.

In this experiment, we split the input to both R and Python scripts, which should produce identical results when we test the web service. This input is replaced with input from the Web service input module when the experiment is deployed as a RESTful web service. As expected, the output of the Add Columns module is identical for both R and Python scripts in Figure 9.


Figure 9: Output of both script modules, merged together for comparison.
This is the output which is produced by supplying sample.

Conclusion

We successfully demonstrated the invocation of compiled code through Azure ML R and Python Script Modules. This technique generalizes to running user-written code in compiled languages on Azure ML, including code which requires static initialization with fixed datasets. This convenience feature harnesses the power of open source compiled code by making it execute within the Azure ML cloud framework, where such compiled code can be easily deployed as a scalable RESTful web service.

Max

New security management and transparency capabilities coming to Office 365

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Today, Bret Arsenault, chief information security officer for Microsoft, announced Microsoft Cloud App Security, a comprehensive cloud access security broker (CASB) solution, based on Microsoft’s acquisition of cloud security innovator Adallom. It will also power new advanced security management capabilities for Office 365 that will improve IT visibility and control.

Let’s take a closer look at the new security management capabilities coming to Office 365.

New security management and transparency capabilities 1bOffice 365 advanced security alerts alert you to anomalous and suspicious activity so that you can take action. The system notifies you of unusual behavior, such as if a user takes an administrative action (like creating a new user) from a location they have never logged onto before.

Office 365 cloud app discovery gives you the ability to understand which other cloud services your users are connecting to. From the Office 365 admin portal, you can view a dashboard on network activity. For example, you can see where users are storing and collaborating on documents and how much data is being uploaded to apps or services outside of Office 365.

Office 365 app permissions gives you the ability to approve or revoke permissions for applications accessing Office 365. For example, you may have users who have approved their CRM application to access Office 365 contact data. If that CRM application is a non-sanctioned app that doesn’t comply with your business policy, you may want to revoke access.

These new capabilities will begin to roll out in the third quarter of this year and will be offered as part of the Office 365 E5 plan.

Extending Customer Lockbox to SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business

In the very rare instances when a Microsoft engineer must request access to the Office 365 service, such as when troubleshooting a customer issue with a mailbox or document contents, they need to go through multiple levels of approval within Microsoft. In December, we announced general availability of Customer Lockbox for Exchange Online, which integrates the customer into the approval process. Today, we’re pleased to announce that Customer Lockbox will begin rolling out for SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business in the second quarter of this year.

We are committed to continually delivering the highest level of transparency and data security capabilities, while ensuring people can be productive and collaborate with each other across their devices from any location. You shouldn’t have to choose between top-notch security and great productivity experiences.

For more information about Office 365 and how we manage security, privacy and compliance, please visit trust.office365.com.

—Rudra Mitra, partner director of program management for Office 365 Information Protection

The post New security management and transparency capabilities coming to Office 365 appeared first on Office Blogs.

February Office 365 updates

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Today’s post was written by Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office team.

February has been another busy month for releases across our Office clients on Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. There are a number of exciting new capabilities in Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. In addition, we released the first cumulative feature update since the initial September release of the Office 2016 apps—otherwise known as the “Deferred Channel” build—for our commercial customers. Read on for the details.

Enhancing the Office experience on mobile devices

We’re continuing to make Office on mobile devices even easier, more natural, fluid and contextual, so you can use Office to do more, faster, with whatever device you have in your hand.

  • Annotate with ink on Windows tablets—Last month we discussed the evolution of the inking experience in Office. Now you can use your pen, finger and the new tools in the Draw tab to naturally write, draw and annotate in Word, Excel and PowerPoint Mobile on Windows tablets (available initially to Office Insiders).

February Office 365 updates 1

Review and comment on documents with your pen or finger—no printing required.

  • Pin your docs to the Start menu on Windows phones and tablets—It’s even easier to pick up where you left off by pinning your favorite documents, spreadsheets, presentations and notes to the Windows Start menu. Get going in just a couple of taps!

February Office 365 updates 2 - BLOG

Pin your documents to the Start menu to get going in one tap.

  • Insert images using the camera on your phone or tablet— Office apps are now integrated with your device’s built-in camera, so you can capture images, crop and insert them directly into your documents on Windows and Android phones and tablets. This is available now in PowerPoint for Office Insiders and will be coming soon for Word and Excel.

February Office 365 updates 3

Capture and crop images directly into Office apps using the built-in camera on your Windows and Android phones and tablets.

February Office 365 updates 4

Box integration is now available in Word, Excel and PowerPoint on iPhone and iPad.

Boosting Excel with more functions, charts and sharing options

We added more ways to manipulate, visualize, and share your data with Excel. New functions make it simpler and faster to build common calculations, and improved Formula AutoComplete helps you find the function you’re looking for (click here for more information). The launch of Excel 2016 brought you new chart types, such as Treemap, Sunburst and Waterfall. Now we added the Funnel chart for Windows desktops, tablets and phones, as well as Android, enabling you to display data in progressively decreasing proportions. Learn more here.

February Office 365 updates 5

The Funnel chart helps you display data in progressively decreasing proportions.

We’re also making it easier than ever to share what you work on in Excel with others. Excel is now more integrated into the Power BI service. This means you can now pin your workbook’s rich formatted charts and graphs directly to your Power BI dashboards and interact with them from anywhere—giving you even more options for telling your story through data. (Read more here; Power BI subscription required.)

Pin your Excel workbook’s richly formatted charts and graphs directly to your Power BI dashboards.

Outlook improves connections with Office 365 Groups and adds one-click Archive

Outlook 2016 helps you stay connected with your Office 365 Groups by providing integrated access to your team’s shared inbox, shared calendar, OneNote notebook, OneDrive and more. Now we’re making it even easier for commercial Office 365 customers to browse, join and create Office 365 Groups right from within Outlook 2016. We’re adding a new Groups section to the ribbon with easy entry points to browse and join Office 365 Groups. Suggested Groups offer one-click access to relevant Groups you might like to join, personalized based on information in the Office Graph. You can also create new Groups from the ribbon.

February Office 365 updates 7 - BLOG

It’s even easier to browse, join and create relevant Office 365 Groups from within Outlook 2016.

We’re also introducing an Archive capability in Outlook 2016 that lets you quickly move messages out of your inbox and into another folder. This will allow you to triage your inbox with an experience similar to archiving in other email services like Outlook.com. Archive is rolling out to Outlook 2016, coming soon for Outlook for Mac, and available today in Outlook on iOS, Android and the web.

February Office 365 updates 8 - BLOG

Archive is coming to Outlook 2016 to help you triage your inbox more quickly.

Office for Mac updates

Office has addressed key customer feedback with improvements and new features for Office for Mac.

  • Morph is now part of PowerPoint for Mac—Morph is one of the latest PowerPoint tools that helps you create stunning presentations quickly. The Morph transition effect helps you easily transform and move several objects at once across slides. Get started here.

February Office 365 updates 9

The Morph transition effect is now available in PowerPoint for Mac, and the Quick Access Toolbar in the top-left is now customizable.

  • Customize the Quick Access Toolbar– In response to a top user request, Word, Excel and PowerPoint for Mac now allow you to customize commands in the Quick Access Toolbar. Pick your favorite commands (such as New, Print or Save) to show at all times in the top-left corner. Get started here.
  • Faster updates—Office for Mac users who stay current can now download just the latest incremental changes since the last release. This means faster downloads of smaller update packages, with download sizes to drop even more in the coming months.

We’ve seen over 150,000 downloads of early builds of Office for Mac apps through the Office Insiders program since initial availability last month. If you haven’t joined yet, opt in to the Office Insider build from the Microsoft Auto Update (MAU) tool on your Mac. To learn more about Office Insider on Mac, go to Office.com/Insider. Follow the updates and get Office Insider support @OfficeInsider on Twitter.

Office 2016 build now available for commercial customers in Deferred Channel

We are releasing the first Office 365 Deferred Channel build, which is effectively the September 22, 2015 release of Office 2016 with four additional months of security updates included. Deferred Channel allows commercial customers to elect to receive cumulative packages of new Office features three times a year, instead of in monthly updates. This can be helpful for taking extra time to validate add-ins, macros, custom line-of-business applications, etc. Customers on Deferred Channel can get the new build of Office 2016 in the Office 365 User Software Page as well as the Office CDN.

You can learn more about what’s new in Office 2016 and Office for Mac. If you’re an Office 365 Home or Personal customer, be sure to sign up for Office Insider builds to be the first to use the latest and greatest in Office productivity. Commercial customers on both Current Channel and Deferred Channel can also get early access to a fully supported build through First Release.

—Kirk Koenigsbauer

The post February Office 365 updates appeared first on Office Blogs.

Top Gear: Drift Legends now available for Windows 10

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BBC TV’s Top Gear joins the popular driving and drifting game series in a thrill-packed new adventure, Top Gear: Drift Legends for Windows 10. Jump in with The Stig and hit the test track in iconic cars from favorite Top Gear episodes, then put the pedal to the metal and start drifting.

Features include

  1. Xbox controller support
  2. Starring The Stig, “the Test Track”, and iconic cars from the show.
  3. Season Mode: 5 countries, 25 tracks
  4. Unlock cars, each with their own authentic oversteer physics, power, and counter-steer feel.

Racers choose their ride based on speed, acceleration, and handling, and then select one of two difficulty modes. Arcade Mode is for novices, with tighter handling and more control, while Expert is for serious driftmasters, with realistic drifts and bigger scores. Season Mode takes drivers through 25 tracks in five countries, including Formula Slide USA, EU Full Lock Series, Japan Super Dori, Australian Outback D Champs, and New Zealand Drift Series.

And then there’s the amazing drifting engine. Unlock five cars, each with their own authentic oversteer physics, power, and counter-steer feel. The better you drift, the higher up the leader board you go. Novice racers see how far they have to go, and experienced racers leave the competition behind in the dust. Full-screen borderless mode gives you a wider view of the action, and support for Xbox controller, touch, or keyboard/mouse means you can play easily.

Download Top Gear: Drift Legends for Windows 10 in the Windows Store today.

Top news from January 2016

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The year has gotten off to a great start and it seems that .NET, the web, and TypeScript get the prize for the most popular topics!

ASP.NET 5 is dead: Did we get your attention with that heading? Well, it’s not dead at all, it just has a new moniker as Scott Hanselman explains in Introducing ASP.NET Core 1.0 and .NET Core 1.0. I love the quote from Phil Karlton, “There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.” That about says it all!

ASP.NET Code 1.0 and .NET Core 1.0

Elsewhere in Web development: If you’ve ever wanted to explore the Chakra engine used in Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer, now is your chance as the ChakraCore GitHub repository is now open. But then again, perhaps you’re not quite ready to delve into the intricacies of JITing and such, so you might find that Channel 9’s Microsoft Tools for Beginner Web Developers (22m 8s) is just the ticket. Or maybe it’s time you explored all the fun stuff in Node.js, Express, AngularJS, and MongoDB starting with Ashwin Shetty’s Getting Started with MEAN Stack. I personally had the opportunity to do a MEAN stack course through Global Knowledge in January, and greatly enjoyed spending a whole week with nothing but Visual Studio Code, npm, and quite a number of different documentation sites!

Introduction to Angular JS, and AngularJS+TypeScript: Ashwin’s post above is just going to get your first toe into the client-side waters of the MEAN stack, which is AngularJS. When you’re ready for more—much more—head on over to Microsoft Virtual Academy and enjoy this free comprehensive course by Christopher Harrison and Stacey Mulcahy. You might then continue with another full course on Angular Applications with TypeScript with Bill Wagner and James Sturtevant, but if you don’t have a half-day to spend with that, maybe you have a couple of minutes to learn how Google engineers from Angular core development team are building Angular 2 with TypeScript.

Learn how Google engineers from Angular core development team are building Angular 2 with TypeScript

Exploring the new .NET “dotnet” Command Line Interface: In Scott Hanselman’s thinking, it should be really easy to sit down and play with .NET from the command line, like you can with Node, and the early and promising work at https://github.com/dotnet/cli is moving in that direction. In this post, he introduces the dotnet CLI with some examples and how interesting the story becomes when you consider the native compilation piece of the story. Then you might start asking why other runtimes don’t have their own compile commands!

Functional C#? It’s an interesting question, because C# is very much an object-oriented language that supports functional programming styles, whereas F# is a functional language that supports object-oriented styles. In any case, Eric Lippert here follows up a talk he gave on functional programming in C# with some interesting Q&A on such matters, such as “Can you explain async and await in parallel programming?” Well, that’s the one question he doesn’t answer, so I didn’t give you any spoilers!

Daily .NET Tips: Perhaps the new year is a good time to go back to certain fundamental questions, like Why am I here? What is the meaning of life? What is the difference between Autos and Locals Window in Visual Studio? And, much to the irritation of Master Yoda and his famous quote, “Do or do not. There is no try!” we have questions like what is the difference between int.Parse() and int.TryParse()? Ahhijit Jana answers these questions on Daily .NET Tips, and also has a popular post covering 10 Visual Studio tips to improve your development productivity.

Difference between int.Parse and int.TryParse

.NET for UWP series on Channel 9: As a .NET developer, you’ll be familiar with how .NET works in Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps on Windows 10, but you might not understand the subtle differences that are explained in this video series. Lucian Wischik kicks it off with a short overview of .NET Core (3m 8s), followed by Daniel Jacobson’s introduction to.NET Native (6m 35s), which is a simple yet effective way to increase app performance. He continues with .NET Native Advanced (8m 43s) with topics such as .NET Native debugging, serialization, reflection, and optimizing CI build servers. Lucian then concludes with his own set of advanced topics (16m 24s) including important details about packaging.

.NET Native

A project guide to UX design (PDF download): finally, for something a little different, this free guide from the GatherContent team explores the relationship between UX design and content strategy. It discusses user stories, designing content models, prototyping, and validation through iterative usability testing. Very insightful stuff!

Content Strategy: A guide for UX designers

Enjoy,

Kraig Brockschmidt, Senior Content Developer, Visual Studio
@kraigbro

Kraig has been around Microsoft since 1988, working in roles that always have to do with helping developers write great software. Currently he’s focused on developing content for cross-platform mobile app development with both Xamarin and Cordova. He writes for MSDN Magazine, is the author of Programming Windows Store Apps with HTML, CSS and JavaScript (two editions) and Inside OLE (two editions, if you remember those) from Microsoft Press, occasionally blogs on kraigbrockschmidt.com, and can be found lurking around a variety of developer conferences.

Now Available: CU3 for System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager SP1 and System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP2

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Author: Brian Huneycutt, Software Engineer, Enterprise Client and Mobility

Cumulative Update 3 (CU3) for System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager SP1 and System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP2 is now available as a hotfix download from KB 3135680. This update contains fixes for issues in various areas including software distribution and content management; administrator console; operating system deployment; site systems and mobile device management.  In addition, the update contains the following:

  • Mac OS X 10.11 can be targeted as a client platform for the following features:
    • Application Management
    • Settings Management
  • A new optional task sequence variable, SMSTSWaitForSecondReboot, is available to better control client behavior when a software update installation requires two restarts.
  • Windows 10 is now available in the Upgrade Assessment Report. Be aware that for Windows 10 to be listed as an option, the Configuration Manager Upgrade Assessment Tool version 5.0.7806.1200 or later versions is required.

CU3 contains all of the changes from prior cumulative updates including the Endpoint Protection client. For more information about the Endpoint Protection client included with CU3, refer to the following knowledge base article:

KB 3041687 Revised February 2015 anti-malware platform update for Endpoint Protection clients

Configuration Manager SP2/R2SP1 includes support for automatically updating the Configuration Manager client after installing a cumulative update.  For more information about that, refer to http://blogs.technet.com/b/configmgrteam/archive/2015/08/03/automatically-updating-the-configuration-manager-client.aspx.

As with other cumulative updates, this release is optional and does not affect the product support lifecycle.

For more information about cumulative updates, refer to Update System Center 2012 Configuration ManagerNew cumulative update servicing model for System Center 2012 Configuration Manager and Configuration Manager Servicing Update.

Brian Huneycutt
Configuration Manager Resources

Documentation Library for System Center 2012 Configuration Manager

System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Forums

System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Survival Guide

System Center Configuration Manager Support

Submit Configuration Manager Product Ideas

Report Configuration Manager Product Issues

This posting is provided “AS IS” with no warranties and confers no rights.

An Update on the Developer Opportunity and Windows 10

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At Build last year, we unveiled our Bridges strategy and our commitment to provide developers with tools to accelerate bringing their apps to Windows 10 devices. Our goal is to make it easy for developers of all sizes to bring existing code to the one billion devices we expect to see running Windows 10 in the next few years. The tools we announced were designed to help developers with existing code bases of HTML/JavaScript, .NET and Win32, Java/C+ + and Objective-C bring their code to Windows, and provide a way to integrate with Universal Windows Platform capabilities.

Enabling developers to bring and re-use some of their existing code to Windows 10 is part of our longer-term vision for developers, where we want to make Windows the best development platform regardless of technologies used. Yesterday, we reached another milestone on this journey via our agreement to acquire Xamarin. UWP developers can not only reach all Windows 10 devices, but with Xamarin, they can now use a large percentage of their C# code to deliver a fully native mobile app experience for iOS and Android. Xamarin’s approach enables developers to take advantage of the productivity and power of .NET to develop mobile apps, and to use C# to write to the full set of native APIs and mobile capabilities provided by each platform.

We’re excited to have Xamarin join Microsoft and the opportunities it will offer developers – making it easy to share common app code across Windows, iOS, and Android apps while still delivering fully-native experiences for each of the platforms.

Progress on the bridges

In addition to welcoming Xamarin, we also wanted to provide an update on the Windows 10 Bridges:

  • The Web Bridge (Hosted Web Apps) helps bring HTML and JavaScript web-based apps to the Windows Store and takes advantage of the rich capabilities of the Windows platform, such as Live Tiles, Cortana integration, in-app purchase capabilities and more. This shipped as part of the standard Windows 10 SDK in July and we’ve already seen adoption from companies such as Shazam and Yahoo.
  • Project “Centennial” helps bring existing Win32 and .NET-based apps to the Windows Store and is in testing with a set of developers now. We’ll have an early iteration of the tools soon, and then we’ll expand the program and support a broader range of developers.
  • The Windows Bridge for iOS (project “Islandwood”), enables developers to bring Objective-C iOS apps to the Windows Store, was released to GitHub as an open source project in August and we’ve been releasing updates to it frequently. Just last week, we released an update which included the first ARM32 preview compiler drop.

We also announced the Windows Bridge for Android (project “Astoria”) at Build last year, and some of you have asked about its status. We received a lot of feedback that having two Bridge technologies to bring code from mobile operating systems to Windows was unnecessary, and the choice between them could be confusing. We have carefully considered this feedback and decided that we would focus our efforts on the Windows Bridge for iOS and make it the single Bridge option for bringing mobile code to all Windows 10 devices, including Xbox and PCs. For those developers who spent time investigating the Android Bridge, we strongly encourage you to take a look at the iOS Bridge and Xamarin as great solutions.

The philosophy behind the Bridges has always been to make it as easy as possible for you to bring existing code to Windows, and our investments in the iOS Bridge will make this straightforward. We initially focused on API coverage for game developers, but we are expanding our API coverage for all app types by adding support for additional frameworks, etc. We’re aiming for significant development cost savings for the majority of ‘typical’ apps – keep an eye on the project on GitHub, and of course we welcome direct contributions, helping us all out!

At Build this year, we’ll go into more detail on the Bridges, Xamarin, our Universal Windows Platform and much more. Hope to see you there!

Kevin


The PowerShell Gallery Is Public

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We are excited to announce that, as of today, the PowerShell Gallery has changed from Preview to Public.

In July 2015, we announced and opened the PowerShell Gallery for public contributions. Since then, we have seen rapid growth in the number of modules, scripts, and users using the gallery – Thank you to those who contributed so far!

We’d like to share with you some of the current gallery community stats:

1856 registered users

567 unique modules and scripts

97,400 page views per month

180,000 downloads last month

821,000 downloads total

As part of this update, we added features to scan submissions using PSScriptAnalyzer for static PowerShell code checking and virus checks using Microsoft’s antimalware technologies. The PowerShell engineering team is hosting and supporting the gallery service, maintaining a high availability target of >99.9% uptime.

Removing the “Preview” tag should not change the way you interact with PowerShell Gallery. PowerShellGet cmdlets like Find-Module, Install-Module, Update-Module, and Publish-Module should continue to work the same way. With WMF 5 RTM and Windows Server 2016 TP4, PowerShell Gallery also enables PowerShell script-based content. Use Find-Script, Install-Script, Update-Script, and Publish-Script to discover, install, and publish PowerShell script-based content.

However, removing “Preview” does not mean we are done. We expect to continue adding improvements and new features to the service. We’d like to hear from you and get your feedback on any improvements or ideas that you’d like us to consider for future releases. Please go to PowerShell UserVoice and let us know.

Finally, we like to thank each of you who have helped make the PowerShell Gallery a reality. It would not have been possible without the amazing support received by the PowerShell community members. We would also like to take this opportunity to welcome new contributions from anyone who wants to share their PowerShell and DSC modules and scripts with others in the PowerShell community – THANK YOU in advance.

The PowerShell Community Team

Backup of Enterprise data made easier with System Center Data Protection Manager

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System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2012 R2 UR9 went live on 26th Jan, 2016. In the previous release, we focused on stability – in this release, we have added a slew of features to optimize backups for large Enterprise deployments. The feedback so far from customers has been very positive. Today, we are happy to announce that we are making it an “Important Update” on Microsoft Update, so it will be made available to more customers. As with all DPM URs, this update is cumulative and contains all the reliability fixes from the previous release. Below is the list of key improvements.

1. Never miss backup SLA for large file server

In some cases, for e.g. production server node shutdown due to power failure, DPM file tracking filter gets corrupted which marks replica as inconsistent. Previously, this required a consistency check to repair the corruption which could run into several hours or even days for large file server deployments. In this update we have made major improvements to optimize the filter repair process.

DPM now leverages USN journal (Update Sequence Number Journal) technology in Windows to track files that have changed since the last synchronization job, making the repair operation much faster. We have seen up to 60X improvements in the tests we have run with large file servers (see more details in the test table below).

To optimize it further, the new repair operation will be triggered automatically with-in 15 minutes of the filter corruption. So there is no manual intervention required. The repair operation will be displayed as a synchronization job in DPM and will also sync the replica to latest.
Table below summarizes the time to complete repair synchronization job based on our internal testing. We have focused on two common deployments, large number of small files and small number of large files.

# Files protectedChurn Size# Files modifiedTime for repair synchronization job
1 million files in a 1 TB volume, each file being a few MBs1 MB (static file server with no changes)51 minute
20 GB (2% churn)20,0001 hour 15 minutes
80 million files in a 2 TB volume, each file being a few KBs1 MB (static file server with no changes)52 minutes
40 GB (2% churn)40,0002.5 hours

Notes:

  • Test Setup configuration

DPM Server- 3.4 GHz processor, 100 Mbps network speed and 2.4 GB RAM

Production File Server- 2.67 GHz, 10 Gbps network speed, 3 GB RAM

  • Please note, individual file server repair times will vary depending on number of files, size of each file and directory structure.

2. No production server restart required

Production Server reboot while upgrading to the new release of SCDPM has been a big concern with our customers. With this release, we have done an extensive review of all the cases which were causing a reboot and eliminated all cases, except filter driver update where it is unavoidable. All backup products that do incremental backups use a filter driver on the production server and need to re-boot whenever they make changes to the filter driver. Good news is we don’t anticipate making more changes in this part of the code so this should hopefully bring smiles to the customer and upgrading to latest URs is easier.

3. Reduced cache space for Online backups

In addition to backing up data to disk, DPM also provides an option to use Azure cloud for long term retention and offsite storage using Azure Backup. Previously, Azure Backup required cache space of 15% of the data source size for backup to Azure. This was an issue for customers with large data sources (for e.g. volumes greater than 10 TB). With the latest Azure Backup agent, we reduced the cache space requirements to less than 5% which is 3X improvement.

4. Increased retention for Online backups

DPM & Azure Backup has increased the number of recovery points for cloud backups. This enables flexible retention policies to meet stringent compliance requirements such as HIPAA for large enterprises. For those who are curious on what the new maximum number of recovery points is, it has been increased to 9999 from 366.

5. And More…

We have made a bunch of other optimizations to improve customer experience when using DPM. For more detailed list and to download the latest DPM please refer to DPM 2012 R2 UR9 KB article

Download DPM 2012 R2 UR9 and also upgrade to the latest Azure Backup agent to get started with these great features.

Additional Resources

Top Solutions for Azure Billing and Subscriptions

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Azure Billing and Subscriptions Here is a list of top Microsoft Support solutions for the most common issues experienced with Azure billing, subscriptions and account management. BILLING 1. Azure offers and pricing Azure Billing and Subscription FAQ Pricing calculator: Price and configure Azure features for your scenarios Azure Offers – benefits & limits, how to...

Outlook hopes to fill the hole Mailbox left in your heart

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Today’s post was written by Javier Soltero, corporate vice president for the Outlook team.

Today, Mailbox is shutting down, leaving a lot of its users mourning the loss of one of the first great mobile email apps. Like the Mailbox team, we’ve always believed that email on the go can and should be better. As Mailbox is turned off, we are convinced more than ever before that there is still much more to do to make email on your phone amazing. In today’s mobile world, we believe email on your phone needs to be more than just for reading messages while standing in line for coffee. It needs to help you quickly focus on what matters and ignore what doesn’t. It needs to let you send better email more easily. It should make you more productive, not overwhelm you.

Since our mobile app launch in January of 2015, our goal has been to build the email and calendar app that would accomplish all of those things. Joining forces with our friends from Sunrise, we made Outlook a full featured app that puts your mobile email in focus, integrates with your calendar and makes attachments much easier to use on the go. Over 30 million people have chosen Outlook as their default email client on their iOS and Android devices.

Today, we want to invite former Mailbox users to give Outlook a try. Here’s why we’re sure you’ll love it.

While you may think of Outlook working only with Outlook.com or Office 365 email, it also works great with many email providers, including Gmail, iCloud and Yahoo. In fact, The Verge referred to us as “the best Gmail app for the iPhone” back in December.

We recently made improvements to our Schedule feature to make former Mailbox users feel right at home. We added several more options for scheduling messages to a later date and time with just a tap, including This Weekend for those personal emails you want to get out of the way or Next Week for less urgent projects. On top of that, we made it easier than ever before to reschedule an email if you change your mind.

schedule.mov

All of these features will be available in the App Store and Google Play next week. We hope you’ll join us in our journey to better email and calendar.

Have any feedback for us? Let us know through our in-app support (Settings>Help & Support>Contact Support) and add #mailbox to your message.

Welcome again.

—Javier Soltero

The post Outlook hopes to fill the hole Mailbox left in your heart appeared first on Office Blogs.

Cumulative Update 3 for ConfigMgr 2012 SP2 and ConfigMgr 2012 R2 SP1 is now available

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Hi everyone, Cumulative Update 3 (CU3) for System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP2 and System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager SP1 is now available. There are a bunch of fixes in this release so I won’t list them all here, but for the details regarding the problems that were addressed and the functionality that is updated, please see the following:

3135680Description of Cumulative Update 3 for System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP2 and System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager SP1 (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3135680)

Note that this update applies to both releases: Microsoft System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Service Pack 2 (SP2) and System Center 2012 Configuration Manager R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1).

J.C. Hornbeck, Sr. Solution Asset PM
Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Group

Windows Store Weekly: 5 new titles to check out this weekend

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This week’s roundup delivers exciting new Windows Store content, including a new Netflix original movie you can watch with the Netflix app for Windows 10, a collection of Oscar nominated films, music and more! Check it out below.

App

Netflix– Free

Debuting exclusively on Netflix this week is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny, a new movie and a new chapter in this thrilling adventure. As duty calls again, can she keep the sword safe? And get ready for the latest season of House of Cards, premiering March 4. It’s an election year, and the stakes are higher than ever! If you don’t already have it, you can download Netflix for Windows 10 here.

Prepare for the Academy Awards this weekend

Oscars film collection in the Windows StoreFrom The Revenant to The Martian to Mad Max, Trumbo, Bridge of Spies and The Danish Girl, we’ve put together a collection of all this year’s major Oscar-nominated films in the Movies & TV section of the Windows Store. Start watching today and you just might finish them all in time for the big night!

Game

World of Tanks Blitz– Free 

Your enemies will be quaking in their boots when they see the stunning new firepower of your IS-3 Defender, a premium heavy tank that lets you volley-fire three shells in quick succession – the first large-caliber auto-loader in Blitz. Get World of Tanks Blitz in the Windows Store.

Movie

The Good Dinosaur– Buy the movie for $19.99 

The Good Dinosaur on Windows 10

What if that dinosaur-killing asteroid had never wiped out our reptilian friends millions of years ago? When an Apatosaurus named Arlo befriends a young boy, an adventure begins – and with Pixar, you know it’s going to be a fun one.

Music

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis This Unruly Mess I’ve Made – Buy the album for $12.99 or listen free*

Macklemore’s wit and Ryan Lewis’s inventive production come together once again in their latest collaboration, This Unruly Mess I’ve Made

Macklemore’s wit and Ryan Lewis’s inventive production come together once again in their latest collaboration, This Unruly Mess I’ve Made. The hip-hop duo’s album includes “Kevin,” a song they debuted live at the 2015 American Music Awards, and their elaborate and politically charged second single, “White Privilege II.” You can buy the album for $12.99 or listen free with a free 30 day trial of Groove Music Pass.

Enjoy your weekend – and we hope you’ll make these titles a part of it!

*30-day trial continues to a paid monthly subscription unless cancelled. Credit card required. Groove Music Pass sold separately and in select markets. Catalog size and availability varies by market and over time.

 

ARM DSC Extension Settings

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Overview

This is the schema for the settings portion of the Azure DSC extension in an ARM template.

Fast Reference

"settings": {"wmfVersion": "latest","configuration": {"url": "http://validURLToConfigLocation","script": "ConfigurationScript.ps1","function": "ConfigurationFunction"
  },"configurationArguments": {"argument1": "Value1","argument2": "Value2"
  },"configurationData": {"url": "https://foo.psd1"
  },"privacy": {"dataCollection": "enable"
  },"advancedOptions": {"downloadMappings": {"customWmfLocation": "http://myWMFlocation"
    }
  } 
},"protectedSettings": {"configurationArguments": {"parameterOfTypePSCredential1": {"userName": "UsernameValue1","password": "PasswordValue1"
    },"parameterOfTypePSCredential2": {"userName": "UsernameValue2","password": "PasswordValue2"
    }
  },"configurationUrlSasToken": "?g!bber1sht0k3n","configurationDataUrlSasToken": "?dataAcC355T0k3N"
}

Details

Property NameTypeDescription
settings.wmfVersionstringSpecifies the version of the Windows Management Framework that should be installed on your VM. Setting this property to ‘latest’ will install the most updated version of WMF. The only current possible values for this property are ‘4.0’, ‘5.0’, ‘5.0PP’, and ‘latest’. These possible values are subject to updates. The default value is ‘latest’.
settings.configuration.urlstringSpecifies the URL location from which to download your DSC configuration zip file. If the URL provided requires a SAS token for access, you will need to set the protectedSettings.configurationUrlSasToken property to the value of your SAS token. This property is required if settings.configuration.script and/or settings.configuration.function are defined.
settings.configuration.scriptstringSpecifies the file name of the script that contains the definition of your DSC configuration. This script must be in the root folder of the zip file downloaded from the URL specified by the configuration.url property. This property is required if settings.configuration.url and/or settings.configuration.script are defined.
settings.configuration.functionstringSpecifies the name of your DSC configuration. The configuration named must be contained in the script defined by configuration.script. This property is required if settings.configuration.url and/or settings.configuration.function are defined.
settings.configurationArgumentsCollectionDefines any parameters you would like to pass to your DSC configuration. This property will not be encrypted.
settings.configurationData.urlstringSpecifies the URL from which to download your configuration data (.pds1) file to use as input for your DSC configuration. If the URL provided requires a SAS token for access, you will need to set the protectedSettings.configurationDataUrlSasToken property to the value of your SAS token.
settings.privacy.dataEnabledstringEnables or disables telemetry collection. The only possible values for this property are ‘Enable’, ‘Disable’, ”, or $null. Leaving this property blank or null will enable telemetry. The default value is ”. More Information
settings.advancedOptions.downloadMappingsCollectionDefines alternate locations from which to download the WMF. More Information
protectedSettings.configurationArgumentsCollectionDefines any parameters you would like to pass to your DSC configuration. This property will be encrypted.
protectedSettings.configurationUrlSasTokenstringSpecifies the SAS token to access the URL defined by configuration.url. This property will be encrypted.
protectedSettings.configurationDataUrlSasTokenstringSpecifies the SAS token to access the URL defined by configurationData.url. This property will be encrypted.

Settings vs. ProtectedSettings

All of these settings will be saved in a settings text file on your VM.

Properties under ‘settings’ are considered public properties because they will not be encrypted in the settings text file.

Properties under ‘protectedSettings’ will be encrypted with a certificate and will not be shown in plain text in this file on your VM.

So, if your configuration needs credentials, and you would like these credentials to be encrypted on your VM, you can include them in protectedSettings like so:

"protectedSettings": {"configurationArguments": {"parameterOfTypePSCredential1": {"userName": "UsernameValue1","password": "PasswordValue1"
        }
    }
}

Example

I have a simple configuration I made that looks like this:

ConfigurationTestConfig
{param($CountryName)Import-DscResource-ModuleName 'PSDesiredStateConfiguration'

    File TestFile
    {
        Ensure ="Present"
        DestinationPath ="C:\TestFile"
        Contents ="Hello there fair traveler! Welcome to $CountryName!"
    }
}

I want to use the Azure DSC Extension in an ARM template to apply this configuration to my VM.

So, first, I save this configuration in a file named ‘WorldlyConfig.ps1′, zip it up, and post the zip file on my website at the URL ‘https://superworldtraveler.thisisnotarealURL/WorldlyConfig.zip’ (just an example, not a real URL).

This file on my website has restricted access, so I will need to provide a SAS token.

I generate the SAS Token ‘?flibberdigibbets’ so that the extension can access the file.

Now, in my ARM template, I use these settings to tell the DSC extension to run my configuration:

"settings": {"configuration": {"url": "https://superworldtraveler.thisisnotarealURL/WorldlyConfig.zip'","script": "WorldlyConfig.ps1","function": "TestConfig"
    },"configurationArguments": {"CountryName": "Canada"
    } 
},"protectedSettings": {"configurationUrlSasToken": "?flibberdigibbets"
}

Updating from the Previous Format

Any settings in the previous format (containing the public properties ModulesUrl, ConfigurationFunction, SasToken, or Properties) will be automatically adapted to the current format and will run just as they did before.

The previous settings schema looked like this:

"settings": {"WMFVersion": "latest","ModulesUrl": "https://UrlToZipContainingConfigurationScript.ps1.zip","SasToken": "SAS Token if ModulesUrl points to private Azure Blob Storage","ConfigurationFunction": "ConfigurationScript.ps1\\ConfigurationFunction","Properties":  {"ParameterToConfigurationFunction1":  "Value1","ParameterToConfigurationFunction2":  "Value2","ParameterOfTypePSCredential1": {"UserName": "UsernameValue1","Password": "PrivateSettingsRef:Key1"
        },"ParameterOfTypePSCredential2": {"UserName": "UsernameValue2","Password": "PrivateSettingsRef:Key2"
        }
    }
},"protectedSettings": { "Items": {"Key1": "PasswordValue1","Key2": "PasswordValue2"
    },"DataBlobUri": "https://UrlToConfigurationDataWithOptionalSasToken.psd1"
}

Here’s how the previous format adapts to the current format:

Property NamePrevious Schema Equivalent
settings.wmfVersionsettings.WMFVersion
settings.configuration.urlsettings.ModulesUrl
settings.configuration.script1st part of settings.ConfigurationFunction (before ‘\\’)
settings.configuration.function2nd part of settings.ConfigurationFunction (after ‘\\’)
settings.configurationArgumentssettings.Properties
settings.configurationData.urlprotectedSettings.DataBlobUri (without SAS token)
settings.privacy.dataEnabledsettings.Privacy.DataEnabled
settings.advancedOptions.downloadMappingssettings.AdvancedOptions.DownloadMappings
protectedSettings.configurationArgumentsprotectedSettings.Properties
protectedSettings.configurationUrlSasTokensettings.SasToken
protectedSettings.configurationDataUrlSasTokenSAS token from protectedSettings.DataBlobUri

Troubleshooting – Error Code 1100

Error Code 1100 indicates that there is a problem with the user input to the DSC extension.

The text of these errors is variable and may change.

Here are some of the errors you may run into and how you can fix them.

Invalid Values

“Privacy.dataCollection is ‘{0}’. The only possible values are ”, ‘Enable’, and ‘Disable'”

“WmfVersion is ‘{0}’. Only possible values are . and ‘latest'”

Problem: A provided value is not allowed.

Solution: Change the invalid value to a valid value. See the table in the Details section above.

Invalid URL

“ConfigurationData.url is ‘{0}’. This is not a valid URL”

“DataBlobUri is ‘{0}’. This is not a valid URL”

“Configuration.url is ‘{0}’. This is not a valid URL”

Problem: A provided URL is not valid.

Solution: Check all your provided URLs. Make sure they all resolve to valid URLs that the extension can access on the remote machine.

Invalid ConfigurationArgument Type

“Invalid configurationArguments type {0}”

Problem: The ConfigurationArguments property cannot resolve to a Hashtable object.

Solution: Make your ConfigurationArguments property a Hashtable. Follow the format provided in the example above. Watch out for quotes, commas, and braces.

Duplicate ConfigurationArguments

“Found duplicate arguments ‘{0}’ in both public and protected configurationArguments”

Problem: The ConfigurationArguments in public settings and the ConfigurationArguments in protected settings contain properties with the same name.

Solution: Remove one of the duplicate properties.

Missing Properties

“Configuration.function requires that configuration.url or configuration.module is specified”

“Configuration.url requires that configuration.script is specified”

“Configuration.script requires that configuration.url is specified”

“Configuration.url requires that configuration.function is specified”

“ConfigurationUrlSasToken requires that configuration.url is specified”

“ConfigurationDataUrlSasToken requires that configurationData.url is specified”

Problem: A defined property needs another property that is missing.

Solutions:

  • Provide the missing property.
  • Remove the property that needs the missing property.

Running Apache JMeter based load tests in the cloud – how to

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Sometime ago, we announced that the cloud-based load testing service in Visual Studio Team Services could be used to run Apache JMeter based load tests. We are happy to let you know that this feature is now publicly available and you can try it out using your Team Services account.

This is a quick how-to to help you get started.

Essentials: How to run Apache JMeter tests

1. Create a JMeter based load test for your app using the Apache JMeter IDE.

2. In the Team Services portal, navigate to your team project. Under the “Test” hub, you will see “Load Test”. Click on “New” in the ribbon and select Apache JMeter test.

Hub-GettingStarted         jmeterauthoring

3. Upload your JMeter test (a .jmx test script).

4. Upload any supporting files that are required for running load tests – for e.g., csv files that might be used to data-drive a test, a user.properties file, etc.

5. Number of agents is the scaling factor. Your JMeter test will be replicated across the number of agents you specify and accordingly the load will be multiplied. For example, if the total number of threads in your JMeter test is 50 and you select 5 agents, your app will be hit with requests using 250 threads. More agents will be available in the future to generate a higher load.

6. Load duration – you can run a small test (a few minutes) to validate your configuration or a long one (upto 4 hours). In the future, we will enhance this to support longer tests.

7. Load location – you can choose to generate load from different locations around the globe. Pick a location that represents the geography from where you expect traffic to your application.

Results and reports

1. As your test runs, a live report will be available to you indicating key metrics such as Avg. response time, user load, RPS, etc, as well as charts for performance and throughput.

2. Any errors that may occur in your test such as failed requests, exceptions, etc. can be viewed in the Diagnostics tab.

3. Once the test finishes you get to view the top 5 slowest requests, and results (.csv format) and logs become available for download.

4. Have a favorite listener that you use to analyze results in the JMeter IDE? Open the results.csv in the listener and analyze away!

Contact

For any issues or queries, please contact us at vsoloadtest@microsoft.com

FAQ

1. What is the supported JMeter version?

A1: Our load test agents run Apache JMeter version 2.13, the latest version available currently.

2. Which samplers are supported?

A2: Currently, only HTTP samplers are supported.

3. I want to supply properties to JMeter. How do I do that?

A3: Add the properties you need to a user.properties file. Upload it using the “Supporting files” field and it will be applied when the load test runs.

4. Are custom listeners supported?

A4: Custom listeners are currently not supported.

4. How is my load test’s usage calculated? What are VUMs?

A1: A load test’s usage is measured using VUMs or virtual-user minutes. It is based on the load generated (virtual users) and the duration of the test. 1 virtual user corresponds to 1 thread for JMeter. For minimum usage applied and other considerations, see this link

5. What else can I do with cloud-based load testing?

A5: Apart from running JMeter tests using Cloud Load Testing, you can run:

  1. A simple load test – just provide your app URL and run a test. No other tools are necessary!
  2. Visual Studio based load tests– build a load test using Visual Studio Enterprise and run them on-cloud or on-premises.

Columnstore Index: Scan and parallelism

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When you query a table with clustered columnstore index, it is run in parallel unless you force it to run serially using MAXDOP or if SQL Server determines at run-time that there are not enough resources to run this query in parallel.

This is all well and good but there is one interesting aspect. The delta rowgroup is scanned using a single thread. However, if you have multiple delta rowgroups, they are scanned in parallel with one thread per delta rowgroup.

Let us look at an example

create-ncci-sql

Note, I only inserted 1 million rows and not (1024*1024 = 1048576), so the inserted rows will stay in the delta rowgroup. Now, let me run the following query

select avg (convert (bigint, unitsold))
from t_colstor

If you look at the actual execution plan below, it shows that it used 4 threads (note, the machine I am running it on has 4 cores)

But if you look at the XML plan, it shows that only one thread processed the 1000000 rows

query-plan

But if you look at the XML plan, it shows that only one thread processed the 1000000 rows
xml-plan1

 

Now, let me compress the rows in delta rowgorup using the following command

-- run this to compressed OPEN RGs
alter index t_colstor_NCCI on t_colstor reorganize with (COMPRESS_ALL_ROW_GROUPS = ON)

Now, I run the same query as before (use TF 8649 to force parallel execution if needed), and here is what I see for compressed rowgroup.

xmlplan-2

Do you need to be concerned about that a delta rowgroup is scanned single threaded? The answer is NO for two reasons (a) most columnstore indexes have very few delta rowgroups (b) if you have multiple delta rowgroups, they can be scanned in parallel with one thread per delta rowgroup

 Thanks

Sunil Agarwal

Clustered columnstore Index: Data Load Optimization – Parallel Bulk Import

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In the previous blog https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2016/01/10/clustered-columnstore-index-data-load-optimizations-minimal-logging/ , we looked at minimal-logging when bulk importing data into a table with clustered columnstore index. In this blog, we will look at parallel bulk import.

Recall that on rowstore tables (i.e. the tables organized as rows not as columnstore), SQL Server requires you to specify TABLOCK for parallel bulk import to get minimal logging and locking optimizations. One key difference for tables with clustered columnstore index is that you don’t need TABLOCK for getting locking/logging optimizations for bulk import. The reasons for this difference in behavior is that each bulk import thread can load data exclusively into a columnstore rowgroup. If the batch size

  • If the batchsize
  • If the batchsize is = 10240, each thread will create a new compressed rowgroup with X lock and import the data into it with locking optimizations as well as with minimal logging. In this case, there will be 4 new compressed rowgroups. The next batch will create 4 additional compressed rowgroups. You may wonder why did we not use existing compressed rowgroup? Well the reason is that once a rowgroup is compressed, it is marked read-only. If you want larger number of rows in each of the compressed rowgroups, you can either choose a much larger batchsize (e.g. 1048576) or run ALTER INDEX REORGANIZE to merge these smaller compressed rowgroups.

Let us now look at three examples with bulk import with the focus on locking behavior as this will determine if we can bulk import in parallel or not.
begin tran

– this loads the data in 1 batch

bulk insert t_bulkload

FROM ‘c:\temp\t_bulkoad-1.dat’

Example-1: Assume data file has 110000 rows (i.e. > 102400),  the data will be directly imported into a compressed rowgroup

locks

Example-2: Load the data same as in example-1 but use TABLOCK as follows. Key thing to note here is that this bulk import gets X lock on the table which means all other concurrent bulk import threads will get blocked! Unlike rowstore where TABLOCK hints leads to BU lock which allows parallel bulk import threads, there is no such lock supported or needed for clustered columnstore index.

begin tran

bulk insert t_bulkload

FROM ‘c:\temp\t_bulkoad-1.dat’

WITH (TABLOCK)

locks2 

Example-3: If the data file has 10000 rows (i.e.

locks-2-rowgroups

Here are the locks. Note, that it gets X lock on PAGE(s) and EXTENT(s) as well. Given that X lock delta rowgroups was acquired, there is actually no need to have locks on PAGE/EXTENT. We will look into this in future as the recommended case  is to load the data directly into compressed rowgroup

locks3

In summary, when bulk importing data into clustered columnstore index, choose a batchsize > 102400 and donot use TABLOCK hint

Happy Bulk Loading

Thanks

Sunil

New Ads Celebrate how Windows 10 Devices, Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 Do More – Just Like You

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Today, we’re excited to share a new advertising campaign for Windows 10, Surface Book, and Surface Pro 4 just unveiled during the Academy Awards pre-show, designed to showcase how “Windows 10 PCs do more, just like you”. Highlighting features like Cortana, Windows Hello, Microsoft Edge, Ink and more, the ads show how Windows 10 can help you be more productive, with the fastest and most versatile PCs, including Surface Book and Surface Pro 4.

Best of all, the campaign is accompanied by a range of special offers for incredible Windows 10 PCs, including up to $200 off select PCs from top partners like HP, Dell and Lenovo.

The first ad in the campaign features The Bug Chicks, Kristie Reddick, M.S. and Jessica Honaker, M.S. – entomologists from Texas A&M University.

The Bug Chicks are great examples of doing more – they focus on teaching about the incredible world of insects, spiders and their relatives and use them as a vehicle to talk about other topics like educational potential and career options. Their quirky videos and live presentations are designed to encourage students to overcome their fears, get into science and explore the natural world.

Real-Time Operational Analytics – using nonclustered columnstore index

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The blog https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2015/12/09/columnstore-index-real-time-operational-analytics-using-in-memory-technology/  describes that customers are increasingly looking for real-time operational analytics for the ability to analytics in real-time while minimizing or eliminating the cost of ETL and setting up of a separate DW. While the customer value is compelling but it was not possible earlier when data was organized as rows. With the introduction of columnstore technology since SQL Server 2012, customers are seeing dramatic (upto 100x) speed up in the performance of analytics queries. SQL Server 2016, with the introduction of updateable nonclustered columnstore index (NCCI), make it possible to do real-time analytics on operational schema. You can do so without requiring any changes to your OLTP or transactional application. All you need to do is to create an NCCI on one or more tables that are needed for analytics. SQL Server automatically chooses NCCI for analytics queries while your OLTP workload continues to run using the same btree indexes as before. In many cases, if the existing OLTP workload already had indexes for speeding up analytics queries, you can drop those indexes and replace them by a single NCCI index. If you are replacing multiple btree indexes with one NCCI index, you may see a speed up in transactional performance as well as shown in the picture below

 

ncci-basic

While this all sounds well and good, there are essentially two challenges to be addressed. First challenge is how we can get good performance for analytics queries when the database schema has been optimized for OLTP? Recall, that traditionally the Data Warehouse (DW) use Star or snowflake schema to give optimal performance for analytics queries. The schema for OLTP databases is highly normalized (i.e. with minimal data duplication) which when used for analytic queries could lead to poor performance primarily because of complexity of joins between larger number of tables. The significant query speed up made possible by columnstore index (i.e. NCCI) can overcome the complexity of query and still deliver most analytics queries in few seconds. At this point, it is important to emphasize the analytics query performance with real-time operational analytics will not be as fast as you can get with a dedicated DW but the key benefit is the ability to do analytics in real-time. Some businesses may choose to do real-time operational analytics while still maintaining a dedicated DW for extreme analytics. There are customers who have deployed NCCI in production and have eliminated the dedicated DW.

 

The second challenge is how to minimize or eliminate the impact of analytics on transactional workload. Many customers we talked to had indicated in very strong terms that transactional system tracks their business transactions and any slowdown in transactional workload will impact their bottom line and therefore unacceptable. SQL Server 2016 provides customers multiple options described below to eliminate or minimize the impact of analytics on operational workloads (to be covered in futures blog in detail)

  • Filtered Columnstore index: This gives customer the ability to create NCCI meeting a filtered condition. For example, if there is a natural filtered condition that can identify rows that are cold (i.e. not or rarely changed), you can minimize the impact of NCCI. Note, SQL Server optimizer will transparently pick both the cold rows using NCCI and the ‘hot’ rows using btree index. A strong recommendation or a best practice is to have a clustered btree index on the column(s) used in the filtered condition to identify the ‘hot’ rows efficiently.
  • Compression Delay: If there no natural way to express a filtered condition, the SQL Server 2016 provides you with an option ‘CompressionDelay’ which you can use to specify a ‘duration’ when the data row(s) is ‘hot’. After the specified duration, the row(s) are now marked for compression into compressed rowgroups.
  • Offloading analytics to AlwaysON Readable Secondary: Most mission critical applications are run High Availability configurations using AlwaysOn. Using this configuration, you can offload your analytics to one or more Readable Secondary as shown below. In this configuration, the only analytics overhead at primary replica is the additional NCCI.

RTOC-AlwaysON

The key takeaway I want you to have is (1) you can enable real-time operational analytics in your workload by just creating an NCCI with no changes to your transactional workload (2) You have multiple options available to minimize the impact of analytics on your transactional workload. Please stay tuned for additional blogs on this topic

 

Thanks

Sunil Agarwal

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