Donovan Brown

Technology Blog

Reschedule a defered release

30 September 2014 Donovan-Brown Work (0)
Problem:  I accepted a release and deferred the deployment to a later date but now I want to change the date of the release. Solution: You have two options.  If you simply want to release the code now you can click the Allow Deployment Now button on the release's log page. If you want to change the date of the release simply click the Properties link and adjust the time and save your changes.

Does Team Explorer Everywhere support Git

30 September 2014 Donovan-Brown Work (0)
While speaking at the Dog Food Conference I was asked if Team Explorer Everywhere (the TFS plugin for Eclipsed based IDE) supported Git source control.  I actually did not know and promised to find out.  It just so happens that the 2013 release of Team Explorer Everywhere does have support for Git as explained in Brian Harry's post http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2013/11/03/team-explorer-everywhere-2013-is-available.aspx

Missing WinRMPort in Server DNSName xxx

25 September 2014 Donovan-Brown Work (0)
Problem  From Release Management I am getting the following error when I attempt a DSC deployment “Missing WinRMPort in Server DNSName xxx” Solution Make sure and include the port when adding a server to your environment.

Start-DscConfiguration access denied

25 September 2014 Donovan-Brown Work (0)
Problem: When I try and execute Start-DscConfiguration I get the following error message: The WS-Management service cannot process the request. The WMI service returned an 'access denied' error. + CategoryInfo : PermissionDenied: (root/Microsoft/...gurationManager:String) [], CimException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : HRESULT 0x80338104 + PSComputerName : VSALM Solution: Make sure you are running ISE as Administrator

Tokenization for DSC

05 September 2014 Donovan-Brown Work (0)
Update!  This resources has been officially release by Microsoft here http://tinyurl.com/xReleaseManagement Update 3 of Release Management introduced Desired State Configuration (DSC) as a deployment option in addition to the deployer based solution.  With DSC we can utilized the Local Configuration Manager (LCM) already installed on many Microsoft operating systems to deploy our applications without the need to install prerequisites.  However, I noticed after playing with it for a while that there was no mechanism to tokenize files for transformation. This is a requirement for applications that store configuration information in web.config or app.config files.  This data needs to be updated as the code is promoted from one environment to the next. I set out to fill this gap by writing a custom resource to transform the files as we can with the deployer based option of Release Management.  Attached to this post is a zip file that contains custom Windows PowerShell Cmdlets, custom DSC Resource and a sample configuration that shows how to use them. The xReleaseManagement folder contains the implementation of the Trackyon_xTokenize resource to be used in your configurations. This resource requires the Write-Token and Test-Token Cmdlets provided in the Trackyon.PowerShell.ReleaseManagement.Module module also in the attached zip. Finally in the zip file are to ps1 files with a sample configuration and start-dscconfiguration calls. All of the Cmdlets, resources and tools are provided AS IS, and are not supported through any support program or service. xReleaseManagement.zip (15.90 kb)

Speaking at Dog Food Conference 2014

24 August 2014 Donovan-Brown Work (0)
If you don't have a chance to see me at TechEd Europe or St. Louis Days of .NET I will also be speaking at Dog Food Conference 2014. Cross-Platform Development with Team Foundation Server 2013 This session provides an overview of how cross-platform teams can utilize the power of Team Foundation Server (TFS). The power of TFS can be leveraged by developers of any language and platform. We will demonstrate how to use and access TFS from Eclipse and deploy to Linux with continuous Deployment. 

Speaking at St. Louis Days of .NET 2014

24 August 2014 Donovan-Brown Work (0)
Shortly after returning from speaking at TechEd Europe I will be speaking at St. Louis Days of .NET 2014. A Practical View of Release Management for Visual Studio 2013 This session provides a detailed technical presentation of the functionality and architecture of Release Management for Visual Studio 2013. We start by presenting an overview of the key concepts, architecture, and configuration of the various components. We discuss the out-of-the box deployment actions available to compose automations for common deployment scenarios and how to use extensibility to cover the not-so-common scenarios. In more detail, we discuss the mechanism to manage variables across environments, how to include manual intervention, automated tests and rollbacks as part of a deployment, how to trigger release as part of a build, how to leverage logs to diagnose failed releases, and finally how to add custom actions to the inventory. These are presented through specific scenarios encountered in the field. Level: Intermediate  Automating a Manual test using Microsoft Test Manager and Coded UI Test This session demonstrates taking a manual test from Microsoft Test Manager (MTM) and automating it with Coded UI testing with Visual Studio. Level: Beginner  Cross-Platform Development with Team Foundation Server 2013 This session provides an overview of how cross-platform teams can utilize the power of Team Foundation Server (TFS). The power of TFS can be leveraged by developers of any language and platform. We will demonstrate how to use and access TFS from Eclipse and deploy to Linux with continuous Deployment. Level: Intermediate 

Speaking at TechEd Europe 2014!

19 August 2014 Donovan-Brown Work (0)
I am so excited to be speaking at TechEd Europe 2014.  Come check out the following sessions: DEV-B310 A Practical View of Release Management for Visual Studio 2013 BreakoutPrimary Speaker(s): Claude Remillard, Donovan BrownSpeaker Assistant(s): Proposed Speaker(s:) This session demos using Desired State Configuration (DSC) with Release Management for Visual Studio 2013 to tackle real-world deployment challenges. We start by presenting an overview of the key concepts, architecture, and configuration of the various components. We discuss the out-of-the box deployment actions available to compose automations for common deployment scenarios and how to use extensibility to cover the not-so-common scenarios. In more detail, we discuss adding custom DSC resources, how to trigger release as part of a build and how to leverage logs to diagnose failed releases. These are presented through specific scenarios encountered in the field. DEV-B333 Cross-Platform Continuous Delivery with Release Management for Visual Studio 2013 BreakoutPrimary Speaker(s): Donovan BrownSpeaker Assistant(s): Proposed Speaker(s:) With Release Management you can achieve true continuous delivery on any platform. This session demos how to use Release Management for continuous delivery in Cross-Platform environments including Windows and Linux.  We will cover how to leverage Desired State Configuration (DSC) and Chef integration to create a release pipeline for both Windows and Linux.