Moving files into the azure cloud

Microsoft azure cloud provides SMB 2.1 file server functionality.

This is great when you need to access your files from different VM or services,
since don't need to run your own VM with the fileserver role installed.

As a bonus, you can access your files also via REST service, so your are very flexible in the usage of the service.

A introduction to the fileserver functionality can be found in this blog post.

When you have setup your service correctly, it's time to move some data to it.
The simplest approach would be to use xcopy or a similar tool to upload your files into the azure file service.

The drawback of such standard tools is, that they copy the files sequencially, one by one.
Azure is a cloud which provides massive paralell operations, so there is a faster way to get your file into the cloud.

Microsoft has released a tool named AzCopy which allows you to upload whole folders in paralell, which will speedup your uploads.

In this blog post there are more examples and use cases to bring your files into the Azure cloud.

130 free ebooks available from Microsoft

Microsoft has many many free ebooks available for download on their different websites.
Up to now it was difficult to find them, since they are scattered over the different sites and pages.

Thanks to Eric Ligman we now have a (complete?) list of all available free ebooks from microsoft.
The books are available in different formats, most are pdf, some are epub or mobi and even some word and zip documents are available.
Some of the ebooks are also available in multiple formats, just look at them.

The books cover MS related topics, from Windows 7, to Server 2012, Sharepoint, SQL Server and many other related topis.

You can also get a free info app, where new free ebooks will be announced.
Unfortunally this one is only available for Windows Phone...

Official Office 365 Roadmap available

Microsoft recently published a roadmap for the office 365 environment.
You can look at it here.

It shows what has already been rolled out, what is currently in the rolling out phase and what is intended to be implemented/changed in the next weeks/months.

New features are not released for all office 365 at the same time.
Rather the new functionality is rolled out in several phases, during a few days up to a few months, depending on the impact of the changes.

Office 365 activation error 0x80070005

When you install Office 365 and then start it, it might occure that the error messages 0x80070005 is shown and you are unable to activate it.

Usually you don't have to activate Office 365, since it is already "bound" to your online account.
So Office is automatically activated.

When you see this dialog, then there is a problem with rights on your system.
The simplest way to solve the problem is to run Word or Excel once as administrator.
Just right click on word and then select "Run as administrator" and you won't even see the activation stuff. It will be activated in the background and after closing word you just can use the office 365 suite as usual.

Fix orphan users in MS SQL Server after restore

When you restore a MS SQL Server to a different machine, you might expect orphan users.
This also happens when you detach a database and then attach it on another server.

You see the users in the Security->Users section of the sql server and also in the database itself, but you can't login with it.

The problem is, that MS SQL stores the SID along the users, and when you restore it on another MS SQL server the link between user names and SID won't match any longer.

Fixing this via GUI is unfortunally not possible, when you try to map the user it trys to create a new sql user and fails, because there already exists such a user.

Fortunally there are a few stored procedures (available since sql 2000 version) which help you fix the logins.

First, make sure that this is the problem. This will lists the orphaned users:

EXEC sp_change_users_login 'Report'

If you already have a login id and password for this user, fix it by doing:

EXEC sp_change_users_login 'Auto_Fix', 'user'

If you want to create a new login id and password for this user, fix it by doing:

EXEC sp_change_users_login 'Auto_Fix', 'user', 'login', 'password'

Automated backups for MS SQL Express

MS SQL Express systems do not allow you to backup the databases via sheduled jobs (Since the job sheduler is one of th emissing features in the express edition)

With this handy script you can however automate it and even compress and send the backup files to a remote resource.

automssqlbackup

http://devio.wordpress.com/category/automssqlbackup/

Installing .net framework 3.5 via ADS GPO

Deploying .net framework 3.5 via group policy is not as easy as it should be.
No idea why microsoft did create packages which can't be used by microsoft products....

To get installable .msi packages you can do the following steps:

Deployment of Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 x86 using Active Directory.

Microsoft Windows Installer 3.1 must already be deployed.

1. Download dotnetfx35.exe from http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/0/f/60fc5854-3cb8-4892-b6db-bd4f42510f28/dotnetfx35.exe

2. Run dotnetfx35.exe /x to extract the files

3. Move wcu\dotNetFramework\dotNetFX20 and wcu\dotNetFramework\dotNetFX30 into the root, eg to D:\dotNetFX20 and D:\dotNetFX30

4. To create Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 SP2 admin install (a prerequisit) run
msiexec /a Netfx20a_x86.msi /update D:\dotNetFX20\ASPNET.msp;D:\dotNetFX20\clr.msp;D:\dotNetFX20\crt.msp;D:\dotNetFX20\dw.msp;D:\dotNetFX20\NetFX_CA.msp;D:\dotNetFX20\NetFX_Core.msp;D:\dotNetFX20\NetFX_Other.msp;D:\dotNetFX20\prexp.msp;D:\dotNetFX20\winforms.msp USING_EXUIH=1 REBOOT=ReallySuppress /log D:\dotNetFX20\netfx20a_x86.txt TARGETDIR=D:\dotNetFX20admin
then copy D:\dotNetFX20\Netfx20a_x86.msi to D:\dotNetFX20admin and move D:\dotNetFX20admin to network share.

5. To create Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 SP2 admin install (a prerequisit) run
msiexec /a netfx30a_x86.msi /update D:\dotNetFX30\WCF.msp;D:\dotNetFX30\WCS.msp;D:\dotNetFX30\WF.msp;D:\dotNetFX30\WPF1.msp;D:\dotNetFX30\WPF2.msp;D:\dotNetFX30\WPF_Other.msp;D:\dotNetFX30\XPS.msp;D:\dotNetFX30\WF_32.msp;D:\dotNetFX30\WPF2_32.msp;D:\dotNetFX30\WPF_Other_32.msp USING_EXUIH=1 REBOOT=ReallySuppress /log D:\dotNetFX30\netfx30a_x86.txt TARGETDIR=D:\dotNetFX30admin
then copy D:\dotNetFX30\Netfx30a_x86.msi to D:\dotNetFX30admin and move D:\dotNetFX30admin to network share.

6. To create Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 admin install run
wcu\dotNetFramework\dotNetFX35\x86\netfx35_x86.exe /x and move vs_setup.msi and vs_setup.cab to network share.

7. Add Netfx20a_x86.msi, Netfx30a_x86.msi and vs_setup.msi in order to an Active Directory GPO.

An x64 version can also be created and deployed using this method.

Amazone MS Licencing deal

Strange news have been published recently:

News entry on information week

In short:

A company, using Linux systems/technologies pays some unknown license fees for "perhaps" patent violations, even MS not being able to prove anything...

So they probably just wish to prevent some treats from the big player in this business.

In other environments such stuff would be called "Protection racket", paying to prevent being harmed by the "stronger" player on the market.
With no proofs, no clear win for the one how pays....