When Software Attacks!

Creating Azure Virtual Networks using Powershell and XML Part 3: Powershell functions for deletion

This is part three of a series of posts about using powershell to script the creation, deletion and (hopefully) modification of Azure Virtual Networks. In part 1 I went through the key steps with some rough code. Part 2 showed the much tidier functions I’ve now written to create virtual network elements. This is part 3, and I will present functions to remove elements. Hopefully I will manage to get the modification functions to work which be a fourth installment!

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Creating Azure Virtual Networks using Powershell and XML

I’ll be honest, I expected this task to be easier than it is. What I’m working on is some powershell that we might use as part of automated build processes that will create a new Virtual Network in an Azure subscription. What I’m after is to add a new network to the existing configuration. There aren’t many powershell commands for Azure virtual networks. The two we need to use are get-azureVnetConfig and set-azureVnetConfig.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, March 3, 2014

Declaratively create Composed Looks in SharePoint 2013 with elements.xml

This is really a follow-up to my earlier post about tips with SharePoint publishing customisations. Composed looks have been a part of a couple of projects recently. In the first, a solution for on-premise, we used code in a feature receiver to add a number of items to the Composed Looks list. In the second, for Office 365, a bit of research offered an alternative approach with no code. What are Composed Looks A composed look is a collection of master page, colour scheme file, font scheme file and background image.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Friday, February 28, 2014

Speaking at NEBytes on February 19th

I’m pleased to have been asked to speak at NEBytes again – a great user group that meets in Newcastle. I’ll be speaking about customising SharePoint 2013 using master pages, themes and search templates, along the same lines as my recent blog post. It will be an unusual one for me, as I will spend most of the session inside Visual Studio showing how to create and deploy the customisations that can deliver really powerful solutions without needing to resort to writing code (other than for deployment).

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Saturday, February 8, 2014

Using the Dell Venue 8 Pro Stylus

You will recall from my earlier post how much I like my Dell Venue 8 Pro and how disappointed I was that the stylus was on back-order until March. Imagine my surprise, then, when a package arrived at the beginning of this week with a shiny new stylus in it! WP_20140205_14_29_06_Raw As you can see from the picture, it works just great with OneNote (and it’s desktop big brother). The only niggle I feel obliged to point out right at the start is that the stylus requires a battery, which is an extremely obscure AAAA type.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Six tips when deploying SharePoint 2013 masterpages, page layouts and display templates

I’ve been hat-swapping again since just before christmas (which explains the lack of Azure IaaS posts I’m afraid). I’ve been working on a large SharePoint 2013 project, most lately on customising a number of elements around publishing. Getting those custom elements into SharePoint from my solution raised a number of little snags, most of which were solved by the great internet hive mind. It took me a long time to find some of those fixes, however, so I thought I’d collect them here and reference the original posts where appropriate.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, February 3, 2014

BlogEngine.Net automatically tweeting on new posts

I sadly miss Twitter Notify, the plugin for Windows Live Writer that would tweet when I published a new post. Fortunately, there are a couple of plugins for BlogEngine.Net that purport to do the same thing. I’ve just deployed SocialPublish to our server. Configuration is a bit fiddly, and I’m not sure yet how well it will work with our multi-tennant structure. This is my first post after activation so I’m keen to see if it tweets when I publish!

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, January 27, 2014

Living with the Dell Venue 8 Pro

venu8prohq Some time ago I wrote about how disappointed I was with the Acer W3 tablet. I really wanted that small form factor device, but the Acer fell short in pretty much every regard. Late last year Dell launched the Venue 8 Pro – the first of the new generation of 8” Windows tablets out of the gate. I sat on the fence for a while, looking at community comments on the the device, then finally ordered one after speaking to Simon May about his impressions of it.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, January 26, 2014

Dealing with AD sync issues in an Azure hybrid deployment

I’ve been building demo environments for Tech.Days Online for the past few days. I had been blogging as I built, but then I hit problems and time pressure meant I had to pause my series on building the hybrid network. I will pick up the remainder of those posts in the near future but in the meantime, I want to give you all the heads up on one of my problems.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Building an Azure IaaS and on-premise hybrid environment Part 2: DC and servers in the cloud

This is part 2 of a series of posts bout building a hybrid network connecting Windows Azure and on-premise. For more background on what the goals are, and for information on how to create the Azure Network and connect the VPN tunnel between on-premise and cloud see part 1. Creating a DC on our Azure Network I’m going to create a new VM on Azure using the VM gallery. One important point when doing this is that you should add a second drive to the VM for domain controllers.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, November 4, 2013