When Software Attacks!

Fixing Lab Manager environments with brute force

As you’ve probably seen, our Lab Manager/SCVMM 2008 R2 upgrade to SCVMM 2012 SP1 was not the smoothest in the world. The end result was a clean lab manager and SCVMM install, but a raft of virtual machines that had previously been part of environments. In tidying up, Richard and I learned a few things about picking apart VMs that were once part of an environment such that a new environment could be built form the wreckage.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Things to remember when building virtual machines for a lab manager environment

As you will have read on both mine and Richard’s blogs, we have recently upgraded our Lab environment and it wasn’t the smoothest of processes. However, as always it has been a learning experience and this post is all about building VM environments that can be sucked into Lab and turned into a Lab environment that can be pushed out multiple times. Note: This article is all about virtual machines running on Windows Server 2012 that may have been built on Windows 8 and are managed by SCVMM 2012 SP1 and Lab Manager/TFS 2012 CU1.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Notes from the field on our SCVMM/Lab Manager environment upgrade

Richard has posted a group effort article on his blog about our System Center 2008 R2/Lab Manager upgrade to System Center 2012 SP1/Lab Manager. All did not go swimmingly… I have more helpful notes that I am writing up myself and will post over the next few days around the steps to fix virtual machines that are part of an environment and tips on building complex multi-machine rigs for lab manager.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, March 4, 2013

Notes from the North East: Imagine Cup Hackathon 2012

We had a great time at the Imagine Cup North East Hackathon this weekend. Black Marble turned out in force with myself, Steve, Richard, Robert, Linda, Josh and Riccardo all helping out. Andy Westgarth and the guys at Sunderland Software City had done a solid job on the organisation and we were well looked after. There were nine teams there in total, from a wide range of Universities and Colleges in the Newcastle/Sunderland area.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Looking forward to the Imagine Cup Hackathon

It’s a busy week this week and I’m really looking forward to being involved with the Imagine Cup Hackathon for the North East Region this Friday and Saturday (1st and 2nd February). Black Marble have a long history of supporting the UK Imagine Cup teams and it’s great to be able to continue that support. We’ll be in The Life Science Centre, Newcastle upon Tyne in force this week. Steve Spencer, Richard Fennell, Robert Hogg and myself will be accompanied by Riccardo Viglianisi and Josh Whittle from Black Marble.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, January 27, 2013

More UK TechDays on System Center 2012 and Windows 8

Our good friends in the UK TechDays team have announced another raft of events in their fantastic IT Camps series. I’m hoping to be there for at least on of them and if you’re at all interested in Windows 8 or System Center 2012 I cant recommend them highly enough. No slides, no marketing – just technical content, demo driven with as much audience participation as they can manage. Everyone I’ve spoken to at previous camps has enjoyed them and learned a great deal.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, January 27, 2013

Upcoming presentations

It’s the start of a new year and my engagement diary is filling rapidly. Once again I am covering a wide range of topics for an equally broad audience which is something I really enjoy. January 15th will find me in Manchester at a Microsoft event for Fire Services. I’m giving an overview of Windows Azure PaaS and IaaS services and how they might be used to complement as well as replace existing IT systems.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, January 14, 2013

User profile service failures caused by Distributed Cache on SharePoint 2013

This is a relatively quick post, largely because I was not able to record the details of the error messages we saw in the farm before we fixed them. On a recent engagement we were investigating problems with a SharePoint 2013 farm that had been installed for our customer by a third party. There were a number of issues that we worked through but I wanted to record this one for the community.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, January 14, 2013

Many upcoming speaking engagements

I seem to have been doing a lot of presenting lately, and the next few weeks are similarly busy. As a one-stop shop to plug them all, here is a list of upcoming events I will be presenting, co-presenting or supporting: VMUG Leeds, 25th October 2012 I am co-presenting with the marvellous Andy Fryer on a range of content around Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V. It’s the first time I’ve attended a VMUG so I’m looking forward to it!

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, October 22, 2012

Speaking at Designing Beautiful Windows Apps in Dublin

I’m really excited to be presenting at a one day event on Windows 8 application design in Dublin on Wednesday 26th September. I’m excited because Bill Buxton is delivering the keynote at the event and I’m a big fan. I’m delivering a session snappily titled ‘From 8 to 88 inches: designing for everyone’ and I’ll be talking about the challenges posed by the incredible variety of devices Windows 8 will be used with.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Saturday, September 22, 2012