When Software Attacks!

Automating TFS Build Server deployment with SCVMM and PowerShell

Richard and I have been busy this week. It started with a conversation about automating the installation of new build servers. Richard was looking at writing PowerShell to install and configure the TFS build agent, along with all the various SDKs that we use across all out projects. Our current array of build servers have all been built by hand and each has a different set of SDKs to build specific project types.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Thursday, July 17, 2014

Our TFS Lab Management Infrastructure

Richard and I spend a good deal of time talking about Lab Manager and our environments. I’ve written here before about our migration to the latest versions of the various components of Lab and both Richard and I have delivered sessions at user groups and conferences. Richard was in Belgium last week for Techorama, after which he was asked about the specifics of our setup. Between us, we came up with a diagram of our Lab Environment and Richard recently posted that to his blog.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, June 8, 2014

Migrating to SCVMM 2012 R2 in a TFS Lab Scenario

Last week I moved our SCVMM from 2012 with service pack 1 to 2012 R2. Whilst the actual process was much simpler than I expected, we had a pretty big constraint imposed upon us by Lab Manager that largely dictated our approach. Our SCVMM 2012 deployment was running on an aging Dell server. It had a pair of large hard drives that were software mirrored by the OS an we were using NIC teaming in Server 2012 to improve network throughput.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Thursday, March 20, 2014

Links from presentation on Server 2012 R2

Thanks to all who attended the ReBuild and TechEd revisited event today. I promised that I would post the links from the final slide to this blog so you can all start evaluating Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2. Download and evaluate the Preview software http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/evaluate/trial-software.aspx Refer to additional Windows Server 2012 R2 resources http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/windows-server/windows-server-2012-r2.aspx Windows Server 2012 R2 on TechNet http://www.Microsoft.com/technet Refer to additional System Center 2012 R2 resources

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Speaking at NEBytes about TFS 2012 Lab and SCVMM 2012

On Wednesday 15th May 2013, Black Marble travels north, as Steve Spencer and I will both present sessions for the great guys at NEBytes. Whilst Steve covers fun hardware and software dev using Gadgeteer, I will be talking about our experiences with TFS 2012 Lab and SCVMM 2012. If you have seen some of my earlier posts, our migration to the latest and greatest was interesting, to say the least. I learned a great deal about how SCVMM and Lab talk to each other and I will be running through how we built our environment and the things we learned that could save you pain as you follow in our footsteps.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Wednesday, May 8, 2013