One typical day I receive a request from a performance tester who is trying to collect some baseline production data about www.microsoft.com , the request seemed simple collect a couple of performance counter values during peak hours and post the data...

Editors Note: One the System Engineers that run the servers that host www.Microsoft.com told me that he wanted to start posting some of the methods and tips and tricks that they use when managing one of the most heavily visitied web site in the world...

Now that Windows Server 2008 has been released earlier this year many enterprises are assessing the value proposition of moving to the Windows Server 2008 and IIS 7.0. As an IT Pro or decision maker in this process you want real world working proof to...

This paper discusses the management, security, performance and extensibility improvements when Windows Server 2008 is deployed to host and manage applications and services that run on the server and/or over the Web. Check it out on this TechNet link ...

Introduction – Modern .NET Development It took me a while to realize it, but Microsoft .NET application development has significantly evolved in the past year and a half. This is not your dad’s .NET . The following releases have added many considerable...

The Microsoft.com Operations Team is pleased to announce the launch of our new Microsoft.com Engineering Operations TechCenter . This site ids designed with the ITPro/Systems Engineer in mind. We get to work on some cutting edge technologies and our goal...

We are pleased to announce that the Microsoft.com Engineering Operations Forum is now live on TechNet. Come join us in discussions that are focused on Engineering Operations. Ask questions, give us your insights, help us build the community of folks that...

MSCOM Operations get lots of requests from both internal and external customers on how we operate www.microsoft.com , Microsoft Update, and the Microsoft Download Center (just to name a few). Those customers are asking about a wide variety of topics that...

MSCOM has been running IIS7.0 in production since June 12, 2007. On November 27 we did a webcast entitled: How Microsoft IT Is Providing an Improved Web and Applications Platform with Internet Information Services 7.0 in Windows Server 2008 In case...

If you have ever run an enterprise web site you have probably received a panicked call from a customer or from your Tier 1 monitoring team that your site was responding slowly or throwing 500 errors and that you needed to resolve this issue ASAP. Maybe...

Obviously the title can mean a bunch of different things, in this case we are merging two fun technologies: Microsoft PowerShell and Microsoft Log Parser . Here in MSCOM Operations, we are in the process of introducing Microsoft PowerShell into our environment...

Dogfood….yummmm! Yes it is true, Microsoft.com has been running Beta 3 of Windows Server 2008 in production since June 12, 2007. What does that mean? 78 of 80 servers that host the www.microsoft.com website are running W2K8 Beta 3 and IIS7.0. Why only...

One of the great new features of SQL 2005 is database snapshots. With one simple transact SQL statement, you can provide your users with a read-only, static copy of their data. For example, you can take a snapshot on the last day of the month and users...

In the last post from the release management team, we talked about the strategic topic of developing the philosophy of RM being a bridge, and not a barrier, to the deployment and support of applications into the production environment. One of the items...

If you were unabel to make it to Orlando and were jsut dying to catch the MSCOM Operations Presentation Microsoft.com: Employing Windows Server 2008 and Internet Information Services 7 As A Next Generation Platform for SaaS Web Applications , here...

While some people are born with a green thumb, others of us have the brown thumb that comes from working to get a garden to grow. While we dream of sweet fruits and crisp, fresh vegetables, sometimes all we get for our troubles is dirt under our fingernails...

Most operational folk are heads down either fixing issues, implementing new changes, or preparing environments for upcoming changes and when work is not being done we are in meetings :-). Every once in a while it is good to pop our heads up and see what...

Introduction – Maybe You Have Been There Too Ok, this could be another pretty dry topic, but here we go anyway. More programmer talk, which can put normal people to sleep. J A while ago I came up with a programmatic solution to a challenge I had faced...

(Mr. Cert’s side of the story) Some days, it just doesn't pay to get out of bed. Nevertheless the day described by Mr. Debug in A day (or two) in the life of an MSCOM Debug Engineer was not one of them for me. If you already had the chance to read...

An example of a measured change In our first two articles we highlighted the importance of measurements and why opportunities identified in this manner many times face an uphill battle . To continue the thread of “Service Management in the real world...

For too many organizations, release management is viewed as nothing more than a roadblock to deployment. Instead of returning value to project and operations teams by promoting the development of standards and documentation that drive improvements to...

Using production data is a smart way to test. It provides the most cost effective way to generate data for testing. This allows testers to spend more time focusing on writing good test cases rather than taxing their brains to generate meaningless information...

(Eiditor's Note: This is part 1 of a multi part post on Cross Domain Web Service Security) So what is the problem? Today, small to big sized enterprises end up with multiple domains due to various technical and business reasons. Creating a forest...

Some days, it just doesn't pay to get out of bed. Unfortunately you never know if a given day is one of them until you have someone walk in with a "quick problem". Usually these interruptions are easily deflected with a simple "What is the problem you...

When looking for ways to improve their site, the development team for MSDN.microsoft.com and Technet.microsoft.com wanted to be able to leverage a new feature set of ASP.NET - virtual path providers and dynamic compilation. What does a virtual path provider...