Microsoft.com Operations

The Mystery of the Missing Process Performance Counter in Perfmon

2008-12-19T00:57:00Z

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 back to him . I started to collecting data from my machines. One of the counters that he was interested in was Process à Handle Count à w3wp. I could not find the process counter the counters what I had was as follows. I quickly remembered about resource...(read more)

SE Tips and Tricks -- Save aTS Session Run Remote... Find Hyper V information

2008-07-11T17:58:00Z

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. This post kicks off this series. 1) How to remotely find out if a machine has Hyper V is installed? When you install the hyperv Role on windows 2008 it updates the BCD store (replacement of boot.ini in 2008 & Vista) of the machine with an entry...(read more)

Microsoft.com Operations Performance Analysis of IIS 7.0/Windows Server 2008

2008-06-09T21:12:00Z

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 make your decision clearer. Sure, the new file based configuration system and modular architecture of IIS 7.0 make administrating your web servers a whole lot more flexible. But how does it perform against its predecessor IIS 6.0 / Windows Server 2003?...(read more)

New IIS 7.0 White Paper…Internet Information Services 7.0 in Windows Server 2008 Provides an Improved Web and Application Platform

2008-04-25T19:20:00Z

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 !...(read more)

Modern .NET Development and The Joy of Simple LINQ to SQL

2008-04-16T18:51:00Z

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 advances in .NET application development technologies: Microsoft Product Release Date Major Features .NET Framework version 3.0 November 11th, 2006 WPF , WCF Silverlight version 1.0 September 5th, 2007 XAML rendering for web applications, JavaScript...(read more)

Microsoft.com Engineering Operations TechCenter NEW on TechNet.Microsoft.com

2008-04-11T22:44:00Z

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 is to share our experiences, best practices, and findings with the ITPro/Systems Engineering community. Take a look at the key articles that are in this inaugural launch: Introduction to the Microsoft.com Engineering Operations Team Introduces the...(read more)

Microsoft.com Engineering Operations Forum Is Now LIVE!!

2008-03-12T21:03:00Z

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 are engaged in real-world systems engineering. Log in with your Windows Live ID and be a part of the discussions....(read more)

Systems Engineering Architecture Consultation…”Help Us to Help You!”

2008-01-12T00:06:00Z

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 we may be able to help them with. Topics like our best practices we use in rolling out new technologies like Windows 2008 and IIS7.0 to our production web environment ,or how we use Peer-to Peer replication in our SQL topologies. Sometimes they just...(read more)

IIS7.0 Lessons Learned In MSCOM Production Environment - On Demand Webcast

2007-12-04T23:48:00Z

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 you missed this live event we would like to invite you to use the link above to view this On Demand. L earn about some of the new benefits and features in Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) version 7.0 in the Windows Server 2008 operating system...(read more)

Analyzing HTTP Traffic On Your IIS 7.0 Cluster

2007-11-29T19:11:00Z

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 you are rolling out a new application or software across your site and want to perform side by side analysis of servers to ensure their health. Over the past year we have rolled out multiple pre-release versions of Windows Server 2008 / IIS 7.0 onto...(read more)

Power Parsing...some days you just need more power for your parser

2007-10-01T19:15:00Z

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 and as a serious user of Log Parser I wondered how to get the two to interact nicely, hopefully in a way that makes each a little more valuable. The first solution was to simply call logparser.exe from the PowerShell . This did what I expected,...(read more)

The Tasty Morsels Found In Dogfood… MSCOM OPS Top 10 Changes In IIS7.0

2007-09-07T17:05:00Z

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 78? We keep a couple of servers running our previous build of W2k3 and IIS6.0 as a reference. The move from W2K3 to W2K8 while very slick, is a topic for another blog. This is about the top 10 changes that we encountered in IIS7.0 1. Simple, Configurable...(read more)

Using SQL 2005 Snapshots As A Rollback Procedure

2007-08-08T17:50:00Z

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 can do month-end reporting without worrying about changes to the underlying data. That’s pretty powerful. But did you know that snapshots can also be used to recover to a point in time? That is the subject of this article – how to use database snapshots...(read more)

Release Management: Building the Bridge

2007-08-01T18:05:00Z

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 listed as necessary to achieving that goal was having a solid understanding of when Operations needs to be engaged in a project. For this post, I wanted to provide a specific example of how we’re delivering on that in the MSCOM world. As the RM team...(read more)

MSCOM At TedchEd 2007 in Orlando...On Demand Viewing of Breakout Session

2007-07-31T18:17:00Z

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 is another chance for you to view this session. As the abstract states: Get the latest technology and architectural information about Microsoft’s corporate Web site and many other hosted business services such as Microsoft Update, MSDN, TechNet, and Communities....(read more)