Introduction

SharePoint 2010 is a powerful platform that provides many useful features that help us in our day to day activities. As I was working in one of the projects I came along a challenge of implementing out of the box workflows, so I considered to explore the option of using one of the new features in SharePoint 2010 called Workflow Visualization.

Workflow Visualization in SharePoint 2010 (Using Microsoft Visio 2010)

Workflow Visualization utilizes SharePoint 2010 capabilities with the power of Microsoft Visio 2010 as an authoring tool. To activate this feature you must use the following:

• Microsoft SharePoint 2010 with SharePoint Designer
• Microsoft Visio 2010 Premium Edition (and activate Visio Services on SharePoint)
• Silverlight 3.0

Usage Scenario

You can use Microsoft Visio 2010 (Premium Edition) to create all kinds of sequential workflows (state machine workflows are not supported yet), all you have to do is:

1.     Create a New Visio Workflow

• Launch Visio, and then click on the File tab.
• Click on the Flowchart Template Category, and then click on Microsoft SharePoint Workflow to start authoring a SharePoint workflow.

2.     Authoring Your Workflow

There are three stencils available for SharePoint Workflow:

• SharePoint Workflow Actions
• SharePoint Workflow Conditions
• SharePoint Workflow Terminators

Use the above to create your own workflow

3.     Validate Your Workflow

The next step is validation your workflow so that we are able to successfully export it  to SharePoint 2010. To validate the workflow, users can click on the Process tab, and click on the Check Diagram button.

In the event that your workflow has issues, an Issues window will pop up, and the shape having the issue will be highlighted.

Note:

There are rules that you need to consider during the validation of the workflow, for more info go to:

http://visio.microsoft.com/en-us/Get_Started/WhitePapers/Pages/SharePoint-Workflow-Authoring-in-Visio-Premium-2010.aspx

4.     Exporting Your Workflow to SharePoint Designer 2010

To export, simply go to the Process tab and click Export:

Visio will automatically validate the workflow first to make sure the workflow can be exported and consumed by SharePoint Designer.

Note:

You can also import the workflow using SharePoint 2010 designer Import option shown below:

5.     Test Your Workflow using Visualization in SharePoint with Visio Services

To do so, go to the Workflow Summary page, and check the “Show workflow visualization on status page” box (note that the checkbox is only available if the SharePoint server has Visio Services enabled and if Visio Premium 2010 is installed in the same machine as SharePoint Designer 2010):

As a result, the workflow is not only being executed, but users can easily track progress of the workflow through visualization! For example, in the diagram below, there are icons indicating tasks “in progress” or “completed”. People assigned to the tasks are also displayed clearly within the Task shapes:

This is made possible by Visio Services, which enables viewing of Visio Web Drawings on SharePoint without requiring the Visio client to be installed for viewing.

 Additional Information:

This post used the “SharePoint Workflow Authoring in Visio Premium 2010” document as the primary source of information, you can find it under:

http://visio.microsoft.com/en-us/Get_Started/WhitePapers/Pages/SharePoint-Workflow-Authoring-in-Visio-Premium-2010.aspx

Organizations have different reasons and requirements for upgrading or migrating to Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS). They include:

• An existing, properly implemented, and operating public key infrastructure (PKI) may require an upgrade to a newer Windows version to make use of new features.
• Organizations may need to change or optimize their existing PKI. For example, the certification authority (CA) may have been installed on a domain controller, or incorrect configuration options may have been selected. To change the AD CS implementation so that it follows deployment best practices requires migration. In these cases, upgrading is optional and can be performed after the migration has been completed successfully.
• Microsoft defines and publishes a support lifecycle for each of its products. We recommend upgrading to a newer product before the support lifecycle of a product has ended. For example, CAs running on the Microsoft Windows 2000 Server operating system should be upgraded to Windows Server® 2003 to be supported and can then be upgraded to Windows Server 2008.
• Company mergers and reorganizations are a challenge for information technology (IT) departments and can be especially challenging for the PKI deployment. A PKI can be affected if organizational changes require naming changes or consolidation, or when encrypted information must be transferred to a new owner and encryption certificates be made available to the new owner.

The choice between whether to upgrade or migrate AD CS environment depends on the features and role services that needs to be implemented and the current and desired network environment. The following flow chart will help in selecting the appropriate options and strategies.

In this blog I will demonstrate how to migrate a Windows 2003 based Enterprise CA to Windows 2008 R2 based CA with same PKI name and hostname.

Decommissioning Windows 2003 CA

Installing Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise CA

Restoring CA Backup on Windows 2008 R2 CA

Reissue the templates

One of the major feature of Windows Server 8 is Hyper-V 3.0 This new version of Microsoft virtualization platform brings great improvements and features.

In this blog post we’ll cover a couple of Windows Server 8 Hyper-V PowerShell command lets. Using PowerShell cmdlet will reduce most of day-to-day administrative tasks.

Open Windows PowerShell ISE and begin with first command;

Get-VM cmdlet outputs all virtual machines that hosted on local Hyper-V server. As you seen above, it warns us about missing columns. To get more user friendly output, use Format List

Get-VM will give you a general idea about virtual machine’s state. That means you can use filters to get specific virtual machine states.

I used Get-VM cmdlet again but with pipeline and $_. special character. It filters the output to show me only virtual machines that status fields equal “Operating Normally”

Another helpful command is Checkpoint-VM. This cmdlet starts snapshot process for specified virtual machine.

Try get-help to learn which syntax and parameters available for CheckPoint-VM

I can use –name parameter to specify virtual machine.

Now firstly I used Get-VM to specify virtual machine and then pipe that information to Checkpoint-VM cmdlet.

As you notice, snapshot process began and finished.

Well, what about reverting Virtual Machines to the previous checkpoints? You can check all snapshots for a specific virtual machine with Get-VMSnapshot cmdlet. Required parameter is –VMName.

Now you have all checkpoint information for a specific VM. That means you can pipe this data to the Restore-VMSnapshot cmdlet.

In below example I used another method to pipe required data. As you see I use Get-VMSnapshot cmdlet’s name property as a Restore-VMSnapshot Name parameter.

But it gives me a confirm popup.

If you want to automate administrative tasks through PowerShell, you need to suppress some of confirm dialogs. It is possible with –confirm parameter.

Restoring snapshot..

Let’s look at other cmdlets. Networking is a major component of Hyper-V. Get-VMNetworkAdaptor gives you network interface details of virtual machines.

Also you can use Get-VMSwitch to get Hyper-V network switch details.

Let’s try to add another switch to Hyper-V. You need to specify physical network adapter name with –NetAdapterName parameter.

As you see above, it couldn't find any related network adapter on local host. To learn your physical network adapter names just run Get-Netadapter.

I assigned net adapter name which have a “UP” status value to a variable called $AdapterName.

Now execute New-VmSwitch cmdlet again. But I gives me another error:

It says my physical network adapter is already in use. Let me check.

Yeap. There is already a Hyper-V switch that uses my current physical adaptor and has a “External” switch type. I can convert that Hyper-V switch type from External to Private. That will let free my physical interface.(Wi-Fi)

Now creating again.

You can check from Virtual Switch Manager. As you see a new switch added and bind to physical network card.

PowerShell can also be used to modify other virtual machine hardware components. Add-VMHardDisk attaches virtual hard disk files (VHD/VHDX) to a VM as additional disks.

But of course firstly you have to create vhdx file separately. Use New-VHD cmdlet.

Now you can assign previously created virtual hard disk to a specific VM.

Here is our newly added disk on Hyper-V manager.

There are bunch of commands that helps you to manage Hyper-V 3.0 on Windows Server 8. In my next blog I’ll cover them.

Thanks.

Anıl Erduran.

In my previous blog article Building Configuration Manager 2012 Hierarchy – Part 3 Deploying Tier 2 Primary Site, we went over the required steps to deploy the first primary site in the hierarchy.

To have more than one primary site, you will need to make sure your hierarchy contains a Central Administration Site (CAS). More primary sites can be deployed by following same steps.

In this article, we will walk you through the process of deploying a Tier 3 Secondary Site Server.

As a required step, we would need to add the primary server computer account to the local administrator group on the secondary server.

Open Configuration Manager console, navigate to Administration section, expand Site Configuration and select Sites.

Right click on the primary server and select Create Secondary Server

Specify the Site Code, the Site Server Name and other information as shown below

Specify how the source files will be located and press Next

On the SQL Server Settings page, make sure the following ports are set correctly and click Next

On the Distribution Point page specify the following settings and click Next

On the Drive Settings page specify the following settings and click Next

On the Specify the content validation settings page, click Next

On the Specify the boundary groups page, click Create to create a new boundary group for the secondary site.

In the Name box, type Secondary Site Clients.

Click Use this boundary group for site assignment, and then in the Assigned site box, verify that PR1-Contoso Primary Site is listed, click OK and click Next twice

Verify that the creation wizard completes successfully.

After refreshing the console, navigate to Administration section, expand Site Configuration and select Sites.

Verify that the State shows as Active and check that the Site Code and Parent Site Code are correct

To monitor the health of the hierarchy, go to Monitoring and click Site hierarchy.

Expand the hierarchy and make sure the hierarchy is healthy by verifying the green check mark.

This comes to the end of this blog article and the deployment series.

Here is the video version of my previous Storage Migration article;

 Download link">http://blogs.technet.com/b/meamcs/archive/2012/03/23/windows-server-8-truly-live-storage-migration.aspx

Download Link: Here

Format: mp4
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