DevOps - Change in Culture, More Automation, Continuous Measurement and share feedback

End to End Azure Automation (DevOps Practice in Enterprise)

2014-11-21T05:53:00.005+00:00

Please head over to my new blog click here DevOps Practice .

Topics demonstrated are:

DevOps Practice

Automation of Cloud Services

Security aspects in moving towards Cloud
Unified build and deployment process
Monitoring and reporting application stack

Infrastructure as Code

Configuration as Code

Publish Artefacts feature in TeamCity

2014-05-25T06:44:00.000+01:00

Scenario:

I have been recently asked to use the teamcity's Publish artifacts feature instead of using the UNC. By default teamcity, will use the following location C:\ProgramData\JetBrains\TeamCity\system\artefacts to store the packages. If you try to specify C:\Packageartefacts\* => c:\tcoutput\CU_1.0.%build.counter%.zip in the command to override the default location. This will not work.

Problem:

Below is the error message you would see,

[05:02:33][Publishing artifacts] Failed to publish artifacts. Failed to upload artifact, due to error: java.io.IOException: Failed to create directory: "C:\ProgramData\JetBrains\TeamCity\system\artifacts\DHDemo\Build\19\c:\tcoutput"

[05:02:33][Publishing artifacts] [Artifacts publishing failed] {build.status.text}

Reason for above error :
Teamcity take the relative path to the artifacts location defined in the general settings tab. Now, lets see how we can change the artifact location.

Solution:

Change the Data Directory from the Globalsettings and setup the Teamcity. Caution : You might have to reconfigure your teamcity projects etc..

Update in Progress ;-)

error MSB4057: The target "Package" does not exist in the project.

2014-05-25T04:30:00.000+01:00

Scenario:

Task is to create the web deploy Package for the solution/project using the teamcity build agent with MSbuild.

Problem:

Below is the Error message shown, in one of the previous below we did discuss about the similar issue for web.application targets.

error MSB4057: The target "Package" does not exist in the project.

Solution:

Download web deploy 3.5 from the link Download web deploy (at the time of writing, please refer the version at the time of reading) and install on the teamcity build agent.

UnKnown way points:

When you are using the solution file and pass the Package target this will be applicable for all the projects within the solution. If any of the projects are not web project then you will encounter the error message in the problem section. Reason is all type of projects cannot be packaged. If you see the attached screenshot you can see I have used the csproj file with package targets.

Nothing is Hidden in developer world :-)

error MSB4019: The imported project "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v12.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" was not found

2014-05-24T08:37:00.002+01:00

Scenario:

When Setting up Teamcity agent to do the Build for .Net Asp.net web application without installing visual studio

Problem:

Below is the error message shown in the teamcity logs:

error MSB4019: The imported project "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v12.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" was not found

Solution:

Copy the following files from the development Machine into the teamcity agent.

On the agent Create the Directory : New-Item -Type Directory -Path "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v12.0"

Copy the WebApplications under the location C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v12.0\WebApplications.

Hidden Touch points:

If there are any other references required for additional components/targets please refer to the above location mentioned in the solution.

Fixing is interesting :-)

Setting up TeamCity 8.1.2 With VisualStuido 2013 GIT TFS Unmet Requirements - Windows 2012 Teamcity Agent

2014-05-24T08:11:00.000+01:00

Scenario:

I have got a project MVC 5.0 using entity framework 6.0 in visualstudio online with GIT as source control. Also, my teamcity 8.1.2 is running under 2012 windows server. Now, the task is to build the solutions/projects using the teamcity.

Known Touch points:

By default, Windows server 2012 comes with .Net Framework 4.5.1.

Server is 64 Bit server

Code is built using the MSBuild not the visual studio

Problem:

I'm using the new feature in the TeamCity 8.1 to create the Teamcity project from the source control URL. Which is quite handy to setup the build very quick. After this, Teamcity automatically detected this solution requires MSBuildTools12.0_x64_Path . Since this path does not exists by default on the server you will have unmet requirements for the agent to start building your code.

Solution:

Best Way : First thing is first, so All I have to do is download the latest version of Microsoft Build 2013 tools and install on the teamcity agent. It works like a charm now.

Not the Ideal way : Install Visual studio on the agent, for which you might need the license for nothing.

Get the builds going fast :-)

On Premises TFS 2013 Git With TeamCity - Project URL created with Spaces

2014-05-16T17:30:00.000+01:00

Scenario:

In one of the instance we have created the TFS 2013 Git project/Collection with spaces in the name. Example as below

TFS Sever name : Dinventivecode:8080
Collection Name : webcode and service
TeamName : Web Git

Below will be the URL generated: (Which is absolutely fine in normal instances)

http://Dinventivecode:8080/tfs/webcode%20and%20service/_git/Web %20-%20Git

Now, the task is to create the VCS root in the Teamcity for build purposes.

Problem:

Since, the URL has got the %20and & %20- Teamcity thinks these are configuration parameters for the agent requirements.

Solution :

Simple one is Just do not create the collection and team name with spaces. For URL's its always best we have with spaces.

Hope Space made space less issues

11 Simple things to consider before Office365 or Exchange online migrations with on-premise Active Directory

2014-04-19T05:24:00.000+01:00

11 Simple things to consider before Office365 / Exchange online migrations

Understand how many users have to setup/migrate into exchange online.
Download the DirSync Tool to sync users. (This will required the administrator Privileges)
Sign-up for an Exchange online / office 365 account. (microsoft-exchange-online-email-for-business)
Obtain the DNS information from the hosting provider. (This will help in provided your own domain address in email)
Also, Understand about Properties in the Proxy Address for active directory user to forward email address.
Consider using the Multi Factor Authentication to boost up the security.
Define and Setup required mailbox rules and policies.
If its a new setup consider using ADFS for user management.
Consider to install Latest Dot Net framework to be installed on the DIRSYNC Server.
Discussed and choose, Exchange ActiveSync and OWA for Devices
Now we are ready with tools and information required for setup a new instance or migration.

Lets discuss in next blog all about actual migration.

"Upfront Information brings healthy results"

Chromecast Icon Missing in Plex

2014-04-18T17:42:00.003+01:00

Problem :

Recently bought a chrome cast dongle which is really great and I bought this for watching youtube and my local language songs. Recently there are lots of application/extensions have been developed. One of the interesting thing I found was Plex to stream the local video or any video you see in the browser using the Plex it Pins. up to now its all easy to set-up and follow the sample instructions using the standard document like installing media server etc.. After all this setup I was not able to see the chromecast icon to cast to TV from the queue.

Solution :

Its Simple please check your router firewall rules and allow the connections in the inbound rules.

Note : There are loads of articles explains about reinstall app, browsers all things but its just firewall.

Enjoy watching from sofa with a Somasa

Configure Two Factor Authentication for OpenVPN Access Server

2014-04-14T02:30:00.000+01:00

Overview :

In recent years, there has been number of hackers, security threats , data breach , etc been revolving in the industry. Also recent issues with Heartbleed have been high risk to the IT industry. To have one more level of security for VPN infrastructure there is a simple to implement DUOSecurity within OPENVPN.

5 Simple Steps

Create the duosecurity account under https://www.duosecurity.com
Download the file duosecurity-duo_openvpn_as-5de4115.tar (https://github.com/duosecurity/duo_openvpn_as)
Create the Integration under the DUO Security.
Edit the file duo_openvpn_as.py and update the following values

Fill in your integration credentials on the following three lines:
IKEY = 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'
SKEY = 'yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy'
HOST = '3445456456456546.com'

Upload the updated file under
Run the following command to run the post auth script.
/usr/local/openvpn_as/scripts/sacli -a xyzuser \

-k auth.module.post_auth_script --value_file=/usr/local/openvpn_as/scripts/duo_openvpn_as.py ConfigPut
$ sudo /usr/local/openvpn_as/scripts/sacli -a xyzuser Reset

Reboot the services.
All Done for now , download and connect the application now.
Should be able to pop up with the DUO Authentication.

HeartBleed issues - Patching OpenSSL 1.0.1g

2014-04-13T16:23:00.001+01:00

Scenario :

Version of Operating System : Ubuntu 12.04

Hosting Provided : Microsoft Azure

Purpose : This server is installed with Open VPN Access sever and it used for accessing cloud services under VPN Connections.

Problem :

Open VPN is using OpenSSL, recently http://heartbleed.com/ issues have been discovered.

Solution :

Fix 1 : Download and install.

Is to patch the version of OpenSSL with 1.0.1g version.

Can be downloaded from http://www.openssl.org/source/

Fix 2:

Update the security patch with ubuntu updates.

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

After security updates , Please reboot the machine.

$ sudo reboot now

This is the Patched version :: 1.0.1-4ubuntu5.12

Verification:

$ openssl version -a

you should be able to see the package updated dated to 7th April 2014.

Secure and Be Happy !!

(Windows) Microsoft Azure Portal review - New Start Board

2014-04-05T07:23:00.002+01:00

Its been a good few months I last wrote a blog post. I have been working on Azure on day job and weekend Job. There are loads to write about it. But one thing I thought would write about it now is new portal for azure which is in preview as I write this blog. You can find it from https://portal.azure.com. Along with this Azure pricing have been drop to match the competitors. No more its called windows azure, its called as Microsoft Azure.

Lets start to talk about the home page itself, which has got nice tiles views of windows 8 theme showing of service health status , quick start , Resource groups and lot more.

Now, the good thing is to able to view the billing information right from the home screen which is really handy. Also to view the Burndown information and also view the usage forecast.

Next things is to have the notifications readily available for you to access which make most of our life easier to action them and review all notifications.

Lets talk bit more about how easy to create the services from the homepage. The Home page is named as StartBoard. In the side bar just click New and within few clicks you will be able to create any type of new services and added to the start board for easy access.

To finish of go and explore https://portal.azure.com and this new shiny preview you will definitely love it. Also, its pretty sleek and bug free. Microsoft have done a great job in pulling this out.

Enjoy exploring new portal.

Getting Started with Release Management formally knows as InRelease

2013-12-04T14:33:00.000+00:00

In this blog we are going to to see how we can configure Release management by walking through each screen.

Below is the screen where you will be able to configure the admin account for the release management server.

Under the manage users section you can create the local users or add the existing users in Active directory into release management server. Also at the same time you can choose what role the user is capable of doing either release manager or the service account for deployment.

After adding the users you can clearly see that the users and what are the roles assigned to each user

Under the manage group we can add the local groups or include the groups from the active directory.

The next is we need to add the servers which is target servers where the deployer is installed.

Setup VPN on Windows Azure

2013-11-27T23:35:00.000+00:00

Windows azure does not have any Mac VPN client for point to site VPN connectivity. If developers are Mac users then we need to come up with some other VPN products which are available on the markets. For small start-ups cannot afford for devices like CISCO, Juniper networks etc... Hence here Comes the OPENVPN product.

14 Little steps to get the OPEN VPN configured in windows Azure environment

Created a virtual machine with Ubuntu server 13.0 on the azure cloud.
Put the machine on the same virtual network where all your servers exists. This will ensure you get the same subnet IP address.
By default, azureuser account will be created with the password provided during the virtual machine creation.
you can use PUTTY to connect to the Ubuntu server
Make sure the ports for the HTTPS: TCP 443 , AdminUI: TCP 943, OpenVPN Server: UDP 1194 are open.
Download and install openvpn-as-2.0-Ubuntu13.amd_64.deb by running the following command in the putty session
wget -c http://swupdate.openvpn.org/as/openvpn-as-2.0-Ubuntu13.amd_64.deb
Install the downloaded package sudo dpkg -i openvpn-as-2.0-Ubuntu13.amd_64.deb
We can change the openvpn password by running following command sudo passwd openvpn
Now let get started in accessing the admin interface with following url https://[nameofpublicdns].cloudapp.net:943/admin
When you login for first time you will be prompted to agree the terms and conditions. Click on agree to continue to admin interface.
In the below section update the PUBLIC IP address of the VPNserver. By default it comes with the internal IP address.
Now Install VPN client and by accessing the URL https://[nameofpublicdns].cloudapp.net:943
Login with the user name and password the you are connected with VPN.

Happy secure Development environment access.

How can I connect to azure virtual machine when network connect is disabled accidentally?

2013-11-22T19:14:00.004+00:00

Problem:

1. Create the windows virtual machine in the azure portal.

2. Configured the network and wanted to add the Default Preferred DNS then went into the properties to changes the values.

3. During this process I have accidentally clicked on the disable the network.

4. Suddenly I got disconnected from the remote desktop connection.

5. Now its the real challenge to get the setting changed.

Resolution:

Option 1:

The easiest way to do is, login to the windows azure portal and select the affected virtual machine and click on the configure tab, in there select the virtual machine size (for example small size) to a different size (for example to medium) then click on the save button at the bottom. When the virtual machine gets restarted it will come up with the new NIC.

Note: In this scenario, windows azure will delete the old NIC card and create the New NIC (Ethernet card)

Option 2:

Delete the virtual machine, but not the associated virtual disk. Then create a new virtual machine by select the existing virtual disk and wait for it to boot up.

NO problems, a word resolution wouldn't exists.

Release Management for visual studio 2013 is now available for download

2013-11-19T05:00:00.000+00:00

In 2013 Microsoft acquired InRelease software from Incyclesoftware. Since this Microsoft have really worked hard in getting Inrelease integrated with team foundation server and visual studio 2013. At the time of writing Microsoft release management tool is supported from visual studio 2013 on-wards and prior version of visual studio should still continue to contact InCycleSoftware for licencing of deployment agents.

Below Link will have a quick overview of the licensing model and various components

http://www.visualstudio.com/en-gb/products/how-to-buy-release-management-vs

Download of release management for visual studio is available at http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/downloads/download-visual-studio-vs#DownloadFamilies_3

Explore and Concur !!!

InRelease preview 2013 - Concepts and Jargons (continuous delivery)

2013-11-18T19:00:00.000+00:00

What is InRelease?
InRelease is a Deployment and release management of the application to help continuous delivery in the agile based development environments. This will help organizations to build once and release to multiple environments. This also, help to do parallel deployments and define the rollback paths in event of deployment failure. Also, facilitates in defining various stages during a particular release. InRelease works very well with the Microsoft team foundation server because both use the similar xaml syntax for build and deployment sequences.

NOTE: In this section I'm not going to talk about how to install and configure all the components of inrelease, we will talk about it in a different article.

Before we deep dive into InRelease I think its best we take a look at few jargon's used with Inrelease.

There are three jargon's which is the heart of Inrelease Tool, Action and Component.

Tool:
The tool is a set of code or lines of code, for example an power shell script which can be silently executed by taking parameters on the target server. Also Tool can be used by the component or the action.

Action:
As mentioned above, this is typically a tool or command which is used within the deployment sequence.

Component:
Component is defined as a module from development perspective which is collection of different components is know as application. For example wcf service is a component or website is a component which can be deployed individually but all work together and the source will be from the TFS build drop location.

The Next three Jargon's are all about Grouping and organizing

Stage Type, Technology Type and Environment & Servers

Stage Type:
This basically used to identify various stages of testing we do and how we take our application from development through to the production.

Technology Type:
This is Tags used for storing additional information about the environments.

Environments & Servers:
Servers are the target in which IRDeployers are installed and grouped into environments.

Finally the last 3 R's jargon's are related with Releases
Release Path , Release Template and Release
Release Path:
The release path is defined usually as how you take your releases in specific scenario and how you define post & pre validation checks. This is normally same in most of the organisation.

Release Template:
This is more similar to the build sequence you will find in the TFS visual studio, windows workflow foundation have been used in InRelease to define the deployment sequence.

Release:
This is a specific version of release which is associated with a specific build in TFS and release template & stage type in inrelease.

4 different components available.

InRelease Server & Database
InRelease Client
InRelease Web Client
InRelease Deployer

InRelease server
This can be hosted on any supported windows server and also the supported database which can be SQL Server express or the standard edition. InRelease server can be access by clients and deployers using the http protocol and for security reasons it can be used with SSL as well.

InRelease Client
This is typically installed on the implementation/build engineers PC for editing the workflows and managing various actions in releasing the software to production environment.

InRelease Web client
This is very light weight components and this is used by approves and release managers who can have the ability to approve/reject a particular roll-out to different environments.

InRelease Deployers:
These are the Little windows service which needs to be deployed on all the target server where you need the deployment to happen. Which is configured to poll the InRelease server for any available actions to perform. Then if there are any it does a pull request to download and install the artifacts.

In the next blog we are going to discuss how we are going to release the artifacts using inrelease :-)

Knowing Basics is must in whatever you do :-)

Single server setiup - TFS 2012 restore in from Disaster recovery

2013-11-15T06:30:00.000+00:00

Single server TFS 2012 restore in case of Disaster recovery

Below are the 10 simple steps to remember to recovery from the disaster

1. Replicate the Hardware for the new instance same as the production version.
2. Install all the required software similar to the production environment along with the SQL server 2008 R2 , SharePoint 2010 and the tools required for the restore process.
3. Make sure users running are part of sql server administrator, sysadmin and also farm administrator to carry out the restore process,
4. The database restore process will recreate the encryption key for sql server reporting services.
5. User should be having the elevated privileges to run SharePoint cmdlets
6. Once, the above steps are ready we can go ahead and restore the databases which are backed up as part of DR process part 1
7. Restore process have got two parts to it, one is TFS database restore and SharePoint for restore
8. TFS database restore, launch the TFS administrator console, select Scheduled Backups -> Click on restore backups -> Select the backup network location ->complete the wizard (Following databases are restored , DefaultCollection, TFS_Warehouse,TFS_Configuration,ReportServer,ReportServerTempDB,WSS_Config,WSS_AdminContent,WSS_Content)
9. SharePoint Farm restore, Below are the two power shell commands should be run
Restore-SPFarm –Directory \\backupserver\tfsbackups\ –RestoreMethod Overwrite
Start-SPServiceInstance –Identity ServiceApplicationID (Get-serviceinstanceID)
10. Above step can be done from the central administration of SharePoint 2010.

Recovery is the art created from disaster :-)

Running Poweshell With Nant Targets

2013-11-15T04:00:00.000+00:00

If you are already using NANT as the build and deployment scripts and want to run the powershell scripts as part of the deployment process.

Below are the 5 simple steps

1. Create a service account which has got the elevated privilages to run the scripts on the target server from the agent.
2. Self sign the scripts or if use proper code sign certificates if one available
3. Use the invoke command to run the scripts as a script block
4. Create a target as mentioned below
<target name="deployps">
<exec program="powershell" workingdir="\PScripts" verbose="true">
<arg value="-noprofile"/>
<arg value="-nologo"/>
<arg value="-noninteractive"/>
<arg value="-command"/>
<arg value=".\sampleScripts.ps1"/>
</exec>
</target>
5. Execute the target as you do with any other targets.

Happy leagecy with shiny powershell

Windows Azure VPN Setup - Point 2 Site

2013-11-13T16:30:00.000+00:00

At the time of writing the point to site vpn was only available in the preview mode for the users with the help of self signed certificate. The main thing to note is the vpn clients were available for 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems. That is only for the windows operating system. If you are a MAC client user then you need to use windows image to achieve this.

Below are 10 simple steps to create the P2S VPN in azure

1. Configure the Virtual networks as per the msdn documentation.
2. Add the gateway and create virtual machine within the above created virtual networks.
3. Use makecert to create the root certificate. [Makecert can be found in the windows sdk]
4. use makecert to create the client certificate with above create root certificate.
5. Export the client certificate as .pfx and root certificate as .cer.
6. upload the root certificate to the azure management portal.
7. Install the client .pfx certificate on the client windows machine.
8. From the management portal, download the appropriate VPN client and install it.
9. From the networks, choose the installed client and connect.
10. once its connected you should be able use the internal IP address to connect to the server.

Happy Connection world...

Monitoring Makes Solutions Perfect

2013-08-03T09:34:00.000+01:00

Application Monitoring

Summary

After having look at the various application within most of the company it can be either a product/service applications, currently there is no mechanism through which we can capture/record the failures, performance issue and statistics to improve the product until reported by customers and/or accidental found within the team. Also, there is no mechanism to trigger automatic repair/warm-up scripts and notify product owners in the event of application failover. Hence proposing a product similar to Zabbix to enable and manage the application/services in a proactive manner rather waiting until it failover.

Scenario

Lets consider we are releasing a product/service to various clients/customers after all the testing(Regression test, Performance test, Pen test, load test,UAT) etc. and we are happy that the customers have not reported any issues. After couple of months, clien/customers are pushing for one patch with bunch of features to be implemented as soon as possible. Sine it’s a patch we decide not to go through the load/performance test to be carried out for this release and customers are happy. At the background after a month, one of the administrator login to the server and figures out cpu/memory are under heavy spikes thinks its quite usual because it does not break the server/application services.

Problem(not until something goes wrong)

As a product owner, I wont know until the server or application crashes. When this happens we have a big panic button pushed and running around to find why this happens.

Do we really have the data to go back when this problem started up?

Is this because of the patch?

this might raise so many questions in the WAR room.

Solution (Traditional)

We look at various logs and ask questions to customers/users to understand if they noticed any performance issues if so when. Then identify patches applied and windows updates applied etc.. also all the related application code changes to various components and lot more. We need to invest lot more time/resources to figure out one of the change in one of the third party component for change for x application have affected y application.

WHAS (When Happened Act Smart)

With Zabbix/similar tool in place with right parameters/check points configured, we would have got notification about the cpu/memory spikes and in turn we should be able to make appropriate action and at the same time its easy to identify the changes happened around that time frame. even if we miss notification we will be able to go back and check the metrics to identify the history, with the advantage of having data in place. Quick response, Easy troubleshooting and customer/user never know there was a problem.

Conclusion

If some sort of similar tool is already in place please enable/promote the usage wider with various team to take advantage and put the company at top in providing the product/services efficiently. If no tools in place lets get started with Zabbix (similar tool). Time for action is now, Its never too late to do something.

Configure Stash with IIS 8 and Application Routing Request Module (ARR) on Windows 2012 server [404 with .net code in Stash]

2013-07-25T07:21:00.001+01:00

Configure Stash with IIS 8 and Application Routing Request Module (ARR) on Windows 2012 server

install-configure-jira-confluence-and-Stash Follow this link to Install and Configure Stash with ARR.

When you are having the .net code within Stash there are few things which we need to be aware of and update the request filtering in the config.

Please add the below contents within the config files of ARR website just Before system.webserver tag , for the asp.net codes to work properly through ARR from Stash otherwise you will receive the error as 404 page not found.

</system.webserver>
<handlers>
<remove name="WebServiceHandlerFactory-ISAPI-2.0-64" />
<remove name="WebServiceHandlerFactory-ISAPI-2.0" />
<remove name="PageHandlerFactory-ISAPI-2.0" />
<remove name="PageHandlerFactory-ISAPI-2.0-64" />
<remove name="PageHandlerFactory-Integrated" />
<remove name="WebServiceHandlerFactory-Integrated" />
<remove name="SimpleHandlerFactory-ISAPI-2.0-64" />
<remove name="SimpleHandlerFactory-ISAPI-2.0" />
<remove name="SimpleHandlerFactory-Integrated" />
<remove name="CGI-exe" />
<remove name="ISAPI-dll" />
</handlers>
<staticContent>
<mimeMap fileExtension=".cs" mimeType="text/plain" />
</staticContent>
<security>
<requestFiltering>
<fileExtensions>
<remove fileExtension=".config" />
<remove fileExtension=".csproj" />
<remove fileExtension=".cs" />
<add fileExtension=".cs" allowed="true" />
<add fileExtension=".csproj" allowed="true" />
<add fileExtension=".config" allowed="true" />
</fileExtensions>
</requestFiltering>
</security>

Install Configure JIRA, Confluence and Stash on sub-domain with IIS and ARR in a single Windows 2012 server

2013-07-21T08:52:00.000+01:00

Task we need to accomplish is outlined below
Part 1
By Default after installation we access all these three application in below method.
Jira - http://dinventive.com:8080
Confluence - http://dinventive.com:8090
Stash - http://dinventive.com:7990

Part 2
Most of the engineers want it to be like as shown below
Jira - http://jira.dinventive.com
Confluence - http://confluence.dinventive.com
Stash - http://stash.dinventive.com

Follow the Instructions below you should be done in few hours.

Install JIRA, Confluence and Stash [Atlassian Suite]

I would prefer installing JIRA, Confluence and Stash using the windows installer and with a SQL Server. For this example I'm using Windows 2012 server and SQL Server 2008 database for the back-end.

Before proceeding, you can run netstat -a to see what ports are available to use. Make sure you do not want to use port 80 for any of the below configuration.

JIRA

Download the latest version of JIRA Installer (In this case its 64bit Installer) from https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/download
Run the installer and setup JIRA by following the documentation in Atlassian website refer this link https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Installing+JIRA+on+Windows [You can just follow the installer method]
In the above link you will get to know about install, starting/stopping JIRA, Configuring/Setup with database etc
Now, we are ready to access JIRA from the with the url http://dinventive.com:8080 or on the server http://localhost:8080

Note: Things to know, Ports is 8080 & running under tomcat container.

Confluence

Download the latest version of Confluence installer (In this case its 64bit Installer) from https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/download
Run the installer and setup Confluence by following the documentation in Atlassian website refer this link https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Installing+Confluence+on+Windows [You can just follow the installer method]
In the above link you will get to know about install, starting/stopping Confluence, Configuring/Setup with database etc
Now, we are ready to access Confluence rom the with the url http://dinventive.com:8090or on the server http://localhost:8090

Note: Things to know, Ports is 8090& running under tomcat container.

Stash

Download the latest version of Stash Zip version from https://www.atlassian.com/software/stash/download
Run the installer and setup Stash y following the documentation in Atlassian website refer this link https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/STASH/Installing+Stash+on+Windows
In the above link you will get to know about install, starting/stopping Stash , Configuring/Setup with database integrate users with Jira, email setup etc
Now, we are ready to access Stash rom the with the url http://dinventive.com:7990 or on the server http://localhost:7990

Note: Things to know, Ports is 7990& running under tomcat container.

Now we have completed Part 1 and have tested that all the applications are working as we expect.

Lets Get to the exciting bit of Part 2 to setup on sub-domain with IIS and ARR modules

Prerequisites:

Enable Web Server roles in server Manager
Install Web Farm framework
HTTP 1.1/1 Modules
ARR [Application Request Routing]
URLRewrite

Easy way to Install is to download web platform installer and choose the ARR module so that it will preselect all the required components.

Create three different websites within IIS with respective sub-domain as the host header. refer the below image

Select ARR and from the left Panel click the link server proxy settings and select the http version as http/1.1 as shown in the below image

Make the web.config changes to each website to reflect as shown below [Basically we are creating the rewrite rules]

JIRA - web.config

Stash and Confluence web.config
[Note : Confluence web.config have got extra urls to allow double space in the request filtering section]

Once you have completed this one last Check/Change need to made in the JIRA, Confluence and Stash on the server.xml file location under the CONF folder of respective installation.

In the JIRA Server.xml file make sure the connector section looks something similar to the below, using a proxy part will be missing.

<Connector port="8080"
maxThreads="150"
minSpareThreads="25"
connectionTimeout="20000"
enableLookups="false"
maxHttpHeaderSize="8192"
protocol="HTTP/1.1"
useBodyEncodingForURI="true"
redirectPort="8443"
acceptCount="100"
disableUploadTimeout="true"
proxyName="jira.dinventive.com"
proxyPort="80"/>

Also, for all the three applications , check the context path is set to empty.

Now, start accessing the application in sub-domain urls all should work just like charm.

Any questions please get back to me.

In the Next Blog , we will have a look at how we can enable SSL and get this working.

Sharepoint 2013 - Web.config Machine Key Configuration across Farm

2013-06-27T18:30:00.000+01:00

Sometime we get into the situation where you need to sync the config file specific contents across the applcation and few configs may be dependent on application generated values. one of the clasic example is to enable single sign-on for a specific application hosted in multipleservers then we need to make sure the machinekey is same across all the application.

For example, Sharepoint application generated the config files with autogenerated machine key, we need to replace with config in other application. Below little powershell can be run as a schedule task to make sure web.config is upto date.

Below scripts is written with two functions

# Update the Machine Conifg across the machine :: Manimaran Chandrasekaran Ver 1.0

#Global Variable defined.
$srclocation = "D:\dinventive.com\web.config"
$destlocation = "D:\howtoscript.com\webapp\web.config"
$currentDate = (get-date).tostring("mm_dd_yyyy-hh_mm_s")

function GetConfigElement()
{
if (Test-Path $destlocation)
{
$xml = [xml](get-content $srclocation)
$root = $xml.get_DocumentElement();
$system_web = $root."System.web"
if ($system_web.machineKey -eq $nul)
{
write-host "Machine Key element does not exist" -fore Green
}
$valkey = $($system_web.SelectSingleNode("machineKey").GetAttribute("validationKey"))
$dekey = $($system_web.SelectSingleNode("machineKey").GetAttribute("decryptionKey"))
$valtype = $($system_web.SelectSingleNode("machineKey").GetAttribute("validation"))
write-host "Values been grep successfully" -fore Green
}
}
else {Write-Host "Source Config file does not exist" -fore Green }

function AddorUpdateConfigElement ([string] $validationKey, [string] $decryptionKey, [string] $validation)
{

if (Test-Path $destlocation)
{
$xml = [xml](get-content $destlocation)
$xml.Save($destlocation + "_$currentDate")
$root = $xml.get_DocumentElement()
$system_web = $root."system.web"
if ($system_web.machineKey -eq $nul)
{
$machineKey = $xml.CreateElement("machineKey")
$a = $system_web.AppendChild($machineKey)
write-host "Machine Key element created successfully" -fore Green }
}
$system_web.SelectSingleNode("machineKey").SetAttribute("validationKey","$validationKey")
$system_web.SelectSingleNode("machineKey").SetAttribute("decryptionKey","$decryptionKey")
$system_web.SelectSingleNode("machineKey").SetAttribute("validation","$validation")
$a = $xml.Save($destlocation)
write-host "Update completed successfully" -fore Green
}
else {write-host "No file existson this machine" -fore yellow }

#Invoke the functions
GetConfigElement
AddorUpdateConfigElement -validationkey $valkey -decryptionKey $dekey -validation $valtype

SharePoint 2013 - How to Check a web application already exists

2013-06-26T19:00:00.000+01:00

This series is all about powershell, here you go

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Sharepoint.Powershell
#Replace the web application url needs to be checked
$webappurl = 'http://webapp.dinventive.com'

#Running below command sometime may error because of the webapplcaiton nonexistance
$checkwebapp = Get-SPWeb($webappurl)

if ($checkwebapp -eq $null ) {
Write-Host Site $webappurl does not exist $checkwebapp
}
else {
Write-Host Site $webappurl DOES exist $checkwebapp
}

Server Information, .Net framework version - Check using powershell

2013-06-26T18:00:00.000+01:00

Most of the time we always think why can't we automate few things in doing basic checks within the environments. Few of the samples which can be done using power shell This is easy to run across version machines in the domain.

function Ping-HostComputer {
Param([string]$computername=$(Throw "You must specify a Hostname."))

$query="Select * from Win32_PingStatus where address='$computername'"

$wmi=Get-WmiObject -query $query

write $wmi
}

function Get-SysInfo {
Param([string]$computername=$(Throw "You must specify a hostname."))

$wmi=Get-WmiObject Win32_OperatingSystem -computername $computername| Select-Object Caption,CSDversion

$netver = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Product -computername $computername| Where-Object {$_.Name -like "Microsoft .NET*"} | Format-Table name, version
$netver

write $wmi

}

Get-SysInfo('htsedusvr1')
Ping-HostComputer('htsedusvr1')