Managing Chef Cookbook Updates

Shortly after writing my first Chef cookbook and using it in a production environment we needed to update the cookbook with changes.  Thankful Chef has you covered here.  You can constrain cookbook versions in each environment to ensure that a new cookbook version is not automatically/immediately applied to a production server.  Instead we can slowly …

Managing Chef Cookbook Updates Read More »

C# Unit Testing: Incrementally Improve Testability

Consider a seasoned brownfield (legacy or seasoned project; not new development) project with little to no unit tests. How and where do you start unit testing?  Should you stop all forward development and refactor the entire solution at once to be testable?  Probably not. Most brown field projects were not developed with testing in mind …

C# Unit Testing: Incrementally Improve Testability Read More »

Chef on Windows Tip: WinRM Bootstrap Failure – .bat not recognized

I hit the following error last week when attempting to bootstrap a Windows server over WinRM: Creating new client for MYSERVER01 Creating new node for MYSERVER01 Waiting for remote response before bootstrap.MYSERVER01 . MYSERVER01 Response received. Remote node responded after 0.03 minutes. Bootstrapping Chef on MYSERVER01 MYSERVER01 Rendering “C:\Users\TEMP\AppData\Local\Temp\bootstrap-17856-1514391069.bat” chunk 1 MYSERVER01 Rendering “C:\Users\TEMP\AppData\Local\Temp\bootstrap-17856-1514391069.bat” chunk …

Chef on Windows Tip: WinRM Bootstrap Failure – .bat not recognized Read More »

Chef on Windows Tip: Windows Package Install Error on Bootstrap

I’ve seen the following error a few times when bootstrapping Chef on a Windows server: * windows_package[Windows Management Framework Core 5.1] action install[2017-12-22T12:05:38-06:00] INFO: Processing windows_package[Windows Management Framework Core 5.1] action install (powershell::powershell5 line 41) ======================================================Error executing action `install` on resource ‘windows_package[Windows Management Framework Core 5.1]’ ======================================================Mixlib::ShellOut::ShellCommandFailed ———————————— Expected process to exit with [0, 42, …

Chef on Windows Tip: Windows Package Install Error on Bootstrap Read More »

Windows Server 2008 R2 WebServer Feature Install Fatal Error – 0x80070643

I tried to change the installed WebServer features on a Windows Server 2008 R2 box and hit the following error: Installation of [Web Server (IIS)] Management Service failed. Attempt to install Management Service failed with error code 0x80070643.  Fatal error during installation     + CategoryInfo          : OperationStopped: (:) [], CimException     + FullyQualifiedErrorId : FeatureMessageDetail,Microsoft.Windows.ServerMan    ager.Commands.AddWindowsFeatureCommand     + …

Windows Server 2008 R2 WebServer Feature Install Fatal Error – 0x80070643 Read More »

Microsoft Connect 2017 Keynote Highlights

As expected, the Microsoft Connect 2017 Keynote was excellent again this year with many new service and feature announcements from a diverse set of talented presenters.  The keynotes and most sessions are available for on-demand viewing, which I highly recommend.  But, if you don’t have the time, this blog post is your quick cheat sheet …

Microsoft Connect 2017 Keynote Highlights Read More »

Building .NET Core and .NET Standard Projects in TFS 2015

We have been using TFS 2015 with great success for a couple years now.  This includes the new build system where we can use the built in build tasks.  For example, the typical Visual Studio project build definition includes the following tasks: These worked great until we tried to build a solution which included .NET …

Building .NET Core and .NET Standard Projects in TFS 2015 Read More »

Free Azure Services!

Microsoft is continuing to make Azure easier for developers to get started and try.  They now have a dedicated page to list all the free services available to all users.  In the past there has been mixed messages of the types of “free” accounts for different types of Azure users.  So this should make it …

Free Azure Services! Read More »