Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials will now allow Essentials features in larger domains as a Windows Server role. See what else John Joyner picked as the best new features.

Along with the Windows Server 2012 R2 official release this month, there is another member of the Windows Server family that deserves attention, which is Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials. I’ve written here previously about Windows Server 2012 Essentials, and can report that Microsoft continues to invest in the Essentials product. While optimized for a hybrid small office scenario, new with Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials is the option to deploy Essentials features in a larger domain as a Windows Server role. Here are 10 new and cool things about Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials:

1. Server deployment

You can install Essentials as a member server in a domain of any size. Previously, Windows Server 2012 Essentials could be installed as the only domain controller of a small office network. Now Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials can be installed on a virtual server or physical server, and on a member server in an existing domain of any size. When installing as a member server, you can have more than one server running Essentials in your domain. Figure A shows the option in Windows Server 2012 R2 Server Manager to install the Essentials Experience role.

Figure A

Installing the Essentials Experience role on a member server in an existing domain.

2. Client deployment

You can connect computers to your domain from a remote location. In other words, you can domain join your users’ mobile computers even when they are not on your corporate network. Directing a new employee to the “/connect” virtual directory of Essentials remote access website (see Figure B) launches a simple wizard that prompts the user for four pieces of information:

Username and password for the domain.
If the computer is only for you, or for you and other domain users.
An optional description to type such as “TechRepublic Windows 8.1 Tablet”.
Will you want the computer to wake up for backups or to only perform backups when the computer is running.

Figure B

The Connect web page hosted by Essentials will domain-join a computer locally or on the Internet.

3. Pre-configured auto-VPN dialing

If you need access to on-premise network resources there is a pre-configured VPN client.Figure C shows the box that appears after connecting the computer to the network over the Internet. The user can optionally trigger auto-VPN dialing so they are always connected to the workplace.

Figure C

A pre-configured VPN Client can be optionally set to auto-dial the office.

4. Server storage

You can create shared folders such as user home folders on a secondary server on the network. Get an alert when a server folder grows beyond its defined quota.

5. Health Report

A really useful Health Report is integrated with Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials and no longer needs to be installed as an add-in. Depending on your business needs, you can customize the system health reports to display items that you prefer to monitor. Figure Dshows a daily health report viewed on a smartphone. This is a quick and easy way to keep your pulse on the health of a small network.

Figure D

Health Report viewed on a mobile device.

6. BranchCache

You can turn on BranchCache to improve data access if the server running Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials is located offsite. BranchCache is a wide area network (WAN) bandwidth optimization technology that is included in some editions of the Windows Server Windows client operating systems. To optimize WAN bandwidth when users access content on remote servers, BranchCache copies content from a main office or hosted cloud content servers and caches the content at branch office locations, allowing client computers at branch offices to access the content locally rather than over the WAN.

7. Office 365 integration

The following functionalities are new in Office 365 integration with Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials: SharePoint Libraries management and Office 365 Distribution Groups management. For the small business that is looking for a way to accelerate their cloud journey by moving some functions like email to Office 365, it’s hard to imagine this being any easier.

8. Mobile Device Management

If your Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials server is integrated with Office 365, you can manage your mobile devices using the Exchange Active Sync functionalities from the Essentials dashboard, such as define email access from a mobile device, set up password policies, and remote wipe of the mobile device.

9. Client Full System Restore

Client Full System Restore is now supported by Windows Deployment Services (WDS). You can create client restore service using the Set up Client Restore Service task and perform client full system restore over the network with WDS instead of using an image saved on a DVD.

10. Remote Web Access

Remote Web Access is updated and optimized for touch devices and enhanced with rich HTML5 support. Figure E shows off this really nice looking interface.

Figure E

The Remote Web Access home page is optimized for touch screen devices like tablets.

via: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-cool-new-features-in-windows-server-2012-r2-essentials/

Programming, Tools

Introducing node.js Tools for Visual Studio

November 29, 2013 AleWhite Leave a comment

Just when you thought it couldn’t be crazier in Redmond, today they are introducing node.js Tools for Visual Studio!

NTVS runs inside VS2012 or VS2013. Some node.js enthusiasts had forked PTVS and begun some spikes of node tools for VS. At the same time the PTVS team was also working on node.js integration, so they all joined forces and made NTVS a community project. NTVS was developed by the same team that brought you PTVSwith help from friends like Bart Read from Red Gate (he did the npm GUI), and Dmitry Tretyakov from Clickberry for several debugger fixes & features.

NTVS is open source from the start, and has taken contributions from the very start. It supports Editing, Intellisense, Profiling, npm, Debugging both locally and remotely (while running the server on Windows/MacOS/Linux), as well publishing to Azure Web Sites and Cloud Service.

It’s actually pretty freaking amazing how they did it, so I encourage you to download it and give it a try because some of the stuff (even given this is an alpha) is very very clever.

Blank Express Application

Node.js Tools for Visual Studio takes advantage of V8 Profiling API’s as well Visual Studio’s Reporting features to give you a sense of where your program is spending its time.

NOTE: See that File | New Project dialog up there? Visual Studio organizes things by language, so node.js is under JavaScript. But you’ve also got Python and Django, iOS and Android via C#, TypeScript, VB, F#, all in Visual Studio.

One of the things that’s impressed me about the way they integrated node.js into Visual Studio was that they didn’t try to recreate or re-do things that already worked well. It’s node, it runs node.exe, it uses the V8 debugger, it uses the V8 profiler because that’s what people use. Duh. But, for example, NTVS can take the output from the V8 profiler and display it using the Visual Studio Profiler Reporting Tools. No need to reinvent the wheel, just use the right tool for the job.

HACKING ON THE GHOST BLOGGING ENGINE WITH NODE.JS FOR VISUAL STUDIO

Let’s look at an example.

Go download and install node from http://nodejs.org.
Next, go download Ghost from https://ghost.org/download/ and unzip it somewhere.
Download and install node for Visual Studio on top of your copy of Visual Studio.
Optional: Install http://vswebessentials.com because it makes Web Development nicer on VS.

From within Visual Studio, go File New Project, click JavaScript, then “From Existing Node.js code.”

From Existing node.js Code

Point NTVS to your Ghost folder.

Create from Existing Code

Then tell node.js for VS that the startup file is index.js, hit Next, save the project file and Finish.

Create New Project from Existing Code

At this point, you’ve got Ghost inside VS.

Random: that since I have Web Essentials I also get a nice split-screen markdown editor as well.

From here, just hit F5 to Debug, or Ctrl-F5 to start without Debugging. Also notice the properties of the Project in the lower right corner there showing the node path and port as well as the Startup File. You can change these, of course.

Ghost inside Visual Studio with NTVS

Here’s me running Ghost locally. You can see the path to node, the ghost.js file and my browser.

You’ll get good intellisense for completions and help for method signatures.

Intellisense example

DEBUGGING

Node.js Tools for Visual Studio includes complete support for debugging node apps. This includes support for Stepping, Breakpoints, “Break on exception”, as well as Locals, Watch, Immediate and Call Stack tool windows.

You can manage Exceptions just like any other language service. See in the dialog below node.js exceptions are listed along with other exceptions in managed and unmanaged code.

Managing Exceptions in node.js for Visual Studio

The debugging still happens like it always has, with the node V8 debugger, except Visual Studio connects to the debugger over another socket (remember, you can even debug node.js remotely running on a Linux or Mac like this!) and translates how V8 thinks into how Visual Studio thinks about debugging. The experience is seamless.

See in this screenshot, you can see node.exe is being debugged, I’m running Ghost. You can see my Call Stack, and the Locals in the Watch Window. I can inspect variables, step around and do everything you’d want to do when debugging a Web App.

Debugging Session of Ghost in VS with Node Tools for Visual Studio

NPMVISUAL STUDIO

The npm experience is pretty cool as well. Node.js for Visual Studio is always watching the file system so are more than welcome to run npm from the command line or from within the node immediate window and Visual Studio will see the changes.

You can also use the npm Package Management dialog and search the repository and install packages graphically. It’s up to you.

npm package management within VS

Here’s a package installing…

Installing a module

The physical node_modules and how modules are handled is pure node…VS doesn’t touch it or care. However, the Solution Explorer in Visual Studio also presents a logical view on top of the physical view.

NOTE: I really like this. I think it has potential and I’d even like to see references in .NET treated like this. The physical and the logical, along with a dependency tree showing NuGet packages. It helped me understand the project much better.

There’s lots more. There’s an REPL interactive window, and you can just publish like any other web project using the same Publish Wizard that ASP.NET projects use. You can publish node.js apps directly to Azure as well, either with Git or with Visual Studio publishing.

You can also remotely debug node instances running on other machines by starting node with the included Remote Debugging Proxy.

node.exe RemoteDebug.js -machineport 5860 script.js

As mentioned, you can do remote debugging between Visual Studio and node running on any server OS.

CONCLUSION

I’m personally pretty happy with the way that Visual Studio is turning (in a short amount of time, seems to me) into quite the competent language and environment factory.

Node.js Tools for Visual Studio is entirely open source under the Apache license and they welcome contributions and bug reports. It’s Alpha and it’s early but it’s awesome. Go get it. Big congrats to all involved!

via: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/introducingnodejstoolsforvisualstudio.aspx

Tools

Automatically Check And Remove Duplicate Bookmarks and Bad Links In Chrome

November 19, 2013 AleWhite Leave a comment

Do you have a lot of bookmarks saved in your Google Chrome Web browser? If you’ve been saving and constantly adding new bookmarks for months or even years, it’s inevitable that you’re going to have some links that are no longer valid.

You’ll probably also have a few duplicates here and there, since there’s no way that you can possibly remember every single bookmark you have. Meaning, you may often bookmark the same link.

Managing a large amonut of bookmarks is hard work, especially if you try to do it manually. One of the easiest ways to manage your bookmarks and automatically check for duplicates and bad links, is with the Chrome extension Bookmark Sentry.

Here’s how it works.

1. Install the Bookmark Sentry extension from the Chrome Web Store.

2. As soon as it’s installed, the extension will automatically scan all of your bookmarks. Within seconds, you should see your scan results automatically open in a new tab; this process may take longer if you have a very large amount of bookmarks.

Bookmark Sentry Scan Results

3. You should see all of your bookmark “problems” listed on the results page. You can manually check each problem (click on the link in the Bookmark column), and delete the bookmarks that are no longer valid (click on the X in the Delete column).

4. You are also free to do a manual scan at any time from the Bookmark Sentry Dashboard, located on its Options page (wrench -> Tools -> Extensions -> click on Options under Bookmark Sentry). Click on the “Scan Now” button when you’re ready.

When the scan is done, the Bookmark Sentry Scan Results page will open up in a new tab, just as it did when you first installed the extensions.

Bookmark Sentry Dashboard

5. From the Bookmark Sentry Dashboard, you can also schedule automatic daily, weekly, or monthly scans. Choose your preferred interval from the “schedule scan” menu; a monthly scan is already enabled by default. You can choose to check for just bad links, just duplicates, or both bad links and duplicates.

With Bookmark Sentry, you no longer have to worry about duplicate bookmarks or bad links; it does all of the work for you.

via: http://www.maketecheasier.com/remove-duplicate-bookmarks-and-bad-links-in-chrome/

AleWhite

10 cool new features in Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials