This is a consequence of the support for Azure SQL Database - as you can use it as a data tier now, you can also...

Today is my last day at Quest Software and One Identity. Moving on has been a hard-thought decision, after over five and a half years....

Another huge feature brought by Azure DevOps Server 2019 is Process Inheritance - meaning you are going to get the same customisation experience you get...

This is the first of a (hopefully!) series of posts looking at the substantial new features of Azure DevOps Server, which was released yesterday in...

As you know, I am a huge fan of Martin Hinshelwood's Migration Tools for Azure DevOps. I've been using them for the past few months,...

Like many I received this email from GitHub a couple of weeks ago on an old repository: This made me think about how important security...

There is a well known issue with SonarQube's Azure AD plugin, where an upgrade from v6.x to v7.x fails. Fixing this issue involves modifying the...

As part of a migration process you might want to easily migrate the Build Definitions for your pipelines – you can easily do this by...

You might have read about the new Universal Package, something I am quite a fan of. There is no need for a huge software system...

At yesterday's meetup we got this question: why should I use GitHub to get the ten free parallel Azure Pipelines if I already have a...

It's been a couple of weeks from the Azure DevOps announcement, and I am contemplating an amazing London sunset while I prepare for tomorrow's event.Before...

Yes I know – it is a bit of an old news, but I was on holiday and I realised that there are so many...

If you run Team Foundation Server on-premise, understanding how SQL Server works on the Data Tier is extremely important. Despite the push for the cloud,...

Like I said in my last post, I really enjoy using VSTS Sync Migrator for Work Item migrations.There are a few reasons why I believe this...

I am in the middle of a TFS to VSTS migration, and unfortunately I cannot use the TFS Database Import Service this time around. So...

Many often do not realise how easy is to consume technology to make it accomplish a certain scenario. This happened just last week to me.For...

As you know, I am not only a technology enthusiast but also very into the business side of DevOps. And as a fan of The...

HTTPS is more and more common-place, not just for public websites but also for internal websites. This is extremely good for a number of reasons,...

After ten years of attending, then speaking at conferences it always strikes me what demos often miss are real world details that really make the...

"Sometimes we go full steam ahead with a complex solution for a very simple problem..."That was the answer I gave to a friend of mine...

Especially if you are testing client applications, you might want to run UI tests on a Deployment Group instead of a Build Agent. While technology...

A few weeks ago something happened on our TFS instance - we discovered that DBCC CHECKDB under certain conditions can mark a database as corrupted.Long...

I was reading this post by Microsoft Premier Developer’s blog, and it was a nice throwback to past times where I had to deal with...

I am going to speak at DevOpsDays Kiel next week about telemetry, and I was thinking about how much Application Insights evolved in the last...

I recently gave a go to this book, because I feel it is important as a stepping stone to whoever is approaching the IDE –...

Like I said in the previous post, modern deployment patterns are not an exclusive of the OTT providers and they are not something that requires...

Team Foundation Server delivers– as usual – the periodic snapshot of VSTS goodness on-premise.One particular feature I am really happy landed in our datacentres is...

Team Foundation Server’s Search Server can be tough. I mean, it works really well but it takes a certain degree of planning, otherwise it can...

I ran into this strange issue the other day in my homelab, and it is worth sharing it: I was trying to setup a highly...

This is an example of how TFS is robust enough to prevent you doing silly and potentially costly (in terms of time) mistakes.Let’s say you...

I ran into this very odd situation yesterday with the Reporting capability of my production TFS instance – I realised the Incremental Analysis Database Sync...

I spent most of February talking about Containers from the DevOps perspective – why you (might) ask? Well, the reason is pretty straightforward: if you...

Last week SonarSource released a new version of their tasks for TFS and VSTS, with a couple of very welcome additions.Up to v3, we basically...

A quick one I am dealing with these days – if you switch the Public URL of your Team Foundation Server to HTTPS you might...

Despite the push we’ve seen in the last few years, the Hosted Build Service might not be the right product for you for whatever reason.Then,...

Two weeks ago I dealt with a head-scratching outage. A few minutes of downtime, for a very stupid reason.So, we are starting in a situation...

If you are deploying HTTPS to TFS and you want to keep HTTP for a while, you might experience a strange behaviour: despite following the...

Usually upgrading Team Foundation Server is smooth and easy, but there is an exception this time around. It is not strictly related to TFS per-se,...

In the previous post we saw how you can automate SonarQube test upgrades, but now it is time for production.As mentioned, my artifacts here will...

Among the many things I do I manage a SonarQube instance. Not a big deal to be fair with you, but it is a valuable...

I was asked if there is a way of transforming configuration files at build time. Nothing else than the good, old and reliable SlowCheetah if...

Among the news and announcements from Connect() you surely saw YAML Build Definitions mentioned, and you might wonder – what’s coming? How does this fit...

I am a huge Excel fan, because it allows easy data transformation and its flexibility is second to none, despite its complexity. But I also...

A quick one today: if the Complete button is greyed out in your Pull Request UI, ask your TFS Administrator to start the TFS Job...

It is something I’ve mentioned a few years ago but the question came out again during my presentation at x-celerate.de:How should I handle a breaking...

I know this happens on a regular basis – but it caught up my eye this morning as I am finishing up preparation for X-Celerate.de.Let’s...

Packages are a thing, exactly like containers are.I mean – who wants to spend countless time in moving files, editing configuration files and the likes?...

If you use Team Foundation Server 2017 you already know this:The new form is brilliant: it makes a much better use of the screen space,...

For all sorts of reasons (including GDPR looming on you) you might feel the need to encrypt your Team Foundation Server databases. Proper encryption at...

I was on holiday for the last couple of weeks so I had only a limited coverage of what happened since the beginning of the...

How would you know how many times your Service Endpoint is invoked, with what result and by who?It is neatly after the Details and Roles...

Just a quick one – if you remove the Search Server before upgrading to TFS 2017.2, you might see failing Git_RepositoryCodeIndexing or TFVC_RepositoryCodeIndexing jobs raising...

With some projects you might face this:error MSB4062: The "IsTestFileByName" task could not be loaded from the assembly <path>\.sonarqube\bin\SonarQube.Integration.Tasks.dll.It is a known issue I’m afraid,...

If you have a large pool of Build Agents it can be easy to incur in a terrible headache: plenty of hardware resources to handle,...

Change is hard to swallow, it is the human nature and we cannot do anything about it so like every change, the new Release Editor...

A colleague rang up saying he could not clone anything from the command line, but everything was fine in Visual Studio. All he got from...

Code Search is a brilliant feature based off Elastic Search. I wanted to summarise a few tips from my relatively limited experience with Search Server...

The cool thing about SonarQube is that once it is set up it works immediately and it provides a lot of value for your teams.After...

I’ve always been a fan of homelabs. It is common knowledge that I am a huge advocate of virtualisation technologies, and pretty much all my...

I thought about reviewing The DevOps Handbook, but then I realised its real reference value. Books like this, with multiple layers of usage are really...