Microsoft.com Operations
We are the operations team that runs the Microsoft.com sites.
New IIS 7.0 White Paper…Internet Information Services 7.0 in Windows Server 2008 Provides an Improved Web and Application Platform
This paper discusses the management, security, performance and extensibility improvements when...
Date: 04/25/2008
Modern .NET Development and The Joy of Simple LINQ to SQL
Introduction – Modern .NET Development It took me a while to realize it, but Microsoft .NET...
Date: 04/16/2008
Microsoft.com Engineering Operations Forum Is Now LIVE!!
We are pleased to announce that the Microsoft.com Engineering Operations Forum is now live on...
Date: 03/12/2008
IIS7.0 Lessons Learned In MSCOM Production Environment - On Demand Webcast
MSCOM has been running IIS7.0 in production since June 12, 2007. On November 27 we did a webcast...
Date: 12/04/2007
Analyzing HTTP Traffic On Your IIS 7.0 Cluster
If you have ever run an enterprise web site you have probably received a panicked call from a...
Date: 11/29/2007
Power Parsing...some days you just need more power for your parser
Obviously the title can mean a bunch of different things, in this case we are merging two fun...
Date: 10/01/2007
Using SQL 2005 Snapshots As A Rollback Procedure
One of the great new features of SQL 2005 is database snapshots. With one simple transact SQL...
Date: 08/08/2007
Release Management: Building the Bridge
In the last post from the release management team, we talked about the strategic topic of developing...
Date: 08/01/2007
MSCOM At TedchEd 2007 in Orlando...On Demand Viewing of Breakout Session
If you were unabel to make it to Orlando and were jsut dying to catch the MSCOM Operations...
Date: 07/31/2007
Gardening (on the Web Server)
While some people are born with a green thumb, others of us have the brown thumb that comes from...
Date: 07/10/2007
Pour Liquid Nitrogen On Your Ballooning Content…Dynamic Compression in IIS7.0
Most operational folk are heads down either fixing issues, implementing new changes, or preparing...
Date: 06/28/2007
How to Get SQL to Accept the Cert or A day (or two) in the life of an MSCOM Debug Engineer – Part 2
(Mr. Cert’s side of the story) Some days, it just doesn't pay to get out of bed. Nevertheless the...
Date: 05/30/2007
MSCOM Service Management – How to Use Metrics to Transform the Business
An example of a measured change In our first two articles we highlighted the importance of...
Date: 05/23/2007
Release Management: A Bridge, Not A Barrier
For too many organizations, release management is viewed as nothing more than a roadblock to...
Date: 05/21/2007
Using Production Data to Test Can Make the Job Easier… But be Careful
Using production data is a smart way to test. It provides the most cost effective way to generate...
Date: 05/08/2007
Security In Cross Domain Web Services
(Eiditor's Note: This is part 1 of a multi part post on Cross Domain Web Service Security) So what...
Date: 05/02/2007
Imaginary Content - No Really!
When looking for ways to improve their site, the development team for MSDN.microsoft.com and...
Date: 04/02/2007
The GUI versus the Command Line: Which is better? (Part 2)
(As promised this is Part 2 of the GUI CLI blog. Part 1 is here.) Intro In Part one of this blog, we...
Date: 03/26/2007
Enabling Valued Change
(The only constant is change. This post form our Service Management Team shares some thoughts about...
Date: 03/22/2007
The GUI versus the Command Line: Which is better? (Part 1)
(Editor’s Note: Are you a point-and-click person or more of a propeller head? What on the surface...
Date: 03/12/2007
Embracing SQLCLR and the XML Data Type
Introduction – If I Can Use These Things, You Can Microsoft SQL Server 2005 has been out for about a...
Date: 03/06/2007
3rd Party Vendor Solutions: Do they reach their potential?
Theory vs. Actual Save time. Save money. Free up your full time employees to work on higher value...
Date: 02/14/2007
Application Performance Testing at MSCOM
One of the very important tasks that falls on the Test teams here at MSCOM is performance testing of...
Date: 02/06/2007
Why is the security team still laughing at your functional spec?
You cranked out your best functional specification ever for your Internet web application’s...
Date: 01/31/2007
Keeping Track of Database Capacity -- Monitoring and Planning
As a DBA at MSCOM, I'm often asked how long our servers have before they run out of disk space. This...
Date: 01/18/2007
Is anyone watching the health of your Multi-tier Web Application?
Do you know if each tier of your application is healthy? This is especially challenging when you...
Date: 01/12/2007
Scrum De-Mystified, Not So Bad After All
It all started this past summer, of 2006. I started hearing about the latest sure-fire recipe for...
Date: 12/13/2006
Tell me how I’m measured…and I’ll behave accordingly
(This is the initial blog post from the MSCOM Service Management Team. This team is an essential...
Date: 12/08/2006
Sunset…Do You Know When Prune the Application Tree?
(This is the initial blog post from the MSCOM Operations and Portal Release Management team.) When...
Date: 11/22/2006
Windows Live ID Adoption Solution in Microsoft.com
(This is the first blog post from the Test Team that is working on the new Microsoft.com portal...
Date: 11/15/2006
Yes, We Recycle!...That Includes AppPools
And I am not just talking about Aluminum and Polystyrene. Application Pool recycling is one great...
Date: 10/25/2006
Microsoft.com and its ADFS Implementation
Active Directory Federated Service, ADFS, is a Windows Server 2003 (R2) component that facilitates a...
Date: 10/11/2006
Add a little Development, mix in some Security, a dash of Program Management, apply a liberal amount of IIS and SQL…Part of the Recipe for MSCOM Operations’ Blog
Readers of this blog might have noticed (or been puzzled by) the variety of subject matter that we...
Date: 09/27/2006
MSCOM Operations Presents At DRJ Conference
Recently Sunjeev Pandey and Paul Wright presented Microsoft.com Operations’ approach to resilience,...
Date: 09/25/2006
STUFF YOU CAN USE!! Finger Saving Good – No Touch Administration
Remote Desktop has changed the way we interact with our servers. However if you have a farm of 50+...
Date: 09/08/2006
View From The Top…”Running the Business”
(This is an ongoing series of blog posts from our Directors of Operations. The latest is written up...
Date: 08/02/2006
New Twists on the Ancient Art of Persisting Application Data
(Note: If you have been keeping up with this blog it is probably apparent that the subject matter on...
Date: 07/25/2006
Why Dogfood?
What is Dogfooding? Dogfooding is a Microsoft term for adopting a Microsoft product (or in a generic...
Date: 07/18/2006