I recently worked with a client to create a fairly comprehensive solution for implementing Continuous Integration and Delivery for SQL Server Databases using Visual Studio 2010 Database Projects.  I had the opportunity to give a talk on the project at SQL Saturday in Omaha.  The presentation is here if you want the slides.  I think there is some context missing with the slides alone so I wanted to do this post to further explain the solution.

Before talking about the solution, let me describe three different continuous processes.  Continuous Integration (CI) is most familiar and is often used to describe all three of these processes.  I think the differences between these three processes is more clear by using these terms.

 

Figure 1 – Continuous Processes

Continuous Integration – Verifying code quality by compiling and running unit tests on the build server when a developer checks in changes.  Often abbreviated as CI.

Continuous Delivery – Adds the deployment of the application and database to an isolated test environment where additional integrated and UI automated tests can be run. 

Continuous Deployment – Includes automated deployment of the application through each environment through production.

In this post I will primary review our solution for CI and Continuous Delivery.  This works lays the foundation for the deployment into Staging and Production but I will discuss this in a future post.

Database Projects

Database tools in the past have been different than the tools used application code development.  These database tools have been difficult to implement change management practices and Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) practices.  Today there is an increasingly amount of application developers managing database changes.   These are some of the reasons that have led to need for a tool like Visual Studio Database Projects (DBPro for short).  This tool is part of Visual Studio 2010 (Premium and higher).  To create a Visual Studio Database Project, select SQL Server from the process template menu and then choose SQL Server 2008 Wizard or SQL Server 2008 Database Project.

Figure 2 – SQL Server Database Project Templates in Visual Studio 2010

The primary purpose of the Database Projects are to manage the the version control of database objects in SQL Server databases. The solution we established utilizes this and many of the features of DBPro including TFS Build Integration, Data Generation, Database Unit Testing, Static Code Analysis, and Database and Data Deployments.  In this post I’m not going to cover how to use all of these features but focus on how to implement the features for Continuous Integration, Delivery and Deployment processes.  For more information, please take a look at the Visual Studio ALM Rangers Visual Studio Database Guide.  This solution is complimentary to the guide and goes into more more specifics for CI.

Figure 3 – Visual Studio Database Guide

Challenges

Visual Studio Database Projects are a great tool and I highly recommend teams utilize these for managing version control for the SQL Server Databases.  However, successfully using Database Projects can be challenging.  I believe the benefits greatly out weigh the challenges but it is important for the team to be aware of these for a successful implementation.

Visual Studio – Visual Studio probably seems like an odd challenge considering this is the tool to use for the solution, however Visual Studio is a beast.  Visual Studio has become everything development.  Developers are used to Visual Studio and I have seen DBAs and other database professions get frustrated using it when they first start.  Stay with it.  It will get easier and is the future direction of Microsoft in SQL Server 2012.  From what I have seen SQL Server Management Studio 2012 is based on Visual Studio.

“Truth Center” Shift – Development teams have been used to using a shared database server and making changes directly on server since the stone age.  Managing source control of the database in DBPro essentially changes the “truth center” of the database project to DBPro.  Changes to the schema should be made in DBPro and then executed or deployed from DBPro to the shared server.  Development can also be done in local sandbox called offline schema development where the developer can make the changes locally and check them in.  Changes made directly to the shared SQL Server database risk being overwritten by the next deployment from DBPro.

Permissions – I have found DBPro does a great job managing almost all of the artifacts for databases.  The biggest challenge and frustration has been permissions.  The problem is that the database project holds the specific version of the database.  For permissions this doesn’t work in most real world examples because permissions change in each environment.  For examples, developers need different permissions in development versus what they need in production.  In addition, many enterprises use a separate domain for each environment.  As shown in Figure 4 below, Database Roles for the most part are consistent between environments and primarily the users and their role membership in those roles will vary.  The best method I found for handling these permission differences is to exclude them altogether.  Use the following steps to handle permissions when importing the schema and adding new objects to the project.  One advantage of removing the users is that that they are normally connected to a login and the login lives outside of the database in the Master database.  Including the users and logins in the project requires an additional project called SQL Server Server Project that contains the Master database.  This solution does not require a SQL Server Server Project.

Figure 4 – Managing Permissions Across Environments

Importing Databases

When using the importing the schema and objects into your project, make sure you perform the following steps to first import all of the permissions and the remove those that will change in different events.

• Enable Import permissions in the Import Wizard to import all of the permissions including Roles, Users, and Role Membership.
• After Import has completed:
  • Role permissions are to be kept in the .sqlpermissions file.
  • Schema Users (without login) are to be kept.
  • The other users must be removed
    • from sqlpermissions
    • From Security\Users
    • From RoleMemberships

Adding New Objects

When adding new objects in the Database Project

• Use Schema View
• Manually modify the Properties\Database.sqlpermissions and add the new permission
  • EX: Grant Execute to Role for Stored Procedures EXECUTE TestRole

  <PermissionStatement Action="GRANT">
    <Permission>EXECUTE</Permission>
    <Grantee>TestRole</Grantee>
    <Object Name="spTestFromSSMS2" Schema="dbo" Type="OBJECT" />
    <Grantor>dbo</Grantor>
  </PermissionStatement>

Permission Scripts

By removing the permissions from the project, there needs to be a place to account for these.  This solution accomplishes this by creating a script in the Scripts folder for environment that essentially creates the logins, users, and assigns the role membership for each user.  This allows the flexibility to store any variations between the environments and still store these in the database project and in source control.  Do not set the Build Action to PostDeploy because you can only have one for each project and it will be combined with the Deployment script.   Instead set the “Copy to Output Directory” property on the script to “Copy Always”.  This will create an Scripts folder and the permission files in the build output directory so it can be called by the deployment scripts.

Source Control

The primary benefit for using the Database Projects is that all of the database changes can be managed in source control.  There are a lot of ways to organize your source control and with branching and merging this can become complex to manage.  I like to take a pragmatic approach to source control and keep things simple but allow for complexity if needed in the future.  The Visual Studio TFS Branching Build 2010 is a great reference for adopting branching and merging strategy.  For this post I want to simply show the relationships between Production, Development, and Work Orders.  The main points is that the database projects should be branched and merged along side the application source control with some sort of release branch that has the current production version.  The Work Order branch is for production support changes that will be made into production.  Development teams should do downward merges often to always have any work order changes incorporated early.  When the application and database changes are deployed to production, the development branch should be merged up to the Production branch.  The diagrams below show how this is organized from a logic view and physical view.

Logical View

Figure 5 – Logical View of the Database Project Source Control Branches

 

Physical view

Figure 6 – Physical View of the Database Project Source Control Branches

Continuous Integration (CI)

To setup the most basic CI process for your Database projects, you can simply add the Solutions containing the database projects to your CI build that is building your application code.  The benefit of this is that it will build your database projects and validate that there are no schema errors and can validate any static code analysis rules.

Continuous Delivery

For Continuous Delivery, we want to expand the process to include deploying the database, insert any test data we need, and then run the database unit tests.  This adds validation that the schema in source control can correctly build the database and that stored procedures can pass any number of validations with the unit tests.  These steps would look like the following:

Figure 7 – Simple Continuous Delivery Process

Visual Studio Database projects make implementing this process very simple and only requires a couple simple settings.  The dialog below shows the out of the box settings.  To open this dialog, select Test > Test Configuration from the menu.   The sections are slightly out of order.  To start we want to set the Deployment database project to the project we want to deploy.  Next choose the configuration.  The configuration settings in the database project will specify the target connection string and other deployment properties.  Next, the Database state setting will generate the test data for the unit tests by running one of the data generation plans.

 

Figure 8 – Database Test Settings

Types of Continuous Delivery

The example above basically deploys the current version of the schema to the target but doesn’t is not a good practice run into production.   It basically deploys the changes from the last deployment.  My goal of the Continuous Delivery process should be a practice run into production and essentially deploy the application and database the way it will be done for the production deployment.   There are two types of delivery based on whether or not the application is already in production.  For new systems that haven’t been deployed to production, the deployment will be to deploy all of the schema.  This is referred to as Greenfield.  For existing systems, the schema will the difference of what is currently in production with what has been developed.  This is referred to as Brownfield deployments.

From a Visual Studio Database Project standpoint, Greenfield deployments are a simple using the deploy option.  This will drop the database and execute the full schema script to create the database.

Figure 9 – Greenfield Process

For Brownfield deployments in Visual Studio Database Projects, the process is accomplished in two steps using Production and Development versions of the database projects.  The first step is to use the Production version of the Database Project to create the full CREATE script.  Next, use the compare feature to compare the Production and Development versions to create the DELTA script.  Again, the key is not to compare the development against the live production database but to use the version of the Database Project that was created either from the production database or from the Release branch in source control.  Once you have these two database scripts, run the CREATE script to drop the database and create the database to the production level.  Then execute DELTA script to bring it to the current development level.  From there you can follow the similar steps to execute the data generation plan and automated tests to complete.  See below to see how this fits together

Figure 10 – Brownfield Process

Putting this all together, here are the steps in order for a good SQL Server database Continuous Delivery process.  There is some customization that has to be done for this.  The database testing options that were available for the simple process, won’t work out of the box for this solution.  This is because the Database Project doesn’t know about the production and delta scripts.  The build by default would create the database and run the data generation plan before unit tests including the database unit tests.  However, the unit tests are run immediately after the application is built and we need to specify the a step to build create the scripts and then execute them.  I customized the build definition by moving the unit test execution activities to later in the process so I could execute the SQL scripts before the Unit Tests are run.  Once this was moved, I could use the built in features to run the data generation plan.  Below are the steps for the full end to end Database Continuous Delivery process.

Figure 11 – End to End Database Continuous Delivery Process

To combine this process into the application continuous delivery process, the same tasks above can executed along with the application steps.  This process is grouped into three groups: Build/Stage, Deploy, and Execute Automated Tests.  The process is outlined below.

Figure 12 – End to End Application and Database Continuous Delivery Process

 

 

VSDBCMD

One of the great features of Visual Studio Database Projects is that the deployment and compare functionality can be executed via a command line utility called VSDBCMD.exe.  This allows us to perform the necessary steps in our Continuous Delivery process.  I utilize a InvokeProcess Activity in the build definition to call a PowerShell script to execute the VSDBCMD commands.  Below are examples of how to create the Production CREATE script and the DELTA script.  The Production Script creates the full CREATE script from the compiled Production version of the Database Project.  The DELTA command shows how to compare two Database Projects to generate the DELTA SQL Script.

 

Create Production Script

& "C:\program files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VSTSDB\Deploy\vsdbcmd.exe" 

/a:deploy /dsp:sql /model:Ecommerce.dbschema /DeploymentScriptFile:c:\temp\OutputFilename2.sql 

/p:TargetDatabase="NewEcommerce"

 

Create Production and Development Delta Script

& "C:\program files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VSTSDB\Deploy\vsdbcmd.exe" 

/a:deploy /dsp:sql /model:Ecommerce.dbschema /DeploymentScriptFile:c:\temp\OutputFilename2.sql 

/targetmodelfile:"C:\tfs\deliveron\Production\EcommerceSolution\Ecommerce\obj\Debug\ecommerce.dbschema" 

/p:TargetDatabase="NewEcommerce"

 

In Summary

This concludes the overview of the solution for Continuous Integration and Delivery for SQL Server Databases.  I hope it gives you a complete overview for creating your own Continuous Delivery process.  Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or comments.

Review of Key Concepts

• There are three types of Continuous processes: Integration, Delivery, and Deployment.
• Continuous Delivery should be set up to be a practice run for Production.
• Create compare scripts between development and production database projects and don’t compare against live databases.
• VSDBCMD is a command line utility that perform the deployment and compare functionality in Visual Studio Database Projects.

This was also cross posted at http://www.deliveron.com/blog/post/Implementing-Continuous-Integration-(CI)-and-Delivery-for-SQL-Server-Databases.aspx

Last week I had the opportunity to speak at Omaha’s first SQL Saturday.  My talk was on Continuous Integration with SQL Server Databases.  I had a good turnout and some great questions at my session.  Here are the slides from my talk.  I mistakenly mentioned in the talk that column changes would be treated as a Drop and an Add, thus resulting in data loss.  Visual Studio 2010 Database Projects track the changes like this and incorporates the column change into the delta script. 

In my example, I have a Product table with existing data. 

Figure 1 – Product table with data

I renamed the column from NameOfProduct to ProductName

Figure 2 – Rename feature in Database Projects

 

Figure 3 – Preview Changes Dialog

You can see that the delta script that was generated by the Deploy option in the Visual Studio Database Project is aware of the column name change.  The script calls the sp_rename stored procedure to rename the column name and keep the data intact.

Figure 4 – Rename Column Script

 

Here are the results of table after the rename. No data loss!

Figure 5 – Product table data after the rename

In my next post I’ll discuss specifics around the CI for SQL Server databases solution.

Enjoy!

This was also cross posted to http://www.deliveron.com/blog/post/Column-Changes-with-Visual-Studio-2010-Database-Projects.aspx

If you have ever tried scripting database schema and data from SQL Server, you have probably been frustrated like me that there is not a simple process for doing this.  SQL Server Management Studio includes two options highlighted below.  The Generate Scripts… option works as expected and allows you to easily create a script to recreate the database.  However, if you want to export the data to import it at a later point, using the Export Data… option doesn’t quite do what is needed to script the data.  It allows you to script to a CSV or Excel file, however I have found importing an exported file, isn’t always easy.  

Figure 1 - SQL Server Management Studio

Surprisingly there is a better option not in SQL Server Management Studio but in Visual Studio 2010 (I believe this option is available in Visual Studio 2008, but I wasn’t able to confirm this for the post.).  Visual Studio 2010 includes an view window called Server Explorer.  This is typically used for data binding and tools like LINQ and Entity Framework.

Figure 2 – Visual Studio 2010 Server Explorer

The context menu for the particular data connection includes an option called Publish to provider… 

Figure 3 – Publish to provider

This option launches the Database Publishing Wizard.  When this wizard displays it gives you the option to export both schema and/or data to a SQL file.  Especially for data, this is perfect for migrating data from one environment to the next including preserving identity keys.

The wizard opens with the option to choose a database and automatically script all objects in the selected database.  I chose the AdventureWorks database and clicked Next.

Figure 4 – Select Database in the Database Publishing Wizard

The next step in the wizard is to choose what objects types to publish.  Here I select Tables.

Figure 5 – Choose Object Types in the Database Publishing Wizard

With the the Tables option selected in the previous step, the Choose Tables step appears.  Here I selected a single table for this demo.

Figure 6 – Choose Tables in the Database Publishing Wizard

Finally choose the output location.  This can either output to a file or to a hosting provider.  Here I chose the Script to file option to save the output to a file.  To use the Publish to shared hosting provider your hosting provider or target system must support a SQL Publishing Web Service and the database already exist on the target.

Figure 7 – Select an Output Location in the Database Publishing Wizard

This screen includes the publishing options.  The options are straight forward.  The Drop existing objects in script option will toggle a dropping existing objects in the target database before the new objects are scripted.  The Schema qualify option qualifies object names with the schema.  The Script for target database drives the compatibility of the script.  Finally the Types of data to publish allows for schema or data only or both.  Here I want to script both so I chose Schema and data.

Figure 8 – Select Publishing Options in the Database Publishing Wizard

The final screen is a confirmation of the options selected.  Click Finish to run the wizard and create the script.  When the wizard completes, it will display success.

Figure 9 – Successful Database Publishing Wizard

Below is the output of the Database Publishing Wizard for the schema and data.

Figure 10 – Schema output of the Database Publishing Wizard

 

Figure 11 – Data output of the Database Publishing Wizard

For more information on the Database Publishing Wizard, read Deploying a Database by using the Database Publishing Wizard on MSDN.

This was also cross posted at http://www.deliveron.com/blog/post/Script-Database-Schema-and-data-using-Visual-Studio-2010-and-Database-Publishing-Wizard.aspx

Enjoy!

Mike Douglas

The Team Project portal site in TFS 2010 is the collaboration hub for many activities that typically includes document libraries, team calendar,  wiki, reporting, and more.  TFS 2010 includes a number of reports that can be displayed on the portal using SSRS (using either SharePoint 2010 Foundation or SharePoint 2010 Enterprise) and Excel Services (using SharePoint 2010 Enterprise).    In this post, I will walk through customizing the report to display the burndown for the particular Iteration..

The first question I often receive is:

How do I customize the burndown dashboard report to fit my Sprint/Iteration?

When you display the project portal page and view the burndown dashboard report, you will notice that the default parameters don’t match the current iteration.  To update this, we can override the parameters being passed into the report through the URL.  I want to set Start Date, End Date, and Iteration parameters to display the correct data.

First, navigate to the page with the report

Click on the arrow and choose “Edit Web Part” to edit the parameters for the report.

On the right of the screen is the settings for the web part and report. The link is what needs to be modified.

http://tfsserver/ReportServer/Pages/ReportViewer.aspx?%2fTfsReports%2fBP%2fTeamProject%2fDashboards%2f
Burndown&rs:Command=Render&rc:Toolbar=false&StartDateParam=07/05/2011&EndDateParam=07/26/2011

To Determine the properties to add or change, you can go to the report itself and look at the properties available. In this example, we want to update the Start Date and End Date and add the Iteration. To find out what the name of the Iteration parameter is, go to the following URL to see the properties.

http://tfsserver/Reports/Pages/Folder.aspx?ItemPath=%2fTfsReports%2fBP%2fTeamProject%2fDashboards&ViewMode=List

Choose the Manage option in the context menu of the report

In the settings screen, choose the Parameters tab and find the parameter you are looking for. This is the name we will add to the URL above. In this instance, it is IterationParam

The format of the IterationParam parameter wasn’t intuitive.  The item is a multi-select checkbox list.  So it wouldn’t take a simple text value such as “Iteration 01”.

To figure out the format of value, I used the report viewer to set the value of the Iteration and exported the report as an Atom feed.  Then I opened the Atom XML and to pull out the value of the Iteration Param that it created.  Below is what the link looks like with the IterationParam value added.

http://tfsserver/ReportServer/Pages/ReportViewer.aspx?%2fTfsReports%2fBP%2fTeamProject%2fDashboards
%2fBurndown&rs:Command=Render&rc:Toolbar=false&IterationParam=%5BWork%20Item%5D.%5B
Iteration%20Hierarchy%5D.%5BIteration1%5D.%26%5B7130920747760410946%5D%26%5B-4689172157298829814%5D&
StartDateParam=07/06/2011&EndDateParam=07/26/2011

Finally paste this URL into the link in the web part and save. This is ready to display.

Mike Douglas

This post was cross posted to http://www.deliveron.com/blog/post/Customizing-the-Burndown-Dashboard-Report-in-TFS-2010-Team-Portal.aspx

In previous versions of Team Foundation Server there was not a way to install and configure TFS to be run in a completely high available environment.  TFS 2008 supports the data tier running in a SQL Server Cluster.  If the TFS application tier server crashed, there could be a “warm standby” configured to take over but required a manual process to do this.   TFS 2010 supports running multiple Application tier servers using Network Load Balancing (NLB).  Last year I first heard of topology improvements in TFS 2010 in Brian Harry’s post about the Administrator, Operations,and Setup Improvements in Team Foundation Server 2010.  I think this is an extremely important feature as companies are utilizing more features in Team Foundation Server and expecting these services to always be available.

In this post I am going to explain:

• Configuring the second TFS application tier
• Enabling and configuring Network Load Balancing in Windows Server 2008 R2
• Testing TFS using the NLB Application tier severs
• Lessons learned

 

Team Foundation Server 2010 Farm Network Topology Diagram

This is a diagram shows the topology of the TFS configuration I created to demonstrate the NLB option.

 

 

I set up this environment on a laptop.  I installed Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 on the laptop as the host OS to utilize Hyper-V.   I added Active Directory Domain Services (ADDS) and DNS to this machine and configured it as the domain controller.  I installed SQL Server 2008 R2 x64 on it also to be the data tier for the TFS installation.  Both TFS Application Tier Servers were created as Hyper-V virtual machines with Windows 2008 R2 x64.  To make this configuration 100% redundant I would have needed to install the reporting services on both of the TFS Servers, used a SharePoint 2007 Farm for the portal, and a SQL Server cluster for the data tier.  In fact, now that I have all of this working, I am going to uninstall everything and try to get WSS and SSRS installed on both application tiers also utilizing the NLB.  This would allow for 100% redundant and high availability for all of the TFS 2010 Components with only 4 servers (creating a 2 server SQL Server Cluster). I will post a follow up on how this goes..

 

Team Foundation Server Installation

The TFS installation and configuration for the first server (TFS2010A) was done just as if it was going to be the only server.  Here are the settings after I installed the first server.

 

For the second server (TFS2010B), the only pre-requisites that were required were IIS 7 and SQL Client connectivity tools.    Below are the steps for configuring the second TFS Server.

In the TFS configuration, choose the “Application-Tier Only” installation option.

The first step was the Welcome step.  There were no options on this step.  The next step is to specify the configuration database that was created when the first server was configured. 

Next, specify the service account for the the new application tier.  I chose to use the same domain account that I used for the first server.

 

This screen shows the summary of the settings that were chosen before the verification is run.

 

After the first time I ran the verification I received two errors.  One was that .Net 3.5sp1 wasn’t installed.  I’m not sure why I reported this error.  When I checked it, it was installed.  It could be related to other error.  The other error, TF255040, was that I didn’t have Reporting Services or SQL Server Connectivity tools installed.

 

I installed the connectivity tools and reran the verification process and it passed this time.

 

The configuration completed successfully.

 

The TFS administrative console now shows both application tier servers.

 

 

Setting up Network Load Balancing in Windows 2008 R2 and Hyper-V

Now that both servers are installed and configured correctly, the next step is to set up Network Load Balancing (NLB).  This will allows users to connect to TFS through a single endpoint and allow NLB to balance the traffic and route all of the traffic to one server if the other is unavailable.  This provides high availability in the event of an outage or when the servers need to be updated.

The first thing to do before setting up NLB is to pick a static IP address and create a DNS (A) Record for the shared name.  In this example, TFS2010 is the endpoint that clients such as Visual Studio 2010.  Here is a snapshot of the A records.

 

Here is an article I used to help enable and configure NLB in Windows Server 2008 R2.  Below are the steps I performed to configure it.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc731695.aspx

For each TFS Application Tier server, install Network Load Balancing by going to Server Manager > Features > Add Features > Network Load Balancing

Once NLB is installed on all of the App Tiers, run the Network Load Balancing Manager by typing nlbmgr at the command prompt.  Then connect to one of the hosts.  I chose TFS2010a first.  Right click on the Network Load Balance node and choose “Add New Cluster”.  Add the current server to the node by walking through the wizard.  You should be able to leave the defaults unless you want to limit the NLB to just port 8080. The last step of the wizard is to assign the Cluster a shared IP Address.  This IP Address is how all of the clients will access and see it.  Make sure this is different than the IP addresses of the any of the nodes in the cluster.

 

Next, add the other host to the cluster by right clicking on the cluster and choosing “Add Host to Cluster”.  Enter the name of the Host to be added to the cluster.

Here is what the Cluster looks like when it is configured.

 

Connect to TFS from Visual Studio 2010

 

Testing the high availability servers

To test the high availability configuration, I am going to take down one of the TFS application tier servers and then both.  First I created the team project while both servers were available.

Then I created a C# windows project, checked it in, and then checked out one of the files.

Next, I disabled the NIC on TFS2010a.

I did a Undo checkout on the file

NLB rerouted the traffic to TFS2010B and it worked perfect.

Next, I Disabled the NIC on TFS2010b so now both are disabled and it should error.

Tried to check out a file and got a TFS not available error as expected.

 

Last, I re-enabled the NIC on TFS2010A

I performed the check out again and worked perfect.

The NLB worked as expected.

 

Lessons Learned

I’m a developer.  I started my IT career as a server and desktop administrator but that was a long time ago.  So setting up a domain to test this scenario was fun but I ran into a few unexpected problems.   Here are a couple things that slowed me down.

• Installed DHCP and DNS with dynamic IP.  Make sure you assign a static IP address to the virtual internal network card on the DC.  Actually now that I have assigned static IP addresses to both of the TFS Servers, DHCP doesn’t even need to be installed.
• I couldn’t reach SQL Server 2008 R2 from the TFS Servers.  I got an TF255049 error in the TFS configuration.  I installed the SQL Server Management Studio and couldn’t connect using that.  I set up aliases and toggled named pipes on and off.  Still couldn’t connect.  Finally I stumbled upon the network protocol configuration for SQL.  TCP and Named Pipes were disabled.   Seems very strange but probably a security precaution.  I enabled TCP/IP and it worked perfect.

 

NLB Issue

I ran into an issue trying to configure NLB on Windows Server 2008 R2 using Hyper-V

“The interface is misconfigured”

Cluster IP address (IP) not added to TCPIP properties

Dedicated IP address (IP) not added to TCPIP properties

Fix is to enable MAC spoofing in the settings of each VM in Hyper-V.

Enjoy!

Mike

We have a lot of exciting things going on at Deliveron Consulting Services. I wanted to post a few of the updates.

Get Social with Deliveron

  Become a Facebook fan of Deliveron: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Deliveron-Consulting-Services/92712059791

  Follow Deliveron on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/deliveron

   Join the LinkedIn Deliveron Consulting Services Network group.

 

Deliveron Website Updates

We have implemented a few website updates.  These include:

• Deliveron Jumpstart Solutions including the TFS Jumpstart information and flyer. (I am very excited about this!!)
• “The Deliveron Story”
• Areas of Expertise
• Our Partners and Memberships

View the first edition of the Deliveron Monthly Newsletter.  Sign up on the website to receive future newsletters and announcements.

 

Upcoming Events

2/3 – Omaha SQL/BI User Group - Solution Consultant Moe Elatta from Deliveron will be presenting on SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 scale-out configuration and new charting enhancements. Register here...

2/18 - MSDN Webinar - Enhancing the Business Process Automation Capabilities of SharePoint Register here...

2/25 - Lunch and Learn - SharePoint Features You Need Register here...

I wanted to take a look at writing SQL Reports for TFS.  I was going to install the Business Intelligence Studio for SQL Server 2005 but I thought it would be better to use the latest edition of SQL Reporting Services in SQL Server 2008.   So I decided to upgrade my TFS Test Server to SQL Server 2008.  This is a single server install of TFS.   I ran the SQL Server 2008 Upgrade Wizard.     Most of the steps were straight-forward.  I only ran into one roadblock that I was able to fix and I documented below.  Here’s the steps.

 

First I chose the “Upgrade from SQL Server 2000 or SQL Server 2005” option.

 

I kept the default settings for all of the steps except when it asked what instance I would like to upgrade.

 

All of the checks passed but one.  I got the following error.

Rule "Security Group SID (Security Identifier)" failed.

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=94001

I went to the link but it didn’t help.  I searched on the web for for the error and I found the fix here.  Basically I had to manually replace the invalid SIDs with the new one.

 

To find the correct SIDs, I ran the command prompt utility:  whoami /groups

 

If you have multiple editions of SQL Server installed make sure you are in the correct one in the registry.  Look at the Edition key

 

I pasted the correct SIDs into the registry keys

 

I fixed the ones in MSSQL.2 but I was still getting the error.  I checked the log file %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\LOG\Detail.txt and here is the error.

2009-04-14 23:24:25 Slp: Sco: Attempting to open registry subkey SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\Setup
2009-04-14 23:24:25 Slp: SqlSidRule.GetSidValue - reading value name ASGroup
2009-04-14 23:24:25 Slp: Sco: Attempting to get registry value ASGroup
2009-04-14 23:24:25 Slp: Sco: Attempting to get account from sid S-1-5-21-3621347759-1475631895-1437307089-1014
2009-04-14 23:24:25 Slp: Sco: LookupAccountSid failed for SID S-1-5-21-3621347759-1475631895-1437307089-1014
2009-04-14 23:24:25 Slp: SqlSidRule.EnsureGroupExists - Exception caught and ignored. Returning false. Exception message is No mapping between account names and security IDs was done.

I grabbed the SID for the ASUser and it worked!

 

The wizard continued and finished.  I launched Visual Studio and TFS is working properly.

Now I can look at the SQL Reporting :)