Reza Alirezaei’s Blog

One of the neat features introduced in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (Read it Windows 7 Server!) is the support for native VHD boot right out of the box. This feature allows you to setup multi-boot scenarios on your machine a lot easier and safer than the traditional way of provisioning multiple OS partitions on your hard drive – something that we all have been doing for a long long time! All you need to do is to make a VHD as a bootable drive that contains its own OS (Win 7 or Win 2008) and then make your computer to boot from it. Snazzy!

Ever since the beta bits of Win7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 came out, some folks have written great blog posts, tweets and articles that walk you through the steps to prepare a VHD image for native booting and everyone is approaching this from a different angle – see References section later in this blog post.

The problem is that if you are not an administrator or you have no familiarity with the tools included in Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 or WAIK , it’s quite challenging to follow most of those articles that are filled with technical or administrative jargons and involves lots of commands, utilities( For example WIM2VHD or PowerShell script) and various tools. Too much complexity for a dev guy, IMO!

My requirement for the use of native boot from vhd thing is so simple:

Scenario: SharePoint Dev,Demo and Validation Machine

Goals:

1. To build a common , reusable SharePoint image that can be immediately used for dev, demo & testing purposes.
2. To build this image using available user interfaces (i.e. Hyper-V Manager) with minimal use of command line and funky scripts or utilities.

Background: People who have worked with me know me as a person who loves virtualization! I run Windows Server 2008 on all my computers and don’t do anything except in virtual machines. However, in order to test my applications (for performance,stability and etc), I’d rather be on a real hardware.Although, there are techniques to even virtualize test resources, the safety net of having everything up and running and fully tested on a real box always gives me an extra level of comfort before any attempts to deploy my stuff to a customer’s environment.

Additionally, I do a lot of presentations, so that would be nice if I could demo on real hardware too with no emulation layer that may degrade the performance of my presentations. By leveraging native boot from VHD, now I can have either Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 as my main OS and spin up extra bootable VHDs and multiboot them in a blink of an eye.

I think the ability to boot from VHD (natively) is like having a heap of computers sitting around at your disposal! Use them when you need them; otherwise leave them in your garage or throw them in the garbage bin if you will.

All right, enough talking. Let’s just go ahead and get busy.

Read more…

Still working out on session details, but so far, it’s confirmed that I will be presenting one session in the Developing For Microsoft-Based Platform track at Techdays Canada 2009. My session is titled Developing and Consuming Services for SharePoint.

Try to buy your ticket while the early-bird deal is still in effect! The regular Price is $599 , but They’re offering $299 for early registrants <– oh boy, it’s well worth the cost! Here are the dates, cities and venues information:

For more information , please visit Techdays 2009 official Web site here.I will update this post about other sessions I will be presenting at a later date when I get the full details. Looking forward to seeing you’ll there!

I just came across this blog that is promissed to be focused on SSRS integration and SharePoint. Awsome Idea and so needed!

Bookmark it NOW: http://blogs.msdn.com/prash/default.aspx.

SharePoint Saturday Toronto has come to an end,but it was a very successful event IMO. Almost 200 attendees were able to make it to the Microsoft Campus in Mississuaga, GTA from all over Toronto and beyond…and boy , did you see the rain storm?!

First off – I would like to thank all of the attendees who showed up at my session – Best Practices for Developing SharePoint Applications. I had a blast and a great turnout, with some fantastic feedback and  follow-up questions on my presentation!

Next, I’m so sorry that some folks in the back of the room had to stand up through the entire thing cause there were not enough chairs available! Next year, I will bring a couple of portable chairs just in case 🙂

Last – Here are the code and PPT slides from my presentation at SharePoint Saturday this past weekend in Toronto.
 PowerPoint Slides
 Code

Remember, the safety net of following best practices lets us do our job without an “oops, what the heck should I do now?” kinda moment (See the guy on the second slide!).

Kudo’s to Kanwal, Muhsin and Hasan Shahid to put this event together!

I have been working on a project with Coskun and Jacob for the last three months that has kept my writing more in Microsoft Office Word than this blog!

Finally, it looks like our book titled “Professional Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Reporting with SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services” is available through Amazon web site. It will probably head off to the printer first week of August, and Amazon.com is now taking pre-orders for it.

Writing a book was an absolutely new experience for me. I always love big projects , but this was the weiredest one that I’ve ever taken on.The process was much longer than I expected it to be , but as with any other projects in life when it was completed I was beside myself with joy! It is nice to feel like the book is finally really and truly out there! Woo hoo!!

Update 23/March/2010:I have gone through the book , page by page, and took some notes about the things that might have been changed in SharePoint 2010 and SSRS 2008 R2 integration.  I’m pleased to announce that 95% of the material presented in this book is still applicable to the most recent wave of SharePoint and Reporting Services products.  I’ll publish a more detailed change log soon. Thanks/Reza Alirezaei