You have probably noticed my enthusiasm for PowerShell Desired State Configuration (PSDSC). After posting how Microsoft has integrated the Docker engine with containers in Windows Server 2016 TP5, I started investigating how PSDSC can be used in container. I have created two examples to demonstrate this.
The Docker toolbox is a package to install the binaries required for managing a Docker-based container environment targetting Windows and OS X. Unfortunately, it forces you to install VirtualBox, Oracle’s type 2 hypervisor. Although a silent installation is documented, it is very successfully hidden how the individual components of this package can be installed or left out.
Microsoft is working hard to align the management experience of containers on Windows Server 2016 with the industry standard Docker on Linux. I will demonstrate how the same concepts and the same management tools now apply to containers in Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 5 as well. Let’s take a closer look at the famous Docker slogan Build, Ship and Run.
So far, I have provided a detailed introduction to Jekyll and using it to create your own blog by exporting your content from WordPress as well as hosting on Azure Websites and hosting on GitHub Pages. Those posts only describe how to get started but leave a lot to be desired when comparing with full-blown content management systems. In this post I will close this gap.
I have been writing a lot of pester based unit tests for PowerShell lately. Unfortunately, I am coming across caveats when testing existing code. I have just been testing code involving PowerShell remoting which creates a new context where mocked cmdlets are not available. I will show you how to write unit tests for remoting code.
In a previous post, I demonstrated how pester can be used for writing unit tests checking configuration data for PowerShell Desired State Configuration. I assumed that the data structure for configuration data was already present in memory. In real life, the environment data contained in configuration data is stored in a file. Therefore, I will show you how to load data structures from a file with and without code.
In XenApp 7, Citrix offers a very comprehensive PowerShell SDK and introduces cmdlets for migrating the database to a new connection string. If the steps for clearing and setting the database connection are not followed very closely, the database connection may not be recoverable using PowerShell. This article describes an alternative to using PowerShell.
Microsoft has decided to intertwine the PowerShell cmdlets for managing VHD(X) files and the Hyper-V role. As a consequence, you cannot create, inspect, configure, mount them etc. without the Hyper-V role. There is even an item in Microsoft Connect describing this issue for Convert-VHD. I will present two workarounds, one for environments already implementing Hyper-V as well as environments without using Hyper-V.
Although hosting your blog in GitHub Pages is very easy to setup, it lacks several features provided by other hosting services like SSL certificates. I have decided to introduce Azure Websites as an alternative because it offers a wide range of hosting options including FTP uploads and server-side code. In addition, Azure Websites can be connected to a source control system to update the hosted content based on changes in the source. This post will demonstrate two important deployment methods.
In the previous posts I have concentrated on generating a static site on your workstation and integrating your content from WordPress. Fortunately, the static content can be hosted anywhere but there are some publicly available services that offer a pipeline for continuous delivery like GitHub Pages.