Also see Part 2 on how to address gotcha's in this process When using Release Management there is a good chance you will want to run test suites as part of your automated deployment pipeline. If you are using a vNext PowerShell based pipeline you need a way to trigger the tests via PowerShell as there is no out the box …

A few days in and I have solved the few problems I have had Can apply update Security Update for Windows 10 for x64-based Systems (KB3074683) My system tried to apply the KB3074683 patch a couple of time, rolling it back each time. A search of the forums found the answer to this one. As in the forum post I have an …

I have just done an in place upgrade on my Lenovo W520 from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10. Something I had not tried during the beta programme, sticking to running Windows 10 in VMs (mostly on Azure). I have to say the process was pretty smooth. I only hit one issue, and this was the usual NVidia Optimus problems I saw …

If you are using basic PowerShell scripts as opposed to DSC with Release Management there are a few gotcha’s I have found. You cannot pass parameters Lets look at a sample script that we would like to run via Release Manager 1 2 3param 4( 5 $param1 6) 7 8 9 10write-verbose -verbose "Start" 11write-verbose …

With the release of Visual Studio 2015 there are some significant changes to Visual Studio and TFS licensing, you can find the details of Brian Harry’s blog. These changes can make a serious change in what you need to purchase for different roles, so it could well be worth a look.

My sister Niamh and I got the opportunity to travel to Microsoft's premier Partner Conference - WPC 2015. It took place during the week of 13th July in Orlando, at the Orange County Conference Centre, or OCCC. It was a marvellous week, very busy and lots of sunshine! ![](/blogs/Calicowind/image.axd?picture=/2015/WPC …

If you are providing a path to a custom test adaptor such as nUnit or Chutzpah for a TFS/VSO vNext build e.g. $(Build.SourcesDirectory)packages, make sure you have no leading whitespace in the data entry form. If you do have a space you will see an error log like this as the adaptor cannot be found as the command line …

I have been using Pester for some PowerShell tests. From the command prompt all is good, but I kept getting the error ‘module cannot be loaded because scripts is disabled on this system’ when I tried to run them via the Visual Studio Test Explorer I found the solution on StackOverflow, I had forgotten that Visual …

I have been doing some work on vNext Release Management; I managed to waste a good hour today with a stupid error. In vNext process templates you provide a username and password to be used as the Powershell remoting credentials (in the red box below) My Powershell script also took a parameter username, so this was …

I will be speaking at Leeds DevOps on the 21st of July on the subject of Desired State Configuration (DSC). ‘In the Windows world, due to its API based architecture, deployment is too often not as simple as copying an EXE and updating a text configuration file. Desired State Configuration is an attempt to ease the pain …