Download All Sessions in MID Quality

$feedUrl = 'https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Visual-Studio/Connect-event-2015/RSS'
 
[Environment]::CurrentDirectory=(Get-Location -PSProvider FileSystem).ProviderPath
function Get-Media
{
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param
    (
        [Object]
        $url,
        [Object]
        $title
    )
     
    $u = New-Object System.Uri($url)
    $name = $title
    $extension = [System.IO.Path]::GetExtension($u.Segments[-1])
    $fileName = $name + $extension

    $fileName = $fileName -replace "’", ''
    $fileName = $fileName -replace "\?", ''
    $fileName = $fileName -replace ":", ''
    $fileName = $fileName -replace '/', ''
    $fileName = $fileName -replace ",", ''
    $fileName = $fileName -replace '"', ''

    $fileName
            
    if (Test-Path($fileName)) {
        Write-Host 'Skipping file, already downloaded' -ForegroundColor Yellow
    }
    else
    {
        Invoke-WebRequest $url -OutFile $fileName
    }
}
  
$feed=[xml](New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString($feedUrl)
 
foreach($i in $feed.rss.channel.item) {
    foreach($m in $i.group){
        foreach($u in $m.content `
                | Where-Object { `
                        $_.url -like '*mid.mp4' `
                     } | Select-Object -Property @{Name='url'; Expression = {$_.url}}, `
                                                 @{Name='title'; Expression = {$i.title}})
        {
            Get-Media -url $u.url -title $u.title
        }             
    }
}

Using Azure PowerShell 1.0 & ARM

Recently the Azure team released a new version of Microsoft Azure PowerShell. They finally broke through v1.0, and that comes with a few breaking changes. But don’t worry, it’s for the best!

This blog post is all about deploying a Windows 10 Visual Studio Virtual Machine to a secured Virtual Network on Microsoft Azure.

Deploying an ARM Template Using PowerShell

Testing Visual Studio on Azure

A few months ago I wrote about my Dev and Test adventure, where I used the Azure Portal to create my Virtual Machine. Since then, Microsoft has released significant additions to the Azure Resource Manager (ARM). This post is all about provisioning a Visual Studio Virtual Machine to your MSDN Azure Subscription using ARM.

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Back in 2013 I wrote about creating a Dev & Test environments in minutes. This post was all about the benefits and the flexibility of creating environments that support our development efforts.

Since then, I noticed that Microsoft regularly creates Virtual Machine templates for MSDN Subscribers that allow them to test software through their MSDN Benefits. Luckily, they have provided us with templates that are pre-configured with various flavors of Visual Studio.

How do you build features on #Azure?

For the past few months my team and I have been using git-flow to build a new REST API for an existing cloud native application. The challenge was impressive, but this is how we did it.

Our team is spread across many geographical locations. We use a mix & match of best practices to help us communicate. For example, we use Skype, it’s on all our devices (phones, tables, laptops and desktops…) and makes collaboration easy! Our code lives in Git and is continuously built and released to our integration environment for validation.

Our team isn’t unique. Many of my colleagues work in distributed teams. Surprisingly, we all share the same common challenges. Time zones, cultural differences and language barriers are now part of each decision we make. Fortunately we all speak a common language, C#.

With this added complexity, how did we go to production on time? We implemented a process that we continuously tweak and adjust to meet our goals.

Visual Studio – Working With Multiple Windows Azure Subscriptions

Like me, you probably work on multiple Windows Azure projects and have to deal with many Windows Azure Subscriptions.

Working in Visual Studio with many Windows Azure Subscriptions can be messy, overwhelming and error prone. Fortunately, Microsoft added a new feature that allows us to filter the Server Explorer in order to show only the resources for a particular Windows Azure subscription, only the resources that are hosted in a particular region, or both.

Released in August 2013 as part of the Windows Azure SDK, this feature really helps me make sense out of all the subscriptions connected to my Microsoft Account.

How to: Filter Windows Azure Resources in Server Explorer

Filtering resources is achieved by right clicking on the Windows Azure node In Server Explorer and by choosing Filter Services.

Windows Azure SDK 2.1 Has Been Released!

On July 31 2013, the Windows Azure team has released the Windows Azure SDK 2.1 and it’s full of goodies!

Visual Studio Server Explorer
In Server Explorer, instantly view information about running cloud services, storage accounts, virtual machines, and service bus resources. Also in Server Explorer, filter your view of resources by subscription, region, or both to show only the information that you care about right now.

• Information is automatically populated so that you don’t have to request the information on each node to see the information.
• You can filter the resources that appear so that you can focus on your current work without being distracted by information from unrelated projects. See How to: Filter Windows Azure Resources in Server Explorer.
• Nodes for cloud services are now labeled by deployment so that you can easily locate Production and Staging deployments.

Windows Azure Web Sites From Skeptical to Believer

When Microsoft announced Windows Azure Web Sites I was lucky to rapidly gain access to the preview, which led me to write a preliminary Windows Azure Web Sites Review.

Initially I was confused about the ideas behind Windows Azure Web Sites, because Cloud Services give me a finer grain control over various aspects of the Instances. Cloud Services also provide Production and Staging environments, which are not available in Windows Azure Web Sites. To top it off, Windows Azure Web Sites lack Remote Desktop connectivity. I must admit that in the beginning, I had a hard time finding reasons to choose Windows Azure Web Sites over Cloud Services (PaaS).

Windows Azure Web Sites, started off as being perfect for deployments that didn’t require custom windows configurations and were perfect for teams who don’t use Visual Studio. By greatly abstracting away the concept of Roles, it opened up the platform to a greater audience and most importantly Windows Azure Web Sites consume  other Windows Azure services like Windows Azure Storage Services.

Almost a year later, Windows Azure Web Sites has grown up and above all, I am now a true believer!  In June 2013,  Standard (formerly named reserved) and Free tiers have both graduated from Preview to General Availability (GA)  and are backed by the standard 99.9% monthly SLA. The Shared tier remains in preview with not charges.

Windows Azure Web Sites have come a long way!