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About HostForLIFE.eu

HostForLIFE.eu is an European Windows Hosting Provider which focuses on the Windows Platform only. HostForLIFE.eu deliver on-demand hosting solutions including Shared hosting, Reseller Hosting, Cloud Hosting, Dedicated Servers, and IT as a Service for companies of all sizes.

Microsoft just released Windows Server 2012 R2 (18 October 2013). In this article, I’m going to describe which changes are available in this release compared to the first Windows 2012 release for the Remote Desktop Services (RDS)/Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). This topic contains only brief information about Windows Server 2012 R2 Hosting, if you want to be more familiar with Windows Server 2012 R2, you should try HostForLife.eu.

Installation

Logically we need to start the installation of the RDS components. Comparing this with Windows 2013 there are actually not anything changed. The possibility to install RDS using the specific Remote Desktop Services Installation is still available, followed by the two same installation methodologies: a standard deployment to divide the different RDS roles over several servers and the Quick Start deployment where the roles are installed on one server. Using the RDS installation method logically also the question to deploy a virtual machine-based desktop deployment or session-based desktop deployment is still asked. Just as in Windows 2012 it will install a VDI infrastructure the Remote Desktop Virtualization Host or the formerly known as Terminal Server based infrastructure.

It is also still possible to use the role-based installation, also here no changes comparing to Windows Server 2012.

Which is actually new it the possibility to install the RD Connection Broker role on a Domain Controller server. Personally I only would use this for demo environments or really small infrastructures. Also there is possibility to in-place upgrade of a RD Session Host to 2012 RS (from the current 2012 version).

Configuration

Also on this part I can be really quick, there are not any noticeable changes made to the configuration part. It is fully comparable with the configuration possibilities in Windows 2012; I don’t see anything new, also no things are removed. There are also no changes visible to the User Profile Disk feature.

Also making changes to the RDWeb Access is still done via the same way (edit the web.config file).

Is there something new?

You could think is there something new within this R2 release for Remote Desktop Services. There are definitely changes/new features, but most they are based on the user experience. Many improvements are difficult to shown in article based review. I will describe the new features, my thoughts about those new features and where possible show the features.

Improved RemoteApp Behaviour

Although this looks like a small step for the user experiences this is in my opinion a big step. The improved behavior is shown at two ways. The first one is when you are dragging the Remote App to another location on the desktop the complete application still will be shown, while previous versions only showed the frame of the application. Secondly a full preview thumbmail is shown when hovering over the app in the taskbar, just as applications directly available on the client. In previous versions only a standard icon of the application was shown. Also there is now full support for transparent windows for RemoteApps and Aero peek, again creating the same view as local applications.

Quick Reconnect

When using the Remote and Desktop Connections (RADC) in Windows Server 2012 it could take a while to reconnect to all RemoteApps. Microsoft claims that this process is improved and is now around 5 seconds to fully reconnect. Also network loss detection has been improved with a more intuitive reconnect phase. Logically this are good improvements for a better user experience.

Codec Improvements

Also the codecs are improved to further reduce the bandwidth for non-video content including the possibility to offload all progressive decode processing to AVC/H.2.64 hardware available in the client. Also DirectX 11 is now supported by extending the ability to virtualize a GPU on a Hyper-V host.

RemoteApp within a Remote Desktop Session

Although this was already available in Windows 2012 itself, it is not known a lot so I thought it was a good idea to mentSion it once more. It is now possible/supported to start a Remote Desktop session and start within this session a RemoteApp (form another server). This options creates the possibility to use the silo concept with Microsoft RDS separating a specific (set of) application(s) on specific servers for performance, incompatibility and/or security reasons.

Dynamically monitor/resolution changes

Within Windows 2012 R2 it is now possible to change the amount of monitors during the RD session or the view of screen (for example on a Surface) the session will automatically resize according the change made without a reconnection. I think this is a big step forward and end users will love this, especially with tablets in mind where the user switches often from horizontal to the vertical view and vice versa.

Support for ClickOnce Applications

Although just a view supplier use this kind of installation technique and is has some challenges within managed user profile environments it a good thing that ClickOnce applications can be offered as a RemoteApp within Windows Servers 2012 R2. Above improvements are mostly based on the user experience. There are also some changes made from a technical or administrative viewpoint.

Online Data Duplication

Probably the biggest announcement for RDS made for Windows Server 2012R2. Online Data Deplucation can achieve a big reduction on storage capacity requirements (Microsoft claims up to 90%) for personal VDI machines. As it looks like that personal VDI machines are the most used deployment technique for VDI infrastructures Microsoft arranges that one of the biggest challenges becomes a smaller challenge.

Shadowing is back

In Windows 2012 Microsoft removed the RD Shadowing option completely, while in Windows 2008 (R2) the functionally was already reduces. Although I see that most customers are now moving to Remote Assistance Microsoft is re-introducing the shadowing functionality again. Microsoft is stating that it is supporting both single as multiple monitors, but it’s unclear to me if the situation is the same as in Windows 2008R2 where it was needed that both the user as the support team should have the same monitor amount. Unfortunate I could not test this is my demo environment, anyone with experiences and would like to share those let me know (so I can add it the article).

Conclusion: To upgrade or not to upgrade

Windows Server 2012R2 Remote Desktop Services brings in my opinion several new features and improvements that are a real added value. But should you upgrade to this R2 release. It depends on your current situation. If you are still on Windows 2008R2 or lower, I think this is a good moment to consider upgrading to the latest platform. If you are still using a 32bit edition the 64bit challenge still apply and should not be forgotten. If you are running Windows Server 2012 it depends on the current end-user satisfaction. If they do not complain about the parts that are now improved I don’t think an upgrade is necessary. A different situation if you are using personal VDI machine and can use the online data duplication feature I think upgrading to Windows Server 2012 R2 is almost a must. Summarized R2 offers several good new features and improvements.

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Microsoft recently released it’s latest operating system Windows Server 2012 R2 to global customers. Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 is much more than just another service pack; adding new features that make it easier to build cloud applications and services in your datacenter.

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HostForLIFE.eu is European Windows Hosting Provider which focuses on Windows Platform only. HostForLIFE.eu deliver on-demand hosting solutions including Shared hosting, Reseller Hosting, Cloud Hosting, Dedicated Servers, and IT as a Service for companies of all sizes.

Memory is one of the most-used resources in SQL Server. Generally, the more you have, the better query performance you’ll get. How can you track your server’s memory usage? One way is to use the Performance Monitor (Perfmon) counters exposed through the sys.dm_os_performance_counters DMV. One indicator of memory performance is Page Life Expectancy (PLE). You can capture basic memory usage over time by setting up a SQL Server Agent job to query this DMV, inserting the results into a table, and reporting on the table results.

COLLECTING THE DATA

I have a “DBAInfo” database on my instance that I use to track metrics and other information. I create a new table, MemoryHistory.

USE DBAInfo;
CREATE TABLE MemoryHistory
(ID INT IDENTITY NOT NULL,
CollectionDateTime DATETIME,
PerfmonObjectName NCHAR(128),
CounterName NCHAR(128),
CounterValue BIGINT)

Then, I create a new SQL Server Agent job that runs every 5 minutes.

The only step in this job is the below query, which queries the DMV and inserts the results into the table I created.

INSERT INTO MemoryHistory
SELECT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
object_name,
counter_name,
cntr_value
FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counters
WHERE object_name = 'SQLServer:Buffer Manager';

I schedule the job to run every five minutes.

VIEWING THE DATA

Now, this data isn’t going to do me any good unless I view it, and make a decision or perform an action based on what I learn.

To view the data I’ve collected, I run the following query:

SELECT ID,
CollectionDateTime,
CounterName,
CounterValue
FROM MemoryHistory;

That’s a lot of junk to sort through when all I want to see is PLE, so I narrow down the query a bit.

SELECT ID,
CollectionDateTime,
CounterName,
CounterValue
FROM MemoryHistory
WHERE CounterName = 'Page life expectancy';

But who wants to read through results like that each time there’s a problem to see when PLE rose or fell? Not me. I’d rather see it in a graphical format. How can I do that?

SQL Server Reporting Services

I have SSRS at my disposal. I’m going to create a very simple report that will allow me to enter start and end dates, and will display a line chart for PLE during that time.

REPORTING ON THE DATA

I set up my report to have DBAInfo as my data source. In order to choose dates, I use the following query as my dataset.

SELECT ID,
CollectionDateTime,
CounterName,
CounterValue
FROM MemoryHistory
WHERE CounterName = 'Page life expectancy'
AND CONVERT(DATE, CollectionDateTime) >= @Start
AND CONVERT(DATE, CollectionDateTime) <= @End;

I change my @Start and @End parameters to “Date/Time” so I get a date picker.

I drag a Line Chart onto the design surface and add the CounterValue as my Value and CollectionDateTime as my Category Group.

I can preview the report to view it:

Last but not least, I’ll deploy this report to Report Manager so that I and others can run it, or even schedule a regular subscription.

Suspend is the new terminate

ASP.NET App Suspend is a new feature in the .NET Framework 4.5.1 that makes ASP.NET sites much more responsive and enables you to host more sites on a single server. It is very well suited for commercial web hosters, like Windows Azure Web Sites, and Enterprise IT web hosting. HostForLIFE.eu proudly launches the support of ASP.NET 4.5.1 on all their newest Windows Server environment. HostForLIFE.eu ASP.NET 4.5.1 Spain Hosting plan starts from just as low as €3.00/month only.

ASP.NET App Suspend is a self-tuning mechanism for web hosting, a little bit like CLR GC generations (if you squint). The addition of suspend establishes three states that a site can be in on a given machine. You can see the three states in the diagram, below.

All sites start out as inactive. As sites are requested, they are loaded into memory, become active, and respond to page requests. After sites have been idle, as determined by the timeout setting, they will be suspended. Suspended sites effectively lose access to the CPU, making CPU cycles and most of the memory they were using available for requests to other sites. However, they are kept in a state – this is the new suspended state – by which they can be resumed very quickly and respond to traffic again.

Usage scenarios

- Scenarios that can benefit from ASP.NET App Suspend.

- Shared hosting (commercial hosting or enterprise IT) Companies selling or taking advantage of shared hosting can pack many more sites on a given machine, while providing much more responsive site experience.  Shared web hosting is certainly the most popular kind of hosting you will discover. As the name indicates, the equipment (server) that your particular web site is held on will be shared together with lots of other users. Because of how prevalent this sort of hosting is, the considerably low cost of managing it, and the volume of companies providing this kind of service plan you can get yourself started out for very little cash. Even though shared hosting is ideal for compact or hobby web sites, it’s not at all without it’s negative aspects. These come from the very character of ‘shared’ web hosting, check out the video above to find out more.

- Switch to shared hosting Web site owners can take advantage of low-cost shared hosting while delivering the responsive experience that they want.

- Hot spare for large sites large high-traffic sites can maintain spares in suspend, ready for when one of the servers behind a load balancer goes down (planned or unplanned).

- Disaster recovery large high-traffic sites can maintain spares in suspend in a backup datacenter, ready for when the main data center goes down or otherwise becomes inaccessible.

Windows Server 2012 R2 brings a host of new features that greatly enhance the functionality of the operating system. Many of these improvements expand on existing capabilities of Windows Server 2012 R2. You can try the features described below, on Windows Server 2012 R2 Italy Hosting.On Windows Server 2012 R2 hosted by HostForLIFE.eu, you have new and improved features that deliver extremely high levels of uptime and continuous server availability. The platform also includes greater management efficiency. This simplifies and automates the deployment and virtualization of major workloads. Greater automation means server deployments are faster and upgrades are now even simpler.

-Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2 will ship at the same time with full feature support.

-Tiered Storage Spaces provides greater performance and scalability. Allows a mix of SSD and HDD in a single space and the storage spaces engine automatically moves the hot blocks to the SSD from the HDD via the in-box tiering technology. The ability to size the SSD and HDD tiers separately is available. It's possible to pin important files to the SSD tier.

-Ability to graphically create a three-way mirrored virtual disk on a Storage Space.

-Site-to-site VPN Gateway.

-In-box iSCSI target now leverages VHDX, allowing larger LUNs.

-Dynamic NIC Teaming allows more granular balancing based on flowlets, enabling best performance and utilization of available resources.

-IPAM support for virtualized environments, providing a consistent IP management experience.

-New PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) extensions as part of Windows PowerShell 4, which helps ensure the components in the data center have the correct configuration.

-Work folders enable users to have access to all their data by replicating all user data to corporate file servers then back out to other devices. Data is also encrypted and if a user device is un-enrolled from management the data corporate data is removed.

-CIM and DMTF standards-based, enabling great consistent management across all types of devices.

We can use the PIVOT and UNPIVOT relational operators to change a table-valued expression into another table in SQL Server. PIVOT rotates a table-valued expression by turning the unique values from one column in the expression into multiple columns in the output, and performs aggregations where they are required on any remaining column values that are wanted in the final output.

Before PIVOT

After PIVOT

A simple PIVOT sample in SQL Server.Here we are going to demonstrate a very simple PIVOT sample without any complexity. We are having a table named Accounts and it containing customer name and their deposit with denominations.

Table Structure For showing simple PIVOT sample

CREATE TABLE Accounts(Customer VARCHAR(25), Denomination VARCHAR(20), QTY INT)
GO
-- Inserting Data into Table
INSERT INTO Accounts(Customer, Denomination, QTY)
VALUES('John','10 $',2)
INSERT INTO Accounts(Customer, Denomination, QTY)
VALUES('John','50 $',6)
INSERT INTO Accounts(Customer, Denomination, QTY)
VALUES('John','100 $',1)
INSERT INTO Accounts(Customer, Denomination, QTY)
VALUES('Ram','10 $',4)
INSERT INTO Accounts(Customer, Denomination, QTY)
VALUES('Ram','50 $',3)
INSERT INTO Accounts(Customer, Denomination, QTY)
VALUES('Ram','100 $',11)
INSERT INTO Accounts(Customer, Denomination, QTY)
VALUES('KATE','10 $',20)
INSERT INTO Accounts(Customer, Denomination, QTY)
VALUES('KATE','50 $',12)
INSERT INTO Accounts(Customer, Denomination, QTY)
VALUES('KATE','100 $',2)
INSERT INTO Accounts(Customer, Denomination, QTY)
VALUES('Eby','10 $',0)
INSERT INTO Accounts(Customer, Denomination, QTY)
VALUES('Eby','50 $',5)
INSERT INTO Accounts(Customer, Denomination, QTY)
VALUES('Eby','100 $',5) 

In order to PIVOT above mentioned table we can use below script. The result should be as Customer name with all denomination will be coming as columns with qty as values for each column.

SELECT * FROM Accounts
PIVOT (SUM(QTY) For Denomination IN ([10 $],[50 $],[100 $])) AS Total

Dynamic Query to PIVOT table for dynamic columns. In the above example we are using a simple structured table and then PIVOT with denomination values. This can be achieved only when we are having denomination values as static. Suppose this denomination values are dynamic (Each country having different denomination like $,EUR, IND etc..), we need to create a dynamic query to PIVOT above table. Suppose we are having different table for getting Denomination values and we are going to take Denomination values from this table at run time as dynamic.

CREATE TABLE Denomination(Value VARCHAR(25))
GO
INSERT INTO Denomination(Value)
VALUES('10 $')
INSERT INTO Denomination(Value)
VALUES('50 $')
INSERT INTO Denomination(Value)
VALUES('100 $')

First of all, we need to get dynamic columns names from the above table. After that we can create a dynamic query with these columns.

Declare @ColumnNames VARCHAR(100);
SELECT @ColumnNames = COALESCE(@ColumnNames+ ',','') +
'['+ Cast(Value AS VARCHAR(50)) +']' FROM Denomination cust
PRINT @ColumnNames
DECLARE @DynamicQuery Varchar(MAX);
SET @DynamicQuery = '
SELECT * FROM Accounts
PIVOT (SUM(QTY) For Denomination IN (' + @ColumnNames + ')) AS Total'
EXEC (@DynamicQuery);

JavaScript is extremely popular language and already has implementations for server-side programming. For example Node.js  - a server-side JavaScript environment that utilizes Goggle's V8 JavaScript Engine.

I am an ASP.NET developer and want to use JavaScript in the ASP.NET environment. I found Javascript .NET project, that bring Google's V8 to the .NET world and I started with a simple task - to write a custom ASP.NET HTTP Handler using JavaScript. (I had done similar task with IronPython before).  If you interested in ASP.NET 4, we recommend you to try HostForLife.eu. We will give the best service at an affordable price. You can start with our lowest price € 3.00/month to host your ASP.NET 4 site.

Setup requirements

1. I want *.js file to be processed on server (like *.aspx or *.ashx)
2. I want to access server side objects (such HttpContext, HttpRequest and HttpResponse) from javascript code.

Implementation

First of all, download Javascript .NET and add the reference to Noesis.Javascript.dll. It embeds Google's V8 and contains an API required to run JavaScript code.

Setup custom HTTP Handler in web.config. It will handle any request of *.js file under App folder. I configure it this way to allow other javascript files (not under App folder) to be processed as static content for being used in browser.

Next step - create App folder and  HelloWorld.js file:

Write the single line code:

At this moment I expect this code run on server and produce simple 'Hello World!' html.
But to make it works I have to implement JavaScriptHttpHandlerFactory - the core of all this.

JavaScriptHttpHandlerFactory

Implementation is listed below:

using System.IO;
using System.Web;
using Noesis.Javascript;

namespace Web
{
    public class JavaScriptHttpHandlerFactory : IHttpHandlerFactory
    {
        public IHttpHandler GetHandler(HttpContext context,
                   string requestType, string url, string pathTranslated)
        {
            return new JavaScriptHttpHandler(pathTranslated);
        }

        public void ReleaseHandler(IHttpHandler handler)
        {
        }
    }

    public class JavaScriptHttpHandler : IHttpHandler
    {
        private readonly string pathTranslated;

        public JavaScriptHttpHandler(string pathTranslated)
        {
            this.pathTranslated = pathTranslated;
        }

        public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
        {
            var scriptCode = File.ReadAllText(pathTranslated);

            using (var jsContext = new JavascriptContext())
            {
                jsContext.SetParameter("context", context);
                jsContext.SetParameter("request", context.Request);
                jsContext.SetParameter("response", context.Response);

                try
                {
                    jsContext.Run(scriptCode);
                }
                catch (JavascriptException ex)
                {
                    throw new HttpParseException(ex.Message, ex,
                      pathTranslated, scriptCode, ex.Line);
                }
            }
        }

        public bool IsReusable
        {
            get { return false; }
        }
    }
}

As you may see, implementation of JavaScriptHttpHandlerFactory is pretty simple. Read the js file, create JavascriptContext, setup context parameters and finally execute.

Now when you run HelloWorld.js you get "Hello World!" in browser:

Error handling

But all of this worth nothing if we are not able to debug javascript easily.
Javascript.NET allows us to handle javascript errors and even points to source code line where error was occurred.

I used this feature to expose a javascript error in convenient format of "yellow screen of death":

Conclusion

Integration of JavaScript into ASP.NET environment is possible and not so hard

BTW, Javascript.NET is not only technology allows it. There is IronJS wich runs javascript over DLR. May be in one next posts will play with it.