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dekard

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So, for reasons I'm not going to explain, my employer decreed that all IT employees have to get Visual Studio w\ MSDN subscriptions. So, they decided to buy me one. Now, I primarily do Linux, VMware, Storage work and I'm wondering if there's anything cool I can use this for while staying inside a reasonable interpretation of the licensing terms.

Any ideas?
 
In your test lab you can do whatever you want. In production though you'll have to actually buy the licenses.

Generally the first thing you'll do with microsoft products is build a server and make a domain controller. Active directory is the center of everything and all of their products build upon it.
 
bman212121 said:
In your test lab you can do whatever you want. In production though you'll have to actually buy the licenses.

Generally the first thing you'll do with microsoft products is build a server and make a domain controller. Active directory is the center of everything and all of their products build upon it.
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Don't get me wrong... I've been working in and around Microsoft Server for years, I'm just not that interested in it. Therefore, why the heck do I want this...
 
dekard said:
Don't get me wrong... I've been working in and around Microsoft Server for years, I'm just not that interested in it. Therefore, why the heck do I want this...
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You... don't? :p


If you already meet your needs with Linux then you simply may not have a reason to need it. It comes back to the whole ecosystem thing. If you're running a Linux desktop and a Linux server, then a Windows server might not make sense. If you have Windows clients the biggest thing for me is using SMB over Samba. I can max out a gig connection or more with no issues. I can manage my windows updates with the WSUS server, manage my antivirus solution with some ties to active directory, set group policy options for password, settings, etc from one central location without having to touch any of the clients. I can also use Windows Deployment Services to quickly roll out a new client or make backups automatically. But all of that is if you are using Windows clients. If you are using Linux desktops then none of that will really apply to your scenario.

Also, if you do programming Visual Studio is certainly one of the nicest IDEs I've ever used. It makes creating, compiling, and debugging code very easy and there is a ton of documentation to help you figure things out. But if you're not compiling .exes then it may not serve a purpose for you.
 
bman212121 said:
You... don't? :p


If you already meet your needs with Linux then you simply may not have a reason to need it. It comes back to the whole ecosystem thing. If you're running a Linux desktop and a Linux server, then a Windows server might not make sense. If you have Windows clients the biggest thing for me is using SMB over Samba. I can max out a gig connection or more with no issues. I can manage my windows updates with the WSUS server, manage my antivirus solution with some ties to active directory, set group policy options for password, settings, etc from one central location without having to touch any of the clients. I can also use Windows Deployment Services to quickly roll out a new client or make backups automatically. But all of that is if you are using Windows clients. If you are using Linux desktops then none of that will really apply to your scenario.

Also, if you do programming Visual Studio is certainly one of the nicest IDEs I've ever used. It makes creating, compiling, and debugging code very easy and there is a ton of documentation to help you figure things out. But if you're not compiling .exes then it may not serve a purpose for you.
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I think I've done almost everything you've mentioned in your post... Well, except the development piece, but that's not really my thing. I ran Win 2k3 and 2k8 domains for a few years. I switched to Linux a couple of years ago because I got tired of Microsoft's lack of imagination. Anyway, not trying to bash anyone, I was just wondering if there was some benefit I wasn't aware of in this MSDN subscription. Maybe I'll download a copy of Server 2012 sometime so I can get some more hands on time with their lovely new interface. (sorry, I just threw up a little there)
 
You can... give it to me? I'll give it a good home in a non-smoking environment :p
 
Just send me your login information. I will take good care of it. :)
 
dekard said:
Ugh... why would you say that? Now I need a shower...
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I don't know, having them host an email account for your domain isn't all that bad. Exchange ActiveSync, mobile office and SkyDrive/OneDrive integration all work pretty well.
 
Yeah, it takes a half an hour to go buy a domain and set it up with your MSDN Office 365 E3 developer sub and have mail flowing. It would take you at least a day to setup a domain controller and an exchange server and then get the certs to get it all working on your own.
 
I have had my MSDN account for the last 10 years in one form or another. it saves my ass all the time.
 
ND40oz said:
Yeah, it takes a half an hour to go buy a domain and set it up with your MSDN Office 365 E3 developer sub and have mail flowing. It would take you at least a day to setup a domain controller and an exchange server and then get the certs to get it all working on your own.
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Ya, I'll have to think about that...
 
dekard said:
I think I've done almost everything you've mentioned in your post... Well, except the development piece, but that's not really my thing. I ran Win 2k3 and 2k8 domains for a few years. I switched to Linux a couple of years ago because I got tired of Microsoft's lack of imagination. Anyway, not trying to bash anyone, I was just wondering if there was some benefit I wasn't aware of in this MSDN subscription. Maybe I'll download a copy of Server 2012 sometime so I can get some more hands on time with their lovely new interface. (sorry, I just threw up a little there)
Click to expand...

I really can't think of anything that stands out that is a must have feature. If there was you would probably already be using it. There are tons of great products included in the subscription, but without having a need to fill it's hard to come up with a solution for a problem that doesn't exist.

You also get access to MS SQL and sharepoint, both of which are great products. I'd be interested to see what they did to upgrade ISA in the Forefront gateway products, and I would love to see SCCM actually setup and running. I attempted SCCM but it's quite the product to try to get running.

If you can think of a product, Microsoft probably has some type of solution for it. But if your not already using Microsoft products then it might not offer the level of integration it does with their own products. A great example of this would be IIS. You could easily tell me that you already run your site on apache and it does what you want. The only reason you would need to change is if you wanted run something you couldn't already do on apache like ASP.net (which it looks like mono has ported some of that over) So in a normal lab environment you'll look at the product and go, "it looks cool but I have no use for it". In the real world you might go I need company xyz's product but it requires IIS and MS SQL for the backend. Sometimes it's just going to be more dependent upon other products to provide that need.


As a side note I just found out that it is actually possible to debug a running install of Windows using serial, usb, or network connections and running the debugger through visual studio. This is another one of those cool features you get, but it's really only intended for developers of software. If you were writing drivers for Windows it might be of use to you, but for the average person it's not necessary.


If I make this post much longer it's a guarantee no one will actually read it, but if you're still with me at this point, here is another cool thing I found the other day. If you download the Windows ADK you can install a subset of the tools called WPT. It's a performance toolkit that allows you to run traces (logs) against your pc and it will chart all of the data into a .etl file. You can then load that file up into Performance analyzer and it will create a pretty graph showing all of the cpu, disk, memory usage of all the processes. I ran a trace for boot and it proved to be very handy to help figure out why the system was being so slow to boot. You can see a video about it here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/hh448170.aspx
 
Play with Azure? That's what I'm doing since I finally signed up for my free MSDN subscription through my employer (... which happens to be Microsoft...).
 
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