Tag: Software

May202020May 20, 2020November 1, 20215 Commentsby Thomas Maurer

How to Install WinGet Windows Package Manager

Posted in Microsoft, PowerShell, Windows

For a long time, people have been asking for a package manager on Windows. Today at Microsoft Build, Microsoft announced the preview of the Windows Package Manager called WinGet. A package manager can help you to save time and quickly install software and tools on to your machine. Developers and IT Pros have wanted a native package manager in Windows for a long time and with WinGet, you will get that.

You can read more about the Windows Package Manager Preview announcement here.

How to install WinGet Windows Package Manager

The Windows Package Manager is currently in preview. To install the preview of Windows Package Manager, you basically have two options. Since WinGet is open source, you can clone, build, run, and test the code from the GitHub repository (https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli). You can also become a Windows Insider an join the Windows Package Manager Insider program by sending your Microsoft Account (MSA) to [email protected] and request to be included in the preview.

App Installer in the Windows Store

After you have joined either Insider program, head over to the Microsoft Store and get the App Installer. The Windows Package manager will be available after you get the update.

How to install software using the Windows Package Manager

Now you can start using winget in the Windows Terminal, Windows command line, or PowerShell. The command line client “winget.exe” is already pre-configured to point to the Microsoft community repository.

winget install Windows Package Manager

Search for available packages

winget search APPLICATION

Display information about the packages

winget show APPLICATION

Install packages

winget install APPLICATION

Manage sources for packages

winget source (add/list/update/remove/reset)

Here is a quick look at some of the packages in the Microsoft Community repository.

winget show

Contribute and Feedback

Since the Windows Package Manager is open source, you can also contribute by sharing your feedback and suggestions on GitHub.

More information

You can find more information about the WinGet Windows Package Manager check out the Microsoft Docs and the preview announcement blog post. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below.

Aug142018August 14, 2018June 17, 20193 Commentsby Thomas Maurer

How to install and manage Azure Stack Updates

Posted in Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell, Virtualization

At itnetX, we help customers to implement as well as to operate Azure Stack. One part of operating Azure Stack is keeping it up-to-date. This means installing Microsoft Azure Stack Updates, hotfixes as well as OEM update packages like drivers and firmware. In this blog post, I will cover all the information you need to keep your Azure Stack up-to-date.

Why should you update your Azure Stack

This may sound like a simple question, but a lot of people ask for it. First of all, Microsoft and the hardware vendors are delivering quality fixes and security updates to keep Azure Stack stable and secure. But Microsoft also adds new functionality with their updates packages to keep up with the rapid cloud development on Azure. This is important if you want that your Azure Stack stays consistent with Azure in terms of functionality.

Another essential reason to stay current is to remain supported. You are allowed to be behind two major versions of Azure Stack, which means 2-3 months. You basically should update monthly, to make sure that you are secure and stable. However, there are reasons why you might have to defer an update. For example, this can happen for some companies, when they are in a freeze period where they are not allowed to do changes in their systems. If you are more than three major versions behind, your Azure Stack is considered out of support and will not be supported from Microsoft, until you have the at least required version installed.

You can read more about the Azure Stack servicing policy on the Azure Stack documentation site.

Updates for the Azure Stack Integrated System

As mentioned before, there are three types of updates to Azure Stack. The monthly Azure Stack Update Packages from Microsoft, Hotfixes, and OEM updates.

Microsoft software updates – Microsoft is responsible for the end-to-end servicing lifecycle for the Microsoft software update packages. These packages can include the latest Windows Server security updates, non-security updates, and Azure Stack feature updates. These update packages are non-cumulative updates and need to be installed one after the other. These updates are fully automated and will update the complete Azure Stack infrastructure.
OEM hardware vendor-provided updates – Azure Stack hardware partners are responsible for the end-to-end servicing lifecycle (including guidance) for the hardware-related firmware and driver update packages. In addition, Azure Stack hardware partners own and maintain guidance for all software and hardware on the hardware lifecycle host.
Microsoft hotfixes – Microsoft provides hotfixes for Azure Stack that address a specific issue that is often preventative or time-sensitive. Each hotfix is released with a corresponding Microsoft Knowledge Base article that details the issue, cause, and resolution. Hotfixes are downloaded and installed just like the regular full update packages for Azure Stack. Other then the major updates, Azure Stack hotfixes are cumulative per iteration.

	Release	Cumulative	Where to find
Microsoft Software Updates	Monthly (4th Tuesday of very month)	No	Release Notes
OEM Hardware Vendor Updates	Depending on OEM	Depends	OEM Website
Microsoft Hotfixes	When needed	Yes	Knowledge Base article

By the way, you can only update Azure Stack multi-node systems, and the Azure Stack Development Kit needs to be redeployed.

Apr032014April 3, 2014April 3, 20144 Commentsby Thomas Maurer

Install Sysinternals from PowerShell via OneGet

Posted in Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell, System Center, Windows, Windows Server

Microsoft just announced the Windows Management Framework 5.0 Preview. The Windows Management Framework V5 preview adds some cool new feature called OneGet.

OneGet is a new way to discover and install software packages from around the web. With OneGet, you can:

Manage a list of software repositories in which packages can be searched, acquired, and installed
Search and filter your repositories to find the packages you need
Seamlessly install and uninstall packages from one or more repositories with a single PowerShell command

As I did some tests this is perfect to install new software packages very easily. So I started with one of my favorite tools called Sysinternals Suite.

Install Sysinternals from PowerShell

First I have check if there was a Sys internals Package available by using:

 
Find-Package Sysinternals

This checks online from different sources if there is a package available. After that I installed the package by using:

 
Find-Package Sysinternals | Install-Package

So this is really easy and guess what, it does not just work for Microsoft Software, there is a lot more of third party Software which can be installed with OneGet. So make sure you checkout the Windows Management Framework 5.0 Preview to get the new OneGet cmdlets.

Nov292012November 29, 2012November 29, 20120 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Altaro gives away 50 free PC backup licenses to all Microsoft Hyper-V administrators

Posted in Microsoft, Virtualization, Windows Server

Altaro Software, a fast-growing developer of backup solutions for Microsoft Hyper-V, today announced that it is giving every Microsoft Hyper-V administrator 50 free licenses of Oops!Backup, their desktop backup solution.

“Following the success of our Hyper-V Backup solution this year, we wanted to give something back to the Hyper-V community during the holiday season” commented David Vella, CEO of Altaro. “Hyper-V admins can give out these licenses to their colleagues, friends and family, for use at work or at home.”

Oops!Backup is a popular desktop backup solution that allows users to preview & restore versions of their files from different points in time.

Any network administrator who uses Microsoft Hyper-V is eligible for the free license keys, they simply need to visit the Altaro website, send in a screenshot of their Hyper-V Manager and expect an email with their respective keys.

To claim the 50 free licenses users should check out http://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/50-free-pc-backup-licenses-for-all-hyper-v-admins
More information about Oops!Backup is available at http://www.altaro.com/home-pc-backup/
For more info about Altaro Hyper-V Backup check out http://www.altaro.com/hyper-v-backup/?LP=Xmas
Altaro’s Hyper-V portal is available at http://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/

Sep212011September 21, 2011September 21, 20111 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Cisco UCS Release 2.0

Posted in Hardware, Microsoft, Virtualization, Windows Server

This monday Cisco released the the UCS Software 2.0, which brings a lot of bug fixes and important features. This major software release brings a new drivers, BIOS, software and firmware.

New Hardware Features in Release 2.0(1)

Cisco UCS 6248 Fabric interconnect
Cisco 2208 IO Module
2500 Watt DC Power Supply for the Cisco UCS 5108 Blade Server Chassis

New Software Features in Release 2.0(1)

Licensing – Updated information for new UCS hardware.
Firmware Bundle Option – Enables you to select a bundle instead of a version when updating firmware using the Cisco UCS Manager GUI.
Disk Drive Monitoring Support – Support for disk drive monitoring on certain blade servers and a specific LSI storage controller firmware level.
iSCSI Boot – iSCSI boot enables a server to boot its operating system from an iSCSI target machine located remotely over a network.
Pre-login Banner – Displays user-defined banner text prior to login when a user logs into Cisco UCS Manager using the GUI or CLI.
Unified Ports – Unified ports are ports on the 6200 series fabric interconnect that can be configured to carry either Ethernet or Fibre Channel traffic.
Upstream Disjoint Layer-2 Networks – Enables you to configure Cisco UCS to communicate with upstream disjoint layer-2 networks.
Virtual Interfaces – The number of vNICs and vHBAs configurable for a service profile is determined by adapter capability and the amount of virtual interface (VIF) namespace available on the adapter.
VM-FEX Integration for VMware – Cisco Virtual Machine Fabric Extender (VM-FEX) for VMware provides management integration and network communication between Cisco UCS Manager and VMware vCenter. In previous releases, this functionality was known as VN-Link in Hardware.
VM-FEX Integration for KVM (Red Hat Linux) – Cisco Virtual Machine Fabric Extender (VM-FEX) for VMware provides external switching for virtual machines running on a KVM Linux-based hypervisor in a Cisco UCS instance.

More Information about the Cisco UCS Software 2.0 release

Sep122011September 12, 2011September 12, 20110 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Microsoft’s Mouse Without Borders

Posted in Fun, Microsoft, Windows

Microsoft Mouse Without Borders

Microsoft released a free software called “Mouse Without Borders” which allows you running multiple computers with one keyboard and mouse like Synergy. But the “Mouse Without Borders” brings a lot of cool features and an easy setup.

Use your mouse seamlessly
Drag files across computers
Copy & paste across computers
Share one keyboard across computers
Lock or log into all of your PCs at one time and share screen captures from one PC to another

Jul122011July 12, 2011July 2, 20180 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Windows Intune July 2011 Beta

Posted in Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Windows

Windows Intune Logo

Microsoft released the July 2011 Beta of Windows Intune yesterday. The new beta brings a lot of new cool features which were missing in the first version of Windows Intune.

Software Distribution
License Management for third-party software
Enhanced Reporting
Read-only Access Administrators
Offline Client Installation
Remote Tasks (Malware scan etc)
and more…

If you need more information on the July beta of Windows Intune you can download the Factsheet or get more information on technet.

I think through this update Windows Intune gets the features it needs to be successful. This is a great opportunity for small and mid-sized which not had a Software Distribution in place, to get an easy solution.

Nov202010November 20, 2010November 20, 20101 Commentby Thomas Maurer

SVN Basic

Posted in Apple, Microsoft

A colleague made a pretty cool blog post about svn basic on his blog. Subverion is a software versioning and a revision control system. At work all our program code and scripts, every little piece of code is going in your Subversion repository. This allows you to get back to earlier revisions of the code or simply share and work on code with other employees. Even your documentation is going into the Subversion repository.

On his blog post (German) he shows the basics of subversion, doing a checkout of e repository, adding files, changing files, removing files and more.

Here is a basic list of svn commands, if you need more information you should check the Subversion Homepage or try the Blog post from tspycher.com

svn checkout  http://svn.colab.company.com # SVN checkout
svn commit -m "My Message and Changes" # SVN committing changes and new files
svn add /files/*.* # Adding Files to the SVN Repository after this you have to commit that
svn update # Update your local copy

A lot of IDE’s (Integrated Development Environment) like Visual Studio or Xcode have SVN integrated.

Sep292010September 29, 2010January 7, 20192 Commentsby Thomas Maurer

Simple Bean Machine program done in Powershell

Posted in Fun, Microsoft, PowerShell, School

Powershell Header

In the last article I posted the C++ Code for a simple Bean Machine output. Now I did the same in Powershell. I know this is not really a fantastic Powershell script, but its good to show others how things get done in Powershell.

Like in the C++ bean machine it works like this:

Bean Machine And the Output should look like this:

And here is how you do this in Powershell:

#Config
[int]$ballCount = 100
[array]$box = @(0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
[string]$line = " +-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+--&gt;"
[string]$numbers = " 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50"
[object]$random = New-Object System.Random
 
#count
for([int]$i = 0; $i -lt $ballCount; $i++){
[int]$counter = 0
 
for([int]$j = 0; $j -lt 5; $j++){
$leftorright = $random.next(0,2)
$counter = $counter + $leftorright
}
$box[$counter] = $box[$counter] + 1
}
 
#Output
Write-Host $numbers
Write-Host $line
for ([int]$t = 0; $t -lt 6; $t++){
[string]$Statusline = ""
for ([int]$u = 0; $u -lt $box[$t]; $u++){
[string]$Statusline += "#"
}
Write-Host $t "|" $Statusline $box[$t]
Write-Host $line
}

Sep112010September 11, 2010July 5, 20190 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Simple C++ dec2bin program @KTSI

Posted in School

This is a very simple dec2bin program done for KTSI.

#include 
#include 
#include 
 
using namespace std;
 
string dec2bin (int v) {
	if (v &gt; 255) {
		return "";
	}
	else { 
		string bin;
		int oneorzero;
		for(int i=8;i&gt;0;i--) {
			oneorzero = v % 2;
			if (oneorzero == 1) {
				bin = "1" + bin;
			}
			else {
				bin = "0" + bin;
			}
			v /= 2;
 
		}
 
	return bin;
 
	}
}
 
int main(){
    int v;
    do {
        cout &lt;&lt; "Wert(ende = -1) = "; if (!(cin &gt;&gt; v)) {
            return 0;
        }
        if (v &lt; 0) break;
        string s = dec2bin(v);
        cout &lt;&lt; s &lt;&lt; endl; //system("PAUSE"); } while(v &gt;= 0);
    cout &lt;&lt; "bye" &lt;&lt; endl;
    //system("PAUSE");
    return 0;
}

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