From the source:

 

Mitch Tulloch has updated his very popular free ebook on Windows Server 2012 based on the RTM version of the software.

 

A key feature of this book is the inclusion of sidebars written by members of the Windows Server team, Microsoft Support engineers, Microsoft Consulting Services staff, and others who work at Microsoft. These sidebars provide an insider’s perspective that includes both “under-the-hood” information concerning how features work, and strategies, tips, and best practices from experts who have been working with the platform during product development.

 

Please see the links below to download one or all of the available formats.

 

 

PDF - Introducing Windows Server 2012 RTM Edition - PDF ebook

EPUB – Introducing Windows Server 2012 RTM Edition – ePub format

MOBI – Introducing Windows Server 2012 RTM Edition – MOBI format (for Kindle)

 

The full version can be bought here:

UK / Europe:

Kindle edition 

Paper edition

 

US:

Paper edition

Kindle edition (at the time of writing, the book is priced at $0.00)

From the MS Press blog:

 

Get an excerpt from Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Pocket Consultant (ISBN 9780735663763; 592 pages) selected by author William Stanek. Click here for your PDF.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

 

Chapter 1: Managing SQL Servers

Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio is the primary tool you use to manage databases and servers. Other tools available to manage local and remote servers include SQL Server PowerShell, SQL Server Configuration Manager, Database Engine Tuning Advisor, and SQL Server Profiler. You use SQL Server Configuration Manager to manage SQL Server services, networking, and client configurations. Database Engine Tuning Advisor is available to help optimize indexes, indexed views, and partitions, and SQL Server Profiler lets you examine events generated by SQL Server, which can provide helpful details for troubleshooting. In this chapter, you will learn how to use SQL Server Management Studio.

■ Using SQL Server Management Studio

■ Managing SQL Server Groups

■ Managing Servers

■ Using Windows PowerShell for SQL Server Management

■ Starting, Stopping, and Configuring SQL Server Agent

■ Starting, Stopping, and Configuring MSDTC

■ Managing SQL Server Startup

■ Managing Server Activity

 

Chapter 2: Implementing Policy-Based Management

Policy-Based Management is an extensible and scalable configuration framework that you can use to manage servers, databases, and other objects in your data environments. As an administrator, you need to be very familiar with how Policy-Based Management technology works, and that’s exactly what this chapter is about. If you haven’t worked with Policy-Based Management technology before, one thing you’ll notice immediately is that the technology is fairly advanced and has many features. To help you manage this complex technology, I’ll start with an overview of Policy-Based Management and then explore its components.

■ Introducing Policy-Based Management

■ Working with Policy-Based Management

■ Configuring Central Management Servers

■ Managing Policies Throughout the Enterprise

SOURCE 

 

From the source:

 

Friends, the final and complete version of Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2012, by Ross Mistry (@RossMistry) and Stacia Misner (@StaciaMisner), is now ready as a free download! You can download the PDF version of this title here (288 pages; 10.8 MB).

 

We will update this post soon with links to EPUB and MOBI files. We expect these files to be available by March 23. If you prefer a hard copy of the book, you can order it here for $14.99.

 

 

Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2012 includes 10 chapters:

 

PART I   DATABASE ADMINISTRATION (by Ross Mistry)

1.   SQL Server 2012 Editions and Engine Enhancements

2.   High-Availability and Disaster-Recovery Enhancements

3.   Performance and Scalability

4.   Security Enhancements

5.   Programmability and Beyond-Relational Enhancements

 

PART II   BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE DEVELOPMENT (by Stacia Misner)

6.   Integration Services

7.   Data Quality Services

8.   Master Data Services

9.   Analysis Services and PowerPivot

10.   Reporting Services

On Katrien’s MSDN Blog:

 

During TechDays Belgium 2012 two weeks ago, Scott Guthrie announced the Beta release of ASP.NE MVC 4 slated for that same week. Since February 16th you can now download ASP.NET MVC4 Beta.
Interesting to note is the availability of a Go-Live license with this release. In other words, if you feel like using these bits on production you now can!

 

A few important updates and features are part of the Beta:

 

• - Bundling and Minification, brought to ASP.NET 4.5 and now also integrated into ASP.NET MVC 4. This allows you to build faster applications by minimizing the number of requests to the server (bundling requests).
  
• - Web API integration into ASP.NET: new support for creating HTTP REST services, has built-in support for content negotiation with support for JSON, XML and Form URL-encoded formats
  
• - ASP.NET Mobile support through custom view engines for mobile sit.es and jQuery Mobile integration.
  
• - Async and WebSockets: when using ASP.NET MVC 4 with .NET 4.5 and VS 11 you’ll also be able to take advantage of the new async and WebSocket support built-into .NET 4.5.
  
• - Single Page Applications: new in the beta is support for building better end-to-end experience for building applications with client-side interactions using JavaScript (Upshot, History.js) and the MVVM pattern (knockout.js). On the server side the ASP.NET NET Web API is used, mainly an abstract class DataController. Note this is a new project template type in experimental phase.
  
• For more information on creating Single Page Applications with ASP.NET MVC 4 I recommend you watch the fantastic session Steve Sanderson did during TechDays: Building rich Single Page Applications (SPAs) for desktop, mobile, and tablet with ASP.NET MVC 4. Worth watching until the end where Steve even shows an offline capable implementation using HTML5 application cache and offline storage. These latter ones however are not yet part of the beta.

 

Resources

 

• Download ASP.NET MVC 4
• Watch Scott Guthrie’s session going through ASP.NET MVC 4
• Watch Steven Sanderson’s session on Single Page Applications
• Read Scott Guthrie’s series on ASP.NET Web API
• Learning: new Intro to ASP.NET MV4 tutorial
• Learning: ASP.NET Web API Samples

Found the MSDN newsletter in my mailbox this morning. First topic that caught my eye: Visual Studio 11 Dev Preview! Another one? Indeed!!! So here is some more information on the new kid on the block.

 

What's New in Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview

Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview Training Kit

 

.NET Framework 4.5 Developer Preview

Recently I’ve been working on a project with a friend of mine. One of the things we were playing with was Team Foundation Server 2010. So we set it up and I connected to it using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate. Collaborating was not an issue. Sharing documents, using source control,… everything worked fine. Now I wanted to work on some of my ideas. I wanted to start a new project in Visual Studio, but the only option that was available to me was the “Start new team project” issue:

 

 

When clicking here, I got the following error (which is ok since my rights on that TFS server have been revoked):

 

The weird thing here is that I have a fully working version of Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate installed, but I only get the Team Explorer functionality. You can verify this by checking the installed components of Visual Studio in the “About”-window (Help –> About Microsoft Visual Studio).

 

To get back to the “normal” mode in Visual Studio (meaning: being able to create new projects and working with VS2010 normally) you need to reset your preferences by doing Tools > Import/Export settings > Import. Here you can choose to reset everything or to import a certain configuration. I chose to import a predefined configuration without backing up my current configuration (wasn’t much use to me anyhow):

 

 

I selected the Visual C# Development Settings and pressed “Next”. There I chose to reset all settings and clicked the “Finish” button:

 

 

Now that my configuration settings have been restored, I have the regular view in my Visual Studio and I can create projects again!

 

 

In Microsoft Outlook you can automatically add your country’s national holidays.

In the “Tools” menu, select “Options”

 

 

In the “Preferences” tab on the Options-screen there is a “Calendar”-section. Click on “Calendar Options”

 

 

In the “Calendar options”-section of the Calendar Options (I swear, I’m not making this up) press the “Add Holidays…”-button.

 

 

Now a list appears with all the countries for which national holidays are known in Outlook. Select the countries of which you want the holiday information imported in Outlook and click “OK”.

Something I found that might come in handy:

 

The Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework is a free, centralized code sample library driven by developers' needs. Our goal is to provide typical code samples for all Microsoft development technologies, and reduce developers' efforts in solving typical programming tasks.

 

Codeplex page

Download (from Codeplex)

Request a code sample

 

For a full list of downloads (sorted by technology), please check the Codeplex download page. There are samples available for C++, ASP.NET, Silverlight, Azure, Office, Windows, WPF, Windows Security, and many more…

Here are some resources that might be useful when working with (or learning) Team Foundation Server 2010.

 

Team Foundation Installation Guide for Visual Studio 2010

Description:
Team Foundation Installation Guide 2010 includes instruction for installing Team Foundation Server, Team Foundation Server Proxy and Team Foundation Build Services.

Note: After you download the installation guide, you cannot view its contents unless you right-click the .chm file, click Properties, and then click Unblock.

 

Download

 

Administration Guide for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server

Description: Effective administration of Team Foundation Server is important to the success of your team projects. You can use this downloadable version of the administration content available on MSDN for local review of critical administration concepts, procedures, and walkthroughs.

Download

 

Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server Monitoring Management Pack

Description: The Team Foundation Server 2010 Monitoring Management Pack provides both proactive and reactive monitoring of Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010. It monitors TFS components such as application tier server instances, team project collections, build servers, and proxy servers.

Download

 

Team Foundation Server Integration Tools (March 2011 Release)

Description: The TFS Integration Tools is a project developed by the Team Foundation Server (TFS) product group and the Visual Studio ALM Rangers to integrate Team Foundation Server with third party systems for migration and synchronization of data.  Although the tools can be used for many purposes, planning, thorough testing and honest evaluation of extra resources and cost that will be required should precede any decision to use the Integration Tools.  The Integration Tools are not intended to replace a server upgrade as a path to TFS2010 and this scenario should be avoided if possible.

The March 2011 release includes the following features:

• Out of the box adapter to Team Foundation Server 2010
• Out of the box adapter to Team Foundation Server 2008
• Out of the box adapter to Rational ClearCase
• Out of the box adapter to Rational ClearQuest
• Out of the box adapter for File system based version control migrations
• Updated documentation, guidance and case studies (readiness package)
• Updated User Interface to configure and run integrations
• Synchronization monitoring tools and reports

Download

 

Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Branching guide

Description: The purpose of this project is to build some insightful and practical guidance around branching and merging with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010. The new release focuses on Hands on Labs and includes lots of lessons learnt from the community Q&A.

Download

 

Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server Requirements Management

Description: This Ranger solution addresses the People, Process, and Technology guidance for Requirements Engineering (RE) using Team Foundation Server. The goal of this guidance is to provide formalized Microsoft field experience in the form of recommended procedures and processes, Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server configurations, and skill development references for the Requirements Engineering discipline of your application lifecycle.

Download

 

Microsoft Visual Studio Team Explorer Everywhere 2010

Description: Eclipse plug-in and cross-platform command-line client for Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server.

Download

 

Team Foundation Server Power Tools (March 2011)

Description: A plug-in to Visual Studio, Alerts Explorer provides a graphical user interface that supports flexible subscription of alerts based on check-in, work item change, or build completion.

Download

Quick reference guide to commonly-used Windows PowerShell commands. For best results, open the file in Microsoft Word, print the contents to legal-sized paper (8 inches by 14 inches), and fold the resulting printout in half, making a four-page booklet.

Powershell Quick reference