We're looking at a custom server build for work. I did some research last night and wanted to record some finding regarding RAID.

• Windows SW RAID has come a long way since the Windows 2000 days (when I last tried it).
• Stripped (RAID0) SSDs are easy, but to get performance benefit from Mirrored (RAID1/10/6) requires a 'good' RAID controller.
• LSI seems to dominate the performance-conscious market with their MegaRaid controllers.  servethehome.com has some good info on controllers (I think the 2208 is best-of-breed with dual-core controller chip).
• The Adaptec 'Hybrid' to always read from SSD, but pair writes (writes to both the SSD and conventional HDD) sounds really good.  Adaptec 6405 should handle 2 SSDs and isn't expensive (under $400).   But can't find a good review of it.

My Google Apps...

I just ran a little experiment and ran an HTA app under debugger (by adding //X as the arguments to MSHTA.exe). In the app version string it reports Trident 6.0 (a.k.a. IE 10) as the rendering engine. This is interesting, because I think they could have chosen to run HTA apps in compatibility mode with IE 8 (which shipped with the last OS) but they continued to move MSHTA to use the latest IE engine, like they alway have. This means local HTA apps have CSS3 and other HTML5 enhancements.

I'd like to see if MSHTA.exe ships on Windows RT (WOA / Windows on ARM). If it does this might help fill the gap between native desktop apps for power users that can't run as metro apps, like tabbed file explorer (i.e. Directory Opus / Cubic Explorer). Instead of native code Windows RT might run 'script apps' like PowerShell and HTA.

1. I used an ancient train simulator utility as my sample (after you click the initial error it shows the current folder and a file list, and it is blazing fast).
2. Create a .cmd script that contains 'mshta.exe sra.htm //X' and it will launch the app and immediately prompt to attach a javascript debugger. (Thanks for this tip.)

The next step is to try to combine this with modern Metro-ish CSS template (thanks code 52).

I'd like to see if a few js libraries work in a Windows 8 HTA. Rx.js, jQuery (or alternate DOM selection and ajax wrapper), and a modern js templating library like JSRender.

I'm not sure how to approach the following technology migrations my team needs to tackle, especially planning, story weights, and customer benefit language.

SQL 2008 R2 -> SQL 2012

Geometry/Geography improvements

VS 2010 -> VS 2012

IDE Performance, integrated SL tools, improved HTML/js tools

production .NET 4.0 -> .NET 4.5

Hoping to see better startup performance, and use new APIs.

The following are also changes I think are needed but which I haven't sold the team on yet.

MSTest -> xUnit

It seems MSTest integration (like test lists) are being retired by Microsft in favor of OSS tools. A big plus (use best of breed OSS where possible) but painful in short run, as we have everything in MSTest and test lists.

SSIS -> SQLCMD or .NET Console (FileHelper OSS DLL)

Migrate data import/export away from SSIS (for files under 100MB).

Update 7/5/2012 5:10 PM

Eliminate GUID PKs

Eliminate GUID primary keys (uniqueidentifier) on all tables

I have VS 2012 running on my main 2 solutions and things are running smoothly. I recently hit a significant problem.

Platform / Tools info:

1. I'm running Windows 8 Pro x64 Release Preview (as a VM, in Hyper-V)
2. I'm running Visual Studio 2012 RC

I also have Visual Studio 2010 SP1 installed, and I do swap back to that IDE 10% or less(for SQL Management Studio and SSIS tooling support) and we plan to have both IDEs installed for all top devs in the company for some time (until SQL tools and SSIS are moved completely to VS 12).

Here's my problem: Publish to file system seems to be broken. I have a simple web services project (ASP.NET project hosted in IIS) that we've always used 'publish to file system' in VS 2010 to deploy. We're using config transformations, so the publish button makes managing and copying the transformations easy.

I just tried it in VS 2012, and it says it deployed successfully, but nothing. It deleted all the files from the (remote) service folder, but it didn't deploy anything.

I have a question: besides opening a web browser after the deployment, what does the new 'URL' setting on the publish profile do? Just used to open a browser, or does it 'do' anything else?