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Microsoft has made available a series of ebooks on the MVA web site. From technical overviews to drilldowns on special topics, these free ebooks are available in PDF, EPUB, and/or Mobi for Kindle formats, ready for you to download.

You can check them all out here:

http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/ebooks

Happy reading!

Microsoft Press has released Rethinking Enterprise Storage: A Hybrid Cloud Model, by Marc Farley, as a free download. You can download the PDF version of this book here.

The book includes seven chapters:

1. Rethinking enterprise storage
2. Leapfrogging backup with cloud snapshots
3. Accelerating and broadening disaster recovery protection
4. Taming the capacity monster
5. Archiving data with the hybrid cloud
6. Putting all the pieces together
7. Imagining the possibilities with hybrid cloud storage

If you prefer the kindle edition of the book, you can find it here: Rethinking Enterprise Storage: A Hybrid Cloud Model

Working on the application development scene, it’s hard to keep up with everything new. Every bit of help counts. Great resources are the eBooks you can find, for free, online on the Web. The books you can find in PDF format are great because you can take them with you anywhere. The ones that are available to view online are also great because you get any updates made on the subject. On this post I leave everyone a small set of links where you can find eBook compilations.
The first one comes from Speck boy Design Magazine and it’s mostly about User Interface design. For instance, the Mobile Web Design Best Practices by Mobify “is a handy mobile web design guide with over 50 tips that will help you build amazing mobile websites”. You can visit the Specky boy eBook compilation here: http://speckyboy.com/2013/06/10/free-ebooks-for-designers-and-developers/
The next eBook compilation is from Revolunet. It’s all about the Python programming language. You have the classic “Dive into Python” and a whole bunch of other interesting books. You can find them all at this Web page: http://pythonbooks.revolunet.com/
Finally, this list wouldn’t be complete without the emerging trend on multi-platform application development: javaScript. Here you have subjects for all tastes: Node.js, MongoDB, Windows 8, and so on. Get them all on this page: http://jsbooks.revolunet.com/
Happy readings!
Photo Credit: Mark J P via Compfight cc

Graph Databases, published by O’Reilly Media, discusses the problems that are well aligned with graph databases, with examples drawn from practical, real-world use cases. This book also looks at the ecosystem of complementary technologies, highlighting what differentiates graph databases from other database technologies, both relational and NOSQL.
Fill in a short form to get your download link by e-mail.

Site: http://www.graphdatabases.com/

While searching for documentation about how to install, configure and administer the latest Microsoft Sharepoint released, I found two very relevant documents that combined give a really good work basis for deploying a fresh install of a server farm or maybe just a standalone development server.
First came the Deployment guide for SharePoint 2013 Preview. It’s the preview version but it has useful information on, for example, how to use a network share to install the software prerequisites. It looks a bit like a work in progress documentation, but it has some bits and pieces that are gone from the definitive guide.
Second, came the definitive Deployment guide for SharePoint 2013. It’s an official free eBook to learn how to install and configure SharePoint Server and SharePoint Foundation. It comes in several formats and it’s a downloadable source of the content available at the TechNet Sharepoint Library.
The first guide is really nice if you’re an experienced administrator that comes from the 2010 version, but lacks some specific guidance. The second one is a complete guide and covers the operation and maintenance aspects very well.
Download the Deployment guide for SharePoint 2013 Preview here.
Download the Deployment guide for SharePoint 2013 here.

Some weeks ago I published about the free preview of  Introducing Windows 8: An Overview for IT Professionals. Well, the final version of this free ebook has been released. You can download it from here.
If you prefer a hard copy of the final book, you can order it here for $8.46 from Amazon (pre-order price).

Is this book for you?

Get a headstart evaluating Window 8—guided by a Windows expert who’s worked extensively with the software since the preview releases. Based on final, release-to-manufacturing (RTM) software, this book introduces new features and capabilities, with scenario-based insights demonstrating how to plan for, implement, and maintain Windows 8 in an enterprise environment. Get the high-level information you need to begin preparing your deployment now.

Topics include:

• Performance, reliability, and security features
• Deployment options
• Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit
• Windows PowerShell™ 3.0 and Group Policy
• Managing and sideloading apps
• Internet Explorer® 10
• Virtualization, Client Hyper-V, and Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack
• Recovery features

Source: Microsoft Press

A few months ago I posted about the feee e-book Programming Windows 8 Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
The companion content for has been updated. So download the companion content again if you’ve already got it:
http://go.microsoft.com/FWLink/?Linkid=270057 (59.9 MB)
Here are the details of the update from the author:
This update fixes one bug in the HereMyAm examples for Chapters 8, 9, 13, and 17 in the file pages/home/home.js. The one line within the updateImage function:
    app.sessionState.fileToken = list.addOrReplace(app.sessionState.fileToken, newFile);
is replaced with
    list.addOrReplace(app.sessionState.fileToken, newFile);
This corrects a bug where transient session state was preserved across the suspend-terminate-restart boundary only every other time because the app.sessionState.fileToken was erroneously overwritten with “undefined”.

Source: Microsoft Press

The Windows 8 operating system is the newest member of the Microsoft Windows family. It differs from earlier Windows releases as much for what it does not change as for what it does change. That is, the features that IT pros loved about Windows 7 are still there in Windows 8—just better. The same keyboard shortcuts, management tools, security features, and deployment options are available in Windows 8. But in many cases, Windows 8 improves them in intuitive and significant ways. Some examples are the ribbon in File Explorer and faster disk encryption when using BitLocker Drive Encryption. This book describes these enhancements plus many of the new features in Windows 8.
Enjoy this preview edition that contains Chapters 1-11. 
Download the PDF version of the book here: Introducing Windows 8: An Overview for IT Professionals - PDF ebook

Source: Microsoft Press

Full Circle is a free, independent, monthly magazine dedicated to the Ubuntu family of Linux operating systems. Each month, it contains helpful how-to articles and reader submitted stories.

On this month’s issue, there a great compilation of free e-book resources for Ubuntu beginners and enthusiasts.

Starting off, there’s the Muktware Ubuntu Manual. According to the magazine, it’s intended for users new to Ubuntu coming from other operating systems, and also users who are upgrading from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

It is a manual produced by the community for the community. Therefore, it is available free of charge, and is distributed under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license. The author also notes that one should be be aware that this is the very first edition and hence is a work in progress. You can download from here.

Next, there’s the Absolute Beginner’s Guide from MakeuseOf. This guide covers what Ubuntu is, what makes it free and how Ubuntu and Linux are related.

It also shows you how to install Ubuntu for absolute beginners, where to find free support for Ubuntu questions, how to use the Unity interface how to find software in Ubuntu and which software to use.

You can find out about the author and get the dowload link from here.

In third place on this list comes the Ubuntu Manual Project: Getting Started with Ubuntu 12.04. It’s  a comprehensive beginners guide for the Ubuntu operating system. It is written under an open source license, and is free for you to download, read, modify and share.

The manual will help you become familiar with everyday tasks such as surfing the web, listening to music and scanning documents. With an emphasis on easy-to-follow instructions, it is suitable for all levels of experience.

In software engineering, continuous integration (CI) implements continuous processes of applying quality control — small pieces of effort, applied frequently. Continuous integration aims to improve the quality of software, and to reduce the time taken to deliver it, by replacing the traditional practice of applying quality control after completing all development. (cited from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).
If you work with Microsoft technologies and products, your sure bet will be the Team Foundation Server and ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) processes supported by that platform.
If you’re working with Java then Jenkins is for you, It’s an open source CI server written in Java. It is licensed under the MIT license terms, and it is widely adopted throughout the world for different languages and environments. It also has an enormous community that contributes plugins. Initially, Jenkins was called Hudson, and was developed inside Sun Microsystems' offices. When Oracle purchased Sun (and inherited the code base), they tried to change the way the project was managed. In early 2011, tensions between Oracle and the community lead to a project fork, and Jenkins was born. The main difference is that Hudson is still managed by Oracle, and Jenkins by most of the original Hudson developers (including the founder Kohsuke Kawaguchi), focused on the community's needs.
To get started with Jenkins, you can follow the online tutorials. But for a more complete self-training I would recommend the book from O’Reilly, “Jenkins: The Definitive Guide”: It’s presented as being ideal for developers, software architects, and project managers, Jenkins: The Definitive Guide is both a CI tutorial and a comprehensive Jenkins reference. Through its wealth of best practices and real-world tips, you'll discover how easy it is to set up a CI service with Jenkins. Aspects covered are:

• Learn how to install, configure, and secure your Jenkins server
• Organize and monitor general-purpose build jobs
• Integrate automated tests to verify builds, and set up code quality reporting
• Establish effective team notification strategies and techniques
• Configure build pipelines, parameterized jobs, matrix builds, and other advanced jobs
• Manage a farm of Jenkins servers to run distributed builds
• Implement automated deployment and continuous delivery

To great news are that if you don’t care for the paperback, you can download this book free on this site.
After getting to know Jenkins, another great resource is the free cheat sheet available from the guys at DZone.

Together with the launch of Visual Studio 2012, Microsoft has released a product guide to learn how to take advantage of their latest IDE release, as well as the technologies supported.
This Visual Studio 2012 Product Guide provides a comprehensive overview of scenarios and features regarding:

• The new integrated development environment (IDE)
• Windows® 8 development
• Web development
• Cloud development
• SharePoint development
• Application Life Cycle Management tools

You can download the guide from Microsoft Download Center.

Microsoft has released in it’s download center a free e-book about how you can use the powerful infrastructure services that are part of Windows Azure to simplify development; integrate the component parts of a hybrid application across the cloud, on-premises, and third-party boundaries; and maximize security, performance scalability, and availability.
This guide is intended for architects, developers, and information technology (IT) professionals
who design, build, or operate applications and services that run on or interact with the cloud. Although applications do not need to be based on the Microsoft® Windows® operating system to operate in Windows Azure, this book is written for people who work with Windows-based systems. You should be familiar with the Microsoft .NET Framework, the Microsoft Visual Studio® development system, ASP.NET MVC, and the Microsoft Visual C#® development language.
This content was already available on MSDN as part of the patterns and practices series. You can now download the full e-book here.

It's exciting news for Microsoft technology developers, as the final builds of the newest version of the .NET framework as well as one of the best development tools, Visual Studio, have become available. You can get a full briefing from this post here.
Furthermore, Microsoft has kindly made available a free ebook from Apress media on Visual Studio technologies. It has the following table of contents:

• Chapter 1: Introducing Visual Studio 
• Chapter 2: Getting Started with Metro
• Chapter 3: Testing in Visual Studio
• Chapter 4: Introduction to ALM
• Chapter 5: ALM Assessments
• Chapter 6: ALM Using TFS
• Chapter 7: Windows Azure Platform Overview
• Chapter 8: Windows Azure Compute

You can download it here.

You can download from Microsoft Press a full preview edition of the ebook “Programming Windows 8 Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript”. It’s free. This first preview contains the first four chapters of what we think will be an 18-chapter final ebook:

• Chapter 1   The Life Story of a Metro Style App: Platform Characteristics of Windows 8
• Chapter 2   Quickstart
• Chapter 3   App Anatomy and Page Navigation
• Chapter 4   Controls, Control Styling, and Basic Data Binding

Happy reading!

Here is a very nice freebie from Microsoft Press. The final and complete version of Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2012, by Ross Mistry (@RossMistry) and Stacia Misner (@StaciaMisner), is available as a free download. 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

 You can download the PDF version of this title here (288 pages; 10.8 MB).

Happy learning.