983 avsnitt • Längd: 35 min • Veckovis: Onsdag
RunAs Radio is a weekly Internet Audio Talk Show for IT Professionals working with Microsoft products.
The podcast RunAs Radio is created by Richard Campbell. The podcast and the artwork on this page are embedded on this page using the public podcast feed (RSS).
How do you make a career in cybersecurity? Richard talks to Yuri Diogenes about his work in cybersecurity, including his book on building a career in cybersecurity. Yuri talks about the inquisitive mindset that works well in cybersecurity - wanting to understand why things happen and get to the root cause. The conversation also explores the value of experimentation and practical experience as well as certifications and training - they all have value. However, it is also recognized that cybersecurity encompasses a vast area of work - it's not one kind of job, so you have a lot of choices to make!
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Recorded March 14, 2025
So what does modern work look like today? Richard talks to Karoliina Kettukari about her new role as the Head of Modern Work for a financial services company in Finland, and what modern work has evolved. Karoliina talks about how the pandemic accelerated modern work, such as being able to work anywhere and collaborating with whomever you need to. Post-pandemic, there is a push for more work from the office, but remote work is still essential - and now artificial intelligence is changing the landscape again. The rapid evolution of AI technologies is a challenge for admins, but the productivity benefits are becoming obvious - you need some good governance!
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Recorded March 6, 2025
What can agentic AI do for you? Richard talks to Tim Warner about his work utilizing next generation agentic AI technologies to help with sysadmin tasks. Tim talks about the early lead that Cursor AI took with AI agents capable of writing and executing scripts on your behalf - as opposed to just creating code you can cut-and-paste. Today, GitHub Copilot has caught up with Agent Mode in Copilot Edits, although still in preview, it speaks to a future where sysadmins use these tools to write better scripts for work - and get more done in less time!
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Recorded February 17, 2025
Are some of your team members starting to hate PowerShell? Richard talks to Barbara Forbes about her experiences with teams frustrated by PowerShell. Barbara talks about overcomplicating PowerShell scripts—the kind the most senior folks can create but no one else can maintain. Eventually, nobody will want to touch those scripts. Then there is the question of business value—does everything need to be automated? And by how much? Often, the appropriate solution solves 80% of the cases; the other 20% are best done by hand because the cost and complexity of the last 20% are too high. Focus on the return on investment for the business, and you'll keep the love of PowerShell alive!
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Recorded February 24, 2025
How can Security Copilot help you secure your applications? Richard talks to Ari Schorr about assessing application risk with Microsoft Security Copilot - a new feature in preview in Security Copilot that focuses on application roles and entities. Ari talks about the sheer array of resources that applications depend on, and the many security risks that exist in that space - how do you even get started on the problem? Security Copilot helps to sort through potential risks and help a sysadmin focus in on the most significant risks, especially the low-hanging fruit weak authentication and unused resources. The conversation also explores some of the future potential of a tool like this to detect supply chain attacks, find ways to strengthen and simplify applications so their attack surface is smaller. It's a great time to get familiar with these tools!
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Recorded February 18, 2025
What can GitHub Copilot do for SysAdmins in 2025? Richard talks to Jessica Deen from GitHub about her experiences using Copilot for her work. Jessica talks about Copilot being the first stop for most tasks - describing the task to Copilot helps you think through the problem, and often the tool can generate code or information to get that task done fast. Today's GitHub Copilot can handle everything from explaining existing code to writing something new, debugging a problem, or even writing documentation!
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Recorded March 13, 2025
How do you write better PowerShell? Richard talks to Jeff Hicks about his latest book, Behind the PowerShell Pipeline, and his efforts to promote writing PowerShell scripts that are easy to understand, use, and maintain! Jeff talks about how making a script work is not enough anymore - you can use GitHub Copilot. The goal is to make the output as usable as possible, whether that is consistent output that is pipe-able or using color coding and column controls to make the results as actionable as possible. This is especially true as your team grows and more than one person works on scripts. Now, you'll want testing and source control, too!
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Recorded February 20, 2025
How are you managing your AI costs? Richard chats with Sonia Cuff about how she's been helping sysadmins understand how AI technology is billed out and how to measure them within a given application and across the organization. Sonia starts with some definitions since the term AI is so broad. It's not just about large language models! The conversation also dives into carbon footprints, and using the FinOps models to help with costing for your cloud infrastructure, whether you're using AI or not!
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Recorded February 19, 2025
Are you using strong certificate mapping in Active Directory? Richard Hicks returns to the show to talk about the impacts of KB5015754, issued way back in 2022, and how it turned into an enforcement event on February 11, 2025 that might have caused some serious problems for folks trying to authenticate to Active Directory. For most sites, the upgrade to strong certificates was pretty much automatic. But if you're using Intune SCEP, you needed to do some configuration - and if that was missed, there is trouble. There are workarounds for now, but come September 2025, enforcement will be mandatory and everything gets harder, so it's worth looking into it now!
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Recorded February 17, 2025
What does it mean to be secure by design? Richard chats with Karinne Bessette about the scope of the problem around making more secure software. Karinne talks about the US government's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) push to promote more secure software products. The conversation digs into some of the more famous exploits in recent years and some of the challenges of dealing with development tools that require super-user privileges, getting security testing done promptly and responding to exploits effectively when they happen.
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Recorded February 21, 2025
What is it like to take care of an Exchange Server in 2025? Richard chats with Michel de Rooij about his work with Exchange, including the many scripts he has written and published over the years to help sysadmins solve problems. Michel discusses how staying on-premises with Exchange is getting harder - the new version will be subscription-based! The conversation also digs into the new version of Outlook, the challenges of securing email, and Michel's latest book Pro Exchange Administration.
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Recorded January 9, 2025
How do you manage your CI/CD pipeline resources? Richard chats with Eliza Tarasila about Managed DevOps Pools in Azure DevOps. Eliza tells the story of discovering that teams were using Azure DevOps internally at Microsoft but would need to build their tooling to stand up the resources for testing and deployment. Managed DevOps Pools became the standard way to specify resources like virtual machines and assign them to projects so that they would start up automatically. The resources in the pool can be custom resources in Azure or even on-premises servers! And, more importantly, you don't need to care and feed for the infrastructure used in the pipelines, Azure DevOps will do it for you.
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Recorded January 6, 2025
Ready to upgrade to Windows Server 2025? Richard talks to Robert Smit about his experiences doing an upgrade—with a few important dos and don'ts! Robert talks about dusting off your Active Directory setup and ensuring you're at the Server 2016 functional level. The conversation also dives into the new-build-versus-upgrade options, taking advantage of SMB over QUIC and SMB Compression, and much more!
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Recorded January 7, 2025
How can Entra ID Protection help keep your organization resist security breaches? Richard talks to Corissa Koopmans about thinking beyond authentication and authorization and into conditional access - knowing what is normal and abnormal behavior for your users. Corissa recommends looking at the Entra ID Protection Dashboard - whether you have configured anything or not - to see what potential risks you have today. Whether it's logins from places where you have no workers or some "impossible travel" or weird browser connections, ID Protection detects and identifies those events. When combined with conditional access, Defender for Cloud, or even Microsoft Intune - you get a "better together" effect that makes it easier to know when something bad is happening!
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Recorded December 10, 2024
Do you Kusto? Richard talks to Mark Morowczynski about his new book, The Definitive Guide to KQL, and the power of Kusto to look across your Azure tenant and understand operational and security issues. Mark talks about being able to query across all log sets, telemetry, the M365 graph, and more - to help understand issues. The book provides example queries you could run today, including knowing the first and last time a user logged on and what devices they used. There are examples of calculating baseline behavior for an account so that you can see when unusual activity starts. There are a ton of excellent queries for operational excellence and cybersecurity - get started today! And for RunAs listeners, you can use code KUSTO to get 30% off the book!
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Recorded December 19, 2024
What about SQL Server in Microsoft Fabric? Richard chats with Anna Hoffman about the preview release of SQL 2025 in Microsoft Fabric and the power of having your data store where you are doing your analytics and machine learning! Anna talks about new applications being developed using AI technologies like large language models and that often those applications need a data store - so why not keep it with the application in a configuration ideally suited for that work? The conversation digs into the relationship between existing SQL data stores and Fabric, how interconnections can happen, and perhaps a future of motion between them - but for now, it's a preview, so take a look!
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Recorded December 16, 2024
Are your docs part of your DevOps cycle? Richard chats with Mattias Karlsson about automating documentation for APIs, cloud resources, and more! Mattias talks about using tools to build text files that contain every Azure resource being utilized, hopefully per application, along with API info, NuGet packages, and more. He also digs into the different audiences for that documentation - business wants to know what website exist, both interior and publically facing. Operations need to know what resources are consumed on-premises and in the cloud. Development is always looking for versions of APIs, calling approaches, etc. Maintaining documentation by hand is tedious and perpetually out-of-date. But if you can get up to speed with the tooling, you can make your documentation generate at the speed of deployment!
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Recorded October 29, 2024
How is least privilege different in 2025? Richard talks to Bailey Bercik about the ongoing efforts to minimize users, administrators, and applications' privileges in 2025. Bailey talks about the power of Entra Permissions Management to help you see what permissions are going unused on various accounts so that you can tailor rights to individual accounts without things becoming unmanageable. Artificial intelligence is a forcing function for many permission issues, with these new tools potentially creating problems when given unnecessary rights. But those same tools can help you understand where permissions are being underutilized and help protect your systems!
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Recorded December 16, 2024
For the first show of 2025, let's talk about being a sysadmin in the coming year. This is the sixth year of Richard going solo on the show to talk about the things he's seen in the past year and speculate a bit on the next year, at least for sysadmins. Economic uncertainty is still a thing, as is employment. The security situation continues to be tough - and getting worse. But remarkable new tools, including large language models, are on the horizon to make things a bit easier. The adoption rates for LLMs aren't as quick as some people would like, but things are happening, and they can provide value. However, you have to do your homework. Oh, and then there's Windows!
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Recorded December 31, 2024
What does Windows want for Christmas? Richard chats with Paul Thurrott about the crazy year that Windows has had and what 2025 holds. Paul starts with the Ignite keynote that focused on Windows being an open platform - which sounds funny on the surface, but has some logic to it! Security is a key part of that story, which brings up the issues around Crowdstrike and the Secure Future Initiative. And then there's Windows 10 going out of support in 2025 - what choices do you have going forward? Two grumpy old men ring out the year – have a great holiday season!
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Recorded December 5, 2024
Ready for some real-time intelligence? Richard chats with Yitzhak Kesselman about Real-Time Intelligence in Microsoft Fabric. Yitzhak talks about what it means to be real-time - that your company has a data analytics need with an ROI affected by a short amount of time. Perhaps it's a factory making products incorrectly or even issues with response times in a call center. The process involves bringing streaming data sources into the real-time hub and then attaching dashboards to them to see data as it changes. Fabric simplifies this tooling so domain experts can do much of the exploration. Once you have valuable and actionable information coming in, you have the activator options, including messaging via email or Teams, all the way to Power Automate to affect almost anything!
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Recorded October 29, 2024
Can government agencies use M365 Copilot? Soon! Richard chats with Angela Dugan about how government entities: federal, state, counties, and cities, are exploring the power of M365 Copilot. Angela talks about the US Government GCC process for making M365 Copilot available in the next few months. The conversation turns to the usual challenges of data governance and security - all the same problems any other organization would have with tools that explore every element of data. Getting your data estate in order isn't easy - but the potential benefits in government are tremendous - providing more services to constituents for less cost!
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Recorded October 29, 2024
Need some gift ideas for your favorite sysadmin? We're here for you! Richard brings back Rick Claus and Joey Snow for another round of great gadgets that sysadmins love. There are some inexpensive options, some expensive options, some silly things, and some awesome toys! Share this show with your loved ones to help them get something great for you!
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Recorded November 29, 2024
How does your organization respond to incidents? While at NDC Porto, Richard chatted with Mandi Walls about her experiences with different incidents, from corrupted files to data center failures. Mandi talks about detecting and determining the scope of an incident, whether it is specific to a customer (or group of customers), or possibly system wide. The conversation ranges over external attacks, bad software updates, unique configuration problems, and more. Keeping good records during the incident helps clean up after the event and provides for an effective retrospective.
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Recorded October 17, 2024
How do you test your database? While at NDC Porto, Richard chatted with Dan Mallott about building unit tests for transactional databases like SQL Server. Dan talks about using testing frameworks constructed for the purpose, like TSQL-T, to make it easier to test individual database elements, from stored procedures to column constraints. The conversation digs into the challenges around testing, tolerating the changes to the database, and tweaking how you write your T-SQL code to be more testable. But the power of getting database tests into your CI/CD pipeline is enormous - catch more problems in testing before they become problems in production!
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Recorded October 17, 2024
What's happening with SQL Server Management Studio? Richard chats with Erin Stellato, now at Microsoft, about the big jump coming for SSMS. Erin talks about how folks felt SSMS was a bit neglected when the reality is that there was a push to catch up with its parent codebase in Visual Studio. However, the next version of SSMS makes that jump, which opens the door to some excellent extension models. The conversation dives into the role of the Copilots in SQL Server through SSMS - helping you understand databases, write queries, and diagnose problems - eventually!
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Recorded September 26, 2024
How does Software-Defined Networking in Azure work? Richard chats with Aidan Finn about his experiences working with the suite of Azure networking products, including Firewall and Route Server. Aidan talks about the training available on Microsoft Learn to get up to speed with the power of Azure Firewall, including building policy rule sets. The conversation also explores the power of defining how traffic can move within your network to clarify when potentially malicious software is active.
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Recorded September 24, 2024
ARM for Windows is here in the form of the Snapdragon Copilot+ PCs - how do you update them? Richard talks with Aria Hanson about how Windows Updates treat ARM like just another Windows device - all the updates! Aria talks about the transition time with Windows 24H2 update, which has some specific Copilot+ PC features. But when looking at ARM-based Windows devices, don't just focus on the Copilot part; check out the great battery life and the simpler architecture that should lead to long-life machines. The conversation also digs into the Windows Insider program, which now has four channels for updates, in order of likelihood to blue screen: Canary, Dev, Beta, and Release Preview.
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Recorded September 18, 2024
How can you secure your company information with Azure Virtual Desktop? Richard talks to Jim Duffy about his work helping companies comply with NIST SP 800-171 security standards. These are the new standards required for Department of Defense contracting - including all subcontractors and suppliers. The security standard is thorough, with over 100 requirements. And you have to be audited to show that you comply! Even if you don't work with the government, the NIST security standard is excellent, and Jim talks about how you can use AVD to create a secure enclave for protecting data. And if you need help complying with NIST 800-171, Island Systems can help!
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Recorded August 12, 2024
Can you pen test yourself? Paula Januszkiewicz says yes! Richard talks to Paula about taking an active role in understanding your organization's security vulnerabilities. Paula talks about the low-hanging fruit she often finds as a professional penetration tester - typically on poorly maintained infrastructure like PKI servers. The conversation digs into tooling you can use to find vulnerabilities - just make sure you trust the source of those tools. Not everyone is a good guy in open source! And, of course, there's always a time to bring in professionals to do a deeper level of testing. Don't wait until the breach happens to take some action!
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Recorded August 22, 2024
How can OpenAI help you with PowerShell? Richard talks to Doug Finke about his experiences with ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot to help him write PowerShell and how he incorporated the OpenAI API into a PowerShell library to create a conversational interface in his PowerShell scripts! Doug talks about his productivity gains using OpenAI to write better quality PowerShell faster - helping him understand the code, automate test writing, and explore aspects of PowerShell he had never dug into. But beyond writing code for him, adding the conversational interface to a PowerShell script opens a whole new interactive opportunity to make it easier for folks to use scripts and do more with them!
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Recorded August 7, 2024
Microsoft 365 Data Governance has always been critical - but it's only getting more important! Richard talks to Nikki Chapple about her experiences working with companies trying to get their "data estate in order." That phrase is what Microsoft recommends before turning on tools like Copilot for M365. Nikki talks about how hard the goal of data security is - that it is just as tricky as any other security goal. Data security is an endless process that needs refining and work on routinely as new data and classes of data arrive in the organization. In the meantime, users are taking advantage of LLMs like ChatGPT for their work whether we want them to or not - so there is a need to act quickly to provide secure capabilities!
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Recorded August 16, 2024
What does Windows Server 2025 bring to Active Directory? Richard chats with Orin Thomas about the new version of Windows Server coming and what to expect around Active Directory. Orin talks about how mature the Windows Server space is, so only incremental improvements are warranted, but they are important ones - like retiring NTLM once and for all. And when it comes to Active Directory, there are new secure features you're going to want, but you do need to up your functional level to get them, and that means getting to at least Server 2016 functional level first... then moving everything else. When was the last time you transferred a FSMO role? Orin also digs into the new certification practice options available, where instead of answering questions, you do the work and get evaluated - cool!
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Recorded August 6, 2024
Do you know how asymmetric encryption works? While at the Kansas City Developers Conference, Richard sat down with Eli Holderness to discuss many of the encryption technologies being used today—and the new options coming in the future! Eli talks about how symmetrical encryption and public key encryption have been the focus of modern encryption, especially on the web. But the ongoing security arms race means we have to keep tweaking encryption—what if we made a bigger leap? Asymmetric encryption offers huge potential - but there's still a long way to go!
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Recorded June 27, 2024
What can you do to Microsoft 365 with PowerShell? Turns out - almost anything! Richard talks to Tony Redmond about his ongoing efforts to educate sysadmins about the vast array of capabilities in M365, including all the PowerShell cmdlets that can let you retrieve and control everything in M365. There's now so much information that Tony and his team have created a separate book explicitly focused on automating M365 with PowerShell. The conversation also turns to the role of Copilot - GitHub Copilot- in helping you write better PowerShell and the challenges around M365 Copilot. The goal is to take advantage of the Microsoft Graph - all that information about your M365 Tenant and what is happening inside it.
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Recorded August 8, 2024
How is generative AI evolving, and what can we do about it? While at NDC in Oslo, Richard chatted with Alison Cossette about her work as a data scientist before the ChatGPT explosion in November 2022 and what life has been like since the LLM came to town. Alison talks about the rigor of building AI models using generative AI before ChatGPT and how many of those efforts have diminished when confronted with a friendly, confident language model. Eventually, this rigor will be needed - as the dangers of not managing language models cause problems, and the need for rigor will re-appear. Alison describes steps you can take today to understand how the LLMs you are using are trained and how they are tested. Generative AI is evolving, and you can be part of making it better!
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Recorded June 12, 2024
Leadership wants to get on the AI bandwagon - what are the security risks? While at the Kansas City Developers Conference, Richard sat down with Steve Poole to talk about his experiences helping companies manage the risk of bringing AI into the company. Steve talks about the impact of introducing a new development stack, especially open-source stacks where you aren't sure of the providence of the code - sometimes there's malware in there! The conversation also moves to the various sources of language models and the potential risks. There's an urgency to move quickly on this technology, but don't allow that urgency to shortcut the safety your company will need - you can do this properly!
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Recorded June 27, 2024
What are the threats your cloud application and infrastructure are facing? While at NDC Oslo, Richard chatted with Daniela Cruzes and Romina Druta about their work building threat models for cloud-based applications. Daniela discusses how modeling helps to understand security concerns before applications are deployed and attacked - often, security retrofits are time-consuming and expensive, so thinking them through beforehand has enormous benefits. Romina dives into the supply chain side of threats - open-source libraries with backdoors, even down to development tools with malware. There are a lot of threats - but when you look, there are often great solutions as well. You'll need to collaborate with development to secure things, but security isn't optional and is worth fighting for.
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Recorded June 12, 2024
Are you ready for passkeys? Richard talks to Tarek Dawoud from Microsoft about the evolution of passwordless access with passkeys. Tarek talks about the FIDO alliance and the ongoing effort to create authentication strategies that are mathematically impossible to phish - no password stuffing under the covers that might get exploited by a man-in-the-middle attack. The conversation also dives into the passkeys name and how it's a rebranding of passwordless authentication to make it easier for everyone to understand that you'd rather have a passkey than a password. The products involved are still evolving, but there's plenty you can take advantage of today and make your organization more phishing-resistant than ever!
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Recorded June 3, 2024
What does it cost to recover from a disaster? While at NDC Oslo, Richard chatted with Natalie Serebryakova about her work helping companies understand their disaster recovery costs and what that process can teach you about your infrastructure. Natalie talks about different types of disasters, from the deletion of a production server to a major outage caused by a fire at a data center - and the power of working through the scenario to determine what needs to be backed up and what it takes to recover. The conversation also dives into the scrutiny of implementation - often, decisions are made that are no longer understood, or systems have changed enough that they could be improved. The result can be lowering DR costs, improving performance, and reducing operating overhead!
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Recorded June 12, 2024
Ready to move your device certificate authority to the cloud? Richard chats with Richard Hicks about Microsoft Cloud PKI - certificate management for devices and people as part of the Intune Suite. Richard talks about it being early days for Cloud PKI, so not everything you want is there yet. The only way to get a certificate onto a device is through Intune, so some devices, like servers, don't have a way to play yet. However, there is a bridge between Active Directory certificates and Cloud PKI, so you can bring your new devices in through Intune and ultimately unload a lot of your on-premises certificate infrastructure. And that will make everyone's lives easier and more secure!
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Recorded June 3, 2024
How are you protecting your organization's data? Richard chats with Joanne Klein about her work with Microsoft Purview to help with data protection, management, and governance. Joanne talks about a spike in data protection concerns from Microsoft Copilot - if you have been securing data through obscurity, you're in for a nasty surprise! Copilot has a knack for finding every nook and cranny of data. Proper data protection also means effective archiving - getting rid of out-of-date or irrelevant data. And then there are the security concerns around data retention - how do you need to keep, and for how long? Microsoft Purview can help with all these problems, but you must work with leadership to get things right!
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Recorded June 10, 2024
How has the cloud transformed the way we work with data? While at Build in Seattle, Richard sat down with Arun Ulag, Microsoft CVP of Azure Data, to discuss how the cloud has transformed how we work with data. The pre-cloud practice of extract-transform-and-load into OLAP cubes has given way to the data lake - you don't need to pre-process data if you have all the compute you need on demand. Arun goes further into empowering analysts using tools like PowerBI - but the key is access to data. With Microsoft Fabric, data lives in OneLake - or anywhere through links! Today, the data analytics landscape spans different product stacks and clouds - but all are available to learn more about your business!
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Recorded May 22, 2024
What hardware runs Azure today and into the future? While at Build in Seattle, Richard sat down with Rani Borkar to discuss the hardware that makes up Azure Compute, including examples of the new Cobalt and Maia processors! Rani talks about Cobalt first, Microsoft's ARM processor designed for workloads in the cloud. Then, a look at the Maia processor, which focuses on neural net workloads like large language models. As Rani explains, the scale of the work coming to the cloud today allows for specialized hardware - you would likely not want to buy a machine this specialized for yourself, but you can rent it by the minute in Azure!
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Recorded May 22, 2024
More application platform pieces make your life better! While at Build in Seattle, Richard sat down with Buu Lam of F5 to discuss F5's latest offering, NGINX as a Service in Azure. Buu discussed how F5's products have evolved to run in the cloud, not just on their hardware. While you could run them as virtual machines or containers, providing them as services in Azure is better. You purchase the service in the marketplace and as part of your Azure billing. The conversation digs into the advantages of the services model in terms of updating and instrumentation, as well as reducing the complexity of your infrastructure as code.
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Recorded May 21, 2024
What are the hard parts of machine learning? Richard chats with Lynn Langit about her work helping the Mayo Clinic improve patient outcomes using machine learning to understand patient data better. Lynn talks about the challenges of multi-modal data analytics - taking all the different data collected from a patient, like an X-ray or video, along with treatment notes, to create an overall picture of treatment and outcome. Then multiply that by thousands of patients, making a complicated data problem with huge challenges in testing and validation. How do you know that the machine learning model is correct? The key to practical machine learning is in the fundamentals - working on each step before you jump to the more complex goals!
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Recorded May 17, 2024
Have you rolled out Microsoft Defender for Cloud? Richard chats with Yuri Diogenes about the bundle of tools under the Defender for Cloud moniker. Yuri describes Defender for Cloud as a Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP). This Gartner term covers the various elements that go into a cloud-native application, including APIs, servers, containers, storage, resource manager, and more! Defender for Cloud integrates with Microsoft Purview to understand data sensitivity, and Microsoft Sentinel helps detect breaches or data misuse. It also offers attack path analysis and remediation so you can get ahead of the attackers to close off potential breach risks before they happen! Check the links in the show notes for great resources, including an ebook on CNAPP strategy!
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Recorded May 13, 2024
How can Microsoft Copilot make your intranet better? Richard chats with Susan Hanley about her experiences adding Copilot into the intranet via the Copilot Studio and Viva Engage. Susan talks about the challenges of getting your intranet data in order - most notably, archiving old information so that it doesn't clutter up a Copilot with out-of-date and inaccurate data. The conversation explores making smaller Copilots focused on specific domains, like company policy. It's still the early days for copilots, so there are some challenges to getting things done right, but the potential is there!
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Recorded May 10, 2024
How are your company's Apple devices connected to the enterprise? Richard talks to Michael Epping about the recent additions in Entra that support the authentication of Apple MacOS and iPadOS devices. Michael discusses Apple's Secure Enclave as the equivalent of Trusted Platform Management in Windows. With Entra Platform SSO, you can now use that authentication to access Azure resources and, ultimately, on-premises Kerberos-secured resources! These features are still in public preview but fully supported, and more is coming!
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Recorded May 13, 2024
How can you use PowerApps to extend the functionality of other apps? Richard talks to Christina Wheeler about her efforts to teach folks to use PowerApps to add the functionality they need to Dynamics 365 and elsewhere! Christina talks about her move to Microsoft, shifting from SharePoint to PowerApps, but still essentially doing the same thing - finding customer solutions. The conversation ranges over the power of the Dataverse to provide access to all sorts of data and the emerging role of the Microsoft Copilot Studio to build custom copilots for your organization.
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Recorded April 26, 2024
Two old guys talk about Windows AGAIN? Richard brings back Paul Thurrott for the tenth time to discuss Windows more. This time, the discussion focuses on the end of life for Windows 10 - currently October 2025. Paul discusses how it used to be April 2025, but that's not enough time. Is it enough time now? The conversation spans other Windows-related topics, including alternative versions like Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop. And what about Windows 12? There is a bit of speculation at the end of a longer show - weigh in with your thoughts on what's next for Windows!
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Recorded April 26, 2024
Machine learning models need updating - what's the reliable way to do it? While in Romania, Richard sat down with Annie Talvasto to talk about her work helping to build DevOps practices around machine learning: Building repeatable processes for data ingestions, cleaning, organization, model building, and deployment. The challenges are the arrays of skilled people needed to operate and evaluate the pipeline - it takes domain experts to know if the machine learning results are accurate and valuable. Tooling can help, but it is only in the early days. If your organization is keen to get machine learning into the company, you need to do some careful planning!
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Recorded April 20, 2024
How's your identity governance? Richard talks to Jef Kazimer from Microsoft about Entra's capabilities to help you have robust governance around identity. Jef talks about the lifecycle of identity - when someone joins the organization and a new identity gets created, privileges changing as roles evolve, to the eventual offboarding when that person departs. The same sort of cycle exists for devices, too - the question is only how much work you must do to get through those cycles. Entra offers tooling to get identity changes out of your support tickets - make your life easier with effective identity governance!
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Recorded April 26, 2024
How does artificial intelligence fit in with SQL Server? At the Microsoft Fabric Conference in Las Vegas, Richard sat down with Muazma Fahid and Bob Ward to discuss the AI developments in SQL Server. Muazma talks about SQL Server as a crucial source of data for building machine learning models and the new features added to make SQL Server a key store for vector data and other elements of machine learning. There's also Copilot for Azure SQL Data to help with diagnostics in your databases and to use natural language to write queries - it SQL Server Natural Language Query all over again, but certainly better than ever.
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Recorded March 27, 2024
Have you downloaded the latest version of PowerShell? While at the MVP Summit in Redmond, Washington, Richard sat down with Sydney Smith to discuss some of the features in PowerShell 7.4. Sydney talks about the successful delivery of PSResourceGet and PSReadline, two long-in-development features that have reached their so-called "1.0" state. The conversation also digs into the ongoing challenge of some sysadmins sticking with PowerShell 5.1, the last of the Windows-only versions. Today, PowerShell 7 has feature parity with 5.1 and many new features that improve the quality, security, and capabilities of PowerShell. Try the latest!
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Recorded March 11, 2024
How can GitHub Copilot help you? Richard chats with Damian Brady at NDC Sydney about the power of GitHub Copilot to help you understand and write the bits of code you need - whether you're using PowerShell, understanding a RegEx expression, or trying to get a Bash prompt right. GitHub Copilot and help to explain the code you've got, even across workspaces - so you can find all the scripts that changes might impact. And if you think it's time to rewrite some old scripts into more modern languages, GitHub Copilot can help with that, too!
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Recorded February 14, 2024
As Artificial Intelligence enters our organizations, how do we secure them? While at NDC in Sydney, Richard sat down with Sarah Young to discuss the challenges of securing these new technologies. Sarah talks a bit about the fundamentals - in the end, AI technology is just more software and needs all the same authentication and authorization that other apps need. However, there are some unique aspects and potential exploits that you can address through tooling and education. We're all learning these new AI technologies and how to apply them in our organizations - training is essential!
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Recorded February 14, 2024
How can Microsoft Copilot for Security help you? While at NDC in Sydney, Richard chatted with George Coldham about Microsoft Copilot for Security - combining GPT-4 with information about Microsoft security products and your organization's resources in Azure to provide guidance and insight into making your company more secure. George talks about how it's early days for this copilot - and it's only in preview so far. Bringing together the vast array of security products that Microsoft makes, Microsoft Copilot for Security brings the ability of Large Language Models to summarize data to help you understand where the organization's security vulnerabilities exist and how to address them. You want to get in on this preview!
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Recorded February 13, 2024
What can GitHub do for you? While at NDC London, Richard chatted with April Edwards about how GitHub can help sysadmins - and everyone in your organization! In the end, GitHub is an engine for managing work, with GitHub Actions kicking off workflows that can send messages, run all sorts of code, activate scripts, and more. Ultimately, you get a good report of what happened - or didn't happen. And over time, those scripts can mature to be more reliable and detailed - and keep a record of every change.
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Recorded February 2, 2024
Aren't we all platform engineers? Steve Buchanan says yes! But there's more to it - and Steve talks about the mindset of looking beyond individual products that we might have skills with and owning the entire problem of providing platforms for your organization to get work done. The conversation dives into the many products that can help our applications function better and the challenge of making them secure and fast. Are containers the solution? Possibly! It's your platform; focus on the fundamentals and go further!
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Recorded February 5, 2024
What do you know about large language models? While at NDC in London, Richard sat down with Dr. Jodie Burchell to discuss how machine learning has reached this new technological milestone. Jodie talks about different types of machine learning and how large language models fit into the landscape. The conversation explores where LLMs come from, what they are good at, and what they should not be used for. They are not intelligent and certainly not a panacea for work - but they can be valuable when used correctly!
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Recorded February 1, 2024
Have you upgraded to TLS 1.3? While at NDC in London, Richard chatted with Scott Helme about his work moving companies onto the latest version of TLS. But do you need to? Scott talks about how SSL 2 and 3 were used until they were broken by the black hats, leading to a panic to update quickly. While there is no evidence that TLS 1 and 1.1 are breached, they are already deprecated - and are slower than the later versions. Want a performance boost? Move to TLS 1.3!
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Recorded February 1, 2024
How are we going to manage the use of M365 Copilot? Richard chats with Martina Grom about her experiences helping organizations prepare for M365 Copilot. Martina talks about getting your data estate in shape - and the challenge that represents in terms of identifying what data should be available within an organization. The conversation also digs into the larger picture of the Microsoft Graph - all the information about how people interact on M365, the resources they create and use, and the potential the Graph offers to help with productivity. It's still early days, but it's never too early to work hard on ensuring we have the right governance in place to allow Copilot to help the company succeed!
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Recorded January 5, 2024
What's coming next for Windows Server? Richard chats with Jeff Woolsey about the latest information around Windows Server vNext! Jeff discusses how customer feedback influences Windows Server and the challenges of moving folks to the latest versions. Server vNext is designed to live in a cloud hybrid world and includes improvements for interacting with Azure, but it also has plenty of on-premises features. The conversation turns to Active Directory and its ongoing modernization to make it more secure, robust, and scalable. The same goes for the rest of the Windows Server - coming soon!
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Recorded December 14, 2023
How does your company organize information? Richard chats with Emily Mancini about the metadata in SharePoint. Emily points out that if you're using Teams, you're using SharePoint - it's all under the hood. And that means any files are being tagged with metadata whether you do it intentionally or not. Taking control of your metadata can mean more effective searches and managing surprises with tools like M365 Copilot. Metadata can help you protect sensitive data and make existing data visible to the people needing it. Spending a few hours with it can make a huge difference!
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Recorded January 4, 2024
How do you manage cloud-native applications? While at Ignite in Seattle, Richard chatted with Brendan Burns about ongoing efforts to develop tools to make building and operating cloud-native applications more manageable. Brendan discusses the challenges around building apps with Kubernetes and how next-generation tools like Radius and Dapr try to address those problems to make it easier to make the right choices. There's a powerful intersection between sysadmins and developers when making manageable applications in the cloud!
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Recorded November 16, 2023
Is there a strategy for buying software licenses? Richard talks with Mary Jo Foley about her new role at Directions on Microsoft, including her experiences around the multi-day workshops on effectively buying software licenses today. Mary Jo talks about understanding the entire landscape of software licenses your organization needs, how they are used, and how you can build a strategy to negotiate a better licensing cost for your organization. You already do much of the work for this, but bringing everything together is a challenge - but worth it!
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Recorded December 14, 2023
How can artificial intelligence help sysadmins? While at Ignite in Seattle, Richard talked with Gil Pekelman of Atera about their AI for IT product. Gil talks about developing smart instrumentation for IT and extensively monitoring machines and networks to give you a broad overview of your infrastructure. Then OpenAI expanded its capabilities - allowing users to submit report requests to a large language model that can act as a copilot or an autopilot, able to resolve tickets or prepare them for a sysadmin to act quickly.
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Recorded November 16, 2023
How is the Power Platform evolving? Richard chats with April Dunnam about the latest on the Power Platform - especially the emergence of Large Language Models like Copilot. April talks about how it's possible to use Copilots in Power Apps, Power BI, and Power Automate to help you build your automation - and how writing prompts can help you think through what you're trying to make. The conversation also digs into providing Copilots to users so that you spend less time creating UX and more time building features that the users can request. It's a Copilot world - we're just living in it!
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Recorded December 11, 2023
Active Directory is still part of our lives - but can we make it more robust? Richard talks to Jerry Devore about his ongoing blog series on hardening Active Directory. Jerry talks about credential drift - decisions made in the past to turn down (or off!) security features in AD that made sense at the time but are no longer relevant. Most of these efforts only consume time - no products are involved, or the products are free. Check out the links in the show notes for Compliance tools that can help you find vulnerabilities in your infrastructure, including AD.
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Recorded November 20, 2023
Another year of doing more with less? While at Ignite in Seattle, Richard sat down with Erin Chapple to talk about her work on Azure Infrastructure and the challenges around the cloud - more instances of everything, more to manage, more to pay attention to. And yet, budgets are not increasing! Erin talks about improving utilization within the cloud and broadening monitoring to cover everything you care about on-premises or on any cloud. And then there are the new copilots. Work to set up? Perhaps. But Azure Copilot can help you understand what's happening in your Azure tenant and how to utilize it more effectively. You can do more with less!
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Recorded November 16, 2023
For the last show of 2023, let’s look back at the year and speculate about 2024. Richard flies solo to talk about what he’s learned the past year and some thoughts about going forward into the next year. Economic concerns continue to play a significant role in sysadmin life – companies are holding back on spending but still expecting all the services. And new technologies like large language models look to play a significant role in our lives – if we choose to take advantage of them!
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Recorded December 22, 2023
What's an Azure Arc Guest Configuration? Richard talks to Jodi Boone about the freshly renamed Machine Configuration for Azure Arc. It turns out "guest" is a problematic word - but being able to set policy around machine configurations can make your life much easier. Jodi talks about using existing policy templates, along with Desired State Configuration, to customize configurations so that they can be applied to multiple virtual machines on Azure, on-premises, and in other cloud environments.
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Recorded November 3, 2023
The holiday season is upon us! What do you get your favorite sysadmin? Richard brings back his friends Joey Snow & Rick Claus to discuss some of their favorite sysadmin gifts this year. From simple gadgets that flashback to the early days of tech to the newest and latest versions of favorite products, there's an incredible array of goodies here. Please share it with the folks who struggle to find the perfect present for the sysadmins in their lives!
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Recorded November 17, 2023
Can M365 help modernize your workplace? Richard chats with Sharon Weaver about her work helping companies migrate into M365 and how it helps provide more options to workers. Sharon talks about how the pandemic accelerated the process and the challenge of finding a new normal today. The conversation also dives into good information architecture for helping with productivity and using tools like Viva Insights to understand more about how you work - and your coworkers!
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Recorded November 1, 2023
We're all using zero trust - but are we using it well? Richard talks to Nicolas Blank about his work helping to develop the Zero Trust Adoption Framework. Nicolas talks about resisting the buzzword effect and avoiding looking at zero trust as a set of products because it isn't - it's really about the people and processes in your organization that keep things secure. The conversation also digs into the tabletop exercises needed to create priorities for security - not everything in your organization needs the same level of protection or effort. It pays to work through scenarios!
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Recorded October 12, 2023
How do telcos use the cloud? Richard talks to Jennelle Crothers about her work with Azure Operator Nexus, a set of services and tooling for telecommunications companies. Jennelle talks about a meeting of the minds between telcos like AT&T and Microsoft - both organizations have a lot of infrastructure, but the cloud is also an architecture that can help provide more sophisticated and resilient services. It's an area of the cloud you may not have seen much of, but it will impact devices going forward - this is our connectivity we're exploring here!
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Recorded October 12, 2023
So, what's Microsoft Entra all about? Richard chats with VPN guru Richard Hicks about his experiences with Microsoft Entra. More than just a new name for Azure Active Directory, Entra includes essential tooling to provide secure access to all sorts of services - and not only Microsoft ones! Richard talks about how Azure Conditional Access can be applied across all types of Microsoft products and with Entra Application Proxy, you can access your internal services and servers. Many of the capabilities are in preview now - but the future looks bright for Entra and Conditional Access!
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Recorded October 10, 2023
How do large language models fit into your organization? Richard chats with Ulrika Hedlund about the challenges sysadmins face with large language models in their company. Ulrika talks about how employees are already using large language models like ChatGPT - potentially risking leaking company data. Tools like Bing Chat Enterprise bring the same capabilities as ChatGPT but with a focus on keeping company data secure. Once you're comfortable with Bing Chat, you can explore Microsoft 365 Copilot, which can index company data as part of its model. Training is essential, as is good data protection management, but the productivity benefits can be huge!
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Recorded October 10, 2023
How does green fit into IT? Richard talks with Mike Halsey about his book The Green IT Guide. Mike starts out talking about not waiting for government regulation - there are things we can do today to reduce our organization's environmental impact. The trend is to keep PCs longer, but what happens when you need new ones? There are more organizations than ever for repurposing old PCs and other devices and recycling. The conversation also digs into right-to-repair, with replaceable batteries and upgradable parts. We can do a lot just by including environmental impact in our buying decisions!
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Recorded October 12, 2023
How do you choose an Azure data storage solution? Richard talks to Nicole Stevens about her experiences helping companies move data into the cloud - typically in SQL Server. The obvious answer is Azure SQL, but that doesn't always make it the best solution! Nicole talks about a customer moving to Cosmos DB for the unstructured data capabilities and a lot of speed. But does the price make sense? All these factors are in play in choosing a data storage solution, and there is never one right choice - often, a mix of services makes the most sense!
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Recorded September 6, 2023
What can large language models do for you and your organization? Richard chats with Seth Juarez about the reality behind large language models like ChatGPT – how they are built, what they are good at, and most importantly, what they are not suitable for. Seth talks about the tremendous hype around these technologies and how to cut through the noise to focus on the value they can provide. As an IT Pro, you will be asked how to utilize large language models, so it is helpful to clearly understand their potential and help your company benefit from them while minimizing the risks.
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Recorded September 18, 2023
Ready to inject a little chaos into your systems? Richard talks to Kelly Shortridge about her book Security Chaos Engineering. Kelly discusses the challenges of modern cybersecurity - how do you find weaknesses in your infrastructure and security systems? This leads to a discussion about challenging assumptions by exploring the workflows that exist in your infrastructure today. Exploring the workflows shows where assumptions exist, and that opens the door to testing them. There's sure to be some low-hanging fruit you can deal with, but eventually, you're left with tests that have to be set loose on your system - and you'll find out how resilient you really are!
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Recorded August 22, 2023
It's episode 900! Richard brings friend Dana Epp onto the show to talk a bit about the last one hundred episodes of RunAs Radio - and a little look to the future as well. With Dana around, you know there will be lots of security conversation. Over the past hundred shows, ransomware has had quite the story arc, especially around Exchange Server and other products. The conversation then turns to more future-looking topics, including the various Microsoft Copilots being built - could these be tools to help sysadmins? Probably a topic for episode 1000!
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Recorded September 15, 2023
Your SharePoint is on-premises (at least for now), but you want to take advantage of some of those cool SharePoint Online features - is there a way? Richard talks with Sandy Ussia about her talk at the Thrive Conference in Slovenia about how on-premises SharePoint can use Power Automate and other tools to create powerful workflows. Sandy discusses the limits of the free version of Power Automate and how paying for the premium edition lets you build workflows that will more than cover the license cost. The conversation also dives into the subscription model of on-premises SharePoint 2019, which looks to be the final destination for on-premises SharePoint, with ongoing support and features being added!
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Recorded August 1, 2023
How do PowerBI and Microsoft Fabric work together? Richard talks to Mike Carlo about his experiences with Fabric so far. Mike explains how it is early days for Fabric and something you should experiment with, not roll out to production. The conversation dives into how we structure data analytics and the potential of Fabric to bring forward more of the pipeline work that analytics needs - so you can explore and get results faster. This leads to the idea of a new relationship between analysts and data engineers, one where you generate results first, then can optimize them with back-end engineering. There is enormous potential in PowerBI and Fabric together to change the data analytics game!
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Recorded August 4, 2023
2023 has been a challenging year for sysadmins so far - how do we do more with less? Richard talks to Sonia Cuff about the current climate for IT in organizations and how we can still be successful. It's not all about building new things but being more efficient. Sonia talks about measuring more precisely - making sure that the expenses that IT has get assigned to revenue centers so that you're not cutting indiscriminately but associating costs with income - then those costs will more naturally adjust. The conversation also dives into new technologies that can be explored on the basis that they can improve efficiency - like large language models and their associated products. There's still a lot to do, but with a slightly different focus!
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Recorded July 27, 2023
How would your organization report a data breach? Richard talks to Troy Hunt about his experiences with Have I Been Pwned and some good and not-so-good breach reporting. Troy talks about the importance of planning - making decisions about how to report is hard to do when you're under stress. And who do you report to? Are there regulatory requirements? What about your customers? Most people want to know if the data they entrusted to you has been stolen. And if you did want to contact every customer involved in a breach, how would you do that? This is a conversation for the C-suite, but you can start it!
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Recorded July 17, 2023
Are you ready for M365 Copilot? Richard talks with Karoliina Kettukari about what we can expect from M365 Copilot and how you can help your organization prepare for it. Karoliina discusses the more straightforward aspects of M365 Copilot we can expect, such as taking advantage of more of the features in the Office suite of products like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The situation is more interesting when considering how Copilot could surface information from within your organization. Now you need to be thorough about identifying sensitive information and data governance as a whole. Plenty of policy and training is needed around these tools, but the benefits could be huge!
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Recorded August 8, 2023
What is Microsoft Fabric, and why do you want some? Richard talks to Andrew Snodgrass of Directions on Microsoft about Microsoft's recently announced Fabric product. Andrew explains that Fabric is an effort to integrate the various data products, including PowerBI, DataLake, Data Factory, and Data Warehousing, under a standard banner. It is early days for Fabric, but it's a great time to take it out for a spin for those who haven't dug into Azure data analytics products. But if you have existing implementations of PowerBI and many other data products, test carefully - the migration paths aren't simple!
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Recorded July 12, 2023
PowerShellGet V3 is getting close to release - what should we expect? Richard chats with Sydney Smith about the key features of PSG3 - especially the support for third-party and private repositories. Sydney talks about how developing the tool in the open on GitHub has helped steer the module into a great version. While there are some breaking changes, there's also a Compat module to help bridge the gap. And now PSG3 is part of PowerShell 7.4 - so we should see some exciting news this fall!
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Recorded July 10, 2023
How does Azure continue to evolve and grow? While at Build in Seattle, Richard chatted with Azure CTO Mark Russinovich about the evolution of Azure and where it is going. Mark talks about the challenges of the recent explosion in large language models like GPT3 and ChatGPT - the sheer amount of cloud computing resources necessary to generate these enormous models, much less operate them at scale. The conversation explores ongoing innovation in architecture and hardware design, including a discussion on the results of Project Natick, the underwater data center experiments of a few years ago. There are more innovations to come!
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Recorded May 25, 2023
What are your options for upgrading to Windows 11? Richard talks to Julie Andreacola about her experiences helping organizations make the move from Windows 10 to 11. Julie talks about the power of Windows Update for Business Deployment Services to simplify the OS update while still giving the users some control - you can set a deadline for when they must update, but the user can pick a time within that deadline to let it happen. Applications don't have a problem with the OS update, since, under the hood, it's Windows 10.1. Same for group policy - do some testing, but expect things to go well - the migration to Windows 11 looks good!
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Recorded June 16, 2023
Integrated communication is everywhere! While at Build in Seattle, Richard talked with Bob Serr, the VP of Azure Communication Services (ACS) at Microsoft. Bob discusses how ACS provides tooling to integrate voice, text, and video into any application through Azure. This leads to a broader conversation about the power of deeper communication, especially for difficult discussions like tech support. Can adding video make it easier to diagnose a problem? And what is the role of the new large language model technologies coming from OpenAI in providing automated communications? There are a lot of possibilities available today!
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Recorded May 25, 2023
How do you secure the sprawling array of services your organization depends on? Richard talks to Karinne Bessette about her experiences working with companies with virtually no internal infrastructure - using Software-as-a-Service products from various providers and finding their glue to keep multiple bits working together. Karinne talks about putting together teams to understand how workflows function first - then trying to put some governance around it. Single sign-on is a great place to start, but the solutions depend on what tools you're using. This is the new reality we're working in - we must find a way to secure it!
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Recorded June 5, 2023
Windows 11 is coming to your organization - do you know how to deploy it? Richard talks to Johan Arwidmark about the need to get to work testing the deployment of Windows 11: Microsoft isn't giving us much of a choice about moving to it! Johan discusses the available deployment strategies, including Configuration Manager, Intune/Autopilot, Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, and more. Odds are, you will have to make some changes to how you deploy Windows to make things go smoothly with Windows 11, so it's a good time to get testing!
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Recorded May 30, 2023
Whether you know it or not, Power Platform apps are proliferating! While at Techorama in Antwerp, Richard chatted with Luise Freese about her work with companies discovering that users are building Power Apps at alarming rates. Luise talks about the ability of users to find solutions in the Power Platform tools, often because they have enough security privileges (or demand them) to get access to data and systems... without many controls in place to ensure those resources are used correctly or securely! This leads to a conversation around providing guide rails for Power Platform developers, using security and governance. Get your telemetry cranked up - likely, you already have Power App proliferating!
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Recorded May 16, 2023
It's 2023 - are you able to keep your systems patched? Richard talks to Sami Laiho about the emerging patching crisis. Sami talks about how MFA and user security have improved enough that they are no longer the primary path of exploitation for ransomware. Today, the main way to get breached is through unpatched computers. But patches are risky and can occasionally cause downtime - so we control when patches are installed and (hopefully) test extensively. Is it worth it? Is it better to be down for an hour due to a lousy patch versus down for months due to a breach? It's time to talk to leadership about a change of tone around patches - and get moving faster!
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Recorded May 10, 2023
Should you use Windows Server Update Services or Windows Update for Business? Richard talks to Aria Carley about the different update mechanisms available today - and some new ones that are coming! Aria talks about how Windows is evolving to routine, incremental feature updates - but that can be challenging for managed workstations. The conversation explores the roles of Configuration Manager, WSUS, WSUB, Group Policy, Intune, and the new Azure Update Management tools. Plus, a hint of what is to come - could there be an Update Copilot in our future?
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Recording May 4. 2023
What does high availability look like in 2023? Richard chats with Allan Hirt about his work with high-availability solutions today - not just on-premises but also in the cloud. Allan talks about the frustration folks had with moving workloads in the cloud during the pandemic panic, lift-and-shifting workloads focusing on getting things working quickly rather than cost-effectively. The results can be costly, to the point where some folks considering moving back off the cloud again - but does that make sense? Allan talks about creating high availability efficiently wherever you want to run your workloads!
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Recorded May 11, 2023
Are you using Microsoft Sentinel? Richard talks to Cloud Security Advocate Sarah Young about Sentinel, Microsoft's Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solution. Sarah talks about the role of the SIEM in creating a common place for all security-related data to arrive. She mentions some of the many tools in the Microsoft suite to feed into Sentinel - Defender for Endpoints, Identity, and Cloud as examples. Specialized analysis tools send summaries to Sentinel, but Sentinel can also process raw logs as well - make sure you need the data because billing for Sentinel is connected to the number of ingress sources. There's a lot to learn, but also a lot of great documentation and information to work from. Check the show notes for links!
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Recorded April 6, 2023
Are your finance people suffering from Azure sticker shock? Richard talks to Aidan Finn about his experiences with organizations discovering they spend far more on Azure than expected. Aidan talks about designing systems based on on-premises requirements where hardware is over-provisioned, and new features in Azure are added without a thought to cost. Getting finance involved in an Azure migration from the beginning can help mitigate the shock and balance features and costs. Plus, there are great tools for cost management in Azure that can allow for budget projections, catch unusual spending early, and point out opportunities to save money with specific services available today!
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Recorded April 6, 2023
Is your organization ready to respond to a security incident? Richard talks to Paula Januszkiewicz about her experience helping organizations respond effectively when a security incident occurs. Paula talks about detection - attackers often have breached your infrastructure months before their attacks become visible. Once you've detected a potential breach, the next steps are to determine where the breach comes from, or as Paula says, who is patient zero? And what are the indicators of compromise? It's not enough to slam the door shut on an attack - how do you keep it from happening again? The conversation explores the idea of threat hunting, of understanding what the black hats are doing by being able to respond effectively to isolate exploited machines but not necessarily shut them down. An attack is an opportunity - seize it!
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Recorded April 4, 2023
Is your Exchange server one of the vulnerable ones? Richard talks to Gareth Gudger about the ongoing security concerns around on-premises Exchange servers. The conversation addresses a blog post by the Exchange server team about restricting access of potentially vulnerable Exchange servers to Exchange Online. But, as Gareth explains, this has to do with hybrid Exchange, where your on-premises server can access Exchange Online in a privileged state. What is the right thing to do to limit exploits in Exchange? Keeping up with the latest versions, patching, and ultimately maintaining your entire infrastructure, especially Active Directory - all play a role in securing on-premises infrastructure. Stay vigilant!
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Recorded April 4, 2023
Moving to Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) has never been easier! Richard talks to Jen Sheerin about her work with the Azure Virtual Desktop Accelerator tools. Jen describes how moving workloads to AVD is part of the Cloud Adoption Framework that helps you integrate virtual desktop workloads with standard security and licensing practices. The conversation explores the different folks who use the accelerator - even for greenfield implementations of new virtual desktops! There are more great tools to help you optimize your AVD implementation. Check the links in the show notes!
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Recorded April 7, 2023
Large Language Models like ChatGPT are all the rage, but how will they impact work going forward? Richard chats with Paul Thurrott about the role of LLMs in the Windows ecosystem. Paul digs into the history of ChatGPT and how this whole wave of technology started more or less by accident until Microsoft grabbed on and created BingAI. Now with announcements for Copilot for security and M365, where else can the technology go? The conversation digs into the power of having a tool that can help you make sense of all the products you own and to go down the checklist of the right things to do when taking on a new task. We're still in the early days for large language models - the next version of Windows should be interesting!
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Recorded April 3, 2023
The demand for effective data analytics within organizations continues to grow – how do you build your analytics team? While at SQLBits in Wales, panelists Maria Zakourdaev, Falek Miah, and Anupama Natarajan discussed their experiences with building teams - from recruiting to training, up-skilling, and retention. The discussion spans the different roles, including architects and data modelers, that help to provide the data sets analysts need. Do you train from within, hire into the role, or use consultants? There are many choices for growing your data analytics team!
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Recorded March 18, 2023
Ready to get some zero trust security inspiration? Richard chats with George Finney, author of Project Zero Trust, a fictional narrative about a company dealing with a security breach and the efforts to make the company more secure. George talks about the challenges of being a security professional and learning to speak to leadership in terms they can appreciate in their efforts to improve security overall. The conversation digs into the reality that security is about people, most of all, not so much as the problem but as the only viable solution. Want some help getting more resources for security? Read and share this book!
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Recorded March 21, 2023
How do you measure the productivity of your team? Richard talks to Angela Dugan about her work at 3Cloud, supporting groups that are primarily work-from-home and working with remote clients. What do you measure when you can't be face-to-face? Angela talks about using objective and subjective measures - time spent on a project- and how people feel about the work they are doing and the people they are doing it with. The conversation also turns to skill growth as part of measuring a team - making new skills portion of the work, sharing them with the team, and growing your value as an employee!
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Recorded February 23, 2023
Are you ready for more IPv6 in your life? Richard talks to Pierre Roman about recent support added to Azure Active Directory for IPv6 - specifically around Conditional Access. Pierre talks about how in the past, IPv6 addresses weren't a part of Conditional Access - but now they are. This could cause problems for folks connecting to an Azure tenant via IPv6 if those IPv6 ranges aren't included as named locations. Even if this update hasn't impacted you yet, it can - changes to your ISP or when connecting to the internet can result in IPv6 access being required - don't get locked out!
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Recorded March 27, 2023
Does multi-cloud make sense? Richard chats with Phoummala Schmitt about her explorations into building workloads that can survive a cloud outage. Phoummala begins the conversation with some definitions because most organizations are multi-cloud already, using more than one cloud provider. Referencing Gartner and Thoughtworks, the term "polycloud" covers that idea. Then the hard part - a workload that needs perfect uptime, even in the face of a cloud provider outage. That is a more complex and expensive proposition, but it is possible once you work through the details. The question is - is it worth it?
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Recorded February 16, 2023
Secure remote file access without OneDrive or VPNs? Richard chats with Ned Pyle about the power of SMB over QUIC. Ned talks about the ongoing battle to put older versions of SMB to bed and how QUIC is becoming the de facto standard for moving files around, both within the network and across the internet. While a lot of business files can be served effectively from OneDrive for Business, often, you have applications and infrastructure that depend on UNCs and other file mapping approaches. SMB for QUIC through Azure VMs and Azure Stack HCI allows the same UNC paths to work securely inside and outside your office network. Check it out!
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Recorded February 3, 2023
What is your approach to incident management? While at NDC London, Richard talks to Hila Fish about her work in incident management. Hila talks about understanding when you have an incident and trying to grasp the scope before acting - is it impacting customer value? The goal is to learn from an incident to stop them from happening, and often immediate mitigations, like rebooting, destroy information needed for later analysis. Making the dashboard lights turn green is not enough - you want to get to a place where they never turn red!
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Recorded January 27, 2023
Ready to go passwordless? While at NDC in London, Richard chatted with Kyle Kotowick about the FIDO2 specification and how it is being implemented to provide more passwordless options for authentication. Kyle talks about how FIDO2 does not necessarily mean physical keys like the Yubikey - there are more options! The TPM chip in your PC or smartphone can act as the token generator when combined with a second authenticator, like fingerprint or facial recognition in Windows Hello. Ideally, this superior level of authentication is effortless - you use multifactor without even realizing you are!
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Recorded January 25, 2023
Managing reliability means being available when things go wrong. But how do you make the on-call time productive? While at NDC in London, Richard talked to Lesley Cordero about her work with the New York Times on reliability management teams. Lesley talks about how putting regular sprint work into on-call time causes more problems than it solves - the quality of work suffers, and people get frustrated. Better to focus on preventative work, which is more contemplative. Even better to have an array of preventive efforts that can be worked on over time. The goal is to have fewer outages and more reliability, and that means being able to communicate reliability needs to leadership - document all the things!
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Recorded January 25, 2023
Are you ready to move your organization to Windows 11? Richard talks to Michael Niehaus about the upcoming end of support for Windows 10 in 2025 and the pressure to get to Windows 11. Michael talks about how slow Windows 11 adoption has been, mainly because there hasn't been a significant reason to do so. But as of October 14, 2025, organizations will have to pay for long-term support - and it's cheaper to move to Windows 11. The conversation digs into how Microsoft seems to be updating Windows 11, deployment strategies, and the optimal ways to move your workforce to a new operating system.
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Recorded January 12, 2023
How do you improve the security of your organization? Richard talks to Jess Dodson about the current security environment we're living in and what you can do to improve your security posture. Jess talks about how breaches happen and what you can do to detect them early before things get worse. The conversation dives into getting more resources - in most cases, improving security means having the time to work on preventative measures, like implementing multi-factor authentication, security information and event management, and setting up Just Enough Administration. And you need the time to review the activities in your network to let you stop a breach before it turns into something worse!
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Recorded January 20, 2023
How about a free suite of over 500 tools for SQL Server best practices, administration, development, and migration? Richard talks to Rob Sewell about the ever-growing dbatools PowerShell module. While its origins are in migrating SQL Server databases from one environment (and version) to another, the range of capabilities is extensive. Rob talks about the power of repeatability when attempting to do these potentially complex tasks - which is best served by scripting. But why write the scripts when they already exist? The conversation also digs into learning as a DBA, including getting involved with conferences like SQLBits!
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Recorded January 10, 2023
Are you ready to move your intranet into the cloud? Richard talks to Susan Hanley about her work helping organizations migrate intranets into Microsoft 365 Sharepoint Online. Susan talks about avoiding lift-and-shift implementations for intranets - or anything going to the cloud. Better to take what you have learned about your intranet and build a governance plan in M365 to migrate content piece by piece. The good news is most of your old SharePoint customizations are now built-in capabilities in SharePoint Online! The conversation also digs into building pages to replace documents and what should be searchable - an intranet migration is a great chance to build an even better intranet!
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Recorded January 6, 2023
Do your applications need identities? Richard talks to Martin Ehrnst about how all Azure resources, including your applications, need an identity to function well in the Azure ecosystem. Martin talks about registering an application with Azure AD, a process that includes a manifest showing how it should be authenticated and what resources it needs. Then to the more confusing part - the service principals that show up as enterprise applications to provide access to the application within your tenant or even across tenants! The conversation goes further into managed identities and this emerging world of many-to-many identity relationships. Ultimately it's the most powerful way to deal with access rights, but that doesn't mean it's simple!
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Recorded December 14, 2022
How is the DevOps movement evolving, and why should sysadmins care? Richard talks with April Edwards about how DevOps continues to grow with better tools and results! April talks about how often developers lead DevOps initiatives but that so much value comes from operations. The conversation digs into the tools that can facilitate deploying more frequently, measuring more accurately, and understanding how customers work. Everyone writes code these days, even if they aren't developers - and the DevOps cycle also applies there!
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Recorded December 14, 2022
Have you used LAPS? Richard chats with Jeremy Moskowitz about the Windows Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS). Jeremy talks about how the Premier Field Engineers originally developed LAPS at Microsoft to deal with having different local administrator passwords on every workstation in an organization. The passwords change automatically regularly, and sysadmins can retrieve the password for a given machine using PowerShell and other tools. Today there is an updated version of LAPS that works with Azure Active Directory and provides more control over password changes and restrictions - you need this tool!
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Recording December 13, 2022
What are the new governance challenges in M365? Richard chats with Martina Grom about her ongoing work helping organizations provide governance over the growing surface area of Microsoft 365. Martina talks about the challenges around identity and multi-factor authentication and the improvements that Microsoft is making to MFA to make it easier for users to do the right thing. The conversation also turns to data loss prevention and the approaches to minimizing a company's legal exposure to data loss - starting with not storing data if you can avoid it! Martina also talks about the new challenges in governance with Power Apps, including the tools available to help sysadmins see what apps exist, how they touch data, and what privacy and security controls are in place. Governance is an ongoing effort!
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Recorded December 13, 2022
It's the end of 2022, and time to reflect on the work coming up in the next year – what will it be like for SysAdmins in 2023? Richard flies solo for his annual year-in-review show, looking back on last year's predictions (including what he got wrong!) and projecting forward into 2023. Security continues to be a top priority, but the situation has evolved. Current economic conditions likely will impact your business – how does it affect your work? How will the cloud continue to evolve, and how can you take advantage of it? 2022 was another unusual year, and 2023 looks even more so – thanks for sticking with us!
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Mary Jo Foley moves on! No, not entirely from Microsoft - away from writing several times a week about the latest enterprise topics. MJ is going to Directions on Microsoft, where she will spend more time on analysis but still communicate it to the world. The conversation digs into current subjects like the state of the cloud and Microsoft's focus on building industry-specific cloud implementations, and precisely what is happening with Windows these days? Lots of great thinking from MJ, as usual, and a hint of what's to come!
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Recorded November 11, 2022
You're moving to the cloud; how does your application security look? Richard talks with Carroll Moon of CloudFit about moving applications into the cloud with better security and governance using the Azure Landing Zone approach. Carroll talks about the various patterns that allow existing applications to work in the zero-trust environment, with containerization, platform-as-a-service changes, and even desktop virtualization! The blackhats are improving, and the cloud is less vulnerable than existing on-premises solutions, but only if you embrace the cloud security models. New standards for cybersecurity are emerging - are you up to speed?
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Recorded October 31, 2022
Is Excel damaging your company? Richard talks with Jen Stirrup about how Excel gets used far too much in businesses and for too many things. Jen talks about the lack of data integrity in Excel and how it's easy to make small mistakes that can damage data - and give you little to no methods to detect the damage! While Excel can often be a starting point for a new business opportunity, as soon as it becomes essential, it's time to pivot to tools that can protect data quality more effectively! Don't let your company be the next news story about a flawed spreadsheet!
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Recorded October 28, 2022
What do SysAdmins want for Christmas? Richard chats with Rick Claus and Joey Snow about their favorite gadgets for SysAdmins. From the gadgets that help us at work to the toys that make us happy at home, it's a shopping spree of goodies! Share this episode with your loved ones to give them ideas on what to get you for Christmas, you impossible-to-shop-for SysAdmin!
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The pandemic has put a lot of stress on teams - how do we make them stronger? Richard talks to Stephanie Donahue about strengthening teams and communities as we emerge from the pandemic. Steph talks about the water cooler and happy hour conversations lost the past couple of years and the value they once provided and should again. Does that mean going back to the office? What are the alternatives? Maybe the new tools can help, or we should just have lunch?
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Recorded October 25, 2022
How are Azure and AWS Billing different? Richard chats with Corey Quinn of Screaming in the Cloud about his experiences experimenting with all the other clouds. Corey talks about his concerns around the security issues with Azure this past year - not the problems themselves, but how Microsoft handled them. The conversation also digs into using Cognitive Services and being unsure what things will cost until the end of the month. What about GCP and Oracle as well? Corey has tried them all and has thoughts!
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Recorded October 26, 2022
Why do you need Azure Stack? Richard chats with Sarah Lean about the capabilities Azure Stack HCI brings to your organization. Sarah describes the three flavors of Azure Stack, including Hub, Edge, and HCI - short for Hyper-Converged Infrastructure. While all the options act like a part of Azure, they are optimized for different needs, but primarily focus on putting Azure-style compute closer to where you need it, perhaps as part of a machine learning solution, IoT, and so on. Azure Arc plays a role in giving you a broad view of your cloud assets, Stack assets, and regular on-premises resources also!
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Recorded October 24, 2022
What can SQL 2022 do for you? Richard chats with Bob Ward about the upcoming release of SQL Server 2022 and its evolution toward data anywhere. Bob talks about running SQL on edge devices, on-premises, in containers, virtual machines, and, of course, in the cloud. The management tools like Azure Arc make it easy to take care of all the places your SQL data can now live - and let you be the data administrator you can be! Check out Bob's latest book on SQL Server 2022 and all its hybrid data capabilities!
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Recorded October 26, 2022
What is the state of scripting in your organization? Richard talks to Christina Wheeler about Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and its role in the array of tooling in M365 to take existing scripting and wrap it into modern automated workflows. Christina talks about how Power Automate for Desktop can work with an Excel macro to further automation to make an entire process hands-off or reduce the number of touches you need to make. It can be a bit messy at times, but there are lots of tools, and there is always Teams to put a collaborative UI over top of it. Automation has never been easier!
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Recorded September 10, 2022
The return of Two Grumpy Old Men Complain about Windows! Richard chats with Paul Thurrott about a year of Windows 11 - the good, the bad, and the meh. Paul talks about the bits of Windows 10X that became Windows 11 and how simplifications in Win11 may annoy power users but are beneficial to regular folks. But nobody benefits from the ads on the desktop - except Microsoft. The conversation turns to the hardware side of the world and the soon-to-be-announced ARM-based Windows laptop. After all, there are already ARM servers in Azure, so when do we get a new generation of great workstations?
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Recorded September 8, 2022
How can Viva Learning improve your team's productivity? Richard chats with Ulrika Hedlund about how the latest generation of tools from Microsoft helps measure productivity and focus on learning opportunities. The M365 platform can show where employees struggle with tools that lead to learning opportunities - and then measure the results! Ulrika talks about the various kinds of learning needed within an organization, including compulsory learnings for regulated industries, standard corporate training, and then moving more into productivity and industry-focused knowledge. Viva Learning and the related tools make it easier than ever to build custom learning materials that can make learning more specific to your company and fun as well!
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Recorded August 9, 2022
How do you make manageable Infrastructure-as-Code? Richard talks to Joe Duffy about his open-source project called Pulumi, helping you build Infrastructure-as-Code solutions in almost any language for virtually any cloud platform or service. Joe talks about how infrastructure folks are headed down a similar path to developers from a few years ago, needing better source control, testing, and tooling for their infrastructure. And these are solved problems in the development space. By taking advantage of developer tooling, you can make Infrastructure-as-Code that is reusable and modular so that you can solve complicated problems like security implementations once. Then, when changes need to happen, they're made in one place and easy to propagate to all your projects.
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Recorded September 6, 2022
What can GitHub do for your PowerShell scripts? Richard talks to Barbara Forbes about using GitHub and PowerShell together. Barbara first discusses the fundamentals - using GitHub as your source code repository for PowerShell. It takes some time to learn, but you can start just using it for yourself. Things get more complex when multiple people start to work on the scripts, but they also get better. Then the conversation turns to the fun stuff - using Github Copilot to help you write your scripts, incorporating GitHub Actions to automate testing and deployment. PowerShell code is code and should have all the protections and power tools that GitHub provides!
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Recorded August 3, 2022
What can a sysadmin learn from a developer? Richard chats with Rick Taylor about his experiences learning from developers to write better code - sysadmin code, of course, like PowerShell, Python, and even YAML. Rick talks about how PowerShell code works across all the clouds and how organizations need well-managed PowerShell the same way developers create well-managed compiled code. The conversation explores the various developer techniques that can help sysadmins be more productive - call it DevOps if you like, but it mostly looks like getting work done!
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Recorded August 9, 2022
Can you use artificial intelligence technologies in data analytics? Richard chats with Priscilla Camp about using cognitive services in PowerBI for image recognition, natural language processing, and even sentiment analysis. Priscilla describes her experience doing analysis on data from the Universal Studio theme parks in Orlando, going beyond simple happy/neutral/sad ranking into analyzing the thousands of comments made by folks in the park. Through sentiment analysis and key phrase extraction, those comments can be turned into actions the park can take to improve people's experiences - and potentially increase revenues!
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Recorded August 5, 2022
How do you learn PowerShell effectively? Richard chats with Jeff Hicks about his experiences teaching PowerShell from the beginning. Jeff talks about strategies to learn more about PowerShell as you code, not just searching for cut-and-paste examples. The danger of cut-and-paste is that you don't get a chance to understand what you're working on - you need to write some code to get better. This line of reasoning turns the conversation to routine learning, ensuring you're writing a little PowerShell daily to grow your skills - whether that's code you need in your work or more practice-related code. PowerShell is a superpower. You just need to learn it!
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Recorded July 26, 2022
PowerApps are proliferating - how do you keep them under control? Richard talks to April Dunnam about managed environments for PowerApps, providing oversight and governance. April talks about the Microsoft Power Platform Center of Excellence Starter Kit as a way to get started in the governance model with tooling for insights, auditing, compliance, and even helping connect the folks building PowerApps in your organization. It's early days for the tooling, but worth the effort to help get PowerApps to be part of the same application lifecycle management processes that already exist in your organization!
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Recorded July 15, 2022
On July 8, the Rogers company in Canada had a total network outage for 15 hours - what happened? Richard talks to Dana Epp about what we can learn from an outage like this. Dana talks about having an open root cause analysis to provide detailed discussion without accusation or blame. You understand the potential when you look at how the airline industry has become incredibly safe through open root cause analysis. Outages are bad - but learning from them is what makes up better!
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Recorded July 15, 2022
Viva continues to evolve - what's the latest? Richard talks to Sandy Ussia about her work with the various Viva modules and approaches to customizing Teams. Sandy talks about how it's possible to shape a Teams experience to fit your organization, including using third-party components - there are many choices! When your Teams is in good shape, there are plenty of new Viva modules to explore, including Topics, a knowledge management system using machine learning to extract critical aspects of your organization. And related to that machine learning module are upcoming Sales and Goals! The Viva family keeps growing!
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Recorded July 15, 2022
What's the best Windows Server and Azure hybrid configuration? Richard talks to Orin Thomas about the new Windows Server Hybrid Administrator Associate certification. Orin digs into how the hybrid certifications pick up where regular Windows Server certifications leave off, adding Azure's role as backup, extended storage, telemetry, and security solutions. The conversation explores how different organizations implement services like file storage and how Azure can add to those solutions without needing significant user retraining but still add essential capabilities. Hybrid is a logical destination for some organization workloads, and certification can get you up to speed on all the options!
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Recorded July 5, 2022
Can you migrate group policy objects to Intune? Richard chats with Katy Nicholson about her work modernizing Windows client machines through Microsoft Endpoint Manager, making on-premises Active Directory optional. Katy discusses using the Group Policy Analyzer to understand what policies will work through Endpoint Manager and Configuration Service Providers. The next question is, what policies are irrelevant or obsolete? This leads to a conversation around refreshing security for an organization - why does this policy exist. How is it applied to non-Windows devices? Does it still make sense? Ultimately, all policies are about security, which means getting to zero trust. How does policy work in a zero trust environment, and where do you have to make exceptions?
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Recorded July 5, 2022
How does Microsoft Loop help you collaborate? Richard talks to Stephen Rose about the recent addition of Loop to Teams. Loop uses the Fluid Framework to provide collaborative spaces to create to-dos and other lists with multiple people working simultaneously, marking up and responding to information. Documents and other assets brought into a workspace can be added to emails and other documents while remaining live. Every time you open them, they grab the latest info from the documents in the Loop workspace. Appropriate security privileges still apply, but Loop makes it easier for folks to work the way they want to and take advantage of up-to-date info from the M365 accounts in your organization!
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Recorded June 3, 2022
Your Intranet needs news, and SharePoint can help! Richard chats with Emily Mancini about the power of the News part in SharePoint to keep your Intranet more dynamic with a steady stream of new content. Emily talks about creating an ecosystem of evolving content on your Intranet so that it is more than just a set of links to HR information. The conversation dives into targeting news effectively within your organization to keep it relevant and how a good Intranet is ultimately a reflection of its culture - so take it seriously!
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Recorded Monday, June 6, 2022
Windows Admin Center in Azure? Richard talks to Prasidh Arora about the preview of WAC in Azure - giving admins that familiar Windows Admin Center view of Azure Virtual Machines running Windows Server 2016 or later. Prasidh talks about creating a unified view and admin access to your servers, whether they are running on-premises, in Azure, or even on other cloud infrastructures. Installing Azure Arc on a server makes it available from WAC in Azure. The conversation also digs into the privileges challenges - making sure you have rights on the server for WAC's different capabilities. But with WAC for Azure, we're one step closer to a unified view and control of infrastructure.
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Recorded June 3, 2022
How do you keep Windows devices updated? Richard talks to Aria Carley about Microsoft's array of update services, including Windows Update for Business, Windows Server Update Services, Intune, Configuration Manager, and more! The host of products can be intimidating, but Aria lays out their role in your organization in a triangle of cost, time, and risk. The options range from allowing consumer-style automatic updates to controlling every install and the order they take place. Where is your comfort level on the triangle?
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Recorded Wednesday, June 8, 2022
Does your organization have a data culture? Richard talks with Microsoft CVP Rohan Kumar, and Mars VP Santosh Jamadagni about building organizations focused on data rather than opinion to drive the company forward. Rohan talks about getting data out of silos and into the hands of folks that can act on the information to make better business decisions. Santosh discusses how Mars has empowered workers throughout the Mars organization with real-time information. The conversation digs into the need to apply security rules to data as it enters the organization so that it is immediately available to the right people at the right time. Data availability is the key to a data culture!
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Recorded May 4, 2022
How can Viva Insights improve personal productivity and the productivity of the team? Richard talks to Karoliina Kettukari about the role of Viva Insights - starting with that daily email you likely already get. Karoliina talks about folks using M365 leaving traces of their work and how Insights puts that information to work. Insights help you be more productive by helping you block out time for meaningful work, make sure you follow through on commitments you make, and even identify when you may be working too much. The conversation also explores the management tooling for Insights to help leaders see their team's productivity in the aggregate!
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Recorded May 4, 2022
Are you ready to turn off your last exchange server? Richard talks with Tony Redmond about the recent announcement by Microsoft around management tools for Exchange Hybrid. Tony discusses how organizations that migrated Exchange to Office 365 are stuck with one last server: The server that hosts management tools. The management tools move to a workstation, but they are PowerShell only. And the process of shutting down your last Exchange Server is very much a one-way trip, at least for now. Should you do it? Tony says it's time to get started!
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Recorded May 2, 2022
How does healthcare function in the cloud? Richard talks to Lynn Langit about her work helping healthcare-related workloads move into the cloud. Lynn talks about how lift-and-shift is a great starting point - it stops analysis-paralysis and gets a baseline on costs in the cloud, which helps plan high return-on-investment activities around workloads. The conversation digs into the visualization challenge: It is hard to see what is being moved into the cloud and how it is operating there. Lynn digs into the cloud-as-architecture side of things since most customers do not know how working in the cloud is supposed to look, and there are distinct differences from on-premises operations!
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Recorded May 2, 2022
What happens when your neighbor starts a war? Richard chats with Sami Laiho about how his work has changed since the conflict between Russia and Ukraine began. Sami talks about splitting the active directory infrastructure of companies that have offices in both Finland and Russia. The conversation dives into the complexities of making two AD solutions from one - splitting admins, FSMO roles, etc. Then there is the cyber warfare problem - countries bordering Russia have dealt with many cyber attacks over the years and have some excellent practices. Do you?
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Recorded May 2, 2022
What are the technical skills that the modern IT Pro needs? Richard chats with Sonia Cuff about a recent blog post that digs into the array of technical skills she sees today. Many are old standbys, like networking and server configuration. And the cloud is undoubtedly an essential part of the current skill set. But there are newer aspects to explore, like source control for scripts and Infrastructure-as-Code. While you don't have to have every skill, it's worth thinking about how you're expanding your skill set and what new things you can add to be more effective!
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Recorded April 21, 2022
In Las Vegas, once again, this is the Q&A session from the SQL Server & Azure SQL Conference in April 2022. Richard moderated questions and answers from SQL luminaries, including Bob Ward, Buck Woody, Pam Lahoud, Bradley Ball, Des Fitzgerald, Davide Mauri, Rie Merritt, and Kevin Farlee. The conversation ranges over Azure SQL migration, new features in SQL Server 2022, challenges in scaling, reliability, disaster recovery, and more!
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Recorded April 7, 2022
How can backups protect you from ransomware? Richard chats with Karinne Bessette about how backup technology has responded to the need for ransomware protection. Whether it's intelligent backup tape systems that automatically pop out tapes so they won't overwrite or other air-gap strategies for backups, you need to have a backup you can rely on to recover from a ransomware attack without paying the ransom. Backups can also be a part of the requirements for ransomware insurance - and if your backups aren't sufficient, they can void the insurance! It is also crucial to know what it takes to restore from backup, how long it takes, and the order of things when recovering, even from the ground up. Backups aren't going away any time soon!
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Recorded March 25, 2022
Can we move away from Active Directory? Richard talks to Travis Roberts about the prospect of moving organizations off of Windows Active Directory and solely onto Azure Active Directory with Microsoft Intune. Travis talks about the critical aspects of Windows Active Directory - NTLM and Kerberos. Can your organization live without them? That means file shares and printing for most places. Microsoft has recommended that hybrid AD is the long-term solution, and for most sites, that's probably right. But how can you depend on Windows AD less? Can new machines coming into the organization avoid being AD-joined? Lots of great thinking about moving forward with Active Directory!
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Recorded March 3, 2022
How do you manage the sprawl of Teams? Richard chats with Erica Toelle and John Gruszczyk about the governance of Teams, starting with allowing a bit of sprawl in the first place - people give up on tools that are too locked down. You have to leave room to explore! But once folks engage with Teams and the sprawl gets a bit out of control, there are tools to help you protect people and information shared there. John talks about controlling access to different parts of Teams, depending on your role in the organization and external guests. Erica dives into labeling data as sensitive and how the Data Loss Prevention tooling can help protect data and indicate where it might be exposed inappropriately. There are many approaches to controlling sprawl. You can choose what is best for your organization!
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Recorded March 3, 2022
We all have those problem WiFi devices - how do you fix them? Richard chats with Ryan Woodings about Tonic, the latest product from MetaGeek that helps you analyze WiFi traffic by the device to understand its problems. Ryan talks about tracking WiFi-specific information, including what AP a client is connecting to and all the intimate details of WiFi connection negotiating. Tools like Tonic can identify a broken antenna in a device based on that traffic or just poor decision-making by the WiFi chipset - and what you can do about it!
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Recording March 3, 2022
How do you keep your SQL queries fast? Richard chats with Monica Rathbun about her approaches to SQL Server query tuning. Monica starts with defining the problem - how do we know that the database is the performance bottleneck? The conversation dives into measuring query performance and the power of Query Store, but only on SQL Server 2016 and above, so get upgrading! Entity Framework is a standard tool for developers to automate access to SQL. Still, it can generate some pretty ugly queries, and Monica talks about different ways to improve them, including the old standby of writing a stored procedure. Lots of ideas for folks struggling to make their databases go fast!
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Recorded February 22, 2022
Ready to flex your Bicep? Richard talks to John Downs from Azure Fast Track about configuring Azure resources using Bicep. John talks about Azure Resource Manager (ARM) being the under-the-hood way to create Azure Infrastructure-as-a-Service, but folks don't enjoy working directly in the JSON that makes up an ARM template. Enter Bicep, a domain-specific language that generates the JSON for you. Today Bicep is Microsoft's recommended way to build Azure resources, offering access to source control, testing, and automation that makes your Azure site more reliable and easier to maintain!
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Recorded March 3, 2022
What's coming in the next version of PowerShellGet? Richard chats with Sydney Smith about PowerShellGet in general and version 3 specifically. Sydney talks about how PowerShellGet appears like a command in PowerShell but is a separate module installed by default with PowerShell and is getting more features and some breaking changes. But version 3 also includes some compatibility features so that you can use your scripts dependent on PowerShellGet 2 within PowerShellGet 3. While there are some breaking changes, they make it easier to find and install the packages you need from the PowerShell Gallery or any other PowerShell repository you want to access.
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Recorded February 17, 2022
What can Chocolatey do for you? Richard talks to Gary Ewan Park about the latest version of Chocolatey, including Chocolatey for Business. Originally a free, open-source product for application management primarily targeted at software developers, Chocolatey has evolved into a modern software automation product for managing software deployment on workstations and servers. Gary talks about keeping deployments self-contained and straightforward - use the Internet if you want to, but you can also do all deployments from a local package manager as well. With self-service and central management tools, you should look at the latest version of Chocolatey for Business!
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Recording February 17, 2022
Is Azure Arc a crucial part of bringing the cloud into your organization? Richard talks with Microsoft CVP Erin Chapple about how Arc helps with digital transformation. Erin discusses the challenges of adding the cloud into an organization from a governance, regulatory, and security perspective, how Azure Arc provides oversight and control for those issues, and more. The conversation also gets into a survey done by Harris Polls for Microsoft that showed how the digital transformation process continues in most organizations, with hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure being a common outcome. All the more reason to use Azure Arc to manage it all!
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Recorded February 17, 2022
How do you secure your email transport? Richard talks to Gareth Gudger about the various additional protocols and approaches essential to transporting email. Gareth reminds us that SMTP, like the Internet, was not designed with security in mind, so we have to add layers to try and improve things. It is an acronym soup of SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MTA-STS, and DANE - but every acronym gets a definition! Sure, there is more to email security than just transport, but arguably, this is the place to start. And after that - focus on identity security!
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Recorded February 15, 2022
Windows Virtual Desktop is now Azure Virtual Desktop! Richard chats with Jen Sheerin about how Windows Virtual Desktop has evolved to become Azure Virtual Desktop - it's much more than a name change! Jen talks about how AVD is fully integrated into Azure, using ARM for configuration, tied in with Insights, and all the other Azure products you count on to manage, monitor, and maintain infrastructure. The conversation also dives into the Azure Fast Track program to help you get started with AVD and the kind of proof-of-concept projects you can build. There are many choices, but the best time to start is now!
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Recorded February 15, 2022
It's 2022, time for a new version of SQL Server! Richard chats with Bob Ward about Microsoft's latest release of their ubiquitous database. The conversation starts out with a little bit of history of how SQL Server has evolved over the decades - and how there's still a need for a database in organizations, but the feature set has changed. Bob talks about making hybrid really work, whether it's an on-premises database that backs up and fails over to the cloud, or how tools like Azure Purview can live in the cloud and help monitor and govern on-premises databases. And if you do choose to migrate to the cloud, these hybrid options make life easier - especially with SQL 2022!
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Recorded January 13, 2022
How does Microsoft Viva work alongside your Intranet? Richard talks to Tracy van der Schyff about her recent projects integrating Viva into existing intranet infrastructures. Tracy explains that Viva, specifically Viva Connections, does not change your Intranet but does assist in organizing access to various aspects of your Intranet with dashboards and the SharePoint App Bar. This leads to a conversation about managing both curation and customization of views of an organization to its employees. A single view doesn't work for everyone, and uncontrolled customization leads to chaos - where is the balance? The new tools in Viva can help!
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Recorded January 17, 2022
The Internet Explorer 11 desktop application retires and goes out of support on June 15, 2022. Are you ready? Richard talks to Joel Hawks about what retirement actually means - the IE11 icon disappears, and only the Edge browser remains. But IE is not gone, it runs inside of Edge instead. Joel talks about getting away from depending on IE at all, by going through an evaluation process of web applications to see whether or not they actually depend on IE, or can run properly using the Edge rendering engine. There are a number of tools to help with this migration, including the Microsoft FastTrack service - give them a call!
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Recorded January 13, 2022
It's 2022, how do you manage your client machines? Richard chats with Julie Andreacola about modern client management. Julie talks about how the pandemic accelerated the need for modern client technologies, including being able to provision and configure computers that will never be in the office. The conversation digs into Windows Autopilot and Microsoft Intune compared with more traditional deployment and configuration approaches. While the new approaches are broader and don't have as many detailed options as the old approaches, security is a key strength in modern client architecture - and that could be the key driver to change up your client management approach!
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Recorded December 27, 2021
Back in Las Vegas and in person, this is the Q&A session from the SQL Server & Azure SQL Conference in December 2021.
Bob Ward, Anna Hoffman, Buck Woody, Bradley Ball, Tim Chapman, Pedro Lopes, and a host of other great SQL speakers fielded questions from an audience of database professionals and developers - and the questions are wide-ranging!
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What's a security audit, and why do you need one? Richard talks to Paula Januszkiewicz about auditing security, technical reviews, and so-called penetration testing. Paula talks about needing outside experts who focus on the scope of exploits out in the world today to help make sure all aspects of your company's systems are reasonably secure - there is no such thing as perfect security! The conversation gets into the details around finding a good auditor, what to expect from them, and what they will expect from you - a good security audit takes time, and is a conversation!
Recorded December 21, 2021
Getting your Public Key Infrastructure right can be tricky - and getting wrong can be very bad. Richard talks to Richard Hicks about the right way to go about setting up and operating a PKI infrastructure in your organization. Different from the public certificates you use for websites and servers, Richard focuses on how to use certificates to authenticate and authorize users and devices. Tools like Intune and Autopilot can help you get certificates out to devices and users, as well as bootstrap new equipment security into your infrastructure. There's a lot to learn!
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Recorded December 13, 2021
2021 was a tough year for security - how can we do better in 2022? Richard chats with Jess Dodson about working to get better at information security in your organization. Jess talks about the log4j exploit as a great example of "what don't we know" - and the need for a software bill of materials as part of your configuration management database. Having a list of the libraries that internal applications depend on helps you respond in a time of crisis, being able to answer the question "where are we vulnerable?" This leads to a conversation about better DevSecOps - where development, security, and operations all take security seriously and help each other to help the organization succeed!
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Recorded December 20, 2021
Happy holidays! Another year, another set of predictions around the life of IT Pros – now in 2022! The pandemic continues to evolve, with new variants appearing and vaccination levels getting high. Will the pandemic still be a significant factor next year? What about back-to-work plans? Or is working-from-home the new normal? The past year was tough on the security side of things with notable ransomware and business-email-compromise attacks – are you prepared? What will we be doing differently in the next year? And how did Richard's predictions from last year stand up to reality? Thanks again for listening!
Recorded December 2021
Does your organization need hybrid identities? Richard talks to Sonia Cuff about Hybrid Active Directory, connecting your on-premises Active Directory infrastructure to M365 and Azure. There's essentially no choice in larger organizations - too many identities and applications exist that replicating identities would be a huge problem. But what about a small organization? Sonia talks about folks living in the Small Business Server and Windows Essential worlds that really could make a go of moving entirely in the cloud without hybrid - but it all comes down to applications that the organization needs. The conversation also digs into modern identity using password managers and authenticators - even going passwordless!
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Recorded November 25, 2021
Basic authentication is going away in Exchange Online - how will it impact you? Richard talks to Greg Taylor about the long-planned end of basic authentication support in Exchange Online. Greg talks about the fundamental vulnerability of basic authentication systems like POP and IMAP - and how many systems still use them by default. Too many business email compromise and ransomware attacks happen through an email hack, and getting rid of basic authentication will help. Basic auth goes away in October of 2022, and Greg discusses the many ways that Microsoft is assisting IT Pros to get to secure email protocols running before that happens!
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Recorded October 25, 2021
What's your adaptability quotient? Richard chats with Sara Caldwell and Angela Dugan about the ideas behind the adaptability quotient - the ability to respond to change. The pandemic certainly forced a lot of change on a lot of folks - and different people coped with the changes in different ways. Sara talks about thinking about your ability to adapt and strengthening that ability, starting with asking for help where needed. Angela digs into the changes that have happened for her and Sara just recently with the acquisition of their company - more opportunities to adapt! Change is inevitable. It's just a question of what we keep from the past and what we let go of: How are you adapting?
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Recorded October 25, 2021
Christmas Gifts for IT Pros! Richard chats with Joey Snow and Rick Claus about their favorite gift ideas for your favorite IT Pros. Yeah, IT folks are hard to buy for, but here are some stocking stuffers and other gifts you will be excited to receive. Whether it's items that will help you work more effectively, home automation to make living a little easier, or maybe just something geeky and fun, there are many cool things to choose. And if you're an IT Pro listening to this show, share the list of links with your loved ones - maybe you'll get some good stuff!
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Recorded October 29, 2021
Windows 11 Ships! So now what? Richard chats with Mary Jo Foley about her thoughts around the release of Windows 11. Mary Jo talks about how quiet the conversation has been around Windows 11, other than a few bits of outrage like the TPM requirements - which, as it turns out, aren't actually required. Is there a reason to move to Windows 11? Most IT folks seem happy to wait for further updates - there's nothing wrong with Windows 10. Maybe operating system releases just aren't as exciting as they used to be?
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Recorded October 22, 2021
Is the cloud secure? Richard chats with Screaming in the Cloud's Corey Quinn about the latest spate of security issues in AWS and Azure - and the responses to those issues. Corey talks about the risks the cloud providers are creating, not being clear when an exploit is found, to let people know how much visibility they have into the problem. Mitigating an exploit is not enough - you have to be able to answer the question about whether or not the cloud is secure. The alternatives are worse!
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Recorded September 9, 2021
Should you inject a little chaos into your systems? Julie Gunderson says yes! Richard chats with Julie about how deliberate failing portions of your system teach you more about your dependency and resiliency. But it's not just about breaking things - you need to build a hypothesis around how you see the reliability of the system and then create tests to challenge that reliability - and how to recover quickly if the test does harm to productivity! Julie talks about starting small, maybe just a development pipeline before moving on to more significant systems like production. The goal is to be resilient, but you're only resilient if you test!
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Recorded October 12, 2021
Episode 800! Richard chats about making 800 episodes of RunAs with Microsoft Technical Fellow Jeffrey Snover. The conversation digs into the state of the IT business today, with the huge role of the cloud and digital transformation, and how it impacts the nature of work. Jeffrey talks about how the artificial intelligence in M365 is emerging as a tool to help people be more productive, by watching what they're working on and helping them to organize their information and efforts better. This leads to a discussion about privacy, understanding objectives and key results, and the ultimate goal of any system - better outcomes. Could this actually be the next generation of Microsoft technology? Hopefully it won't take another 800 shows to find out!
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Recorded October 11, 2021
Is ransomware getting worse? Richard talks to Microsoft VP of Cybersecurity Ann Johnson about the state ransomware today. Ann quotes Sutton's law: "Why do criminals rob banks? Because that's where the money is." An increasing number of cybercriminals have successfully extorted money from companies using ransomware. So yes, ransomware is becoming more popular amongst criminals and will continue to do so until it doesn't pay. Ann explains that the Zero Trust Security Model is essential - as are data backups that you know how to restore! Beyond our efforts at the IT level, Ann talks about ongoing relationships with organizations like the FBI to go after cybercriminals at a higher level, shutting down infrastructure and charging the criminals with crimes. Ransomware is getting worse, and it's up to us to fight back!
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Recorded August 23, 2021
What's the right way to have virtual desktops in the cloud? Richard talks to Aidan Finn about a virtualization project he was involved with that started with Citrix Cloud, which runs in Azure. Aidan talks about the number of virtual machines involved in a large-scale VDI implementation, many of which are infrastructure and plumbing. Why own the plumbing when you can get it as a service? The conversation then digs into Azure Virtual Desktop, which doesn't have all the bells and whistles of Citrix Cloud, but does simplify implementation a great deal. No virtualization implementation is ever simple, but working at the platform level can make it easier!
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Recorded September 9, 2021
How do you add custom audio, video, and text communications into your organization? Richard chats with Mary Anne Noskowski about Azure Communications Services (ACS), a set of APIs and tooling that brings the features of Teams communications into custom applications and more. Mary Anne talks about Teams integration, providing a means to customize the guest access features into Teams via ACS. The conversation also digs into a few different scenarios for optimizing customer, vendor, and employee experience in communications. It's early days for ACS, but they are taking the reins from the Skype for Business APIs - and it's the same APIs that Teams depend on, so you know they will scale!
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Recorded August 5, 2021
Are you stuck in the print nightmare? Richard talks to Jeremy Moskowitz about the ongoing battle over potential exploits through the point-and-print system in Windows. Jeremy talks about the discovery of the vulnerability in July 2021 and how it has led to a series of patches and registry key changes to resist a potential exploit. Meantime, people need to print! There are several workarounds with Group Policy, and Jeremy's own PolicyPak has some practical solutions. If you put some time into thinking through how your organization prints, you can find a solution that works and is secure!
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Recorded September 9, 2021
Making mistakes with reporting or analytics can lead to mistakes in business and a loss of trust - now what? Richard chats with Melissa Coates about building mechanisms in tools like PowerBI to make it easier to get correct results. Melissa talks about having a diligent core of analytics and a flexible edge - making sure the expert data stewards and building data flows and repositories for accurate analytics, allowing the self-service PowerBI users to explore. Sure, everyone needs some guard rails, but over-governance leads to tools going unused. Let them experiment and find value, then look at how to keep things under control!
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Recorded August 5, 2021
How does your organization work with files in Microsoft 365? Richard chats with Jason Moore about the role of OneDrive for Business, SharePoint, and the many tools available for files, folders, and lists in the M365 world. Jason talks about how under the hood, every file ends up in some pretty standard spots, like Azure Blob Storage - so you know that compliance, governance, and policy are consistent. The conversation also ranges over how different organizations come to different solutions based on their past experiences and skill sets - there's a lot of choice for a reason!
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Recorded August 6, 2021
Does Windows need a package manager? Richard talks to Sarah Lean about Windows Package Manager, aka winget. Of course, there have been package managers for Windows before winget, and Sarah talks about her favorite, Chocolatey. But winget is destined to be a part of Windows itself and opens the door to some great deployment automation. The conversation also dives into exporting - making a copy of the manifest of applications currently on a workstation. Could we get to full local workstation localization, where you could build and re-build workstations on demand? Maybe some next-level hot-desk workstations are possible!
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Recorded August 13, 2021
It's a hybrid and multi-cloud world - how do you manage it? Richard talks to Microsoft VP Jeremy Winter about Azure Arc and its ability to work across on-premises and multiple clouds to give you a view of your whole infrastructure - and ways to govern, manage and secure it! Jeremy talks about the role that Kubernetes plays in the hybrid world to help manage applications and how Azure Arc helps you manage Kubernetes itself with consistent security and implementation policies. It takes some training, but Azure Arc can play a key role in your infrastructure and application modernization!
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Recorded August 5, 2021
There's value in the data your organization has gathered - do you know how to use it to help your company succeed? Richard chats with Jen Stirrup about the new tools and techniques for data analytics. Jen talks about how cloud-based tools like PowerBI and Power Automate open the door to rapid interaction of analytics so that folks can get value in a short amount of time, and you can bring new capabilities quickly. The conversation digs into getting beyond data-driven reporting into more insight-inspired: That good analytics can help you understand the true value of different customers, even to the point of recognizing that some customers are actually costing you money!
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Recorded July 8, 2021
How do you respond to a ransomware attack? Richard talks to Dana Epp about dealing with a ransomware attack. Dana discusses making a plan - if you don't have a plan already, dealing with an attack is very difficult. And make sure your plan exists outside of your regular network since one of the first things you're going to do during an attack is shut down the network. The conversation focuses on how ransomware attacks are a crime and need to be treated accordingly - it's a business problem, not just a technical problem.
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Recorded July 19, 2021
How can Azure AD Conditional Access help to protect your organization? Richard chats with Nitika Gupta about the tooling available to detect and react to unusual sign-ins and access to data. Nitika talks about how Conditional Access lets you set policies in place to require additional authentication and even lockout an account when certain things happen - like a change in device, application, location, and more. The conversation also digs into providing additional security requirements for company leadership and admin accounts - the kinds of accounts that, when exploited, can do significant harm to the company.
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Recorded July 9, 2021
Paul is back! Richard chats with Paul about the recently released preview of Windows 11. Paul talks about being a bit surprised by the timing of Windows 11, and how it looks an awful lot like an update to Windows 10, with a UX refresh. The conversation digs into the current controversy around the Trusted Platform Module requirement in the hardware for Windows 11, while also discussing what should be controversial - requiring a Microsoft account to log into Windows 11. The controversy is helping to shape the product, you should be a part of the discussion!
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Recorded July 19, 2021
As the pandemic starts to wind down in some parts of the world, the conversation is turning to - do we go back to the office? Richard talks to Martina Grom about how some of her customers are responding to a need for hybrid workspaces, with some mixture of working from home and in the office. Martina also digs into the governance challenges of M365 with hybrid workers, and how folks who moved quickly to the cloud during the pandemic are still struggling to use their tools in a sustainable way. There's lots to learn still!
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Recorded June 30, 2021
The SQL Server & AzureSQL Conference is BACK!
After more a year away, the SQL Server & AzureSQL conference happened in Orlando in June 2021. And that means a SQL Question and Answers session at the end of the show.
Bob Ward, Anna Hoffman, Buck Woody, David Pless, and many other great speakers answered questions from the attendees of the conference both in-person and online.
Topics ranged over migrating to AzureSQL, securing data effectively, failover strategies, keeping up with the endless stream of new technologies coming, and much more!
Recorded June 10, 2021
Can you have a private platform on the public cloud? Richard chats with Jennelle Crothers about her work with organizations setting up private Platform-as-a-Service infrastructure in Azure. Jennelle talks about using private DNS Zones, private container registries, and other services to provide a public-like platform experience for a company while not exposing it to the open internet at all.
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Ned Pyle is back and he's got cool news! Richard chats with Ned about some of the features coming down the pipe for file storage in Windows Server 2022. First up is encryption - Server 2022 will have direct support for AES-256. Sure, it's overkill for many scenarios, but some organizations are demanding it, so here it is. Ned also talks about SMB Compression - while it has existed for xcopy et al for a while, now you'll be able to enable compression across any mapped drive. Finally, there is SMB over QUIC - file sharing over the internet that is secure by default, and much more efficient than VPNs. File sharing is never going away - how can you do it better!
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What's it like to build a tool for SQL DBAs? Richard chats with Kendra Little about her role at Red Gate being a product manager for the SQL DevOps tools. Kendra talks about moving to the UK to be closer to the main offices of Red Gate - just in time for pandemic lockdowns to start. The conversation digs into the various strategies around including databases in a DevOps approach, and how tooling can help. Kendra also explores the challenges of making the right thing, working with the team effectively through the pandemic, and software development teams have evolved in this strange time in history.
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What happened to Windows 10X? Richard chats with Paul Thurrott about the ongoing saga at Microsoft to create a lighter version of Windows that can compete with iOS and ChromeOS. Paul talks about various incarnations along the way, including Windows ARM and Windows 10S - Windows 10X is just the latest victim of an extremely challenging problem. Windows has always been about maintaining backward compatibility - but does that still make sense today? What are we willing to do to increase security and reduce complexity?
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What happens when you bring Teams into an organization that already uses SharePoint? Richard chats with Susan Hanley about the intimate relationship between Teams and SharePoint, especially when it comes to files. Susan talks about aligning SharePoint folders and Teams groups to be able to connect existing SharePoint information into Teams - and how Teams can become the interface to everything, especially with Viva!
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What is Microsoft Viva? Richard chats with Hilton Giesenow about the recently announced Microsoft Viva as part of Microsoft 365. Hilton discusses how Viva is a group of products focused on Employee Experience (EXP). Employee Experience being the things that employees need to do at the company outside of the actual work, such as submitting timesheets, requesting vacation, getting training, and understanding company procedures. The conversation turns to the different components of Viva: Learning focuses on employee education with LinkedIn Learning. Connections provide an interface to SharePoint pages for employees that the organization may already have. Topics is a discovery tool, identifying key terminology in the organization from within chats on Teams and elsewhere to bring information together. Finally, there are Insights, which looks at employee wellness. The interface to Viva is Teams - so that employees have everything they need in one place!
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How do you protect your PowerApps? Richard chats with April Dunnam about backing up and maintaining versions of PowerApps over time. April talks about how many PowerApps are developed by people that are more domain experts than developers. That lack of experience in development means that issues like source control and disaster recovery are not on their minds. There is excellent tooling available to help manage PowerApps: You just need to set it up!
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What does cybersecurity look like today? Richard talks with Troy Hunt about the recent news around the Hafnium exploits. The FBI utilized the vulnerability created in Exchange servers to patch the servers and remove the exploit. Is this a good idea? Is it legal? The actions of the FBI lead to a broader conversation about modern cybersecurity - when time is of the essence, should the so-called white hats be able to get legal authority to act to protect people, companies, and property? What's the alternative?
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How do you get started with the Power Platform? Richard chats with Sandy Ussia about the familiar places that Power Platform first appears - domain users trying to automate work like approvals, improve or replace forms-over-data tooling, and more! Sometimes it relates to existing custom applications in the organization, and sometimes it is a set of connectors between SaaS services - or is so far down the to-do list, who knows when someone will get to it! Sandy talks about how culture impacts the evolution of Power Platform in an organization - will the people using the tool reach out when they hit an access restriction, or work around it? This is where IT can help - and maybe find some opportunities to use Power Platform as well!
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So many ways to store data in the cloud, so little time! Richard talks to Karl Rautenstrauch about the array of offerings for your files in Azure Storage. Karl talks about how the rush to move to the cloud last year created some regrets - in the form of large bills for certain services! Planning migrations help because there are several storage choices based on your needs. The conversation digs into the role of Azure Disk, Azure Files, and Azure Blobs - including their relationship to OneDrive for Business, and even a quick chat about NAS products like NetApp!
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You moved your data into the cloud - but have you moved your thinking? Richard chats with Jes Schultz about going beyond the lift-and-shift of databases into the cloud to thinking more broadly about what you can do with data once it's there. Jes talks about how the cloud changes your approach to disaster recovery and database storage, opening the door to experimenting with different database capabilities, even different databases entirely! With core operations more automated, you have time to do more tuning - improving performance and saving money!
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Windows Server 2022 is in preview - have you checked it out? Richard chats with Robert Smit about the early stage preview of Server 2022 released to Windows Insiders. Anyone can be an insider if you want to check it out! Robert mentions a minor problem with the early build that broke sysprep. Check out his blog post in the links below for the workaround. The focus of Server 2022 seems to be on security, although not all the features are in place for the preview. But this is the version of Windows Server that will be in long-term support - and worth checking out!
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Ready to have your Azure virtual machines auto-managed? Richard chats with Phoummala Schmitt about Azure Automanage, recently released into public preview. Phoummala talks about how Automanage sits atop Azure Update, Azure Backup, Azure Security Center, and more. The combination of tools gives you an overview of all of the virtual machines in your tenant and the ability to managing patches, governance: All the things you'd typically do by hand or in ARM templates. Virtual machine management is getting easier!
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How can Azure Security Center help you? Richard talks to Yuri Diogenes about the array of security tools in Azure, starting with Azure Security Center (ASC). ASC is free, and you enable it as soon as you set up your Azure tenant. Yuri talks about how ASC analyzes your Azure tenant and points out potential vulnerabilities, culminating in a security score. Your score goes up as existing resources in Azure are secured, or when you add already-secured resources - and your score goes down when the opposite happens! Talk of security leads to a conversation around Azure Defender for threat detection, Azure Sentinel for security event management, and ultimately to Azure Arc providing security access beyond Azure, into AWS, GCP, and even on-premises servers!
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What did the pandemic do to your infrastructure? Richard chats with Stephanie Donahue about the array of digital transformations that have taken place in the past year. Stephanie talks about moving workloads to the cloud - and how it is not just an IT problem. Work-from-home and other remote aspects of work have helped drive cloud adoption, but the opportunities are much larger than that! The conversation dives into new ways to collaborate, understanding how people work together on projects, and the potential for the latest tools available today!
A severe set of exploits have hit the on-premises Exchange server world. Richard talks to Tony Redmond about the so-called Hafnium exploits, a collection of four zero-day exploits that can allow an attacker to run arbitrary code on Exchange servers visible to the internet. Exchange Online is not affected, and it appears that on-premises Exchange servers only accessible by VPN are also safe. The patches are available for Exchange 2010 on upward, but it is likely too late for tens of thousands of Exchange servers. What happens now?
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What is Azure Purview, and how can it help you with data governance? Richard chats with Laurie Litwack about the preview version of Azure Purview. Laurie discusses how Purview focuses on an overall view of data in an organization - collecting metadata about data wherever it is stored. That means collecting information about data in databases, file shares, on-premises, in the cloud, even on the various SaaS platforms like Salesforce. The result is a data catalog that can help your organization utilize data more effectively, as well as understand where sensitive data exists and is being created!
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Are your teams secure? Richard chats with Tobias Zimmergren about securing Office 365 Teams - both internally and externally! The challenge of Teams collaboration is the risk of sharing too much - and as Tobias says, by default, everyone can see everything. Certain teams in your organization, like HR, legal, and RnD, have to limit who can see their collaborations: Teams has information barriers to protect sensitive collaborations. Tobias also dives into eDiscovery and Data Loss Prevention, two huge topics on their own, and typically connected with Exchange: But also important with Teams. Get secure!
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What's the right way to migrate SQL workloads to the cloud? Richard chats with Anna Hoffman about the expanding array of choices we have today for moving your SQL Server to Azure. Anna talks about the great support for running SQL Server in an Azure Virtual Machine - and why that sometimes makes the most sense for folks! Then there's moving into Azure SQL, which has some differences to regular SQL Server, but you will find it familiar. The conversation also turns to migrating other databases as well - and the migration tools that provide guidance and tooling to make it easier than ever!
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How does your IT career evolve? Richard chats with Michael Levan about his career journey and some ideas of how your career can evolve as well! The conversation starts out at the help desk, where many IT folks get started, interacting with the various applications in the organization as well as the staff. Michael talks about thinking more broadly about your career, whether self-employment makes sense, how you learn, how you teach, and how you grow!
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Everyone needs source control! Richard chats with Nicole Stevens about what IT Pros need to know around source control. Normally the purview of developers, source control is useful anywhere you have text that needs to be stored, versioned, and protected. Nicole talks about how you can use GitHub in a private repository to manage your own scripts - keep track of the changes you make over time, be able to go back to old versions, and so on. And when the whole team gets involved, it gets even more interesting!
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What happens when our most private thoughts are ransomed? Richard talks to Sami Laiho about the Vastaamo Ransomware hack. Sami talks about how the hacker succeeded over months to steal private healthcare records, including transcripts of therapy sessions, and then attempted to ransom the company to get the data back. When the company refused to pay, the hacker contacted the individual patients with ransom demands and released several hundred private records in the process. Ransomware attacks are no joke - and Sami was both a victim and one of the folks fighting against the hack. In the end, spending time, energy, and money on protecting data your organization's data is important - you can't wait until after an attack to fix it. Not all genies will go back into the bottle.
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Secrets Management ships for PowerShell! Richard chats with Sydney Smith who is the product manager for Secrets Management about how this PowerShell extension helps you access and manage multiple key stores in your organization and provides secrets for your PowerShell scripts. Sydney talks about how the development process of Secrets Management was done out in the open, on GitHub, with lots of feedback from the community. It works with multiple key stores, including its own, and leaves room for you to provide very granular security to your secrets - take a look!
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Does M365 work for small business? Richard chats with Ian Williamson about his work as a sole IT person in a small business trying to move into Microsoft 365. Ian talks about how many of the features (and documentation) for Microsoft 365 is aimed at organizations much bigger than what he is working in - and often digging into features his tenant doesn't have! The conversation also focuses on the challenges of identity: Making sure your personal Microsoft identities don't collide with your M365 identities, how to untangle that mess, and perhaps, at some point, actually get some real benefits from M365!
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Do your tools help you work the way you want to? Richard chats with Heather Newman about the concepts of work-life balance and how your tools can make it harder to do the right thing for you and your organization. Heather also dives into the new etiquette around communication, the value of attention, using time and energy wisely. Can our tools help? It's all in how you use them!
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It's 2021 - does PowerShell really need any new features? Jason Helmick says yes! Richard and Jason talk about Jason's move to Microsoft into the PowerShell team and the cool new things coming down the pipeline. First up is Secrets Management, providing a great means to avoid putting passwords in scripts and to be able to utilize secure accounts without ever knowing the secrets in the first place. Jason also explores IntelliSense and IntelliCode with PowerShell and how new AI technologies can make your PowerShell coding experience even better. Finally, Crescendo - tooling to make it easier to wrap native command line tools with PowerShell. 2021 looks to be a great year for PowerShell!
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What else can Teams do? Richard chats with Christina Wheeler about going beyond the default features of Teams, turning it into the hub of work that it can be. Christina talks about the various plugins available for Teams available from third-party companies, as well as the kinds of add-ins you can build yourself. The conversation focuses on app templates as useful tools unto themselves, like the request-a-team template that lets you control the creation of Teams. But since it is an open-source project, you can customize it, or use it as a starting point for something more extensive. With excellent security and governance features, you can extend Teams to help your users have one place to look for all their work!
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Ransomware attacks are a disaster! Can your disaster recovery strategy cope? Richard talks to Dave Kawula about his experiences battling ransomware attacks - and how failed backup strategies facilitate the bad guys getting paid. Dave talks about securing your backups with separate credentials - the ransomware folks count on getting all-powerful administrator accounts! When you granularize your security (call it Just Enough Admin) you make it harder for ransomware to succeed. Get smarter about protecting your backups!
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What's your Productivity Score? Richard talks to Ulrika Hedlund about productivity in 2021 - the impact of the pandemic on work, and how IT can help. Ulrika discusses the rush to work remotely and the move into the cloud, including Microsoft 365. But the move is not enough - you have to train and learn how to use the new tools available. The conversation focuses on the etiquette of chat, email, video, and audio meetings - and the difference in formality between work and home uses! Ulrika also talks about the Productivity Score that M365 can provide to help IT understand how folks are using the technology so that they can provide support where needed.
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Happy New Year! A year ago Richard flew solo to talk about what IT looked like in the new decade. And then the pandemic hit and changed everything. With vaccines beginning to roll out, it's a good time to look at what 2021 is going to look like. What changes have been made in your organization, and how many of them will stay as the pandemic ends? Richard also dives into the predictions he made at the beginning of 2020, and how they look a year later. This is also the end of the Pandemic Series - thanks so much for listening!
What can GitHub tell us about DevOps? Richard talks to Nicole Forsgren about her new role at GitHub, studying the behavior of developers (and many others) using the massive set of aggregate data that exists within GitHub. Nicole talks about expanding the annual State of the Octoverse report to dig deeply into development productivity, security, and the community of source code contributors. This opens the door to some great ideas on how operations and development can work together - and isn't that what DevOps is all about?
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Christmas time with COVID! Richard invites Mary Jo Foley on the show to celebrate a bit of Christmas and reflect on what a crazy year 2020 has been. Mary Jo talks about the early days of the pandemic when the tech companies sent everyone home and the challenge of keeping the internet and cloud providers working while the loads went up... it may have been a near thing! The conversation ultimately turns to gratitude for friends, family, and a great career in this industry. All the best to you and yours!
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What role does PowerShell play in DevOps? Richard talks to Rick Taylor about his experiences building deployment pipelines for development and operations using a variety of tools, including PowerShell. Rick talks about how each tool, including PowerShell, can be the easiest solution to a given task. The conversation also turns to cross-platform deployments, where the implementations of tooling vary from platform-to-platform. PowerShell can help there too, but you do have to learn the platform you're working from! In the end, even PowerShell is just a tool, and DevOps is more about culture and process - and the conversation goes there too!
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A year into the pandemic - how have things changed for IT? Richard talks with Stephen Rose about his experiences working with organizations during the pandemic, from the rapid move to the cloud, facilitating work-from-home, sending all work online, and more. Stephen talks about the social changes happening at work that aren't likely to go away when the virus does. The relationship with IT has evolved also - how are we going to be different in the years to come?
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How can Query Store help you participate in the DevOps cycle? Richard chats with Erin Stellato about the power of SQL Query Store - born out of Azure SQL, Query Store keeps a record of every unique query that is run, along with its query plan and stats. How does this help with DevOps? By providing data for DBAs to talk to developers about how to make improvements to applications that will have a real impact on customer value in the long run!
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How has the pandemic affected work? Richard chats with Karoliina Kettukari about the concept of Modern Work and the tools that make it possible. Karoliina points out that only a year ago, the discussion was about the modern workplace - but with the pandemic, the workplace can be anywhere, and the focus is on work. The conversation digs into the role that Office 365 Teams plays in helping teams to collaborate, keep track of cooperative work, and to maintain the connection between team members!
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What do you get an IT person for Christmas? Richard chats with Rick Claus and Joey Snow about what's on their list for Christmas - some gadgets expensive, some not so much... but all cool stuff that you could get for yourself, or put on your list for a loved one! Heck, play the show for them - we'll share the ideas directly. The best gadgets are things you'll use, but perhaps not buy for yourself because they are a bit indulgent... or maybe you just haven't thought about it. Here's to a great holiday season!
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How can you empower your users to change their own passwords? Richard chats with Jan Bakker about the self-service password options in Azure and Microsoft 365. With more people working from home, the usual ways of changing passwords using the help desk have gotten harder - you can't do in-person authentication! Jan talks about utilizing Azure AD and M365 features to get additional authentication methods available for users with Microsoft Authenticator, text messaging and more. Once that's set up, you have more choices to make, including allowing Microsoft's Identity Protection to recognize when a password should be changed!
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How do you keep documents alive and maintained? Make them lists! Richard chats with Lise Rasmussen about Microsoft 365 Lists, the latest versions of lists from SharePoint with lots of extensibility and templates to build up sophisticated workflows. Lise talks about not making documents since they tend to be endpoints for discussions and work - rather, make lists with views and automation so that the work continues to evolve!
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Every organization has a culture, and every culture has been affected by the pandemic. How is yours? Richard talks to Dr. Tracy Brower about how the COVID-19 Pandemic has impacted company culture. Tracy starts out talking about how most folks planned for a short pandemic and have attempted to sprint through these challenging times. But the reality is that the pandemic is a marathon, and thinking through your culture and how to strengthen the important parts of it can make for better work experiences and more successful business!
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What's coming for Exchange? Richard talks to Gareth Gudger about all the news coming out of Ignite and beyond around Exchange server. Gareth talks about Exchange 2019 not being the last version of Exchange - there will be another on-premises version, although likely it will be an in-place upgrade, and without a year designation - call it the last version of Exchange. This leads to a conversation about folks still on-premises, staying hybrid with the cloud, and making it easier to make mail work no matter what, in the cloud or otherwise!
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Now that folks are working from home, how do you re-image their machines? Richard chats with Johan Arwidmark about the changes coming in Configuration Manager and a library for MDT. Johan talks about how the ConfigMgr responded to the pandemic by adding work-from-home features now in technical preview. You can deploy images onto a VM in your Azure tenant that remote workstations can deploy from, no VPN needed. Also, Johan and Michael have built a PowerShell Extension for MDT that works over the cloud as well - check the links for more info!
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If you're using Office 365, do you know about FastTrack? Richard talks to Erica Toelle about how FastTrack can help you get more value from your Office 365 subscriptions. One of the big services available in Office 365 is compliance around the retention and protection of information. If you have enough seats and the right levels of licensing, Microsoft will help you to take advantage of the advanced compliance features in Office 365!
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The pandemic rushed some work into the cloud - but getting up to the cloud in an organized way takes some preparation, starting with Active Directory. Richard talks to Jess Dodson about the various clean-up processes we always meant to do for AD, but never got around to it. And now with a move to Azure Active Directory, those cleanups are important - not doing them can be expensive! Jess talks about getting your admin accounts in order, cleaning up services accounts, modernizing onboarding and offboarding, and taking advantage of multifactor authentication. There is lots to do!
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Where did Azure SQL come from and where is it going? Richard chats with Bob Ward about his new book, Azure SQL Revealed. The conversation starts out at the beginning of SQL Server in the 90s, all the way to SQL 2005, when the first discussions of a database in the cloud happened at Microsoft. Bob talks about the early days of SQL Server for Windows Azure that eventually became Azure SQL. Today Azure SQL works from the simplest of SQL Server workloads to some of the biggest hundred terabyte hyperscale servers - have a read!
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The Pandemic has moved a lot of applications into the cloud. Are you automating the deployment? Richard chats with Steve Buchanan about the ever-advancing tooling for Infrastructure-as-Code. ARM Templates are the standard approach to IaC for Azure, but they can get complex. Terraform is HashiCorp's tool for IaC that utilizes ARM Templates under the hood. But as Steve says, it takes time for new features of Azure to surface in Terraform. And Microsoft is developing Bicep as a new domain-specific language for IaC over ARM as well. What do you choose?
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Artificial Intelligence is here to stay - how did this happen? Richard chats with Amy Boyd about where artificial intelligence came from, starting back in the 1950s - and how it was overpromised and under-delivered, resulting in an AI winter. And this cycle happened more than once! But along the way, some interesting technology developed that leads us to the modern era of AI, where cloud computing and huge data sources have created conditions for some really remarkable software - and a great story!
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The pandemic has accelerated the move to the cloud - but it's not the only reason to migrate. Richard talks to Sonia Cuff about the effects of the pandemic on business transformation. Sonia talks about the response to the pandemic, such as working-from-home and moving to the cloud, as an adaptation to the crisis: Not transformation. The transformation part comes later, as you dig deeper into the new world the pandemic has brought you to. Can you go beyond surviving, and actually thrive?
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You're moving virtual machines to the cloud - how do you keep them organized and maintained? Richard chats with Samuel Erskine about all the things Azure provides to make the life of a virtual machine better. The conversation starts on organization, using dynamic groups and tags to identify servers - not the machine names! Samuel digs into patch management and monitoring as well. Virtual machines are not going away; keeping them organized and maintained continues to be a crucial part of the job!
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Is the deployment of IPv6 impacted by the pandemic? Richard talks to Ed Horley about how IPv6 deployment has continued through the crisis - and also how enterprises continue to lag behind home services when it comes to IPv6! Ed discusses the latest data around IPv6 usages showing that work-from-home has actually increased the amount of IPv6 traffic because the majority of consumer ISPs now provide IPv6 services. This leads to an interesting discussion on the instrumentation of IPv6 traffic for business. If you're not using IPv6 in your work network, you likely aren't watching what traffic moves across it!
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What does it take to get started with data science? Richard talks with Ayodele Odubela about her new book on learning data science. Ayodele talks about how often data science starts out just defining a good question to ask - and how that question evolves as you learn more. The example explored is getting new customers - which starts with understanding what customers you already have. Often we are unconsciously filtering potential customers, so knowing what bias you have in data is key - as is improving the quality of the data you collect! Visit Ayodele's web site (links below) and use the code RunAs to get a 50% discount on her book!
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Ever had a conversation take a twist you didn't expect? Richard talks to Lauren Malhoit about the state of networking during the pandemic. The conversation evolves into a broader view on IT in the pandemic, thinking longer term, and that the changes we're making today are not going to magically disappear with the virus. While it may not be the conversation planned, it is two experienced IT folks sharing their tales of coping in these challenging times!
Windows can protect itself from exploits – but you need to turn it on! Richard talks to Chris Jackson about his recently published document about exploit protection. Chris talks about the long list of mitigation strategies that exist inside of Windows to stop arbitrary code (read: malware) from executing. Each strategy comes with the risk of breaking your application. You need to apply the mitigations on an application-by-application basis, and with some testing around it. But if you want to make your Windows desktops more secure, these exploit protections are enormous!
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Enterprise Mobility is no longer optional! Richard talks to Richard Hicks about his work during the pandemic around remote connectivity. The early days of the pandemic were a scramble to get folks working from home, often needing to scale up VPN services. Now that a few months have gone by, other problems have appeared: Are the remote workstations getting patched? How do you know? What about self-service password changes with remote machines? Richard digs into the details of not being on the local network and how you can tune up your remote connectivity to bring back all the goodness!
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Can you go serverless with databases? Monica Rathbun says yes! Richard chats with Monica about Microsoft's serverless mode for SQL Azure. Same SQL database, but now it is billed by the second and will automatically suspend itself after a set amount of time - incurring no costs to you while suspended! It doesn't work for every database scenario, but Monica talks through some options that have great potential. You need to understand the limitations as well as the benefits, but serverless SQL is a great new tool!
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How can Windows Virtual Desktop improve productivity? Richard chats with Jen Sheerin about the kinds of applications better served by virtualization. Jen talks about her work with Citrix XenDesktop and Windows Virtual Desktop, and how the pandemic has accelerated adoption. The challenge is especially acute for thick client applications - you can deploy them to a home machine, but that is a security risk and has VPN performance challenges. Windows Virtual Desktop gives you more control, more security, and more ability to keep your users working efficiently. Get the power of "any any" - any location on any device with desktop virtualization!
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Perimeter security is one thing - what about beyond the edge? Richard chats with Ned Pyle about a series of blog posts (links in the show notes) to help you harden security on every machine in your network. Ned talks about various settings available on Windows clients and servers that can help protect your systems from bad actors - and there's nothing to install, just adjusting policy and settings! In the end, you can make your security much deeper and difficult to exploit.
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How can compassion help during the pandemic? Richard talks to April Wensel about the importance of compassion at this difficult time. April talks about how compassion has always been important and powerful for work and the rest of life, but today it's essential. Everyone has been affected by the pandemic to some degree, and everyone is grieving, whether they know or not. We all need more compassion in our lives, for ourselves, family, neighbors, co-workers, and the world.
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SCCM or Intune? Do you need to choose? Should you choose? Richard chats with Greg Shields about device management using SCCM and/or Intune. Greg admits that it is his own journey coming from SCCM but developing an Intune class that led him to admire what Intune is good at. The two products definitely overlap, and understand each other - you can run both very successfully. It comes down to your organization's needs!
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What does incident response look like during the pandemic? Richard talks to Julie Gunderson of PagerDuty about what it takes to respond to an incident effectively when you can't necessarily be in the same room together. The conversation starts out with the fundamentals of incident response - how to report an incident, how an incident unfolds, what it looks like to resolve an incident and then, most importantly, the post mortem. The pandemic just makes it harder - communication is remote, documentation is essential, trusting your people is critical. We'll get through this!
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What is your preferred SQL Server tool? Richard chats with Vicky Harp, who oversees the development of many of the tools you count on to manage all sorts of databases in the Microsoft world. From SSMS to Azure Data Studio to SQL CLI - there's a lot of ways to manage and maintain databases on-premises and in-the-cloud. What tool is right for you? Don't worry, you can use more than one!
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Ready for some cloud snark? Richard chats with Corey Quinn, the cloud economist and snarky commenter on all things cloud. The conversation digs into how the use of the cloud has evolved rapidly during the pandemic, and the reality that people may want to spend less on the cloud, but more importantly, they want consistency in their spend. Getting off virtual machines and into "real" cloud services can help, but understanding how you are using cloud technology is critical. Lift and shift is not enough!
Are you ready to become Ansible? Richard chats with Josh Duffney about his book on Ansible - using a play on the term "become," which is the privilege elevation command in Ansible. The conversation turns to how you evolve as an infrastructure-as-code person, doing basic automation tasks first, but ultimately turning into a source-code-controlled library-building-team that makes deployment of applications and resources easy, reliable, and powerful. If you're coming from the Windows world and trying to learn Ansible, this is the book for you!
The pandemic has sent everyone home to work - how do you support them? Richard chats with Jessica Deen about her work doing remote support both before and now during the COVID-19 pandemic. Jessica starts out talking more philosophically about support work in this challenging time, with lots of patience and empathy. But that also takes effective remote communication - being able to see the person you're supporting is incredibly valuable! Ultimately effective remote support comes down to understanding the person battling the issue and working with them - like working locally, only harder!
With folks working remotely more than ever, how do you keep your team together? Richard chats with Tracy van der Schyff about her work building tools in organizations that become the focal point of work. Whether with SharePoint in the old days, or Teams today, you can make a place that is great for work and connecting the team - and the power of transparency!
The Hybrid Workforce is here to stay - how do you update Windows? Richard chats with Dave Backman about what it means to manage a hybrid workforce, where most of your staff work both from home, and occasionally in the office. The pandemic made this happen, and it's likely to continue indefinitely. So how do you keep Windows up-to-date? Dave talks about the modern update strategies beyond Windows Update Server, into InTune and Windows Update for Business.
How do criminal hackers make money hacking? Richard chats with Paula Januszkiewicz about the methods used by criminals to steal money through various exploits. Whether its ransomware or taking control of your Facebook account long enough to ask for money in your name, there are a lot of possibilities. As long as there is money to be made, the hacks will continue. Increasing your security doesn't make you immune, it just makes things more expensive for the black hats. Perhaps expensive enough that they stop?
You sent machines home during the pandemic - are the drives encrypted? Richard talks to Microsoft Premier Field Engineer Julie Andreacola about BitLocker and the various management tools needed to make BitLocker work for you and your organization. Julie talks about the need for PCs that have modern TPM chips - BitLocker will work without them, but life is much better with, especially in recovery. The conversation then turns to management, including Azure AD, InTune, and MBAM. Any combination of those tools can help you provide keys when BitLocker goes into Recovery mode. Keep your drives safe, even when they are remote!
ARM Templates are awesome - but what happens when they get big? Richard chats with Pierre Roman on the Cloud Advocates team at Microsoft about how ARM Templates are evolving to help you manage them when they get more sophisticated. Pierre talks about all the challenging bits of scaling ARM Templates, including modularizing, testing, and using source control. Your infrastructure-as-code is code, and it needs care and feeding to be as good as it can be, especially as things get more complex!
How is your productivity during the pandemic? And the folks you work with? Richard talks to Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick, authors of Agile Conversations, about how to improve productivity during the pandemic. The conversation turns to how we measure productivity in the first place, and why we were happy with our productivity before the pandemic. Squirrel and Jeffrey talk about being comfortable with how things were - and now that no one is all that comfortable, how do we rethink work, trust, confidence and productivity!
How secure is your office Wi-Fi? Richard chats with Dr. Avril Salter about using enterprise security features in Wi-Fi. The conversation starts out focused on WPA2-Enterprise, using RADIUS servers and protocols like CHAP and PEAP. It may be more complicated to set up, but once running, you have far more control over who can be on your Wi-Fi. Avril talks about creating separate SSIDs for secure corporate devices, BYOD devices, a guest network, and a legacy network. Yeah, four SSIDs! Next up - WPA3, with even better default security features!
There is big data, and then there is genomic-scale. Richard talks to Lynn Langit about her work in large scale data analytics around the pandemic. Lynn talks about the terabytes of data involved in doing genetic analysis and the pipeline needed to move and organize that data. It takes a cloud - you need a huge amount of compute in relatively small bursts, as well as massive amounts of storage. And in the end, you get probabilistic results - nothing is ever absolutely certain! But the experiences happening today in genomic-scale research point to amazing data analytics capabilities for everyone in the future.
There are performance issues in the cloud? Lori Mac Vittie says yes! Richard chats with Lori about how just buying more cloud might increase capacity - but not performance. This leads to a conversation about performance even is - and what it means to the users of your apps. Ultimately, the same diagnostic challenges we had before the cloud come into play - bottlenecks exist within software and need to be improved. Might be code, might be data architecture - it takes a group effort to understand and improve!
You've moved to the cloud - you're secure, right? Richard chats with Dana Epp about what you should be doing to secure your cloud services in Azure. Dana talks about how the default settings for Azure services tend toward making them easy to use and inexpensive. But it also leaves you potentially vulnerable - logging is turned off, for example. The conversation turns to tools like Azure Advisor helping you lock down your services better and having a clear view of who is using your services, as well as who is attacking you. Microsoft secures the cloud, you secure your cloud services!
Ready to automate? Richard chats with Sandy Ussia about Power Automate, formerly known as Flow (although the term flow is never far away). But Power Automate is exactly what you think it is - a no-code/low-code solution to providing automation in Azure between Office 365 and a whole host of other platforms including Google, Salesforce, and so on. Sandy talks about the array of templates that already exist for Automate, so that rarely do you need to start from scratch - there's always a template for your idea that can at least get you started. And the Starter Kit helps you get started right, with good governance!
The Black Hats are targeting your users' fears - are you prepared? Richard talks with Susan Bradley about the focus of attackers on COVID-19 topics. Susan talks about how many security exploits depend on convincing users to click on something they shouldn't. You can train to resist those clicks, but nothing is ever perfect. The question is, what happens next? The conversation digs into multifactor authentication, resisting lateral security breaks, and more. You can keep your remote workers secure!
We all have a hybrid cloud solution - how do you manage it? Richard chats with Thomas Maurer about Azure Arc, a tool in the Azure suite for managing virtual machines, Kubernetes clusters, and data services in Azure, your on-premises servers, even other cloud providers! Thomas talks about how IT folks end up with an array of tools for managing servers depending on the location and how Azure Arc ends that. Arc provides location-independent access to all your resources, and it's in preview now, so free to use (although you may have to pay for additional Log Analytics data)... check it out!
You've got everyone working from home - how is their WiFi holding up? After the initial rush to get folks working from home, there's the need to work effectively from home. Having bandwidth and connectivity problems seriously impacts productivity. Richard talks to Ryan Woodings, the CEO of MetaGeek about getting WiFi working well. MetaGeek has made products for tuning enterprise WiFi for years, but the need for getting better performance out of home WiFi has had them refocusing on different tools - including the free inSSIDer WiFi analysis tool!
What can Azure Synapse do for you? Richard chats with Jen Stirrup about Microsoft's Azure Synapse Analytics. Jen talks about how most companies have structured and unstructured data, typically stored in different locations. If you're all in on Azure, you have an Azure Data Warehouse for structured data ready for analytics as well as an Azure Data Lake that holds your unstructured data. Azure Synapse brings those two data sources together, along with other SQL data sources, to help you do comprehensive analytics. The conversation turns to the idea of answering business questions as opposed to exploring business mysteries - both are valuable, but need different tools and techniques!
Are you ready to have employees back in the office? As part of the Pandemic Series, Richard talks to Cynthia Milota about what preparations need to be made for using office space during the pandemic. In some places in the world, the initial wave of the pandemic has passed and the number of cases stabilized. Where authorized, folks can go back to the office - but with certain restrictions. What makes sense for your office? Can you maintain physical distance? How much cleaning is required? How do you give the staff the confidence that working from the office is safe?
Two old guys bicker about Windows! Richard chats with Paul Thurrott about the current state of Windows Desktop, and the cycles that keep recurring - put more things into Windows, then take them out. Update more frequently, then less frequently. Client software deployment problems - use the web instead. Web doesn't have enough features, build more client apps. There are lots of cycles around Windows, which ones affect you?
How do you stop the company email from being compromised? Richard talks to Niall Merrigan about the sophisticated level of hacks going on in business email. Niall describes how business email systems get compromised, typically through a weak password, then monitored to understand the business well enough to inject email in to steal money or compromise the business. In these challenging times, no one can afford this - and multifactor authentication and strong confirmation policies can help!
Windows Terminal 1.0 is shipped! Richard talks to Kayla Cinnamon about the open-source project that is Windows Terminal. The conversation starts with a bit of a history lesson on updating the Windows Command Prompt - and why it turned out to be a bad idea. Folks depended on the exact behavior of the command prompt so heavily that any changes broke things and spread sadness. But what if you could start over? Windows Terminal brings together all the things you never knew you wanted in a terminal client, as well as a bunch of features you definitely knew you wanted. Check it out!
Could Windows Virtual Desktop be your organization's Work-From-Home solution? Another episode in the Pandemic Series, Richard talks to Grant Becker about the latest version of Microsoft's virtual desktop tools. Grant talks about Windows Virtual Desktop as Remote Desktop Services in Azure - you have a minimal installation on the workstation, all of the security policies live in the Azure-hosted virtual machines that run your templates. And it works on mobile devices as well! While certainly a useful solution during the pandemic, WVD could be a common way to work going forward!
How robust is the data governance in your organization? Richard talks to Susan Hanley about the various elements that go into data governance, starting with having a plan! Depending on what your organization does, there can be a huge array of rules on how to collect, retain, and delete data. Then comes the challenge step of actually following those rules! Susan talks about the latest generation of tools available to make sure you're consolidating and deleting data when you should. Good data governance keeps a company safe and relevant!
It's Show 700! Richard brings his friend Jeremy Moskowitz on to celebrate making 700 episodes of RunAs. The conversation spans the history of the show, the evolution of Windows, the challenges of the pandemic and how Group Policy can fix everything - check out the webinar that Richard and Jeremy did together at https://www.policypak.com/runas - and thanks for listening!
How do you get value from the unstructured data in your organization? Richard chats with Seth Juarez about the array of AI-related services that Microsoft makes today to help understand all kinds of data in your organization. Seth talks about machine learning in general, and how Microsoft has built various cognitive services that can be applied to Azure Cognitive Search to help dig deeper into any kind of document, images, PDFs, and more - and understand them! The conversation digs into what can be extracted, how you can utilize the data, and even how to plug that revealed information into standard analytics tools like PowerBI!
Databases are important during a crisis - how are yours? Richard talks to Brent Ozar about how the pandemic has effected workloads for databases and DBAs. While some businesses have wound-down during the crisis, many are busier than ever. How do you scale on short notice? What if bigger hardware isn't readily available? Even large cloud database instances are somewhat limited today, so clever techniques have to be found to keep things running. Brent also digs into the maintenance side of things - it's a great time to do the preventative work you always meant to do!
WireShark has evolved - are you using the latest? Richard talks to Laura Chappell about her on-going efforts to teach IT folks more about what is happening in their network and how you can understand and improve it! Since the last time Laura was on the show (ten years ago!) the role of WireShark has changed. Today there are great capture tools for understanding the vast amount of network traffic produced in your organization, and WireShark helps to dissect the interesting bits, both from a security perspective and performance!
Even during a pandemic, the bad actors are out there. Richard talks to Ann Johnson, Corporate VP for Cybersecurity at Microsoft about the security activity going on during this unusual time. Ann points out that there isn't necessarily an increase in attacks, but that the attacks are targeting the pandemic, using phishing strategies around COVID-19 and preying on people's fears. The conversation turns to all the things we meant to push out for security, like multi-factor authentication and password manager, as even more important today.
What's your WiFi network solution? Richard chats with Daniel Piessens about the Ubiquiti UniFi WiFi devices available today. What started as a straight WiFi provider has evolved into a more sophisticated networking set up with switches, gateways, security devices, and more. But its the software around the UniFi products that really makes things interesting. Daniel talks about the frustrating parts of UniFi as well as the fun stuff. Looking for a WiFi set up for home or small business, have a listen!
How's your business continuity? As part of the Pandemic Series, Richard talks to Sonia Cuff about the role of IT in business continuity. As Sonia says, the first word there is BUSINESS. And we're all part of making a business work, so you need to engage with business leadership around what continuity looks like for your organization. Backups are not enough! The conversation also dives into the fact that business continuity is not just about outages - productivity plays a part as well. Helping staff that are new to working from home get more productivity, providing mechanisms for making work and progress visible; all these things are about business continuity. And any improvements here benefit the business today and in the world beyond the pandemic!
Are your PC deployments on Autopilot? Richard talks to Michael Niehaus about Windows Autopilot, which offers a centralized way to deploy to PCs, both remotely and on-premises. Michael talks about getting away from the double-shipping approach of provisioning new PCs, where you as an IT person have to receive a machine, load it up, then ship it out to the employee that is using it. With Autopilot you identify new PCs to your hardware provider using your Azure Tenant ID. Then you specify your configuration information so that when the machine powers up and connects to the Internet, it knows how to provision itself. There are also services for resetting machines and de-provisioning them at end-of-life!
Next up in the Pandemic Series - how is your VPN? Richard talks to Richard Hicks about the vast increase in demand for VPN services as employees work from home en masse. For many businesses, VPNs were an exception case, with relatively few users. When everyone needs to use it, can the infrastructure hold up? Richard talks about configuration issues that can limit the scalability of your VPN, what workloads can be offloaded from the VPN entirely, and how sometimes its easier to build out a new infrastructure for connectivity than to revise the existing one.
Are you ready to move to the cloud? Richard talks to Evelyn Padrino about the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework. Evelyn describes how Microsoft has been collecting knowledge from all the past cloud migrations to build out a framework to make it easier to do the right thing moving workloads to the cloud. The conversation digs into all the preparations that need to be made before anything gets moved, and how to move the right things the right way. And it's not just about Lift-and-Shift, but also how you modernization, monitor, and make your infrastructure better!
How are you managing everyone working from home? Second in the Pandemic Series, Richard talks to Martina Grom about the challenges around maintaining security and productivity with entire workforces doing their jobs from home. Office 365 does offer some powerful options for security, including the Azure Information Protection services that can restrict the copying of files and limit lifetimes on access. Modernizing security using password managers and authentication helps also - this is not the time for information breaches!
How do you keep the configuration of your Microsoft 365 resources consistent? Richard talks to Microsoft Premier Field Engineer Nik Charlebois about the evolution of Desired State Configuration. Nik talks about how his old open source project called ReverseDSC has become a part of the new Microsoft365DSC - giving you the ability to extract all the configuration and policy details from the various elements of your Microsoft 365 tenant. And once you have that file, you can compare it against other templates of Microsoft 365 tenants and apply it if you need to. Nik talks about the power of knowing exactly when your configuration gets changed for any reason, and the options available to react to that change!
The first of the Pandemic series - how's your bandwidth? Richard talks to Cameron Fuller about some of the issues IT folks are dealing with during the pandemic. With most employees working from home, the bandwidth available to those employees is essential. And most likely, there's more than one person at home that needs that bandwidth - do they have enough? Does it make sense for IT to get involved in configuring networks in employee homes to provide bandwidth shaping with QoS? What about other bandwidth options like MiFi access points? Cameron explores several options and ideas you can add to your list of things to do to keep employees productive in this challenging time!
What is Terraform, and why should you use it? Richard chats with Jennelle Crothers about HashiCorp's open source project called Terraform, providing configuration-as-code solutions for building out Azure infrastructure. As Jennelle describes it, this is code for racking-and-stacking Azure resources: Defining your virtual machines (or containers), wiring them up with networking, and so on. You could do it with Azure ARM, but do you want that much JSON in your life? Jennelle talks about the Azure Provider for Terraform and how it transforms the easy-to-read code of Terraform into Azure objects. But that code is still unique to Azure, don't expect to use your same Terraform scripts with other cloud providers.
DevOps involves a whole organization - but what can Ops do to facilitate DevOps? Richard chats with Michael Levan about the role of Ops in the DevOps evolution of an organization. Michael talks about the need for culture change to make your DevOps practices successful, but at the same time, tools have gotten dramatically better. The conversation turns to Azure DevOps as an overarching tool for dealing with the continuous integration and continuous deployment of software for your organization. There are lots more tools needed and Michael gives time to many of them - but Azure DevOps is a great place to start!
Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 went out of support as of January 14, 2020. Now what? Richard talks to Sonia Cuff about what your options are to deal with your Windows 2008 Servers. The conversation dives into all the great things that have been added to Server in the past twelve years, and the various options to have to upgrade. Starting with - should you upgrade? Sonia talks about building new VMs for roles like DHCP, DNS and Active Directory - and shifting workloads gradually. There are lots of great examples online! Sonia also digs into the power of Windows Admin Center to painlessly migrate file storage roles - and improve server management as a whole!
If you care about mail, there are important things coming in 2020! Richard chats with Gareth Gudger about recent announcements from Microsoft that will have an impact on email both on-premises and in the cloud. First up is the end of Basic Authentication to Exchange Online this fall - old mail clients are going to break, time to upgrade! Next is the end of TLS 1.0 and 1.1 support - more client challenges! Gareth talks about upgrading, contracting out and other solutions for the on-going efforts to increase security to mail.
What does it take to become a data scientist? Richard chats with Ginger Grant about her experience talking to DBAs about getting into data analysis and data science. The conversation starts out describing the difference between analysis and science - Ginger describes analysts as using querying to generate dynamic reports in tools like PowerBI. Data science is all about algorithms. But either way, your knowledge of data and domain are key skills. You have an advantage as a working DBA, add some additional knowledge to your existing knowledge and experience to expand your career!
How does IT Pros do their jobs during a pandemic? It may sound like an April Fools Day joke, but it's not. The Covid-19 pandemic is having a significant impact on how we work and play. Richard flies solo again to talk through various aspects of IT during the pandemic, including various efforts needed to help employees work from home, communicate effectively and maintain important operations. This is a time all about business continuity - how can you keep people productive and safe? We can get through this together!
Teams in Office 365 is a hit - but should it be your intranet? Richard talks with Stephanie Donahue about the role that Teams can play in your organization. More than chat, teams is an effective collaboration tool, and a way to store and share institutional knowledge - how decisions are made, what roles people have in those decisions. Is it the first place you should look when you come into work in the morning? Probably. Is it the perfect place for everything in your organization? Stephanie says no - but it can be part of the solution!
What is Azure Sentinel, and how can it help protect your organization? Richard chats with Paul Keely about Azure Sentinel, a set of tools that provide Security Information Event Management (SIEM) and Security Orchestration Automated Response (SOAR). Paul talks about going beyond the firewall, into the analysis of behavior within your systems, including Office 365, Azure and more - and using machine learning, being able to detect what unusual behavior looks like and automatically respond to it.
Power BI is a hit! Now what? Richard chats with Melissa Coates about the challenges of applying data governance to analytics tools like Power BI. Melissa describes various aspects of data governance, including security, organization/classification, documentation of data and education - you need training to understand the rules and responsibilities of data in an organization. If every company is a software company, then we're all data stewards as well!
What's an intelligent substrate? Richard chats with Microsoft Technical Fellow Jeffrey Snover about his new role in Office 365. About a year ago Jeff changed jobs and jumped into one of the biggest, oldest (and most profitable) teams at Microsoft: Office. Today Office is totally cloud-focused, and Jeff talks about the intelligent substrate, a NoSQL data store that contains everything related to Office 365, including documents, spreadsheets, SharePoint lists, email... everything. This allows artificial intelligence technology to find relationships within that data to provide more value to companies using Office 365 - lots of value!
How do you manage CosmosDB? Richard chats with Deborah Chen from the CosmosDB team about what it takes to care and feed the cloud-based NoSQL data storage solution. Deborah talks about the advantages of not having to manage the infrastructure of storage, with replication and fail-over solutions integrated into CosmosDB from the start - as well as at-rest and in-transmission encryption always on! The management tools are pretty straightforward too, with thorough logging and diagnostics tools integrated into Azure. CosmosDB can make your life simpler!
How can a deployment tool make your disaster recovery process easier? Richard chats with Michael Richardson of Octopus Deploy about Operations Runbooks. Octopus Deploy handles deployments very effectively, and with Runbooks, you can expand that functionality to include all sorts of other related processes, like backing up and restoring data, running failover scripts and more. Through deployment, Octopus already knows where all your resources live and the rights they need, making it easy to expand your automation over all sorts of disaster recovery needs!
It's 2020 - why are we still using passwords? Richard chats with Libby Brown about the on-going efforts to make passwordless authentication work great for everyone. The problems with passwords are well-known, but can we really get to a place where we don't have them at all? Libby talks about the challenges of using multi-factor authentication, including authenticator applications, FIDO keys, facial recognition and more. You need multiple methods of authentication and recovery strategies available before you can consider turning off passwords - but it is possible!
What does it take to get your team learning new skills? Richard chats with Don Jones about the entire learning process in the IT profession. Don discusses outcomes - why are we learning? What new skills will help the company? Answering these questions leads to budgets and times, but also commitment and deadlines. You can't just learn for fun (although you should), you have to provide value to the company. The good news is, we already learn all the time, we just have to remember that we do!
Azure Sphere continues to evolve - what's the latest? While at Ignite in Orlando, Richard sat down with James Scott to talk about how Azure Sphere has progressed. Azure Sphere is a highly secure IoT solution that follows the seven properties of highly secure devices (check show notes for the white paper). James also talks about how Azure Sphere will be in general availability in February 2020 - and it should be your IoT solution!
SharePoint custom solutions are powerful - but how do you get them into the cloud? Richard talks with Christina Wheeler about her work moving complex on-premises SharePoint applications into the Power Platform that includes Office 365, Power BI, Power Apps and more. Christina talks about the cultural shift that happens both to her and her customers as the cloud becomes a compelling option for business. That cultural shift opens up a world of best-of-breed options for CRM, CMS and other tools - all that can be integrated together with the Power Platform. SharePoint still plays a role, but evolved!
What are SQL people concerned about at the end of 2019? While in Las Vegas at SQL Intersection, Richard hosts the semi-annual question and answer session for SQL at the end of the conference. Panelists include Bob Ward, Kim Tripp, Paul Randal, Brent Ozar, Glenn Berry, Kevin Farlee, Pam Lahoud, Pedro Lopes, Ben Miller and Tim Radney. Questions around SQL Server 2019, SQL in the cloud, new clustering services, challenges around working with developers and more!
Happy New Year! It's 2020 - the future is here! What is the career of an IT Professional going to look like in this decade? Richard flies solo, pulling together a summary of the past few decades and how they will shape this new decade just starting. Don't expect any crazy predictions - the IT industry moves carefully, with logical progressions. In some ways, you can expect more of the same - more computers that people rely on, more security challenges, and more of the new technology being used in new ways we may not have considered. Your fundamental skills are still useful and important - keep improving them!
How do you share company data outside of the company? While at Ignite in Orlando, Richard talked to Joanna Podgoetsky about Azure Data Share, a new tool specifically designed to make it easy to share data outside your organization in a controlled and measurable way. Joanna talks about the various Azure data sources you can use to share data, and how to provide access to it for individuals and applications as well as being able to measure who has accessed the data.
You know about DevOps - but what about MLOps? While at Ignite in Orlando, Richard talked to Damian Brady about how Machine Learning projects need to go through the same kind of lifecycle as any other software project. Damian emphasizes how important good instrumentation is for MLOps - because it can be hard to tell how well a given machine learning model is working. And good instrumentation often involves development, so get with your devs and talk through how you're going to measure success!
Python and SQL Server together? Julie Smith says yes! Richard chats with Julie about the strengths of Python in various tasks around databases including ETL. Julie talks about the tooling available for doing data extraction, transformation and loading - you can find existing Python implementations on most tasks you need to do! And as of SQL Server 2017, Python is directly supported, so you can call Python code from within T-SQL. And that's just the beginning - wait til you see Python in data analytics and visualization!
Gene Kim is out with a new book - The Unicorn Project! Richard chats with Gene about his latest book - a fictionalized story of an organization struggling to build software that is critical to the survival of the company. The conversation explores a core aspect of The Unicorn Project known as the Five Ideals. Think of these ideals as a Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs when it comes to teams building software - this is how you do it!
Are you managing your infrastructure with code? Richard chats with Josh Duffney about his current toolset for writing infrastructure as code, including PowerShell, Chocolatey and Ansible. Ansible is an open-source project from Red Hat that includes some retail components if you need them. Josh dives into the playbook model, how Ansible helps make testing that infrastructure code easier, and the challenge of using virtual machine based application deployment in the modern world.
Collaboration continues to evolve - how do you do it? Richard chats with Heather Newman about the tooling and techniques that have changed over the years to let teams work together remotely and in-person. SharePoint has been around a long time, but do you remember Groove? Heather talks about her current favorite stack including Teams, Planner, OneNote, OneDrive and SharePoint, all working together under the Office 365 banner. It's a great time to collaborate!
What is Microsoft 365, and why do you need some? Richard chats with Stephen Rose about the superset that is Microsoft 365, encompassing Office 365, Windows, InTune and more. Stephen talks about how Microsoft is organizing the products that work together with the cloud to be productive, making it easier for folks to put them to work and take advantage of all the features. This includes the latest incarnation of Windows Virtual Desktop, allowing any device to act like a high-end Windows workstation - check it out!
Does DevOps make sense for DBAs? Richard chats with Kendra Little about how DevOps practices have spread throughout the development process - and yet somehow, in some organizations, the database folks aren't all that involved. Kendra talks about what practices work for those responsible for the care of feeding of data, including things like source control and automating deployments. Can it be done? Yes! Is it worth it? Also yes!
How do you keep your groups and teams in Office 365 under control? Richard chats with Tony Redmond about Office 365 and how individual users can create their own groups, essentially on demand. In large organizations, this can lead to a huge proliferation of so-called dead groups - how do you manage them? Tony digs into the policy tools, and what really constitutes a dead group. The conversation also dives into how this keeps happening - making it easy for users to use a feature means it gets used, but when do you need governance to make sure it isn't over-used?
Your organization is using Azure - but is it under control? Richard chats with Phoummala Schmitt about policy, compliance, and governance in Azure. Often moving to the cloud starts as an experiment - and then suddenly it's live! While it's great to work through governance in advance, it's not always possible. So how do you get things right? Phoummala talks about account management, monitoring utilization, security and cost controls, all key parts of good governance. Azure gives you lots of tools to get things right!
Can deploying software and updates enable a hack? Richard chats with Mikael Nyström about doing secure deployments - and this leads to a conversation about how modern hackers are exploiting systems today. Modern hackers can break into machines, but security restrictions limit their ability to exploit - until an administrator logs into the machine. Mikael talks about limiting your use of super-user accounts, including for deployment - and keeping your systems difficult for hackers to exploit!
Are you compliant? What does that even mean? Richard chats with Erica Toelle about the various security and compliance features in Office 365. Erica talks about regulated industries such as oil and gas that have very specific rules around reporting and regulations - but every organization can benefit from the security and compliance tooling! Document retention, inappropriate communications across email, chat and other tools are all part of compliance, and Office 365 can help!
Are you using SysInternals? Richard chats with Sami Laiho about Mark Russinovich's masterwork. Sami talks a bit about the history of SysInternals and how Microsoft came to acquire them and Mark - and the tool development continues! Process Explorer and Monitor are the best known of the suite of over a hundred tools - and they focus on diagnostics. But once you know what an issue is, there are more tools to help you resolve them. Check out Sami's Pluralsight series on SysInternals - he considers it some of his best work!
Is your cloud secure? Richard chats with Paula Januszkiewicz about what it takes to secure your cloud - that is, the cloud services that you're paying for. Paula talks about how cloud services are not automatically secure, that many security features are off by default and it takes time to figure out how to configure them to help protect your accounts and services. And since cloud products are relatively new, there aren't many experts around - you have to figure out what is right for you and your organization!
How are you managing mobile device? Richard chats with Jeremy Moskowitz about the world of mobile device management and how it continues to evolve. Jeremy talks about the balancing act between supporting Windows-centric concepts that group policy did extremely well alongside what it takes to manage the broader diversity of devices today - and in the future! If you want to dig deep on MDM, check out Jeremy's new book!
It's 2019 - has DevOps 'crossed the chasm'? Richard chats with Nicole Forsgren and Dustin Smith about the latest DevOps report, showing that in all aspects of software development and operations, things are getting better - but not evenly! The conversation digs into the latest research showing that it is large enterprises today struggling the most to improve development and delivery of software, while retail operations seem to be leading the pack! There's a lot to explore in the DevOps report, take a look!
What is it to teach, and what is it to learn when you're in IT? Richard chats with Don Jones about his on-going work on his book Be The Master and how it has evolved since its first publication in 2018. Don talks about how readers connected with him around the book and discussed their own efforts in mastery and teaching - which encouraged Don to revise the book! Remembering how we learn helps inform how to teach, and teaching strengthens knowledge, so everyone benefits - and there's a lot to know!
Office 365 has a ton of features - how do you manage them effectively? Richard chats with Martina Grom about the various aspects of Office 365 that affect the way the folks in your organization collaborate with each other and get work done. As Martina explains, there are great tools inside Office 365 to make it easier to apply policies and governance around the various services that Office 365 provides, including onboarding and offboarding employees, self-service for collaboration, even policies for file storage and retention. Adding Office 365 to the mix can actually make your life easier when it comes to governance!
How much is the cloud costing you? Richard chats with Corey Quinn about his work as a consultant for cloud billing - finding ways to reduce the cost of cloud while maintaining the quality of service. Corey talks about his focus on AWS, but every cloud has similar problems - instances that aren't turned off, over-provisioning and more. In the end, you have to take the time to understand what your organization really needs from the cloud to optimize, but it is worth it!
What do you know about software-defined networking (SDN)? Richard chats with Claudia de Luna about her work in SDN, including implementing Cisco's Application-Centric Infrastructure (ACI). While the physical topology of your network isn't all that different when technology like ACI is in play, your apps see a much simpler network, and strict controls over what your applications can connect with. SDN is changing the networking game - are you playing?
What questions do you have for the SQL community? While in Orlando at SQL Intersection, Richard hosts the semi-annual question and answer session for SQL at the end of the conference. Panelists include Bob Ward, Kim Tripp, Paul Randal, Brent Ozar, Glenn Berry, Kevin Farlee, Pam Lahoud, Pedro Lopes, Ben Miller and Tim Radney. Questions around SQL Server 2019, reporting and integration services, running SQL in AWS and of course, the obligatory partitioning question.
Does Windows still matter? Richard and Paul Thurrott spend the better part of an hour debating back-and-forth about the state of Windows and the need for Windows. Microsoft has split the Windows team and largely concealed its revenue from reporting, so we don't know how Windows is actually doing. What do we want from Windows today? Is it just part of the plumbing now?
Ready for a new Windows administration console? Richard chats with Haley Rowland about Windows Admin Center, a browser-based administration tool that puts a graphical console over top of PowerShell commands to your on-premises servers and workstations - and your Azure-based resources as well! Haley talks about making hybrid cloud easier, using Windows Admin Center to provide coherent connections between on-premises servers and their Azure-based backup solutions. Doing the same task in Windows Admin Center repeatedly? You can grab a copy of the PowerShell script it uses and automate!
Is it time for a new Windows Terminal? Richard talks to Richard Turner about the announcement at Build of the new Windows Terminal. The conversation starts with: Why? Richard explains that the ConHost.exe based console of Windows has hit its limits - the need for backward compatibility exceeds the ability to make changes to it effectively anymore. A new open source project has been developed to allow all the features you've always wanted in a terminal, like tabs, font choices, customization per environment and more - take a look!
Is DevOps only for startups? Rosalind Radcliffe says no! The largest enterprises can benefit from DevOps practices, the challenge is finding the right approach to changing practices. Rosalind talks about getting buy-in from senior leadership by focusing on reducing waste and improving efficiency. Picking the right project is important also - you want a project that is important, but not the crown jewels of the company. Understanding how work actually gets done in the enterprise helps lead you to where you can find improvements in deployment, testing and more. DevOps in the enterprise is possible - and worth it!
It's 2019 - what's new with the Internet of Things? While at the Build conference in Seattle, Richard sat down with Sam George to talk about the latest initiatives Microsoft is taking to bring IoT to the mainstream of business. As Sam explains, its starts with instrumentation - knowing what is happening in your business in more detail. That informs ways to make improvements and further roles for IoT. It's a digital feedback cycle, and it can transform your business!
What can PowerApps do for you? Richard chats with Sandy Ussia about her work with PowerApps and Flow to help organizations build custom applications that run in the browser, on the tablet and phone. On the backend, Flow provides access to many Software-as-a-Service platforms, including all of Office 365 and all sorts of other third-party services. Sandy calls PowerApps a low-code solution, and the code you write is more algorithmic like Excel than C++.
The cloud-based distributed database is a product you can buy by the minute! While at Build, Richard chats with Mark Brown about CosmosDB, Microsoft's high performance distributed database. The conversation turns to the modern thinking around storage - you have lots of space, you need speed and reliability. So what does your data storage architecture look like? Mark talks about how CosmosDB reflects this modern thinking, utilizing the cloud to provide fast data services anywhere you need them.
Machine learning has brought new terms and language to data - do you speak it? Richard chats with Jen Underwood about how machine learning has added capabilities to data analytics, but also a number of new terms that need to be understood to take this capability into the business. If you're coming from the DBA role and adding machine learning to your skills, you need to know the language well enough to teach it to others!
How do you maintain Windows Server Update Services? Richard chats with Adam Marshall about all the maintenance that WSUS needs over time - and the toolset he has built to automate it. This leads to a conversation about Windows Update in general... which hasn't been great lately. Can you really count on Windows as a Service? What about InTune? Adam also talks about Windows Update for Business which is a free option for managing updates without having an on-premises update server. Lots of choices!
Microsoft Teams is popular, but is it effective? Richard talks with Melissa Hubbard about how to get the most of out of Teams. Melissa talks about the natural chaos that comes from adding a new collaboration tool and how that can be a good thing for adoption but ultimately needs some governance. At the same time, too much governance up-front can stop people from using a new tool - so allow a little chaos! Teams is all about collaboration, and works with other Microsoft products like Yammer and SharePoint, offering a great combination!
Is it time to migrate to Server 2019? Richard chats with Dave Kawula who says YES! After a bit of a bumpy start, Server 2019 is good to go and offers a ton of great features - and some pretty painless in-place upgrades too. Dave points out that this is a version of Server 'born in the cloud' and since Microsoft does in-place upgrades, for certain roles, it makes sense for you to do it too. File servers and VM hosts are great for in-place upgrades, but domain controllers and app servers, you need to think things through more carefully - and they're likely virtual machines anyway, so build new... and use automation while you're at it!
What's a data lake and why do you need one? Richard chats with Stacia Varga about the evolving landscape of data analytics - focusing on how the cloud is changing the way a company can gather, store and analyze data. This leads to a conversation about the role of the data lake, a place where raw data can arrive and then be processed on-demand for analytics. The cloud provides the elasticity and scaling to be able to analyze data quickly on demand - you just need to take advantage of it!
WIndows Server 2019 has been out since November 2018 - is it time to install it? Richard talks to Jason Helmick about how the creation of Windows has evolved and how Microsoft's new practices around building Windows has affected adoption and interest in the latest operating system. Jason talks about how the continuous improvement model of Microsoft products including Windows can be a challenge for some folks, but provides huge benefits also. Should you install Server 2019? Jason says YES!
SharePoint is not just a product, it's a tool for helping your organization manage critical information. Are you taking advantage of it? Richard chats with Susan Hanley about what information architecture is about and how SharePoint can play a key role in helping an organization find, store and share data. Every organization needs this capability, successful organizations do it well - how well do you do it?
IT may be evolving, but are all aspects of your IT organization advancing? Richard chats with Jeff Stokes, former Microsoft PFE and now working at Tanium about the challenges IT people have around improving performance. Arguably the least advanced part of much of IT infrastructure is the network - so what does a modern network look like? Jeff talks about being able to get visibility into what servers and desktops are talking to each other, and how to set logical boundaries around them. At least know when your machines are speaking out of turn!
How do you make your SQL queries go faster? Richard chats with Erin Stellato about how Query Store in SQL Server 2017 and its ability to provide detailed information on query performance, including where SQL Server is compiling new query plans for repeated calls. Erin talks about how ORMs can cause repeated ad-hoc queries and how Query Store can be used to help educate developers and explore options for tuning those queries with stored procedures or parameterization. But you can't blame code by default - Query Store can be used for a variety of performance tuning options, on-premises and in the cloud!
Firewalls and MFA are awesome, but how's your physical security? Richard chats with Ned Pyle about a story surrounding a consultant able to walk into a data center, take a VM host server and walk out - and then was able to exploit it to pull all sorts of information out of the Active Directory service on it! Ned talks about taking both physical security and policies seriously, and then moves to the next phase: How do you protect a virtual machine even when its stolen? Enter Guarded Fabric and Shielded Virtual Machines, first introduced in Server 2016 and improved in Server 2019 - go beyond BitLocker protections and really digitally secure your VMs!
The next DevOps Report Survey is out, and Nicole Forsgren needs your help! Richard chats with Nicole about the changes at DORA (now part of Google) - but the work to understand how to make high performing teams continues! Nicole discusses her now expanded team of researchers getting to the heart of what it takes to make great software in your organization. Its never one simple thing, but many aspects that work together so that everyone involved in the creation and operation of software can be as effective as possible - take the survey today and contribute to the effort!
Office 365 is growing in popularity - but is it fast enough? Richard chats with Paul Keely about how IT needs to monitor Office 365 to understand performance problems and worse. Paul talks about all the various aspects of performance that can be impacted by working with Office 365, including needing more overall bandwidth. The discussion turns to the Azure Service Map tool that runs on workstations and in the cloud to understand what services are eating resources - and how that can turn up potential malware and security breaches! There are a lot of aspects to understanding exactly what's going on with Office 365 in your org, but it is a solvable problem - dig in!
Is Artificial Intelligence part of your data analytics strategy? Richard chats with Jen Stirrup about how data analytics and business intelligence continue to evolve to include different elements of artificial intelligence. Natural language interfaces are one aspect, but machine learning can play an even larger role - if you continue to do your diligence! Jen talks about needing quality data to feed to machine learning algorithms and the challenges of dealing with data bias and confirmation bias. We've had these battles all along in analytics, but the new AI tools can amplify your mistakes - there are no shortcuts to good data!
Whitelisting is a good idea - but not easy to make happen! Richard talks to Aaron Margosis about his work making it easier to use AppLocker to implement whitelisting on Windows, a set of scripts and tools named by Chris Jackson as AaronLocker. Aaron talks about implementing the whitelisting strategies outlined in the NSA whitepaper on the subject, making it easier to maintain the whitelist when apps need to be updated. Admins can choose how locked down to make a machine, providing flexibility around updates while still blocking the primary malware vectors - check it out!
How do you understand what's going on in your applications? Richard talks to Isaac Levin about Azure Application Insights - now part of the Azure Monitor Suite that can help with monitoring of PCs, virtual machines as well as a large variety of applications. As Isaac explains, Insights is really a reporting tool that feeds off of a standard SDK that can be installed in a variety of applications - but in the case of .NET applications, you don't have to install the SDK, AppInsights can still instrument it! But the most important aspect is all the complex reporting built-in that can show trends of behaviour as well as errors in your suite of applications.
Every organization has information hoarders; the question is, do you know where it is? Richard talks to Stephanie Donahue about the challenges around discovering information hoards and helping to unwind them - finding out why people hoard data and get them to share it to the larger organization that can benefit from it. Part of the challenge is tooling, and part of it is personal. Either way, it's worthwhile to get that hoarded data shared and help everyone be more productive!
It's 2019 - do you know where your IPv6 network is? Richard chats with Ed Horley about the current state of IPv6 and his new business, HexaBuild, that specifically provides services to companies implementing IPv6. Ed points out that the cell industry has pretty much moved entirely to IPv6 - if you're using a current generation smartphone, it's running across an IPv6 network. All the cloud providers offer IPv6 addressing, so the laggards at this point are the big, older corporations. The real question is, when do we move off of IPv4?
Machine Learning is all around us - are you getting ready for your company to use it? Richard chats with Ginger Grant about what you need to understand around machine learning to be successful. Not all data is created equal - often we think if we just store everything, it'll be useful for machine learning analysis in the future. Ginger talks about some of the mistakes she's seen in the space, and that analysis can't be an after thought. There are lots of great tools in the show notes to help you get started and be successful!
It's a container world - we're just living in it! Richard chats with Microsoft VP Corey Sanders about how containers have taken off in the cloud world. Starting the conversation with the previous show done with Corey in 2017, the discussion dives into how containers in general and Kubernetes specifically have dominated deployment and operations in the cloud. Corey runs down the gamut of advantages, including hybrid and cross-platform options, and how Microsoft is using containers under the hood - it's a container world!
How do you get developers and DBAs to collaborate more effectively? Richard moderated a panel discussion at the PASS conference in Seattle with panelists Amy Herold, Angela Henry, Lyndsey Padget and Tim Corey to share their experiences and debate methods and mechanisms that can help. Lots of participation from the audience as well!
Why does DevOps work? Richard chats with Martin Woodward about the key aspects of DevOps and how they make a difference in an organization - even one as large as Microsoft! Martin talks about how developer often drive a DevOps practice from their Agile development experiences, and how that is a challenge to translate to operations. There's a natural tension between shipping more often with smaller changes and keeping the system stable - how do you find the right balance point?
Once more into the questions and answers! A twice-yearly event, SQLIntersection always closes with a great question and answer session with all of the SQLIntersection attendees asking questions of an amazing line up of SQL Server experts including Kim Tripp, Paul Randal, Bob Ward, Brent Ozar, Erin Stellato, David Pless, Aaron Bertrand and many more! Want a sense of what the SQL Server community is worried about and otherwise focused on? Have a listen!
What's happening with Exchange 2019? Richard chats with Gareth Gudger about the announcements around Exchange 2019 back at Ignite, and what has happened since. A number of interesting performance improvements including the MetaCache Database and Dynamic Database Cache let you take advantage of high-speed storage like SSDs without committing to moving your entire Exchange storage over. New security features also factor strongly. More challenging is the removal of unified messaging and the shortened support cycle for Exchange 2019. This leads to some speculation from Gareth about Microsoft's plans for the future of Exchange!
PAL is back, and speaking more languages! Richard chats with former PFE Clint Huffman about his latest work on Performance Analysis of Logs or PAL. For more than ten years, Clint has been supporting the open source project that helps you understand what's going on in all sorts of important Windows applications including Active Directory, SQL Server, BizTalk, Exchange Server and more. Clint talks about evolving PAL and it's sister tool CLU into Pro editions that you can subscribe to - stay tuned for more!
Time for a holiday season show and a look back at the year! Richard chats with Microsoft Technical Fellow Jeffrey Snover about the very good year that Microsoft has had in most aspects. Jeff talks about how Azure came of age in 2018 and is leading the industry today - and heck, Microsoft even jumped up to be the highest market cap company in the world, at least for now. Looking beyond Windows, the various products that work with Linux and even Microsoft's own Linux distro in the form of Azure Sphere speak to a new Microsoft world. What will happen in 2019?
How do you engineer a customer experience? Richard chats with Chris Jackson about the role of the Windows Customer Experience Engineers - the folks at Microsoft who talk to people using Windows all over the world and advocate inside Microsoft to make those experiences better. A lot of Windows experiences are collected automatically via telemetry in Windows, but there are certain places where that telemetry doesn't work. Chris also digs into Deskop App Assurance, where Microsoft is actually helping to fix compatibility problems with applications on the latest version of Windows - no really!
What's new in SQL Server 2019? Richard chats with Brent Ozar about his take on the latest version of SQL Server. Is there any more to do? Apparently yes! Some features are a bit more questionable, like Java support in SQL Server. But others make a ton of sense, including more analytics, more insights and better support for containers. It all depends on what you want to do with SQL Server. Brent talks about how the culture of DBAs is changing and how that is reflected in SQL Server itself. There's more data to store than ever!
Device Management is evolving - are you? Richard chats with Jeremy Moskowitz about how device management is changing. From the good old days where Active Directory could do everything to the today where there is a huge diversity of devices, even versions of Windows, that cannot be domain joined - there are management solutions for everything. The question is, what makes sense for your organization? Jeremy talks through the different scenarios and options for traditional, hybrid and modern device management!
How do you make the Internet of Things (IoT) secure and reliable? Richard chats with Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Galen Hunt about Azure Sphere, a comprehensive approach to IoT that provides security and the hardware, operating system and cloud services layers. The discussion digs into how microcontrollers (MCUs) permeate all technology in our lives, and that they will soon be a part of the Internet of Things, but only if they can be made safe. Azure Sphere starts with MCU hardware that has a hardware root of trust, along with the Azure Sphere OS, a custom Linux kernel developed by Microsoft for MCUs. And finally, the Azure Sphere aspect provides the mechanisms for on-going security, authenticity and response to threats. The first MCUs are available today for experimentation, check them out!
Who advocates for operations folks in the cloud? While at Ignite in Orlando, Richard sat down with Rick Claus to talk about what it means to be an advocate, and how operations folks think about the cloud. A lot of cloud concepts, like containers, are driven by development - and yet ultimately, it all needs to be deployed, monitored and managed. Rick digs into how operations people are focusing more on those core competencies than any particular technology, and finding there's more to do, more opportunity and more fun to be had in the cloud - what a great thing to advocate for!
What's happening with VPNs in the Microsoft world? While at Ignite in Orlando, Richard sat down with Richard Hicks to talk about the on-going evolution of VPN access in Windows. There's been a number of products along the way, Richard talks about DirectAccess as the one most people know and love - but it hasn't had much work done on it in the past few years. Enter Always On VPN, which simplifies VPNs as well as broadening the VPN support for Windows and other platforms. There are some tricks to migrating, not the least of which is deciding what additional services you need, like InTune - but this is the VPN service Microsoft is focused on today!
The DevOps movement continues to grow - let's see the results! Richard chats with DORA chief scientist Dr. Nicole Forsgren about the State of DevOps in 2018 Report. And it's great news! Nicole digs into the rigorous reporting methodology used to develop the report, covering a broad chunk of the IT community - large and small companies using a huge variety of technology. More than half of the respondents fell into the high performing and elite categories, able to deploy changes to software rapidly with low failure rates. But there are still holdouts - folks trapped in a cycle a slow deployment cycle that means each iteration is difficult because of the vast amount of change. Smaller, faster updates are better - read the report to learn more!
The Internet of Things and Industrial SCADA controls are colliding - what happens next? Richard chats with Niall Merrigan about the security issues around industrial plants - factories, power stations, refineries and so on. There has been automation there for years in the form of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems - but their security models are pretty primitive, often relying on air-gap networks to keep hackers out. Meantime, inexpensive and powerful IoT devices offer new capabilities - they have their own security issues, but there are solutions. What happens when the two meet?
What can Graph do for you? Richard chats with Jeremy Thake about his return to Microsoft, joining the engineering team at Microsoft Graph. Jeremy is focused on the developer experience, which leads to a detailed discussion of what Graph is all about and how it can help an organization manage rights between users, devices, and applications. This leads to a conversation about increasing the sophistication of security models within an organization by incorporating granular privilege controls provided by Graph. Get away from the nothing/everything security dichotomy!
And the battle is on - CloudOps vs DevOps! Richard debates with Dana Epp about what modern operations looks like. Dana points out that all too often, DevOps is purely a developer-driven initiative for automated continuous delivery pipelines - but there's more to DevOps than that! Meantime there's a group using the CloudOps term as an approach to not bothering with operations at all - let the cloud take care of it! What does the real value of operations looks like today? Do we have to decide between on-premises and cloud? How do we get to be a better team?
What's an IT Community and why should you be a part of it? Richard chats with Michael Bender about being a part of a larger IT community. Michael talks about how often IT folks are so head-down in the day-to-day crises of operations that they don't have the cycles or interest to connect with others in their profession. But it's a trap! Engaging with the community is a source of support, information and opportunities to make your work better, help your career growth and to open doors to the new things you might want to do. Go to a conference or attend a local meetup - you'd be amazed at what happens next!
What does a data analytics solution look like today? Richard chats with Trey Johnson of Zap about how data warehousing and OLAP have evolved into the modern data analytics solution. The cloud is the biggest shift for data analytics, changing what it means to Extract, Transform and Load. Trey talks about the focus being far more on extracting and loading across different SaaS products, and transformation being a rarer option. Whether you're starting a new greenfield analytics solution or looking to modernize an existing implementation, the tooling just keeps getting better!
Spectre and Meltdown are still out there - are you protected? Richard chats with Susan Bradley and Wayne Small about Spectre and Meltdown, a set of vulnerabilities found in Intel, AMD, ARM and other CPUs. Since the public announcements in early January, there have been an on-going stream of patches to mitigate the vulnerability - but at the expense of performance and in some cases, stability. The presumption that all patches are good is significantly challenged by Spectre and Meltdown. What are the right answers here?
What's new in Configuration Manager world? Richard chats with Johan Arwidmark about the latest for Configuration Manager - but starts out with a discussion around Windows Update. Of course, anyone immersed in configuration cares about the problems with Windows Update, and Johan talks about the testing they're doing that often results in needing to wait for fixed to updates before they get deployed. Report your problems - they will get fixed faster! Then into a discussion about the Cloud, and the new cloud management tools for Config Man - making it easier to manage configuration no matter where you are. Check it out!
Control what gets onto your PCs! Richard chats with Sami Laiho about the latest thinking around application whitelisting. For years we've worked from the blacklist model of allowing anything onto PCs and running anti-malware software to remove the bad stuff. But there's so much bad stuff today, it's impossible to keep up. Whitelisting has gotten simpler with better versions of AppLocker and approaches that allow you to more easily control what applications live on PCs. And it defeats the vast majority of malware right out of the gate!
Hey, it's episode 600! Let's celebrate! While down in Redmond at the residence of Kim Tripp and Paul Randal, Richard turned on the recorder and this bit of silliness emerged. Technical content? Not so much. Cursing? Yeah, a bit of that. But it's been 600 episodes - thanks for listening!
Ready for a chuckle? Richard chats with Mike O'Neill about a number of stories from his work as a Premier Field Engineer for Microsoft. While it's best to always be kind, some of these mistakes, especially the security ones, are shocking... Mike talks about offices where everyone was a domain administrator (including every ex-employee too!), keeping passwords secure in paper envelopes, and many more. You can't know everything, but if these stories are any indication, it's still worthwhile to ask and know more!
Ready to migrate some storage? Richard chats with Ned Pyle about his work on the Storage Migration Service, which is part of Server 2019. You can get an insider preview of Server 2019 today, and with a couple of extra clicks, start experimenting with this cool tool to help you migrate file server content, that is files, rights, metadata and all the details onto Server 2019. Ned talks about the pain of manual file server migrations - what if you could make it like a Physical-to-Virtual migration in Hyper-V with no downtime!
Computers and water don't mix! Usually. Richard talks to Ben Cutler, one of the team leading Project Natick - building subsea data centers. Ben talks about the history of Natick, starting with the first tests off the coast of California, and the phase 2 project happening now in the Orkney islands. Speed of deployment is one advantage, as is reduced latency by being able to put data centers close to customers. But the focus of Natick is first and foremost environmental - what is the least environmentally impactful way to provide compute to those that need it? There's more to come!
The month of July 2018 was an especially hard one for updates to Windows - and has prompted an important letter. Richard talks to Susan Bradley about her open letter to the leaders of Microsoft talking about the problems that Windows updates are causing for consumers and IT Professionals alike. There were 47 updates in July, and many of them had significant 'side effects' to Windows workstations and servers - even Microsoft products. Susan talks through the issues and offers some potential solutions - does updating Windows have to be this hard?
In April 2018, Microsoft re-organized the Windows division - so that there is no Windows division anymore. What does it mean? Richard chats with Paul Thurrott, who has made a career around Windows for years, about what happened with Windows division leader Terry Myerson, and what this re-organization means for Windows going forward. It's a new world!
OneDrive for Business continues to evolve! Richard chats with Stephen Rose about the announcements around OneDrive for Business at the SharePoint North America conference. Stephen talks about the improved support for photos taken via smartphones, being first-class citizens in OneDrive for Business - including using the amazing Office Len technology to make photos of whiteboards and documents (like receipts) super crisp and clear. The conversation also gets into getting those key 'known' folders moved into OneDrive, so that no given device has unique files, they're always part of the OneDrive for Business ecosystem. Deeper cloud integration everywhere!
Where do you keep your secrets? While at Build in Seattle, Richard chatted with Andrew Cheung and Paul Yuknewicz about the latest features for Azure Key Vault. The conversation dives into what should go into the Key Vault beyond the obvious TLS certificate private keys. Any username/password combinations for services accessed by other applications can live there - really, anything with secrets. And as Andrew says, containers have secrets too - they can live in Key Vault!
Have you got containers in your operations? While at Build in Seattle, Richard chatted with Jessica Deen about the gamut of offerings that Microsoft has around containers. Jessica talks about the latest container features in Azure, including the Azure Kubernetes Service. But even more important than services is tooling, and the conversation dives into the Kubernetes Tools for VSCode as well as tools like Helm for helping you set up and manage your complete container system.
Self-Service Test Labs in Azure! While at Build in Seattle, Richard talked with Claude Remillard about the on-going evolution of Azure Dev Test Labs. Azure Dev Test Labs allows you to define a set of templates and services for building up a set of VMs for doing testing - or anything else you like. The set can have run limits, billing limits and more, so you can control costs as well as make sure things get cleaned up when done. Claude digs into using Azure Dev Test Labs for demos, training and more - maybe the name should be changed to Azure Lab Services!
Data Warehousing is for everyone! While at Build in Seattle, Richard sat down with Matt Usher to talk about the latest version of Azure SQL Data Warehouse. Matt talks about how the cloud has made the barrier of entry for data warehousing trivially low - costs that are dollars per hour, so that you can afford to experiment at almost any scale. What can data warehousing do for you? Make your company more competitive and efficient!
Linux on Windows! While at Build in Seattle, Richard talked to Tara Raj and Sarah Cooley about Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). While you've been able to run Linux in virtual machines and containers for a long time, WSL actually lets you run Linux in a command line inside Windows. Why would you do that? Sarah and Tara focuses on the biggest benefit, which is taking advantage of great Linux command line tools and scripts.
The Exchange story continues to evolve - how about an update! Richard chats with Gareth Gudger about his work with a variety of companies using Exchange both on-premises and in Office 365. Gareth digs into older versions of Exchange that are coming out of support (time to upgrade) and the announcements around Exchange 2019 - the features come to the cloud first, but we get them in our own data centers eventually. There are plenty of ways to operate mail successfully for your organization, and Gareth talks through a number of those choices.
SQL Server runs on Linux and in containers! Richard talks to Bob Ward about the on-going evolution of SQL Server and how the latest version literally has a common codebase between the Windows and Linux versions - feature-for-feature identical! The tooling is different, but the new SQL Operations Studio is built to be cross-platform, running on Windows, Mac and Linux! The conversation also dives into container strategies using Docker and Kubernetes, both on-premises and in the cloud. Lots of data choices!
What can you automate in the cloud? Everything! Richard chats with Dana Epp about how the tooling in Azure allows for automating a huge range of tasks, starting with Dana's personal focus - security. Dana talks about using automation to catch whenever security rules change anywhere, just for logging if not for direct action. The combination of Azure ARM Templates, Automation and Azure Functions is hugely powerful. The challenge is in managing that tooling, which leads to a conversation around source control, just enough administration and DevOps!
What does it take to build a great cybersecurity team? Richard chats with Paula Januszkiewicz about the work she's doing to create more cybersecurity professionals. The challenge is that cybersecurity still isn't really a profession - there are no certifying bodies out there that take on responsibility for their members. Paula talks about different certifications you can get, but in the end, doing the work is the most important thing - and how you approach security problems. It's a full-time task - if you can't think about security all the time, it's hard to keep up!
So many collaboration offerings - what's the right way to go? Richard chats with Tom Arbuthnot about his experiences around the modern digital collaboration world - using technologies like Slack, WebEx and Skype. Today, Microsoft is pouring its energy into Office 365 Teams. Tom discusses what the strengths of Teams are and the choices moving forward. The conversation also dives into the etiquette of these new tools. For those that grew up with them, it's easy to do the right thing. But people are new to these collaboration tools make mistakes - training is worthwhile!
What does modern service management look like? Richard talks to ex-Microsoft Carroll Moon about his experiences modernizing service management at Microsoft, and now for his customers at CloudFit. The cloud has made compute and infrastructure effectively unlimited for the right price - how does a great IT group take advantage of this? Carroll talks about applying DevOps principles effectively in the operations space to focus on the applications that cause you the most grief, and where improvements can have the biggest impact. You have to measure to know where to work!
Spring in Orlando - time for a SQL Server Questions and Answer panel! Richard hosts a panel of Kim Tripp, Paul Randal, Bob Ward, Aaron Bertrand, David Pless, Tim Radney and many more to answer the questions that the SQL Intersection attendees have. The conversation ranges over challenges around partitioning, scaling, various disaster recovery strategies, the advantages of upgrading to the latest version and providing direct feedback to the SQL team members in the room! These question and answers shows provide a snapshot about the thinking around SQL Server and database administration - have a listen!
Your developers want to do some DevOps - what does it mean to you? Richard chats with Tim Warner about what operations needs to care about and learn when the organization wants to roll out software faster. DevOps is an umbrella term for a lot of different technical changes, but also procedural and culture changes too. Tim hits on the key points for operations folks, including understanding source control (and learning to value it), automating all the things, and being able to get to a known reliable state. Better systems faster!
After email, what's the next thing you want from Office 365? Peter Schmidt says its OneDrive for Business. Starting with the ability to get rid of file attachments in email and instead make the files links to OneDrive for Business - but it goes both ways. Peter talks about how Office 365 Flow can automate the process of moving incoming attachments into OneDrive for Business folders automatically. And then there's the new versioning and backup/restore features in OneDrive for Business. This is not your grandfather's cloud storage solution!
Why should you care about containers? Richard chats with Jennelle Crothers about what container technology does for operations. Like virtualization before it, containers allow you to densify your infrastructure into fewer machines and VMs - and all container tech focuses on configuration-as-code. Containers make sense when you have services that are regularly updated or need to scale elastically. And they work on-premises as well as in the cloud. There are some tricky bits to containers, but if you're looking to provide more services to your customers in less time and at a lower cost, they are certainly worth the look!
What can Microsoft Graph do for you? Richard talks to Sahil Malik about his experiences working with Microsoft Graph - starting with rationalizing all the different versions of Graph that have come along in recent years. While largely they're back to a single version, there still are aspects that are more Active Directory oriented as opposed to broader mobile mindsets. But the issues of identity with users, devices that users use and the rights that applications have with those users and devices is the key - can you keep track of what rights are out there, what is appropriate and contain them? The tools are getting better, but there's still a lot to do!
What does it mean to be a System or Network Administrator? Richard talks to Tom Limoncelli about his experiences and book around the subject. Tom talks about how networking and sysadmin roles have evolved recently, where all the roles are being impacted by automation and DevOps practices - nobody is immune, nor should they want to be! The conversation dives into providing value to the organization, both in the form of keeping the employees productive, as well as safe and secure. It's not just about plugging cables and spinning screwdrivers, today, more than ever, the role of the sysadmin is understanding the needs of the organization and helping to achieve those needs!
The challenge of hiring new people into the world of IT is getting harder every day - what does it take to grow your skilled staff? Richard talks with Don Jones about his book Be the Master, where Don focuses on the fact that there are plenty of apprentices out there, but not enough masters to teach them well. And the masters exist - it's just easy to forget that you know things that others don't know, and need to know. The conversation spans around where learning responsibilities lie - it's not going to be the tools vendors like Microsoft, and while organizations that need skilled people need to support learning, ultimately it comes down to us - we need to want to learn and grow!
If you're writing PowerShell, you're writing code - now debug it! Richard chats with Josh Duffney about tools and techniques for debugging your PowerShell code. The conversation starts out with the admission that as PowerShell coders, you really are doing development work, just for sysadmin tasks. That means you need source control, testing, coding practices and hopefully, a continuous integration pipeline - DevOps all the things! Josh talks about how VSCode has made his life of debugging PowerShell easier with color coding, breakpoints, code formatting and more. It's all code in the end!
Modern security is complex - how can the cloud help? Richard chats with Paul Keely about his work with organizations helping to secure workstations and using the cloud to get insight into the kind of attacks going on and how to mitigate them. Paul talks about security starting with administrators, who are now the key vector to exploits in the modern cybersecurity age. Just Enough Administration, where there are individual accounts for each service that an admin uses and the accounts are logged, emailed and meant for short-term use only. There is a large array of tools provided by Microsoft both on-premises and in Azure - it takes awhile to sort them out, but they are powerful!
How do you ETL? Richard chats with Tom Kerkhove about Azure Data Factory, now previewing V2 features. We've had Extract-Transform-Load workflows since databases were first invented, but the concept was really formalized back in the data warehouse days. With the cloud, there are more tools, more data sources and more compute to enhance your ETL experiences. Tom talks about how V2 of Data Factory adds SQL Server Integration Service functionality so that you can put your SSIS packages directly into Azure. Data Factory is tied in with Logic Apps, including supporting features like Azure Key Vault. This leads to a great conversation about data-centric vs. application-centric workflows. Your company is sure to have both!
Ready to manage SQL Server with PowerShell? Richard chats with Rob Sewell about dbatools, an open source effort to build an amazing set of PowerShell commands for SQL Server. Yes, Microsoft has a few PowerShell commands implemented, but when you see the dbatools set, you'll see what PowerShell can really do for you! Rob talks about the focus on migration for continuous integration purposes, upgrading from one version of SQL Server to another, even into the cloud. If you wanted to get to a place where you can experiment with SQL Server configurations, settings and performance, you need dbatools!
What's a company intranet look like in 2018? Richard chats with Susan Hanley about her work helping companies find value in their internal information management systems - after all, it's where you keep a lot of company value! The conversation starts out with a discussion around search, the bane of most intranet implementations. Sure people want Google, but do they really? The indexing system that Google relies on doesn't make sense in an internal website. Susan points out that today's modern intranet is typically in the cloud, taking advantage of great tools like Office 365. That helps with search, but it starts with culture - does your organization value finding existing things? Without culture, the tech can't save you!
SQL Server keeps getting smarter! Richard talks to Erin Stellato about Query Store and Automatic Tuning. First introduced in SQL Azure, these features showed up in SQL Server 2016 and improved substantially in 2017. Erin describes Query Store as a kind of black box for databases, similar to an aircraft, but you don't need to wait for a crash to value the data stored in it. Query Store is a real-time record of the queries happening in your database, along with the query plan and what caused the query to wait. This leads to a ton of tuning opportunities, including automated tuning, where SQL Server will recommend indexes and other performance features for itself!
SharePoint has never been more manageable! Richard chats with Andrew Connell about his experiences around using the latest programming models for SharePoint and how they stick to more standardized client-side development models that are easier to secure, audit and don't mess with your servers quite so much. The conversation starts out with a discussion around the Office 365 APIs and the programmability they bring to Office 365 as a whole, while also sticking to good secure standards - this is the stuff that Microsoft itself depends on! Andrew talks about how the cloud-first approach to SharePoint has strengthened and simplified SharePoint on-premises, so we all benefit!
How does Office 365 help teams collaborate? Richard chats with Tony Redmond about his insights into Microsoft's on-going effort to make Office 365 the most efficient place for people to work together. Tony talks about two primary hubs of team work - collaboration around email and collaboration around chat. The chat product is, of course, the new Office 365 Teams. The conversation dives into how different people like to collaborate in different ways, and that Office 365 has carved out spaces so that all those styles of collaboration can work together. Some conversations are best suited to Teams, some are best suited to Outlook, and you don't have to choose one or the other. Just don't store files in email!
Your company is sold on the idea of data analytics, but is it ready for it? Richard talks to Jen Stirrup about her experiences getting organizations started with data analytics, which means really focusing on the quality of the data that a company is collecting. Jen discusses her process of figuring out how data is collected, how often it needs to be corrected and how much gets missed and stays incorrect inside the data stores. The conversation also explores the other locations of important data for analysis like weblogs. As Jen says, some data problems are business puzzles and some are business mysteries - and it takes different tools and techniques to answer them!
Desired State Configuration now works boths ways! Richard talks to fellow Canadian Nik Charlebois, a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, about his work building ReverseDSC. The open source tool is available in the PowerShell Gallery and opens the door to a ton of interesting possibilities. Nik talks about how his work as a PFE is made much easier when he can use ReverseDSC to create a copy of the configuration of a system he is trying to troubleshoot so that he can explore and experiment with no risk. But there's so much more that ReverseDSC can do, especially when you start thinking about continuously deployed infrastructure - creation, deployment, testing and debugging of infrastructure all facilitated by ReverseDSC!
How do you make your work visible to your team, your division, your entire organization? Richard talks to Dominica DeGrandis about her book 'Making Work Visible' and the challenges that IT folks have showing workloads and flow. The discussion turns to the Kanban board, both digital and physical. Dominica talks about methods for identifying work items, showing them flow and making it easy for everyone to see the huge scope of work the average IT team handles.
Office macros need security? Yes! Richard chats with Karim El-Melhaoui about the issues around Office macros. With default settings, VBA macros in the Office suite are incredibly powerful and are an effective malware vector. While Microsoft has some built-in capabilities to warn users about enabling macros, modern malware makers have been socially engineering users to bypass those protections. You can go heavy handed and disable macros with group policy, but what if you need them? Karim talks about some of the latest features coming in the Windows 10 Creators Update to provide more granular security for Office macros. But maybe it's time to move away from them entirely?
Data analytics has evolved - have you kept up? Richard chats with Andrew Brust about the revolution taking place in data analytics in general and Microsoft efforts in the space specifically. Andrew talks about how tools like SQL Server OLAP Services renamed to become Analytics Services, and then moved into the cloud. Not that you need to be in the cloud to do analytics - there are plenty of on-premises tools as well, but it sure does help to be in the cloud. Data analytics workloads are very bursty and well suited to the utility computing offered by the cloud. Lots of links in the show notes, check them out!
Can SQL Server be part of a DevOps practice? It has to be! While at Connect in New York, Richard sat down with Michael Upton to discuss the role of SQL Server in the DevOps practice and the tooling that can make your life easier. The conversation digs into the hard bit - not destroying data. Michael works at Red Gate, who have been building SQL Server data management tools for decades. And they know you can't afford to lose data, so the process of updating has to be done carefully. It can be done, and the effort is worth it - your database can also continuously deploy!
Service Fabric is not just for Azure! While at Connect in New York, Richard sat down with Mikkel Mork Hegnhoj to talk about what Service Fabric can do for your applications. Mikkel talks about the ability to host both Windows and Ubuntu VMs in Service Fabric, on Azure and on-premises. Think of Service Fabric as software to facilitate the architecture of cloud as much as the product - you can configure failover rules, scaling settings and more. And it will run on pretty much anything!
Have you looked into CosmosDB? While at Connect in New York, Richard sat down with Kirill Gavrylyuk of the CosmosDB team to talk about the latest features. CosmosDB an update to Azure DocumentDB that focuses on global distribution and ultra-high performance. On top of that, CosmosDB has different API layers you can call through, including MongoDB and now the Apache Cassandra API. Kirill talks about being a drop-in replacement for these existing data stores, typically when confronted with an application that needs to scale substantially. And you only pay for what you use!
How do you do your business intelligence? While at DevIntersection in Las Vegas, Richard sat down with Jason Himmelstein to talk about PowerBI, the latest reporting and analytics tool from Microsoft. Jason talks about how PowerBI fits into Azure and Office365, but today there is also the PowerBI Reporting Server, which is an advanced version of SQL Server Reporting Services that runs on-premises. This leads to a discussion about how you build a hybrid reporting solution between the cloud and your own data services. Lots of good thinking around business intelligence!
Fall in Vegas - time for a SQL Server Questions and Answer panel! Richard hosts a panel of Kim Tripp, Paul Randal, Aaron Bertrand, Jes Borland, David Pless and Tim Radney to answer the questions that the SQL Intersection attendees have. The conversation ranges over SQL 2017, containers, partitioning, mirroring and what the modern DBA will be doing in the future. SQL continues to evolve and there's a lot to explore!
Are you using SysInternals? Richard chats with Aaron Margosis about the venerable SysInternals tools originally developed by Mark Russinovich. But first, a discussion about Aaron's main job at Microsoft, developing security baseline guidance for operating systems. Aaron talks about the recommended security configurations for operating systems and how you can check the workstations you're responsible for to put those configurations in place. SysInternals also has a role in security, understanding exactly what is running on workstations and more. Aaron talks about a session he did at Ignite on using SysInternal to be better at your job - check it out!
Hybrid Cloud is the new normal! Richard chats with Scott Hoag about his experiences migrating organizations onto Office 365 and embracing the reality that no one is ever 'pure' cloud - on-premises hardware is here to stay and necessary. Scott talks about what services make more sense in the cloud and what works best on-premises, and how to connect the different elements together. The key part of the equation is identity, whether you're using Active Directory or not, working with mobile devices - it's all about identity!
What IT certifications do you hold? Richard chats with Greg Shields about the value proposition behind various IT certifications. In the fast moving software industries, it's pretty difficult to effectively measure the capabilities of someone. The conversation digs into the purpose behind an IT exam, and the dangers of focusing purely on an exam, rather than the body of work the exam represents. Greg discusses Microsoft certifications and the latest software for helping to talk broadly about your skills - and what it means for your work and opportunities!
In May 2018, the EU General Data Protection Regulation laws take effect. Are you ready? Richard chats with Seb Matthews about what IT Pros can do to get ready for the GDPR. The regulations are broad, covering personally identifiable information, data breaches, the right to be forgotten and more. Whether you're an EU company or just do business with EU residents, the GDPR can affect you. Seb talks about the six Ps to compliance: Placement, Process, People, Products, Privacy and Protection. And he also digs into how Microsoft can help with a number of great tools as part of Azure, Office 365 and more. Yet another reason to get to the cloud!
What's next for SharePoint? While at Ignite in Orlando, Richard sat down with Todd Klindt to talk about the next version of SharePoint - announced at Ignite as Office 2019. Todd talks about the recurring nightmare of the end of on-premises versions of SharePoint, and the ever-increasing call of the cloud - Office 365 just gets more compelling every month. What form of SharePoint makes sense for you? There's still a ton of choices to make!
Microsoft has a DevOps practice too! While at Ignite in Orlando, Richard sat down with Donovan Brown and Martin Woodward to talk about their experiences helping various Microsoft teams move along the DevOps journey. The conversation starts out on Visual Studio Team System (VSTS), Microsoft's source and project management software running in Azure, that also builds Azure, as well as many other Microsoft products, including Windows! Donovan and Martin talk about pressing against the edges of what their tools can do - so that you know when you get there, they will be ready!
Databases still need to be reliable, but what does that look like in 2017? Richard chats with Allan Hirt about how he makes databases reliable today. The conversation also turns to how reliability works with the Linux version of SQL Server - clustering is definitely different when you change operating systems! Alan also digs into what the cloud brings to the table - on-premises databases are never going away, and have certain advantages in some scenarios, but you better have a plan for how the cloud fits in, even if only for disaster recovery. The importance of data in an organization isn't going away any time soon!
Desired State Configuration continues to evolve, are you? Richard chats with Missy Januszko about her work (with Don Jones) on The DSC Book. DSC is short for Desired State Configuration, and a key part of PowerShell and the Windows Management Framework. Missy talks about how DSC is a key part of creating 'cattle' style infrastructure, where servers can be replaced on demand and changes are handled through code, not mouse-clicks. The conversation digs into the limits of the 'cattle-ness' of servers and what moves easily to the model and what doesn't. The DSC Book is a 'forever' book from LeanPub and is routinely updated!
Here come the acronyms! Richard chats with Cameron Fuller about Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS), the cloud-based instrumentation, diagnostics and automation tool from Microsoft that is all the rage - and not just for cloud related products! Cameron talks about being able to feed any kind of log data into OMS for analysis. The conversation then turns to the on-premises System Center Operations Manager and its role in providing deep analytics into specific Microsoft products, and able to push that data to OMS for a comprehensive view. All these products work together!
Still on the fence about moving services to the cloud? Richard chats with Tim Warner about the on-going evolution of the cloud and the increasing pressure that IT folks feel to incorporate it into the infrastructure strategy of an organization. The conversation starts out with budgeting when it is time to talk about buying new hardware and renewing co-lo space. How does the cloud fit in? Tim talks about what services move easily to the cloud but admits that hybrid is permanent. Is the cloud eliminating IT jobs? It sure doesn't seem like it!
So what is a reporting ecosystem? Richard chats with David Pless about the modern Microsoft reporting ecosystem, which can involve SQL Server Reporting Servers, Excel and the new Power BI tools. David talks about how you can work from the space you're most familiar with, and still be able to move data and reports between the different tools. But they aren't the same - different tools for different purposes. Power BI is the relative new comer and brings the power of the cloud to reporting, but the latest offerings are also available on-premises as well. Lots of reporting choices!
Turn off SMB1! Richard talks to Ned Pyle about the ongoing battle to retire SMB1, a 30-year-old file transfer protocol at the heart of recent malware attacks. While there are patches to eliminate the vulnerability, the best patch is removing the protocol entirely. Already on the schedule for deprecation, Ned talks about how ransomware like WannaCry has accelerated the process. Windows hasn't depended on SMB1 since 2006, the challenge other devices and software - some are current. Patch your systems, be safe and turn off SMB1!
Azure is growing, and Azure Stack is taking orders! Richard chats with Aidan Finn about his work with companies implementing Azure and looking at Azure Stack. Azure Stack is Azure, but it's your own private Azure - you run it where you want. What you don't choose is what hardware (just how much) and any of the configuration, since that is handled by Microsoft. You're always patched at the same level that public Azure is. Does Azure Stack make sense for you? Aidan digs into the various reasons why you might need your own private hybrid cloud!
Lots of news around NanoServer - what's it all mean? Richard chats with Jason Helmick about NanoServer - but first, a quick discussion around a comment from a listener on the ongoing evolution of PowerShell. This ties nicely into the broader topic of Microsoft getting opinionated about how NanoServer should be used, which is to say, designed for containers. Jason talks about containers being light-weight virtual machines with configuration-as-code at their core. Microsoft is picking containers as a key approach to delivering services, does it make sense for you to jump aboard?
Windows 10 has been out for two years now, are you ready to move? Richard chats with Steve Thomas about the latest tools Microsoft provides to help you migrate your clients over to Windows 10. Steve talks about the Windows Upgrade Readiness tools that are part of Operations Management Suite. Not using OMS? Don't worry, there's a free version available for Windows Readiness. OMS brings your readiness evaluation to the cloud, checking against all sorts of hardware configurations and the organization's software library. But as always, it's the homegrown apps that represent the biggest challenge - and there are an array of options for solving that!
Change is scary, how do you keep people from resisting? While at the DevOps Enterprise Summit in London, Richard sat down with fellow Kiwi Rob England to talk about his experiences bringing DevOps practices to very conservative organizations - like the New Zealand government! The conversation starts out with the idea that DevOps is not just for unicorns, that is, companies that are all about leading edge technologies. DevOps works for horses too, it just has to be approached the right way.
Ready to go off the IT rails? Mark Minasi is back! Richard chats with Mark about his favorite subject at the moment - automated vehicles. Mark takes a humorous poke at the role of computing, cloud and sensors that should bring automated driving to fruition. Are we really ready for this tech? That's a big shift in the workforce, a change in the cost of technology and a change in how we all travel. What comes next? Meantime, Mark's life is changing too, what's next for him?
DevOps for Mainframes? Really? Yes really! While at DevOps Enterprise Summit in London, Richard sat down with Rosalind Radcliffe and David Rizzo to talk about how mainframes can be part of a DevOps practice! The conversation starts out with Rosalind talking about the modern mainframe, which in IBM parlance is all about z/OS operating system and hardware. It's not just CICS anymore; Java runs there too! And with z/OS available for IBM Linux, you can run the same operating system setup on traditional PC hardware as well. This leads to all sorts of options in the modern DevOps practice with mainframes!
How can PowerShell improve your help desk? Richard chats with David das Neves about his work improving the efficiency of a help desk by writing PowerShell scripts. Not the most obvious role for PowerShell, but David walks through the process of finding common tech support requests that can benefit significantly from automation, rather than mouse click - like uninstalling and reinstalling Java! This leads to a conversation about creating mature, shareable and maintainable PowerShell scripts that multiple people can use reliably and safely. Think bigger with PowerShell!
ITIL and DevOps together? Yes! While at the DevOps Enterprise Summit in London, Richard sat down with Akshay Ananad and Kaimar Karu of AXELOS to talk about how the DevOps practices apply to service management. ITIL was born in a slower time for IT, but the core axioms are still relevant - you just need to focus on service rather than technology. The conversation also goes to including your service management folks in the conversations around software, the same way that operations, infosec and bizdev need to be involved. Devops is all about service, and so is ITIL!
How is DevOps evolving? While at the DevOps Enterprise Summit in London, Richard sat down with Nicole Forsgren to talk about her latest data finding and analysis on DevOps. The conversation starts with a discussion about making good reports, including who the data is collected from. Ideally you'd want a fully random data set, but as Nicole explains, that's not possible - you have to go with as large a set as possible. In the case of the 2017 report, that's 3200 survey responses. And what do they say? DevOps works for everyone! It's not always easy, but it's worth it!
More questions answered at SQLIntersection! Richard hosts a panel discussion of Kim Tripp, Paul Randal, Bob Ward, Brent Ozar and many other SQL speakers from SQLIntersection. The questions are far ranging this time around, talking about business intelligence, data science, reliability approaches and a record-setting answer on data partitioning from You-Know-Who!
More database services in Azure! While at the Build conference, Richard sat down with Jason Anderson and Sunil Kamath to discuss both MySQL and Postgres coming to Azure Database services. Sure, you've been able to run MySQL and Postgres in virtual machines on Azure, but why would you want to maintain an operating system and patching yourself? Jason and Sunil talk about all the cloud aspects of a database service - update policies, resiliency, backup and extension options. There's more coming, but the first versions of MySQL and Postgres available as an Azure Database Service look great!
Azure Stack is coming soon! While at the Build conference in Seattle, Richard sat down with Jeffrey Snover to dig into the latest developments around Azure Stack. If you like cloud architecture but are not prepared to go to the public cloud, Azure Stack offers many of the capabilities of Azure but in a private configuration. Jeffrey talks about the various scenarios that make sense for Azure Stack and how it is likely to be made available through a number of third party providers. Azure Stack will be in GA mid-2017 and the features will just keep coming!
What's the latest on Exchange 2016? Richard chats with Microsoft PFE Mike O'Neill about some the things he's seen lately in Exchange world. Mike talks about the hybrid world of mail these days, with on-premises Exchange servers working alongside of Office 365 Exchange Online. The conversation also digs into the affect that feature testing in the cloud has had on the on-premises edition of Exchange - the quality of updates is better and you can have confidence in doing updates during the day with zero downtime - with caveats of course! This may be the last version of Exchange on-premises, but the features will keep coming!
Why would you run Linux on Hyper-V? Richard chats with Microsoft Premier Field Engineer Kevin Kelling about his experiences working with a customer that had tens of thousands of virtual machines running Hyper-V - enough that the licensing of the VMs became an issue! And since Windows Server Data Center edition allows for unlimited Hyper-V instances, the effort was on to make those Linux-based VMs run well in Hyper-V - and with the right tweaking, they do! Great story about digging deeply into how Hyper-V works!
How do you build sustainable PowerShell? By testing it! Richard talks to Adam Bertram about his work with Pester, the testing library for PowerShell. Adam talks about building mature PowerShell scripts, that is, scripts you're willing to share with others. As those scripts become important parts of your application deployment process, they end up in source control and need to be tested before being run. That's where Pester comes in. And Pester does more than just test your scripts, it can test your infrastructure as well!
How do you get identity into the cloud? Richard talks to Joey Snow about his role helping folks with Azure Active Directory. Azure AD is more than just extending your on-premises Active Directory into the cloud, it provides single-sign-on to a variety of SaaS applications, and not just Microsoft ones either! Joey talks about the different techniques available to get and protect identities with the cloud, including multi-factor authentication, Azure Identity Protection and more. There are lots of options to choose from, but there is an identity solution that will work for you - check it out!
DMA vulnerabilities have been around for ten years - are your machines in danger? Richard talks to Sami Laiho about his experiences trying to close the exploit that is Direct Memory Access. This technology for rapid data transfer has been available for years with FireWire and Thunderbolt, and now exists in USB 3.1 as well. The problem is that it has been two-way memory access, so connecting two machines together via FireWire can allow the attacking machine to steal any memory it wants, like your BitLocker encryption key. Only in Windows 10 are we starting to see protection in place, and there's more to come. Scary stuff!
How can automation help you? Richard chats with Jennelle Crothers about her work automating tasks with Azure. So what does automation mean to you? Jennelle talks about automating the delivery of resources to internal developers - whether that be on-premise or in the cloud. This is part of a DevOps practice, being able to use templates so that development is using resources configured as close to production as possible. Automation also applies to testing, deployment, instrumentation, disaster recovery and more. Will IT ever run out of work? Not a chance - there's always more to do!
Can Group Policy help protect your user's machines? Definitely! Richard chats with Jeremy Moskowitz about his on-going work with group policy, including his cool tool, PolicyPak. Jeremy talks about applying least privilege principles via Group Policy, including a case of a patch from June 2016 that may have broken some of your group policies because the machine that has to apply them doesn't have sufficient privileges! Other important least privilege aspects discussed include better management of local admin accounts, control over who actually makes and changes group policy, and how to deal with users who want to install apps. Lots to learn!
What's the Delivery Pipeline and why should you care? Richard chats with Steven Murawaski about his work at Chef, helping organizations get more effective at delivering software. Steven talks about how the latest generation of platform tools such as containers, that while helping to automate the delivery of software, are not a panacea that eliminates all the challenges of said software. You still have to take the time to get your automation right and deeply understand the value of being able to rapid-fire deploy. When you go faster, things get better!
How do you get started in data science? Richard chats with long time data scientist Rafal Lukawiecki about practical data science. Rafal starts out focusing on the most common data science scenarios - understanding your customer and their needs. This goal is more complicated than it appears, often the questions first asked are not the questions you'll actually need answers to. But asking them is important since it leads to information that will influence the next round of questions. The cloud has made it easier than ever to dive into data science, but the principals are still the same: This is a science, after all!
Johan is back, and still doing deployment right! Richard talks to Johan Arwidmark about best practices and clear thinking around deployment. Johsan starts out with the idea that with the speed of updates coming these days, you really need to have a good lab. While it's awesome to test on native client hardware, it's not always possible - but testing in VMs is still a good idea! The conversation also goes to the need for caching of updates with WSUS and Configuration Manager - the network is the constrained resource and updates are only getting larger!
The oil and gas industry is in the cloud! Richard chats with John Paul Cook about his work bringing various Azure technologies to bear on the oil and gas industry. Contrary to popular belief, the oil and gas industry loves software and has embraced the cloud to increase efficiency. John talks about utilizing various Azure products to do data collection, including the IoT Hub. But the fun really starts when you get into the analysis side, using stream analytics to capture data in real time and react to it, as well as analysis tools to understand the data more deeply. Cool stuff!
Stephen Rose is back and in a new role! Richard chats with Stephen about his work on OneDrive for Business, which is one of the great cloud-enabling products out there today. Stephen talks about the automation in OneDrive for Business with Office 365 that gets rid of big email attachments, instead automatically embedding a link to the file into the email - the file itself lives in OneDrive for Business the whole time! The conversation also turns to the sophisticated security models available through the cloud with OneDrive for Business, that focus on preventative behaviors, not just reactionary. File storage has never been more interesting!
PowerShell? On Linux? Why would you DO that? Richard chats with Tim Warner about the recent announcements around making PowerShell open source and available on Linux and Mac OS. What does this mean? The Linux world has been script-driven since it was Unix, so does PowerShell make any sense? Tim talks about coming up with common ways to manage both Windows and Linux machines, and where PowerShell adds some interesting capabilities by being far more object-oriented than text-file-oriented. It's still early days, and there's only an alpha version on GitHub to experiment with, but it looks to be interesting times in the future!
It's 2017, do you know where your config manager is? Richard chats with Microsoft PFE Steven Rachui about his experiences helping companies manage substantial System Center Configuration Manager infrastructure. With the 2016 edition, the ability to handle rapid updates to Windows 10 is key and introduces the concept of Current Branch, as opposed to going with a more conservative stable edition of Windows. The conversation around non-Windows mobile device management focuses on using a hybrid mode to work with Microsoft InTune, but there does look to be a future of on-premise solutions as well. Lots to think about!
Are your noSQL stores safe? While at NDC London, Richard chatted with Niall Merrigan about the latest wave of exploits targeting MongoDB, ElasticSearch and others. As Niall explains, the challenge is that the default security models for many of these products leaves them vulnerable to outside attack. As these attacks have progressed, they have presented themselves as ransomware - data is removed and a bitcoin account offered up to restore the data. However, to date, even when the ransoms are paid, no data is restored. Apparently there is no honor among thieves. Now is a great time to review your security vulnerabilities, and Niall suggests looking at your systems the same way hackers do, through tools like Shodan. Give yourself a security checkup!
Of course you can scale in the cloud - but exactly how? Richard chats with Corey Sanders who goes on a whirlwind tour of the many options in Azure to help your applications be reliable and scalable. First up is a discussion on Virtual Machines and Scale Sets - rather than making separate VMs for every instance of your application, you can build them in blocks up to a thousand! After discussing the kind of problems that need a thousand of anything, Corey dives into Service Fabric and Containers, getting more fine-grained and lighter weight so that you can scale faster. And it works with existing applications as well, opening the door to moving what you have today to the cloud!
JSON for IT folks? Yes! Richard talks to Aidan Finn about his experiences actually getting into configuration-as-code. Aidan talks about discovering the Azure Quickstart Templates as a starting point to automating setting up test and training labs. JSON is a simple file format but takes a little getting used to, and with Azure you can specify virtually every aspect of a virtual machine so that it can be created on-demand. And there are great tools available to make it easier to build and maintain these configuration files. Ultimately, if you are creating anything in Azure more than once, you need to get up to speed on this kind of automation - it's the future!
VPNs don't have to suck! Richard chats with Richard Hicks about the latest in DirectAccess, Microsoft's built in VPN technology that makes maintaining a secure connection for a remote PC a bit less painful. Richard talks about how the server-side of DirectAccess being pretty solid for Server 2012R2 and 2016. But the big improvement comes from deploying Windows 10 Enterprise - bringing key features like multi-homing so that remote PCs can choose from a variety of geographically dispersed data centers. The conversation also goes to the mobile device management side of things, since DirectAccess requires a domain-joined version of Windows, it's not for everything. What are the alternatives?
Have you used WireShark? Richard chats with Tim Warner of Pluralsight about his experiences working with this super-powerful open source network inspection tool. The conversation dives into the challenges of understanding what's going on with your network, both wired and wireless. WireShark gathers up traffic coming and going from a machine and analyzes it to identify what its for and where it's from. Tim talks about the challenges of seeing the network as a whole when it comes to Layer 3 routing, but there are tools to help. There are many reasons to want to understand your network traffic, but there are privacy challenges also - know the rules for your world!
The cloud is secure, right? Richard chats with J Peter Bruzzese about Office 365 Security - focusing primarily on Exchange Online. The social engineering of email is hitting new highs, with ransomware, wire transfers and other approaches to exploiting people. Is the only solution education of the user? While an important part of the equation, J Peter also talks about building a robust email infrastructure that fights back from various attacks.
Microsoft had a pretty good year in 2016 - or did it? Richard chats with Paul Thurrott about his impressions on Microsoft in the past year with an eye to the future. And while there have been some successes, there have also been some duds in 2016 too. Looking at you, Windows Phone! Paul talks about Microsoft's battles with hardware, from the killing of Band to the problems with Microsoft Surface Book. At the same time, he still loves his Book and is in awe of the Surface Studio. There's lots of great things going on at Microsoft and more to come - have a listen and a great 2017!
Still have applications that depend on Internet Explorer? Richard talks to Fred Pullen from the Edge team about IE Enterprise Mode, allowing IT folks to strictly control what sites run in IE11, and what sites can run in Edge. The Edge browser breaks with the legacy of Internet Explorer, making it smaller, faster and more secure. But IE has a 20+ year history and there are plenty of apps, especially internal apps, that still depend on it. Fred talks about using Enterprise Mode to specify exactly what apps run in IE11 and what ones can run in Edge - and automating the switching between browsers so that users don't have to think about it at all.
SQL Server 2016 SP1 has shipped - what's new? Richard chats with Bob Ward about the latest in SQL Server, some of which was announced at the Connect event in New York. Huge on the list was the addition of many more of what was once enterprise-only features on the Standard and Express editions of the database. Bob discusses architectural changes that have come to SQL Server 2016 to better reflect the latest hardware, which has resulted in the same workloads on the same hardware actually running faster just by upgrading the database to the latest version. Finally, there's a discussion of migration and the tools available today to help you test your workloads to see any variation in behaviour for your application from one version to the next. Check it out!
The DevOps Handbook is finally released! Richard chats with the one-and-only Gene Kim about the five years of effort that have gone into making the DevOps handbook. Gene talks about how the Handbook was supposed to come out before the Phoenix project, but as the scope of the book grew, they realized it needed more time. The benefit of time has been a ton of case studies and great detailed evidence of how automating workflows, instrumenting systems deeply and a culture of experimentation leads to better applications, happier employees and customers, and a better business all around. You need to read this book!
What does it take to make Azure networking actually work? Richard chats with Microsoft VP Albert Greenberg about the whole of Azure networking. The conversation starts out talking about the complexity of building massive virtual networks for Azure so that every customer has their own private space to work in, while not impacting or being impacting by any of the other customers. Albert talks about the need for no central point of focus when scaling to public cloud sizes when it comes to network - there's no hardware available at this size!
How does your Active Directory data look? Richard chats with Chris Johnson of Hyperfish about how important AD personnel data is, and the terrible condition that most organizations leave it in. Chris talks about how the point of Active Directory was to be the authoritative source of personnel information in an organization - but most companies just use it for login credentials! It was Microsoft Exchange that first took on AD for all its user information, and more systems are doing so. The challenge is finding efficient ways to allow users to keep their data up to date and accurate.
Ready for Nano Server? Richard chats with Andrew Mason, one of the folks at Microsoft responsible for creating Nano Server. The conversation dives into the distinctions between Nano Server and Server Core - Core is still around, but Nano is substantially smaller. How much smaller? Less than half a gig! Andrew digs into what Nano Server can and can't do in this version, but don't worry, more is coming and user voice is being used (check the links) if you want to make suggestions to the team. If you're looking for the lightest footprint for Windows Server, you want Nano!
Once again into the breach of answering questions about SQL Server! Richard hosts the open Q and A session with Kim Tripp, Paul Randal, Bob Ward and a number of other talented SQL folks fielding questions from an engaged and fun audience at SQL Intersection. Lots of questions around SQL Server 2016 which shipped back in June, and explorations about the best way to deal with very large scale systems and transactional velocities. And listen at the end of the show for a question to Richard!
PowerShell is ten years old! How did that happen! Richard chats with Don Jones about his on-going enthusiasm for PowerShell creating the awesome PowerShell.org website and summit. The conversation turns to what PowerShell is like today - a mature product that is well supported throughout the Microsoft ecosystem and beyond. Don discusses the excitement around building your own automation in ways that help you deeply understand your infrastructure. Today the young product in the suite of tools is Desired State Configuration (DSC), which got a minor update in Server 2016, but can still do more. Don is building Tug, an open source pull service for DSC that can put even more control in your hands. Check it out!
Microsoft Ignite was huge! What's an Exchange admin to do? Richard chats Gareth Gudger about his favorite sessions from Ignite in Atlanta that focused on Exchange. The conversation roams over classic sessions around migration and living in a hybrid world (forever) to the more leading edge features of Office 365 including Groups and Planner. Gareth talks about how effective some of the Q and A sessions were, where great panelists interacted with the audience to explore subjects in a way that makes them much more real to the average Exchange admin. Lots of good stuff happened at Ignite - have a listen!
The BIOS has evolved, and we need to take advantage of it! While at Ignite in Atlanta, Richard sat down with Mark Minasi to talk about UEFI and SecureBoot. The conversation starts out with a bit of a history lesson about BIOS, ROM and booting up a computer. Mark tells the story of how EFI started with Intel's Itanium, and eventually appeared everywhere. UEFI is effectively an operating system in its own right, with drivers and it's own set of security risks. This leads to a conversation around SecureBoot, dealing with the challenges of resisting security exploits from startup onward. It's easy enough to get SecureBoot running, it's what happens when it's triggered that gets complicated.
What does it take to make your applications work in Windows 10? While at Ignite, Richard sat down with Chris Jackson to talk about what's hard and what's easy. Of course, it comes down to what you've done before - if you implemented Vista and/or Windows 7 by turning off User Access Control, you're going to have a surprise. While you can turn UAC off in Windows 10, it's not considered a supported configuration. Time to do some testing! Chris talks about how UAC limits access even for administrator accounts so that you know when you're actually using admin privileges. The conversation also goes to security baselines and how to test your apps cost effectively by knowing the price of failure!
How does data analytics fit into your business intelligence strategy? While at Ignite in Atlanta, Richard sat down with Jen Stirrup to discuss her experiences helping companies really take advantage of the data they have to understand how their businesses are doing, and what they could be doing better. The conversation starts out with a discussion on data warehousing, which is still valuable in this day and age. Jen talks about how the ETL process sometimes "shaved off the corners" of important data, and that new data analytics strategies are better at avoiding that behaviour. The discussion also turns to R and the statistical analysis approaches available today to really understand data. It's a brave new data world!
Holy smokes, 500 episodes! Richard brings in Carl Franklin to do hosting duties while guest stars on his own show - taking a look at the changes to the IT landscape in the past nearly 10 years. Back in April 2007, Vista was brand new (and not doing well), PowerShell was new also, Cloud was just starting out and DevOps didn't even really exist. 64 bit computing was something that was going to be important and smartphones were just starting to take off. Amazing what can happen in 500 shows... and now on to the next 500!
How granular can mobile application management be? Richard talks to Mike Crowley about the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite, and it's ability to allow Bring-Your-Own-Device to work effectively without taking over the device. Mike focuses in on three key aspects in the suite, starting with identity - being able to identify users through Azure Active Directory. From there, the next aspect is application management, controlling what capabilities certain applications have on the device. And finally, there is document rights management so that you can protect docs on the device. This works, check it out!
What can App Service do for you? While at Ignite in Atlanta, Richard sat down with Jeremy Thake to talk about his new role with the Azure team, working with App Service. The conversation starts out focused on the truth that App Service is for operations folks, not developers. App Service is a set of tools for managing applications in the cloud effectively, being able to measure their health, scale instances, restart, reconfigure, and so on. Jeremy also talks about the role App Service takes in deploying your cloud applications at scale for testing and pre-production reasons, as well as out in the production space. No matter how you use Azure, App Service can help!
Is your IT group in the dark? Richard chats with Mattias Karlsson about his experiences as a consultant coming into companies where IT really doesn't know how well their infrastructure is operating - place where the mantra is "if no one is complaining, we're fine." But life can be better than that! Mattias talks about deploying an instrumentation solution like PRTG to start getting insight on whether or not applications and infrastructure are healthy and in use. You can't get better if you don't know what is going well and what isn't, so you need to do measurements. It starts out knowing what normal looks like, and then trying to do better. You need instrumentation to know if you're improving!
How do Small Business Server and Windows 10 get along? Richard chats with Susan Bradley about her experiences continuing to support Small Business Server and Server Essentials even though the products aren't available for the latest builds of Windows Server. There are some challenges working with Windows 10 as security and access rules continue to evolve. The conversation also digs into the move to the cloud for small businesses - where it works for an organization, there are some significant advantages, but it isn't always an option. And who knows what will happen with Server 2016!
IPv6 continues to gain traction! Richard talks to Ed Horley about the progress of IPv6, including the recent announcement by Microsoft at the Ignite conference in Atlanta that virtually all of Azure would now support IPv6. That's a lot of new IPv6 traffic added to the internet at large! Ed discusses the big penetration points of IPv6, including mobile networks (there are a lot of smartphones out there), some consumer ISPs and now the public cloud. Where is IPv6 not happening much? Big enterprises. Adoption in some countries (including the US) are well past 25% - IPv6 is becoming mainstream!
Ready to move your PBX to the cloud? Richard chats with Avrohom Gottheil about this fundamental shift in telephony. Once upon a time there were analog phone systems, then everything went digital. But now, the location of your phones and phone system is almost irrelevant! Avrohom talks about being able to create unified communications solutions where email, telephony and presence all work together. But how do you get past your old PBX approach? It takes new phones, a careful look at your networking and thinking through what's possible when location and connectivity aren't tied together.
Have you heard about Azure Stack? While at Ignite in Atlanta, Richard sat down with Jeffrey Snover to discuss the Azure Stack announcements. Azure Stack is all about bringing Azure architecture to your data center, or the data center of your preferred service provider. The concept is more about architecture than implementation, although as Jeffrey explains, you won't be running Azure Stack on your existing hardware. The hardware and configuration requirements for Azure Stack are very specific, look at this as more of a partnership with Microsoft doing a fair bit to maintain your new Azure Stack infrastructure - perhaps even more than you do! This is a new kind of on-premises solution and bears careful study!
If you could make storage super fast, how much better would things be? Richard chats with Alan Sugano about his discovery of Simplivity, a card added on to certain Dell, Lenovo and Cisco storage arrays to do inline de-duplication so fast that the iOPs load drops massively. And how many problems does that solve? Alan talks about how improving storage performance changed the way he thinks about hyperconvergence. Different kinds of VMs and roles living together on these high-performance devices makes your private cloud solution so much simpler!
What can Azure Site Recovery do for you? Richard chats with Nicolas Blank about his experiences backing up on-premise systems with Azure Site Recovery, including tricky products like Exchange and SQL Server. You may not be ready to move your on-premise systems into the cloud, but often disaster recovery is more acceptable, if for no other reason than it is far less expensive than maintaining a separate data center. The question is, can you test it properly? Just because you've taken backups doesn't mean you can restore them. Nicolas talks through the fine details about being able to organize and test disaster recovery with Azure Site Migration.
Ready to move to Exchange 2016? Richard chats with Paul Cunningham about the latest version of Exchange and what it takes to move up to it. The older your version of Exchange, the harder it is to upgrade - as Paul says, moving from 2013 is the least painful. And if you're still on 2007, well, you have to migrate to 2013 first. The conversation dives into the typical problems that are revealed when you start looking at a migration - issues around namespaces, certificates and third party tools. And speaking of tools, Microsoft provides the Exchange Server Deployment Assistant to help you started on your own migration!
VMWare and PowerShell together? Of course! Regardless of the recent excitement around PowerShell going open source, third party companies have been supporting PowerShell for years, and VMWare is no exception. Chris tells his story of building out a set of PowerShell scripts for automating configuration of the company demo and operations VMWare environments. The conversation also digs into the logical line between automation and control, as well as better source management and testing for PowerShell scripts. Check out Chris' open source project called Vester that can help you manage your VMWare environment with PowerShell!
Is there a science to DevOps? Richard talks to Dr. Nicole Forsgren, who has a PhD in Information Management about her work with the DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) organization. Nicole is one of the key people behind the State of DevOps report (published by Puppet). The conversation digs into some of the findings in that report, including the proof that stability and speed are not mutually exclusive - you can bring new features and products to market quickly while keeping your systems stable. Have a listen and a read!
How does the cloud shape your infrastructure? Richard talks with web pioneer and CEO Jon Mittelhauser about the on-going evolution of infrastructure architecture to something more closely resembling the cloud. You might not use public cloud infrastructure, but getting your virtual machines able to be created and destroyed on demand is certainly reflective of cloud architecture. The challenges come in the networking and mixing of the models. In the future, cloud architecture will be the norm - the question is, how long will it take you to get there?
How do you build a blameless post-mortem culture? And should you? Richard chats with Jason Hand from VictorOps about the blameless culture, which is a methodology embraced by the safest and most reliable organizations - think aircraft safety. Having everyone involved in an incident able to discuss everything they did and saw helps to get a clear picture of the truth. Without that information, it's very hard to make real improvements in our organizations. Jason talks about ChatOps as a strategy to get there, using tools like Slack to let people see the conversations going on and capture the critical information during an incident to address problems.
Here comes the Redstone update for Windows 10! Richard chats with Stephen Rose about the big one year update for Windows 10. Don't call it a service pack - it's full of new features of Windows. The patching normally done in services packs is now a routine thing with Windows 10, they don't even wait for Tuesday. The conversation digs into some of the new features in Redstone and how it can serve the enterprise effectively. A lot of energy has been focused on taking security to the next level, because the black hats sure are! Steven talks about some new security devices and a shift in attitude from an administrator's point of view - we're security risks too!
Infrastructure deserves tests too! While at ChefConf in Austin, Richard sat down with Steven Murawski to talk about Test Kitchen. Test Kitchen allows you to execute code to validate the operation and performance of specific features in your infrastructure. As Steven explains, you can used Desired State Configuration (DSC) to determine whether or not your configuration is correct, but when it isn't, how do you determine what's wrong? Test Kitchen is all about actually exercising the relevant elements of your infrastructure so you know what's working and what isn't, and how well it all runs. Since it's open source, you can download it and take it out for a spin for free!
What does it mean to have application automation? While at ChefConf in Austin, Richard sat down with Jessica DeVita to talk about Habitat, an open source project driven by the folks who created Chef to bring automation to the application itself. As Jessica explains, most applications are dependent on a given infrastructure to provide scaling, security, reliability and all of the other services that make a good application. But what if those elements were part of the application itself, and the infrastructure could change? That's the promise of Habitat. It's still early days, but well worth a look!
How do you manage the security of documents around individual applications on a mobile device? Richard talks to Simon May about Microsoft InTune Mobile Application Management (MAM). MAM allows IT folks to specify security privileges on an app-by-app and document-by-document basis. The identity role is handled by Azure Active Directory, and the entire Office 365 suite is supported - but so are products from Adobe, FoxIt, SAP and more. Documents can be time-limited (very spy novelish!) and even have individual parts of a document (like a paragraph) have different privileges. This looks to be a lighter-weight way to allow bring-your-own-device to protect corporate documents while leaving personal content alone. Check it out!
A whole other area of Windows Server 2016 to dive into - Hyper-V! Richard chats with Aidan Finn about the coming features for Hyper-V in Server 2016, starting with the ability to host older VM version in 2016: You're no longer forced to upgrade immediately! But you'll want to upgrade, because there are some awesome new features, including being able to map GPUs into specific VMs. Aidan also talks about rolling cluster upgrades, where you're able to take your 2012R2 clusters and upgrade them instance-by-instance to 2016, and only after they're all done, upgrade to new functionality. The feature list continues with the role of Nano Server and new security features - have a listen!
How does Windows 10 protect your secrets? Richard chats with Mark Minasi about the endless evolution of protecting user information in Windows. What, you don't have any secrets? Sure you do! Start with your login password: You don't want to have to type a password in every time an application runs, so Windows remembers it for you, at least while you're logged in. How can you be sure it's safe? Mark does his usual amazing story telling job of taking you through the history of protected storage and digging into how Windows 10 (and Server 2016) will do it better - check out the links in the show notes for more!
Windows Server 2016 is coming soon - but is it all about on-premise, or all about the cloud? Richard talks to John Savill about his favorite features of Server 2016, which is, as he says, "inspired by Azure." Of course, folks are excited about the new containers service that has been in Linux for years, now in Windows in a couple of flavors, based on security level. This also means there's a need for nested virtualization, although typically only one level deep. The idea of limited administrator privilege factors largely with shielded VMs and Just Enough Administration. Bring more cloud thinking to your on-premise infrastructure!
Public Folders are a plague! Richard chats with Tony Redmond about the challenges of decades of public folders in Exchange accumulating the data cruft of a company. The need to store information independent of any given individual and discoverable by others has always been a challenge. Public Folders never got a lot of love, but today there are some interesting solutions found in Office 365. Tony talks about Office 365 Groups and how they are becoming what Public Folders ought to have been. These are the new emerging features of Office 365 and are worth a look!
Is Group Policy dead? Jeremy Moskowitz says no! And he's not alone. Richard chats with Jeremy about the confusion in the marketplace these days around Active Directory, Group Policy, Intune, mobile device management tools and so on. Group Policy continues to represent the best way to manage Windows PCs, which is still a large part of most organizations. And Windows 10 implements even more Group Policy related features. If you manage a domain, you should be using Group Policy. MDM, well, that's another show!
Is it time to jump into machine learning? Richard talks to Buck Woody about how he has focused his multi-decade career at the leading edge of using data for business advantage. Buck talks about the differences between business intelligence, data mining, predictive analytics and machine learning. The landscape called Data Science these days is large, but there is lots of opportunities. When you get it right, Data Science represents a huge opportunity for your organization. But it is a young technology now that benefits generalists, and you do need to learn some things. Check the show notes for great places to get started!
Hyperconverged storage is coming to Windows Server 2016! Richard chats with Ned Pyle about his work building parts of the Storage Services in Server 2016, including Storage Replica. The term "hyperconvergence" is a bit abused, but Ned talks about how software-defined compute, networking and storage have come together to allow the scaling and reconfiguration of server resources easier, more dynamic and maintainable. The latest incarnation of Storage Services takes using bunches of storage devices (hard drives, SSDs, NVME and so on) and making them allocate out based on your needs for performance, reliability and scalability. There's a ton to talk about, so this is a long show - and worth it!
Time for another SQL Q and A! Richard moderates an hour long discussion at SQLintersection in Orlando with panelists Paul Randal, Kim Tripp and Brent Ozar as they tackle the questions and concerns of the attendees. A number of other SQL luminaries (including Microsoft SQL team members) chime in about topics ranging from data types to data recovery, noSQL vs RDBMS, query performance strategies, and more! Why should you upgrade to SQL 2016? How long does CheckDB take to run on SQL 2005? What is the longest answer to a question that Kim Tripp can give? All this and more in this show full of great answers and debates!
So what happens when a country gets hacked? Richard talks to Troy Hunt about the significance of the attacks on Turkey and the Philippines, where entire voter registries have been exposed, including email addresses, passport information, even fingerprint data! Troy digs into the ideas around biometric data, the tepid reactions of the governments in question and a larger conversation about where this will ultimately lead. If you are concerned about data privacy, there are steps you can take, but only to a limited degree - anywhere that you share your data is vulnerable, even your government. Protect yourself!
Instrumentation and Automation across clouds and on-premise? Yes! Richard chats with Jeremy Winter about his work bringing Microsoft Operations Management Suite to life in the cloud. Think of it as Monitoring and Management as a Service, although it works just fine with your on-premise systems as well. OMS comes from the System Center world, but it isn't dependent on it - you can use OMS with and without System Center. Jeremy also talks about how other existing instrumentation and automation tools integrate with OMS so that you don't have to do any rip-and-replace, just add OMS on the top for a broader view of your systems. Lots of great links, check them out!
How much administration do you need? Richard chats with Tech Fellow and Father-of-PowerShell Jeffrey Snover about Just Enough Administration (JEA). The goal of JEA is to get administrators to stop living in admin accounts, to operate day-to-day with regular domain accounts and only escalate up to admin for a specific task, typically written in PowerShell. Jeffrey talks about creating a "break glass in emergency" account that is the superadmin, only to be used when there's no other way to do something. This account should be heavily logged and scrutinized, so that root cause analysis can extract the needs for the event and create more automation and security granularity around it. JEA works on Server 2008R2 and above, and will be built into Server 2016!
How do you know your systems are compliant with security and industry standards like CIS, SOX, HIIPA, PCI and so on? Chef evangelist Jessica DeVita talks to Richard about the free Chef compliance tools that can help you understand where your systems are exposed and help get you into a compliant state - and stay there. If your only check of compliance is an audit, things are going to be rough. Audits are just spotchecks, not comprehensive evaluations, and it takes time to get things into order. Having a system that can continuously check compliance state, even as code is being written, makes life much, much simpler. Check it out!
How do you manage your infrastructure like its code? Enter the release pipeline! Richard chats with Steven Murawski and Michael Greene about their recent white paper on the Release Pipeline Model. The conversation digs into the stages of developing and management configuration-as-code, including source code management, building, testing and deploying. There's a ton of tooling around each of these aspects, what you choose is very personal - and it makes sense to use what you already have onsite. Michael and Steven also dig into crisis management - taking advantage of the pipeline to respond more effectively when there are problems, and to help make sure those problems never happen again!
Ransomware is in the news, but do you know what to do about it? Richard talks to Paula Januskiewicz about how ransomware works and what you can do to prevent an attack, and how to clean up after one. An awful lot of the power of ransomware is blunted by having a good backup strategy - one that you actually know how to restore from. Paula also talks about running your workstations in a whitelist configuration, where only a known good list of software can run. There are tools built into Windows that can help you there. At the same time, having good communication between IT and users helps - sometimes the reason a computer is slow is that it is encrypting everything, and reporting that to IT gives you a chance to get a jump on the malware!
What's the state of DevOps coming into 2016? Richard chats with Gene Kim, one of the godfathers of the DevOps movement, about what he's seen over the past year and how DevOps is evolving into "the way we build and operate software." Gene talks about getting management more involved in the DevOps process, recognizing that when software is built and operated in a rapidly iterating model, the way that software is sold and utilized changes as well. More and more Gene can see that DevOps is not just about the unicorn companies, but about what every business can do to build and operate better software. Have a listen!
What is coming in SQL Server 2016? Richard chats with Brent Ozar about his thoughts on the upcoming version of SQL Server. The conversation digs into how the cloud is impacting SQL Server - features like Query Store were available first in the cloud are now showing up in this new on-premise edition! Speaking of Query Store, who wouldn't want a record of query plans so you can find out exactly why a query in production took a long time? Brent discusses other features including the stretch table to azure, always encrypted, row level security... the list goes on! The question is, when do we get this great version?
Does the cloud represent the end of the world for ISPs? Hardly, according to Barnaby Jeans. Barnaby and Richard chat about how service providing is still an important part of the equation for many customers, but the workloads are evolving. Microsoft has a Cloud Solution Provider Program to help ISPs utilize features of Azure and Office 365 as part of their overall offering. Every service provider has some unique element to their own product line up, and Azure can be used to augment or expand that offering. Looking the other way, there are opportunities for consultants to offer services in the form of Azure and Office 365 as well - take a look!
How do you diagnose performance problems in Windows? Richard chats with Microsoft Senior Premier Field Engineer Clint Huffman about the tooling he builds and use to get Windows running as fast as possible. The conversation starts out with a bit of a digression around Clint's efforts to get his Surface RT devices running fast - using the same techniques he uses everywhere! A huge long list of links in the show notes reflect all the different tools available for free to tune Windows - including Clint's own brand new ICU (Clue) Tool. Take it out for a spin!
Is the cloud really secure? Richard chats with Orin Thomas about his work developing a doctoral thesis on cloud security. Recognizing that security at this level is less about products and more about principles, Orin digs into thoughts around encryption, physical security, breach identification and more. Inevitably there are some references to particular tools like the Azure Key Vault, but the challenge is in evaluating a technology in the context of a broader principle. Lots of great thinking about security!
How do you host Linux in the cloud? Richard talks to Tim Warner about his experience managing Linux instances in Azure. According to Microsoft, about 25% of Azure's VMs are Linux! Tim focuses on the key issue of working with Linux, which is getting familiar with the command line approach of management. Sure, there are GUIs for Linux, but it's all about the command line. The CLI is becoming central to Windows server management as well, and Tim talks about setting up tooling for managing both from the command line. Development on Linux is a common practice in the open source world and becoming an important supported platform in the Microsoft space - dive in!
What are your disaster recovery plans? Richard chats with Jennelle Crothers about Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery products - two different types of backup into the cloud. Jennelle talks about getting started simply with file backup into the cloud - being able to get copies of data outside of your organization without the mess and reliability problems associated with tapes. You can do the backup rotation style that you like, and just pay for the storage you use. Site Recovery is a far more sophisticated product, to the point where it becomes your recovery orchestration engine - call it Disaster Recovery as Code. Backup has evolve - have you?
How are you managing desktop updates? Richard chats with Andrew Laurence about his work using IBM BigFix to manage updates for Windows and OSX desktop machines. Most update technologies are platform specific, which means in an environment with Windows PC and Macs, you're doing many things twice. Andrew talks about using IBM BigFix to provide a comprehensive update solution, but only if you work with its strengths, rather than insist that it works the way you've always done things. Living in a cross-platform world has its challenges, but it's not optional, and there are tools to make your life easier. Check 'em out!
How can you increase the digital resilience of your organization's systems? Richard chats with Alan Sharp-Paul about exactly what it means to be resilient, starting with knowing when your systems are changing, either intentionally or otherwise. All too often security starts and stops at the edge, which means when a breach happens, the breach is total. Worse yet, as Alan discusses, the organization often doesn't even know there's a breach for months! Resilience really focuses in on being able to deal with security and systems problems with graceful degradation. Without an ability to fail and measure the failure, how can you even know there's a problem?
Ready to put your PBX in the cloud? Richard chats with Tom Arbuthnot about the Cloud PBX offering as part of Office 365 Skype for Business. Skype for Business has been around for awhile, as part of an overall cloud-based unified communication strategy - so what makes the Cloud PBX offering unique? Tom talks about how Microsoft is talking on the PSTN services as well - in the United States (at least for now), they've become a full-fledged carrier and can sell you PSTN numbers that bridge into Office 365. Elsewhere in the world you can work with your local carrier to provide SIP and TDM access up to Office 365 and get pretty much the same result. If you're looking to update your PBX, you need to check this out!
Have you looked at Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS)? Richard chats with Cameron Fuller about OMS and its relationship with System Center Operations Manager - other than caring about operations, they aren't the same thing at all. Cameron discusses the cloud-centric nature of OMS, but not necessarily an Azure-centric view: OMS can help with instrumentation and management of Amazon's cloud as well as other platforms as a whole. While OMS will integrate with Operations Manager, it will also take data from Nagios, which is a great instrumentation system from the open source world. The conversation also digs into different approaches to automation and backup - OMS covers a ton of important functionality!
Patching is hard, but patching clusters is worse! Richard chats with Luke Sword about the challenges of getting patches done right when systems are mission critical and complex. Luke runs down the range of options for managing patch, including Windows Update Services, the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and System Center Configuration Manager (which depends on the previous two). But that only works when the patches are all independent - what happens if you have to patch one server before another? The conversation digs into System Center Orchestrator in the role of coordination and all the PowerShell scripts you need to write and manage to make it all work. Check it out!
Are you using Chef for your configuration management? Richard chats with Steven Murawski about the on-going open source project that is Chef. Steven talks about how the community leads and builds the project as much as the folks from Chef themselves do - and its free to use, but Chef offers pay services above and beyond the core product to make your life easier. The conversation also digs into the relationship between Chef, PowerShell and Desired State Configuration - they all work together to keep your servers on the straight-and-narrow of delivering reliable software services. Whether you're on-premise or in the cloud, this is configuration-as-code at it's best!
When should move your storage to the cloud? Richard chats with Kevin Evans about migrating off of an on-premise SAN onto Azure's StorSimple hybrid cloud storage solution. Kevin discusses the data requirements of a graphics packaging company, making multi-gigabyte files for printing. When the on-premise storage solution was due for replacement, looking at the massive increase in storage available in the cloud was hard to resist. When combined in a hybrid configuration so that you have the performance of local storage as well, it was an unbeatable combination. Disaster recovery, continuous online storage and archiving... is the cloud the perfect storage solution?
How is Windows 10 working out for you? To finish 2015, Richard chats with Mark Minasi about the on-going changes to Windows that should result in this idea of Windows-as-a-Service. Mark talks about the almost continuous building process going on with Windows, and how various rings of folks get access to those builds. Most of those builds are only visible to Microsoft employees, but you can see them at BuildFeed - and you can get further into the new builds with the Windows Insider Program. The challenge of this new model will be the demand to keep up to date. How often and you and your organization stand new versions of Windows? Every year? Every few months?
With last names like Claus and Snow, what else could we talk about but Christmas gifts? Richard chats with Patch and Switch, aka Joey Snow and Rick Claus, about all the gifts you wish you'd thought of for your IT loved ones. Oh wait, that's the listeners, isn't it? Right, offer this show up to your loved ones and let them know this is the kind of stuff you want - geeky and cool! Whatever you celebrate this time of year, all the best to you and yours!
Ready for SharePoint 2016? Richard chats with Todd Klindt about what's coming in SharePoint 2016, comparing the differences in on-premise and Office 365 versions. Todd talks about the dark times a couple of years ago where it seemed like SharePoint on-premise was over - it was cloud or nothing. But that has changed, today the hybrid option of some SharePoint elements in the cloud and some on-premise is possible. Want to keep your files on-premise but search in the cloud? No problem! How about just externally accessible files in the cloud? Todd talks through all these scenarios - you can do SharePoint the way you want!
Can you use the cloud as backup? Richard chats with Aidan Finn about Microsoft Azure Backup and Site Recovery services. The conversation starts out talking about the challenges of earlier versions of Azure backup, which could really only handle files. If you wanted more comprehensive backup, you needed System Center Data Protection Manager, which was more complex (and expensive) than most SMB businesses wanted. But the latest incarnation of Azure Backup Services covers everything at a much more incremental price. And then there's Site Recovery, which can snap entire VMs from on-premise and keep them in the cloud - lots of options to protect your data and systems!
Data breaches are a fact of life - how can you resist them, and when that fails, deal with them effectively? Richard talks to Troy Hunt about his experience studying a huge variety of data breaches over the past few years. Having a plan for dealing with breaches is key, but so is actually being able to detect a breach, and knowing what to do when someone tells you that you have been breached - ignoring it won't make it go away! As far as resisting breaches, have you tried hacking your own site? There are lots of free (and paid) tools out there to show you your vulnerabilities. If you don't run them, someone else WILL!
So what can go wrong with Windows 10 and what do you do about it? Richard chats with Mike Halsey about his experiences troubleshooting Windows 10. Mike talks about driver issues - standard fare for a new version of Windows, especially with the huge number of upgrades. Hardware vendors are not always diligent about getting new drivers made for old hardware, they'd much rather focus on new drivers for new hardware that they can sell. The conversation also digs into badly behaved software and how it can destabilize a system. Mike provides lots of tips and tricks for figuring out what is going on in your system and how to get it back on track.
Time for another SQL Q and A! Richard moderates discussion between Kim Tripp, Paul Randal and Brent Ozar with the audience of SQLIntersection in Las Vegas, Oct 2015. The questions come fast, the answers almost as fast (but certainly longer) as the discussion ranges over a variety of disaster recovery approaches, federation, upgrading strategies and recovering from a lost quorum file (don't judge). Twice a year we capture an hour long conversation about concerns around SQL Server, and this one is no exception - have a listen!
Where is Exchange 2016 on your radar? Richard chats with Tony Redmond about the current history of Exchange, from 2003 onward. Tony talks about the growth of Exchange Online with Office 365, and the impact that has had on the shape of Exchange on-premise. This leads to a discussion about Exchange 2016 which looks to be a maturing of Exchange 2013 without really disruptive changes. One of the biggest changes in the past three years has been the improvement in updates, to the point where they are boring - but also that there are no perfect versions of software anymore, just an on-going continuum. Lots of digressions, but also great thinking about modern on-premise and in-cloud mail!
Nobody's data security is perfect, but do you know the security state of your data? Richard chats with Luke Babarinde about his work helping companies secure their data effectively and understand where the risks exist. The rules vary from company to company, and it takes time to education management on what risks exist for data, and ultimately to get feedback on what levels of security are reasonable. Luke talks about how every system is breachable, its just a question of what happens next - how long does it take to detect a breach? How do you limit harm? Lots of great thinking from someone out there in the trenches trying to protect data!
Are you thinking about Microsoft Nano Server yet? Richard chats with Jason Helmick about what we can do today to get ready for Nano Server. As announced by freshly minted Tech Fellow Jeffrey Snover, Nano Server represents an ultra-light version of Windows Server and the new foundation of the server side of the operating system. So what can you do to get ready? Jason talks about working with the Core edition of Windows Server, preferably 2012, as a great starting point. This gets you started on a path of using PowerShell and scripting to configure and operate your servers, rather than GUIs and RDP. The conversation then turns to Desired State Configuration as the ultimate goal - getting every aspect of a server described in code so that you can create it, consistently, on demand. That's how you get to Nano!
Does it matter what virtualization technology you use? Richard chats with Greg Shields, one of the few folks out there with certifications in Microsoft's Hyper-V, VMWare's vSphere and Citrix Xen about the relatively merits of the stacks. Turns out, they're pretty close together, at least when it comes to virtualization. But the conversation goes deeper into the instrumentation - how do you know that you have the right loads on the right hardware? Can you make your own cloud effectively - it's got more to do with architecture than operating systems, as it turns out. Greg focuses in on the way you understand your systems as the true differentiator today!
What does your security plan look like? Richard chats with Dana Epp about the ever increasing attack surface of our organizations and the ongoing battle to provide better tools and techniques to keep the lights on. Hackers are getting more clever, even hacking cars - how do you keep up? Dana talks through a series of policy approaches to deal with the reality that you are going to be breached, but how to you detect the breach and limit the damage caused? Check out Dana's article on credential theft for even more ideas!
There are lots of reasons to instrument your apps in production - but one of the most powerful is to understand how your users actually use your apps. Richard talks to Andreas Grabner of DynaTrace about the variety of instrumentation approaches possible for applications - some driven by operations, and some by development. But everyone in the organization can benefit from a deeper understanding of how applications are used. Andreas talks about the diversity of metrics that can be taken, from your typical ecommerce financial metrics, to performance metrics, to reliability and scalability. There's a lot to measure!
Well, that's it - ARIN is out of IPv4 addresses. Richard chats with Ed Horley who has been warning of this day for a number of years now. So what does it really mean? No, the internet isn't going to stop working. Ed talks about how much IPv6 is already going on - some ISPs have double-digit adoption already! And certain marketplaces need it the most, such as smartphones. There are billions of smartphones, and the Internet of Things looks to bring many more billions of devices online as well... we need IPv6! The time is now!
Windows 10 has shipped - but has it really, really shipped? Richard chats with Paul Thurrott about his take on Microsoft's on-going efforts to get the operating system just right. After some history discussion about how Windows 10 came to be, from Vista on up, Paul digs into the truth of the matter - Windows 10 isn't quite done yet, it's fine for consumers, but IT Pros need to look carefully. It's a powerful operating system that alongside the upcoming Server 2016 should be able to take infrastructure to the next level, which Paul says is hybrid cloud. But there's still more to come, so watch close!
Docker is coming to Windows and it's going to be huge! Richard chats with Taylor Brown of the Windows Core Virtualization team about the new Windows Server containers coming in Server 2016. With the TP3 release of Server 2016, you can start experimenting with Windows Containers! The discussion also focuses on the upcoming Hyper-V Containers, and the differences and reasoning behind having two different types of containers. Taylor digs into the focus on configuration-as-code for containers, so that automation becomes the default approach to any container based deployment. This looks to be the future of virtualization!
So where is remote access going these days? Richard talks to Richard Hicks about Microsoft DirectAccess and more. Recognizing that VPNs don't make people happy, Richard Hicks talks about how DirectAccess did a good job of making remote connectivity seamless and invisible - at the price of being a challenge to set up in the first place. Having your remote access roles as isolated VMs in your network has distinct advantages! However, the domain join requirement is a significant limitation, and one that Microsoft is working to overcome with Microsoft inTune and the cloud. Remote access continues to evolve!
Have you looked at everything available in an Office 365 subscription? It's easy to stop at Exchange or SharePoint online, but what about the services side of Office 365 including OneDrive for Business and Azure Active Directory Applications. Office 365 is more than just the Office suite in the cloud, there are APIs available to allow developer to build mash-up style applications that integrate with Exchange, SharePoint (both on-prem and cloud) as well as a huge number of third party applications. Jeremy Thake walks through the opportunities for doing overall application installation management from Office 365 - not just Microsoft apps!
So how interesting can power management be? More than you might believe! Richard chats with Microsoft PM Joao Botto about how Surface has taken power management to a new level. While it's easy to just think about power management as a tool to reduce company power consumption over night, when you get into the tablet space, it's also about conserving battery life. Joao talks about Connected Standby mode, which utilizes hardware, drivers, operating system and software together to minimize power consumption while still being able to receive notifications about updates, messages and more! This is some next generation power management!
Ready to manage Azure from the command line? While at That Conference in Wisconsin Dells, Richard chatted with Brian Lewis about the PowerShell support available for Azure. Every command and more available in the Azure GUI Dashboard works from PowerShell. Brian talks about the advantages of using scripting to control Azure, creating repeatable, consistent execution plans through scripts for all sorts of configuration changes, including creating new VMs, configuring networking and activating services. Don't use a Word doc to set up your Azure apps - use PowerShell!
How do you build a data warehouse in Azure? While at That Conference in Wisconsin Dells, Richard sat down with Michael Blumenthal to talk through a particular case study. Michael talks about the early days of Azure, and how for this particular project, Azure was used only as a VM host - entirely an Infrastructure-as-a-Service solution. Using SQL Server and Integration Services, the system gathered data from a number of disparate systems and loaded into separate databases. Then the consolidation! Great stories about making the cloud work!
Ready for a new version of Desired State Configuration (DSC)? Richard chats with Don Jones about the second version of DSC, although it's bundled as part of The Windows Management Framework 5.0. Don discusses the evolving nature of server management and DSC's role in it, and how the tools need to improve to manage your scripts and configuration files. The conversation also turns to testing, and the tool Pester on GitHub as the ideal way to do testing for PowerShell. Don also suggests that if you're new to PowerShell, the ideal way to learn it is in the context of DSC - it gets you focused on a few key capabilities that can provide a ton of power!
How do you provide granular administrative privileges to junior administrators? Richard talks to Mark Minasi about the idea of Just Enough Administration (JEA). And it's not just for junior administration - the conversation dives into this idea that administrators should be domain users most of the time, and only elevate their privileges for specific tasks. JEA helps you organize privilege sets for those tasks so that you have no more capability than necessary. Administrator accounts are the hot new exploit vector, it's time to lock them down! Check out Just Enough Administration on TechNet.
Is ITIL still relevant in a cloud-centric world? Carroll Moon says yes! Richard talks to Carroll about his work building out the service management infrastructure of Office 365 and how those learnings can apply to your organization as it moves to the cloud. Carroll focuses first and foremost on monitoring - until you can see how your applications are operating in real time, other DevOps-type improvements are hard to quantify. And the instrumentation needed should be going down to the client, just monitoring servers is not enough. Getting great monitoring working on your apps means involving development - there's no getting around that. You can read Carroll's entire blog post series on Service Monitoring on Axelos.
How do you filter spam and malware for your mail server? Richard chats with Peter Schmidt about Exchange Online Protection (EOP). Remember Forefront? This is where the product went, into the cloud. As an Azure product, EOP is available when you use Exchange Online - but you can also put it in front of your on-premise Exchange server at a stunning price of one dollar per user per month. Peter discusses the spam and malware filtering, but EOP also offers mail proxying in general so that your mail has a place to live when your server is down. This is the first step to moving your mail to the cloud, check it out at Exchange Online Protection.
Are you ready for Windows 10? Richard chats with Mark Minasi about the impending release of Windows 10. Mark talks about the new features of Windows 10 that will make you happy you're upgrading, including Universal Apps (no really, they're good!), the new store mechanism and the new browser - Edge. This leads to a conversation about managing updates, browser compatibility and keeping your business environment stable. Not everything will be ready in July, but the upgrades will be ongoing through the rest of 2015, so keep your eyes open!
Desired State Configuration and SQL Server? Richard talks to Patrick Curran about using DSC for more than just setting up a web farm. In fact, Patrick uses DSC to set up an entire SharePoint infrastructure - including SQL Server! And that is the tricky bit, since SQL Server isn't quite as PowerShell friendly as IIS. Patrick talks about battling the SQL PowerShell bits which sometime install, sometimes not so much - ultimately you're better off using SQL internal scripting for a reliable install. Lots of interesting thoughts about taking DSC to the max!
Does your organization need Yammer? Richard talks to Chris Poteet about the whys and hows of Yammer. The conversation starts out on the why of Yammer - what does this tool bring to the table? There are lots of pseudo-social-media products out there for the enterprise, but they only work if people use them. But Yammer's approach makes it familiar and easy to have conversations within the organization that can be searched and shared. Chris then digs into the install process: There almost isn't one! Totally cloud based, you sign up to Yammer with your business email and things pretty much start happening from there. Check it out!
How does Microsoft use SharePoint? Richard chats with MS IT SharePoint Server owner Jared Shockley about how Microsoft uses SharePoint internally. As it turns out, Jared has been part of the team moving Microsoft SharePoint sites into Office 365 - according to him, 93% of the on-premise sites are now in the cloud! The last 7% represent the tricky bits. Serious customizations are the main issue, and the mechanisms for customizing SharePoint on-premise are very different from SharePoint in Office 365. Jared talks about evaluating projects for rewriting - SharePoint isn't the only choice these days!
An update on Windows update? Richard talks to PFE Robert Smith about the announcements coming out of build around how Windows will be updated going forward. No more rollups! Well, almost. The conversation digs into the on-going evolution of updating Windows, the lack of Service Packs (and their meaning), rollups, hotfixes, and so on. As Terry Myerson said on stage at Ignite, for unmanaged environments, updating is going to be far more automatic. If you run a strict update environment with WSUS, nothing needs to change, expect that hotfixes will now appear in the Windows Update Catalog. So things are getting better!
What burning questions do you have about SQL Server? Richard moderates a panel discussion with Paul Randal, Kim Tripp and Brent Ozar and a host of other folks at the SQL Intersection conference in Scottsdale Arizona. Taking questions from the audience, which are sometimes answered by other audience members (who happened to be speakers and/or Microsoft employees), the conversation ranges over SQL 2016, indexing, high availability, federation, data types, query governors and more!
PAL is growing up! After a few months of rest from publishing his book Windows Performance Analysis Field Guide, Richard talks to creator Clint Huffman about the latest update to PAL - Performance Analysis of Logs. PAL helps you sort out PerfMon to understand your performance problems in all sorts of Microsoft products. Clint has added a new auto-detect feature to check through your perfmon log file and know what profiles from PAL to pull in. And the latest features is the PAL Collector tool, which will analyze your machine and auto-configure PAL for data collection - and you can set it up to start on boot!
Rights Management in the Cloud? Richard talks to Morgan Simonsen about Azure Rights Management. Azure RMS works with Office 2010-13 and a variety of other applications to provide rights like read-only, modifiable, even limit viewing times - as well as letting you know when secured docs are viewed. And it can work outside of your systems as well, through Azure Active Directory. For other applications, there is the general RMS service that handles text files and images at portal.aadrm.com. It doesn't work with everything (gmail for example), but it does work in the field - if you need rights management, you should check it out!
So what happened at Ignite? Stephen Rose chats with Richard about the keynotes, sessions and announcements at Ignite. One of the biggest shows Microsoft has ever done, more than 22,000 people soaked up a huge amount of knowledge over a week in Chicago. Stephen also talks about the upcoming Mobility Transformed Tour around the US in May and June 2015!
Are Public Folders evil? Peter Schmidt says no! Richard chats with Peter about Modern Public Folders that come with Exchange 2013. Treated more like regular mailboxes (only BIGGER), the public folders in Exchange 2013 are much easier for the administrator to handle while being essentially the same as far as the users are concerned. The migration is a bit tricky, but you can do it on-premise as well as to Office 365. Peter has a great video about migrating to 2013 public folders from NICConf. Check it out!
How do you tune your stored procedures? While visiting Kim Tripp at her home, Richard chats with her about her approach to turning stored procedures. The conversation starts out focused on query plans, which applies to all sorts of things, but stored procedures have some special foibles around parameter sets and recompilation - there are good techniques and bad! Kim also digs into session parameters. If you've ever had a stored procedure that performed great in Management Studio but sucked out in the world, there's a good chance the session configurations are different. Also listen for a quick discussion on stored procedure techniques that can help fight SQL Injection attacks!
How do you manage your SQL Servers? Richard talks to Boris Hristov about using Policy-Based Management tools in SQL Server. These tools have been in the box since SQL Server 2008, but it's amazing how many folks still don't use them - are you really RDPing into every SQL Server? Hristov talks about using the Policy-Based Management tools to sweep across all of your SQL Servers and check what various settings are at - and change them if you need to! The conversation also digs into creating a Central Management Server to have a repository of all SQL Server instances and make it easy to propagate changes. Finally, if you're ready to step up your SQL management game, take a look at the Enterprise Policy Management Framework, a CodePlex project to do detailed analysis and reporting on your entire SQL Server landscape.
So what does it take to live stream the largest sporting events in the world? Richard chats with Ian Philpot, Premier Field Engineer at Microsoft, about his work troubleshooting streaming issues for events like the Winter Olympics in Sochi, 2014 FIFA World Cup and Super Bowl XLIX. Of course it takes a team to make a project like this happen, and Phil talks about the entire service chain, from NBC's broadcast to iStreamPlanet to Azure Media Serviecs, Akamai and Adobe's Primetime Player. The conversation also turns to the Azure Media Services Explorer, a GitHub project to make it easier to integrate your software into Azure Media Services. If AMS can handle the Super Bowl, they can handle your streaming project too!
Are you looking at Chef for deploying your infrastructure yet? Steven Murawski is back to talk about the latest development in Chef, including his role as the Community Software Development Engineer. Chef integrates with DSC and PowerShell to make managing your Windows instances and everything else much simpler when you roll out applications. Steven also talks about Chef going all open source, with some paid services if you need them. You should check it out!
How fast can you analyze incoming data? Richard talks to Scott Klein about Azure Stream Analytics. Scott discusses how stream analytics is different from data warehousing, being an additional "near real time" service you can add to your application infrastructure to let you react faster to business opportunities. The conversation digs into gradual adoption of stream analytics, taking small bites into the new technology to give your applications and services new capabilities without having to go "all-in" at once. Check it out!
Virtualization at Microsoft continues to evolve! Richard chats with Aidan Finn about the on-going evolution of virtualization and the options available in Azure to use it. It's not just about Azure-hosted virtual machines any more! The conversation ranges over a number of Azure technologies in use today, including Active Directory. You need AD in the cloud to make your hybrid infrastructure work effectively, but it does take time to figure out all the options. Aidan also talks about Microsoft Azure RemoteApp and the options it brings to making applications available in the cloud. Also mentioned is the Azure Speed Test for evaluating which data centers give your location the best performance. The Azure story continues to evolve. Have you checked out the latest?
So how has the Cloud changed Exchange? And how will those changes affect you? Richard talks to Tony Redmond about the on-going evolution of Exchange, primarily through Microsoft's cloud efforts with Office 365. Running Exchange at massive scale has changed the way Microsoft thinks about many of its products. Tony talks about what happens when an organization starts to move mail to the cloud - an obvious move, but it makes you look at a number of practices around email, especially with attachments. How do you share that information effectively without clogging up your mailbox? And, most importantly, how do you change people's habits with email?
So how is IPv6 doing, anyway? Ed Horley knows! Richard chats with Ed about IPv6 adoption. And Ed delivers - turns out there's a lot more going on in the IPv6 world that folks know about. Looking at the stats on World IPv6 Launch, Ed talks about how Comcast has been quietly implementing IPv6 in their DOCSIS3 routers. If you're a Comcast customer, you maybe running IPv6 without even knowing it! The conversation also turns to the cloud providers and their challenges around implementing IPv6. There's lots of little problems, but they are getting solved... 2015 should be an amazing year for IPv6!
Mike O'Neill is back with some free tools you need to know about! Richard chats with Mike about his roster of go-to tools for a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer. All of the tools are free to download and use. Mike starts out talking about The Problem Steps Recorder, a tool that lets you record every keystroke and mouse movement while using an app for playback in a web browser. Next up is a regular on RunAs, Performance Analysis of Logs Tool. PAL analyzes your PerfMon data and shows what are good numbers and bad. And to help you get Exchange PerfMon data, Mike mentions ExPerfWiz, which actually helps you collect the right counters in Exchange. There's a similar tools for SQL Server called SQL Monitor. For Active Directory, check out ADReplStatus, which gives you details on how replication is going in your domain. If you want to visualize your domain, check out Active Directory Topology Diagrammer. For PowerShell, check out Script Browser and Analyzer which comes with some 9000 script samples. Finally, two tools for Office 365, including ID Fix for cleaning up your Office directory structures before moving to the cloud and Office Configuration Analyzer which can identify configuration problems before they bite you. It's a lot of tools for a half hour, but well worth checking out!
Paula is back - with stories of hacking her customer's systems! Richard talks to Paula Januszkiewicz about her work as a penetration tester and what it has revealed about the common vulnerabilities for corporate systems. There are lots of simple things you can do to make your systems less vulnerable - starting with getting patched up! There's a lot of conversation about passwords and account restrictions too, such as making sure that local machine admin accounts do not all have the same password, that service accounts do not allow interactive logins and so on. In Paula's experience, you're always going to get penetrated by some zero-day exploit, so be prepared to defend in depth!
Where did PowerShell come from and where is it going? Richard chats with Principle Software Engineer Lee Holmes about his experiences building PowerShell, going all the way back to 2003/2004 when Jeffrey Snover was trying to convince folks that Monad (the code name for PowerShell) was a good idea! Lee mentions a number of great resources along the way including AutoIt CmdLets and an Overview on PowerShell as a Hosting Solution. The conversation then turns to the future of PowerShell including tools like Desired State Configuration and OneGet. More PowerShell!
How do you look at the potential security threats in your organization? Richard talks to Robert Hurlbut about threat modeling. Robert talks out talking about we all threat model in our day-to-day lives, after all, we put locks on doors and windows for a reason. But when applied to technology, things get more complex. Are you resisting specific attacks or casual hackers? How much security is enough? Robert references the book Threat Modeling by Adam Shostack and the acronym STRIDE: Spoofing, Tampering, Repudiation, Information disclosure, Denial of service and Elevation as an approach to planning the overall threat models to your software, systems and organization.
Where is your DevOps practice at? Richard catches up with Gene Kim, the godfather of DevOps, to recap 2014 and talk about what DevOps in 2015 is going to be like. But you can't look into the future without being informed by the past, and Gene points to Puppet Labs 2014 State of DevOps Report as a way to understand the impact DevOps has had so far, and where things are going. The discussion also digs into the DevOps Enterprise Summit held in October 2014, you can see the sessions on YouTube at www.youtube.com/user/DOES2014. The DevOps Movement is progressing - are you coming?
How secure is your data? Richard talks to Simon Sabin about securing your databases and making sure you know they're actually secure. The conversation digs into various aspects of security including access control, restricting permissions and effective record keeping. Audits don't have to be the enemy, they're also the best proof that you've protected your data, and help point out when you haven't! With all the stories out in the world about data breaches, isn't it a good time to start really thinking about data security? Check out Simon's SQLBits session about not becoming the next Sony in the links below!
Does web performance just mean moving to the cloud today? Richard talks with Scott Forsyth about a variety of web performance strategies. Scott explains that moving to the cloud isn't the panacea that some folks think it is - any more than scaling out a web site ever was. There's still hard work to be done along the way, and it helps to have the tools to actually understand what's going on with your site. At the lowest level, when you have a crashing server, you want DebugDiag. At a higher level, you better have SysInternals in your toolkit too - these are must have tools, and they're free. Gotta talk web for episode 404, and Scott delivers!
Ready for the end of Server 2003? Richard chats with Eric Mills about the end of extended support for Windows Server 2003 - it had to come sooner or later! There are still millions of instances of Server 2003 out in the world, and they won't exactly spontaneously combust come July 2015, but the important bit is the end of tech support and security maintenance. The good news is that there are so many improvements that have happened to Server in the past ten years - you're going to love it! Eric talks about various approaches to migrating to a new server, pointing out that there is no way to directly upgrade from 2003 to 2012. Perhaps it's time to look at the cloud for some of your services? It's worth getting some help to make these decisions!
Thinking about getting into Azure? Now is a great time! Rick Claus talks to Richard about how Azure continues to evolve making more entry points at lower levels of friction for a larger variety of customers. The conversation ranges over using Azure for disaster recovery, for application elasticity, building hybrid solutions with parts in the cloud and parts on-premise, and more! Want a VM in the cloud? Azure can do that too. Rick runs down the gamut of options for the IT Pro to get Azure into your organization one step at a time.
It's New Years Eve, time to get scared! Troy Hunt is back and talking about the evolving story that is the Sony hack involving North Korea. The show was recorded on Dec 22 2014, after hackers had threatened movie theaters with "9/11 style attacks" if they showed the movie "The Interview", which was deemed derogatory to the North Korean government. What happens next? Are we entering a new period of cyber warfare? What can we as IT professionals do to protect our companies and customers from these kinds of attacks?
Holy cow, it's show 400! How did this happen? Richard invites his friends Paul Randal and Kim Tripp to have a little celebration, talk about what it takes to make a ton of podcasts. The conversation starts with a more personal discussion about what motivates Kim and Paul beyond SQL Server - animal rescue and exploring the world. Half through the show a fairly serious discussion about SQL topics... who would have thunk it on the 400th show? Thanks to everyone for making this milestone possible, we couldn't do it without you.
Richard talks to Steve Thomas about AppV and AppX. AppV is short for Application Virtualization, a huge growth area of virtualization, providing tools to allow you to encapsulate applications to simplify deployment and configuration - or to not deploy them at all and allow them to run remotely. Steve talks about AppX, based on the Open Packaging Conventions (OPC) that helps to define application configuration and deployment requirements which at this point is focused on Windows 8.1 Store Apps. Beyond AppV is User Experience Virtualization, on the way to full Desktop Virtualization. How far will you go?
Richard talks to Sean Kearney about his work with PowerShell, including being one of the honorary Scripting Guys - including the fellow who makes the crazy Holiday Special songs and events. Sean digs into how PowerShell is penetrating all aspects of operations, including working in the cloud, specifically Azure. And PowerShell isn't just for migrations to Azure, it can handle a ton of administrative tasks, so you can automate and make them more reliable. Isn't that why you moved to the cloud in the first place?
While at the SQLIntersection conference in Las Vegas, Richard hosted a panel discussion of amazing SQL Server rockstars including Paul Randal, Kim Tripp and Brent Ozar to answer questions from the audience about SQL Server. Also listen in for comments and responses from some of the SQL Server team and a number of other great SQL personalities. Great discussions on replication, Always On, indexing, statistics, clustering, features in SQL 2014 and more!
Richard chats with Tom Hollingsworth about the Software Defined Network (SDN) landscape and how it's evolving into a more open set of standards that interoperate well together. Of course, it's never that easy, but one aspect that has really grabbed ahold is whitebox networking - standard hardware with custom software. Normally the two are supplied by the same vendor, but that is starting to change. Remarkably, Hewlett Packard has some leading edge aspects of this, including their own SDN App Store, so that you can choose what networking software you want to run on their hardware. And other hardware vendors while still supplying their own software are supporting OpenFlow, using the OpenFlow protocol to make highly interoperable switches. The future of SDN is very cool!
How do you troubleshoot SQL problems? Kevin Kline talks to Richard about his process for diagnosing SQL Server, starting with Windows and SQL Server event logs, then moving through wait statistics, dynamic managed views and more. The focus is on making sure you're working on the right problem. Kevin also mentions Glenn Berry's awesome blog on DMV Queries, a resource you need to use! He also talks about SQLSentry's free PlanExplorer tool for helping you understand where your query performance problems come from. And don't miss Kevin's great blog post and video on End-to-End Troubleshooting.
Richard chats with Eric Shupps about search in SharePoint. The conversation starts with a state of the union conversation about SharePoint on-premise and cloud. Eric talks about how even folks not using public cloud technology are using the architecture to implement their on-premise systems. He sees the opportunity space for SharePoint professionals expanding. The discussion turns to the on-premise search systems in SharePoint, and how with a bit of effort, you can dramatically improve the ability to find documents and information in your business data. Eric talks about how it's not the same as consumer search - enterprise search has some complexities but can be hugely valuable when you get it right.
Richard talks to Alan Burchill about the security aspects of Group Policy Preferences - good and bad! Alan reminds us all about where Group Policy Preferences came from, as an acquisition by Microsoft, and opened the door to reduce or eliminate login scripts, but only when it has sufficient privileges. And how do you do that? By embedding passwords! We all know that's a bad thing, so Alan walks through what is safe and what isn't safe in Group Policy Preferences, and gets you thinking about how to reduce your attack surface by using tools like Metasploit to hack yourself. Check out Alan's Group Policy Central web site for more information.
Richard talks to Paul Cunningham about configuring high-availability features in Exchange 2013. The conversation starts out talking a bit about how Exchange 2013 has evolved, including a mention of the amazing Microsoft Exchange Server Deployment Assistant. If you're planning a role out of Exchange, you want to use this tool! From there, Paul digs into the range of features you need to look at to make Exchange function in a high availability configuration, including creating redundant client access roles, using load balancing (or at least DNS round robin) to support failover, data access groups (DAGs) and transport redundancy. And don't forget about Managed Availability - Exchange 2013's built in capabilities to detect and failover to alternatives, sometimes to your own chagrin! There's a lot to learn to make a highly available Exchange infrastructure, so keep an eye out for Paul's ebook on the subject!
Richard talks to Alan Sugano about his experience building out a private cloud for his customers. The conversation starts out focused on why you would want to build a private cloud, especially for someone else to use - Alan talks about his customers not wanting to go to the public cloud, but also not wanting to upgrade their own hardware. Once committed, Alan got to do the fun part (for a hardware geek) of building a private cloud - finding a great data center provider. From there he implemented VMWare's vCloud Director with some expensive hardware and difficult 10Gb networking to get up and running. From there things getting really challenging - what does it take to run a cloud properly? It's more complex than you think!
So where did Small Business Server go? Susan Bradley knows! After entirely too long, Richard chats with Susan Bradley about the state of affairs for Small Business Server folks. The last version of SBS came out in 2011, and now piece of the bundle have gone to the Cloud, and other bits have morphed into Window Server 2012 R2 Essentials. But just to make things even more interesting, Essentials is both a product and a role - that you can buy as a Cloud product as well as configure on any Server 2012 R2 version. There are lots of choices here, and Susan helps to lay out the options!
Here comes Windows 10! Richard chats with Mark Minasi about the technical preview of Windows 10, but first Mark reels off some humorous reasons why the name "Windows 9" has been skipped. After mocking Apple's iOS 8 for a bit, Mark dives into some of the cool features seen in Windows 10 beyond the return of the Start Menu (with fancy new features). And don't forget about server! There is a technical preview of Windows Server which includes these Windows 10 bits, which brings to the discussion about technologies that are going away, like Network Access Protection (now deprecated). What's the future of Active Directory? Is the cloud permeating everything? Mark always provides a great viewpoint.
Richard chats with Brent Ozar about the amazing new hardware coming out for SQL Server. Yeah, it's time to geek out on hardware. Brent discusses some of the amazing small form factor machines coming from Dell and Hewlett-Packard, including the Dell PowerEdge 13G R730xd. What's new there? 24 RAM slots permits up to 1.5TB of RAM! And that's not all, Brent talks about the power of having three stage storage - room of three PCIe based SSD storage, 18 1.8" SATA SSD slots and 8 3.5" hard drive bays. Not only is that a lot of storage, it also provides the flexibility to let SQL Server structure your data into ultra-fast storage, super-fast storage and plain old fast storage. While the cloud is only offering scale out solutions, the latest hardware shows that you can still scale up!
Richard chats with deployment master and control freak Johan Arwidmark about the latest on Configuration Manager 2012 R2 and the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2013. Johan discusses MDT first, talking about how much power actually exists in this free tool from Microsoft - you can start with light-touch deployment, but it's equally capable of doing zero-touch when you really want to scale. And MDT works nicely alongside the pay-product System Center Configuration Manager 2012 R2. You want both! Johan also talks about where PowerShell fits into the picture for deployment as well as Microsoft InTune. And check out the great notes from Johan and Kent Agerlund for optimal configuration of Configuration Manager!
Richard talks to Aidan Finn about Software Defined Storage. Picking up he left off in April talking about Microsoft's Scale-Out File Server, the whole concept of Software Defined Storage is abstracting the details of the storage hardware away from the actual storage process. Aidan digs into how mixtures of SSD and spinning drives to optimize performance using Windows 2012 R2 Storage Spaces reduces costs and simplifies getting significant amounts of storage without any custom gear. And as Aidan says, in the end, it's all just Windows. Storage continues to evolve, and not just for the big enterprise folks - there are clustered storage solutions for small and medium businesses too!
Richard chats with Venkat Kalyanasundaram and David Apolinar about Azure Active Directory. The conversation starts out with a focus on the whole idea of claims-based security and what it takes to make single sign on work, especially with heterogeneous clients (like mobile phones and tablets) and cloud-based applications. David digs into the use and limitations of Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) letting you keep your AD infrastructure in-house and your cloud-based applications authenticating against it. What happens when you want to scale further? Azure AD opens the door not only to high-scaling authentication infrastructure, but also support for a larger diversity of devices and applications. There are thousands of cloud-based applications supported by Azure Active Directory! Azure AD also opens the door to support for multi-factor authentication and other features to keep identities more secure and resistant to hacking. Check it out!
Richard catches up with Jeffrey Snover, father of PowerShell and one of the moving forces behind Desired State Configuration (DSC). After just over a year since the original version of DSC came out, Windows 2012 R2 has shipped and DSC has gone through a number of revisions. Jeff refers to a Window Powershell Blog post on DSC Resource Wave 6! Not bad for one year. DSC is also part of Windows Management Framework Preview 5.0 which is an ongoing bundling of all sorts of tools you need to really take advantage of the power of Desired State Configuration. The conversation also digs into new version of DSC for Azure and for Linux. The Linux version you can find on GitHub as an open source project! Jeff wraps up the show with some information about the Open Management Initiative and a whitepaper called Just Enough Administration. Huge show with a ton of info, including a callout to our sponsor, ScriptRock!
Richard chats with Troy Hunt about some of the crazy things being said in the same of security these days. Troy's first story involves a UK cell phone company that decided that short passwords made their customer experience better - insanity! This event a number of others inspired Troy to start @infosecinsanity. Follow to see some amazing bad security statements by companies that really ought to know better. The conversation also digs into the state of affairs around SSL, why CPUs have the cycles to encrypt everything and the need to use a decent certificate in the first place.
Richard talks to Alan Sharp-Paul about the challenges of building a DevOps culture in your organization. Alan talks about the problem just defining DevOps - it's approaching the abused word state with so many organizations piling onto the term. The discussion digs into the early stages of DevOps culture, focusing first on discovery: Do you really know how your infrastructure is set up and configured? For sure? How do you check? And what about drift? Providing visibility into how your systems actually work starts the conversation about making them better, and those conversations start you down the path of a DevOps culture. Have a listen!
Richard chats with Microsoft Evangelist Scott Klein about the Microsoft Azure Management Libraries (MAML). MAML wraps up the REST calls to Azure to allow you to do a huge host of cloud tasks, such as provisioning new instances, monitoring, configuration, maintenance and more. Yeah, it's a dev library, but it can build things that the operations people want! Scott discusses three pretty powerful scenarios for MAML: automating elasticity/scaling, testing in the cloud and creating Software as a Service apps. You can get more info from Brady Gaster's Blog Post on MAML.
Richard chats with David Tesar about DevOps for the Microsoft-oriented IT Pro. DevOps has been a big thing in the Linux/Open Source community for the past few years, and it's starting to really resonate in the Microsoft world also. David focuses on the core ideals of DevOps - that it is first and foremost of culture of building better systems faster. Resist the tools and focus on the people! Not that tools don't have a role, but without culture, the tools can't help you. David has a blog post of IT Pro Learning Resources that points to other interviews, conference sessions and a Microsoft Virtual Academy course on getting started with DevOps. Check 'em out!
Richard chats with Microsoft Premier Field Engineer Clint Huffman about his book the Windows Performance Analysis Field Guide. Clint is also the genius behind the Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL) Tool on CodePlex. See a theme here? Clint is focused on understand why things in Windows (and elsewhere) go fast or slow. And he's willing to share his insight! The book focuses primarily on Windows challenges, and also references the Windows Performance Analyzer (WPA). Between PAL and WPA, you have all the tools you need to understand Windows performance better - and they're free! But the book isn't free, and you should buy it. It's real world advice from a guy who's been there and done that.
Richard chats with Stephen Rose about how Windows has continued evolving with some thoughts on what future versions might look like. Windows 8 brought the tablet to the Microsoft space, and with it a chance to explore how different form factors fit into the enterprise. Stephen talks about the cool kinds of retail projects he's working with that are taking advantage of these form factors. This naturally leads to a discussion about what new features might look like, how the experience can continue to be improved, managing more devices, more portable identity and configuration, and whole new areas of work. Lots of interesting thoughts on the future of Windows!
Richard chats with Steven Murawski on the day he is leaving Stack Exchange to join the Chef team as a Community Manager. So naturally, the conversation turns to Chef. Chef is a configuration management system that comes from the Linux world - it's scripting language is Ruby. But in the past year, Chef has added Windows to it's repertoire with support from Microsoft and Desired State Configuration. Steven mentions a free DSC EBook you can download from Powershell.org to help get you started on DSC. There's also the Learn Chef site to get you started on Chef. It's early days for Chef and Windows, but things continue to improve - Steven also mentions John Ewart's book Managing Windows Servers with Chef as a starting point for managing Windows and Linux servers side by side.
Richard talks to Jeff Stokes about the role of User Access Control (UAC) in making Windows client machines safer. Safer? Actually, the conversation starts out with the reality of UAC as it first arrived on the scene in the Vista days - an annoyance that was immediately turned off. But Jeff digs into how UAC is a part of the compatibility features of Windows. The discussion then turns to a broader discussion of the security features in Windows: Taking the time to understand them will save time and money in your organization. UAC is not the enemy!
Richard chats with Steve Thomas about Microsoft User Experience Virtualization (UE-V). The conversation starts out with a focus on Application and Desktop Virtualization - while server virtualization has become the norm, App-V is catching on more slowly. Steve talks about how the back end of desktop virtualization has become more like the cloud, being very elastic and flexible to better utilize resources. On the front end, things are even more interesting. UE-V provides portability to the relatively light-weight things that are important on the desktop, such as configuration settings, favorites, printers and so on. Like Active Directory Profile Roaming, but without all the baggage. You should check it out!
Richard chats with Chris Jackson about his experiences working with large organizations migrating off of XP. Once you've done the hard work of taking an inventory of all your organization's applications and platform requirements, how do you use that information to benefit the company? Chris talks about moving over to a more template-driven approach to software delivery using System Center Configuration Manager and the Deployment Toolkit. Then the conversation turns to web browsers - how hard is it to get the latest browser into your organization? Chris discusses the various built-in compatibility features in Internet Explorer as well as the thinking around building a continuously evolving application platform. Let the latest features being offered in the platform benefit your organization!
Richard chats with Dana Epp about multi-factor authentication. The conversation starts out with some definition around multi-factor authentication - something you know and something you have. Most of the time, the thing you know is your user name and password. Dana digs into authenticating using the most common thing you have, the smartphone. Tools like Twilio can help you bring text messaging to your system. Beyond the phone, there are dedicated devices like YubiKey that provide a different thing you have. The battle of better identity has been going on for some time, Dana mentions Dick Hart's amazing identity keynote from Oscon 2005.
While at Tech Ed US in Houston, Richard chatted with Paula Januszkiewicz about the current state of system security. Paula talks about a new wave of exploits aimed at administrators, taking advantage of their elevated privileges to spread malware into systems. The conversation also digs into more subtle exploits, and the ability of black hats to cover their tracks by modifying logs to hide their actions. Listen also for a quick discussion on passwords and multi-factor authentication. Things are getting better!
While at Tech Ed 2014, Richard chat with John Craddock about the latest incarnation of Active Directory Federation Services - don't call it version three, it's the Windows Server 2012 R2 version! John discusses some of the new features of ADFS, including it's integration with oAuth2 to allow a more lightweight approach to authentication, authorization and federation. Lots of great thinking from one of the best minds in identity!
While at Tech Ed 2014 in Houston, Richard chats with Jeremy Moskowitz about group policy in Windows 8. Jeremy talks about his session at Tech Ed called Group Policy Notes from the Field which focuses on how group policy is often unfairly blamed for performance problems. Check out the video and watch for a link at the end of it to get access to the performance tools that Jeremy uses! The conversation also digs into PolicyPak, the tools Jeremy and his team have built to allow group policy to apply to third party products like FireFox. And the latest incarnation works in the cloud against non-domain-joined machines!
It's the Questions and Answers from SQL Intersection in Orlando! Richard moderates a panel of the usual suspects: Kim Tripp, Paul Randal, Brent Ozar and occasional contributions from some of the SQL Team, Kendra Little, Jeremiah Pesha and more! Lots of discussion around virtualization, different recovery and fail over strategies, the infamous heap-vs-clustering debate, using SSDs with SQL Server... the list goes on. It's a long show, but a good one!
Richard talks to Damian Flynn about Windows Azure Pack for Windows Server and Service Management Automation. Big confusing names for a really simple concept - how do we bring self-service to the users of our infrastructure? The discussion starts out around the idea of service management automation, using tools to make your IT systems more service-centric, allowing people to provision and utilize infrastructure on demand. This leads to a conversation on Windows Azure Pack for Windows Server (WAP) - terrible name, but accurate. WAP is all about making Microsoft Azure tooling available in your own infrastructure. While it can stand on it's own, WAP also works well with various components of System Center including Configuration Manager, Operations Manager, Virtual Machine Manager and Orchestrator. This looks to be the best way to bring self-service to your company!
Richard chats with Microsoft PFE Mike O'Neill about his work with customers using large scale Exchange sites. Mike is one of the contributors to You had Me at EHLO, the Exchange team blog site. The conversation digs into how Exchange 2013 is the most Powershell-centric version of Exchange yet... you really need to know it! Mike talks about the efficiency and scriptability of Exchange and Powershell, as well as the migration path from Exchange on-premise to Exchange in the Cloud.
Recorded in front of a live audience at SQL Intersection in Orlando, Florida, this panel discussion focuses on the new features in SQL 2014. The panelists are all Microsoft engineering folks, deeply involved in creating SQL 2014. The discussion does NOT focus on Hekaton, but rather all the other cool performance and reliability enhancements coming in SQL 2014. Okay, there's a little Hekaton.
Hot off of last week's news about Heartbleed, Richard talks to Troy Hunt about the size and scope of the problem. Heartbleed is the cool name (and logo) given to a weakness in the OpenSSL library. The news has been hyped, but the exploit is real and there's really no way to know what data has been compromised. And if you don't run OpenSSL on your servers, do you know what your networking gear runs? After you're done listening to the show, check out Troy's awesome blog post on Heartbleed and do some checks on your systems. You'll be glad you did!
Richard chats with Aidan Finn about the Scale-Out File Server features of Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 R2. Aidan digs into a bunch of the improvements that have come with Windows Server 2012 R2, including SMB 3.0., which opens the door to dramatic network speed advantages for such things as live VM migration. But it also impacts how we do file sharing, and Aidan digs deep into the new features in Storage Spaces and Scale-Out File Servers. Looks like you'll want the latest version!
Richard chats with Michael Nygard about the concept of resilience in the IT world. Michael starts out the conversation talking about what resilience really is - do your systems keep working even when things aren't working perfectly? Or are they brittle, where one problem takes the whole system down. The conversation broadens to more of a DevOps conversation, since ultimately resiliency involves everyone that builds, tests, operates and uses software. And then Michael goes a step further - is your team, processes and organization resilient?
Steve Evans makes a return visit to the show to talk a little DevOps. The conversation starts out with the work he's currently doing with a bio-tech company, and how the little changes their making to their processes are affected overall productivity to the better. You don't have to call it DevOps, you can just call it 'doing your work more effectively.' The conversation digs into the automation side of things as well as how you to gradually move your culture and processes into a faster, more reliable and higher quality lifestyle. DevOps doesn't happen over night!
Richard chats with fellow Canadian Aaron Bertrand about his work with SQL Server. Aaron starts out the conversation with a mention around SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 coming out of primary tech support and the push to get one last service pack out for both versions. You can contribute to that discussion at the Microsoft Connect site. Aaron also discusses some of the nasty bad practices he's found in supposedly 'good' databases - like dates in strings! We all know better, but are we actually doing better? Time to poke around your database for the truth!
Richard catches up with Tony Redmond on all things Exchange. The conversation starts out talking about the fact that Exchange 2013 has a service pack, even though there have been quarterly cumulative updates - in reality, Exchange 2013 SP1 is really cumulative update 4 (CU4). Tony digs into what it takes to install these updates, the fact that testing continues to be not optional - it's your mail system, just because it's tested in Exchange Online doesn't mean it won't have problems in your configuration. The discussion also digs into some of the key features in CU4, including MAPI over HTTP and the simplified DAGs. Exchange continues to evolve!
Richard chats with Microsoft PFE Kurt Falde about the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET). It might be a weak name, but it's an amazing set of tools - a whole different way of defending a workstation from malware exploits. Kurt dives into how EMET can lock down PCs in a standardized way, including controlling specific SSL certificates for key web sites. But the bulk of the focus of EMET is on protecting software from changes by malware. Rather than using fingerprint matching the way typical anti-virus software works, EMET tracks known-good states of common software and stops changes to them from happening - an effective strategy for zero-day exploits!
Richard talks to Jeremy Thake about the move of Sharepoint into the Cloud. The conversation starts off with a bit of a history lesson and how Sharepoint has taken a few twists and turns along the way offering different programming models, and really struggling with what it is actually good at. Jeremy discusses how moving Sharepoint to the Cloud is really about shaking off some of the baggage of the past to focus on the core goodness in Sharepoint. It's not just about paying by the user, it's also about reinforcing good governance in Sharepoint. Whether you're moving to the cloud or not, Jeremy has some great thoughts about creating sustainable Sharepoint environments.
Richard talks to Gene Kim about his experiences in DevOps - the research he's done on high performing IT teams, and how that knowledge has evolved into what we now know as DevOps. Gene mention's John Willis' blog post on The Convergence of DevOps as a great explanation of why DevOps is happening now. Beyond The Phoenix Project, Gene and a team of luminaries are working on the DevOps CookBook, to catalog and codify the practices of a high performing DevOps team.
Back with Minasi! Richard chats with Mark Minasi about the end of XP... coming in April of 2014! The discussion rapidly turns to a history lesson about the evolution of Windows, the bumps that led to Vista, the fix that was Windows 7, and the concern around Windows 8... and what about Windows 9? As with any conversation with Mark, the discussion ranges all over the topic space!
Richard chats with Matt Wrock about the power of boxstarter.org for building and configuring PCs quickly. The conversation starts out talking about what Boxstarter can do for you - automate the installation of software and patches. Boxstarter depends on Chocolatey and PowerShell 2. Everything is public, if you'd like a private version, you should check out MyGet for a private configuration. Check it out!
So how do you learn? Richard talks to Kim Tripp about technology learning. The conversation starts out with responsibility for learning - what is the role of the learner (typically an employee), and the company? Who pays for what? What is the commitment to provide value for everyone involved? And how do you learn? How does instructor-led training compare to a video course, or a conference? Kim and Richard share their experiences teaching, leading and learning.
Richard talks to Boris Hristov about Distributed Transaction Replay in SQL Server 2012. New to SQL Server 2012, Distributed Replay uses a SQL Profiler template to collect transactions that can be replayed on your server. The tool is largely command line, and can be distributed across as many as sixteen clients. Boris talks about the different types of replays that can be done to simulate a workload in detail for testing purposes - say to make sure an upgrade will work properly, or in stress mode, to see what the limits of your SQL Server are. This is a great new tool for your SQL toolbox, check it out!
Richard chats with Ed Horley about his new book, Practical IPv6 for Windows Administrators. The conversation starts out with the evolution of IPv6 from a Windows perspective, starting back in 2006 with Vista and Windows Server 2008. Ed digs into the fundamental things that all administrators need to know about IPv6, how it works in your internal network, the advantages it gives, and how to get away from the archaic thinking that IPv4 has created to keep itself alive for so long. You need this book!
What happens when a podcast host talks to another podcast host? You get confused about who is interviewing who. Hal Rottenberg from the PowerScripting podcast chats with Richard about DevOps - and the conversation travels all over the spectrum on the topic. Where is the DevOps movement really at? Is this something we all should be doing? Is it developer-centric or operations-centric? How do you actually get better, and how do you get your whole organization to get better as well? Fun conversation with Hal!
Richard chats with PFE Chris Evans about using Surface devices in the enterprise. After a quick recap of the various Surface models, the hard conversation starts - how do we use tablets in the enterprise in general? What does it take to get your own custom apps on a Surface device? Do the ARM devices make sense? Can Bring Your Own Device really work? Chris takes them all on and outlines some interesting plans for pilot projects in your organization. The Tablets are coming!
Happy New Year! Richard chats with Stephen Rose about the crazy things that went on at Microsoft in 2013 and some thoughts about the potential of 2014. A little Windows 8, tablets, Windows Phone and new development tools... and what about the whole CEO thing? Fun conversation to help you start thinking about your goals in 2014!
Richard talks to Martin Booth from Microsoft about their vision of the People-Centric IT. A cornerstone of this vision is unified device management, covering desktops, laptops, tablets and phones across all platforms. Martin digs into how tools like Intune, Configuration Manager and Window Server 2012 R2 work together to be able to deal with Bring Your Own Device, effective Information Security and data sharing. The conversation gets beyond the devices and into the diversity of services such as multi-part authentication, file sharing and computing. A great set of thoughts to end the year! Merry Christmas!
Richard chats with Steven Murawski about implementing Microsoft's Desired State Configuration (DSC) in the Stack Exchange infrastructure. DSC is part of the Windows Management Framework 4.0 that comes with Windows Server 2012 R2 but is also backward compatible for Server 2012 and 2008 R2. Steven talks about being able to create detailed configuration documentation as part of DSC that then actually works with tools to generated pre-configured virtual machines in detail. The conversation also dives into the magic of using source control to handle these files and how it helps connect Ops folks to developers to support self-service configuration, reduce problems between the teams and generally spread the DevOps goodness.
Richard talks to Scott Lowe about VMWare's NSX product, which provides network virtualization to the vSphere world. NSX came from VMWare's acquisition of Nicira in July 2012 and their own development efforts to bring Software Defined Networking to life. Scott talks about being able to provision and configure networking the same way that you do with virtual machines, and what that means to networking, applications, security and performance. The conversation also looks to the future where applications and infrastructure are smart enough to move themselves together for speed, a part for reliability and know what hardware to use and how. Great thinking beyond the basics of virtualization!
Richard chat with Dana Epp about the latest on Microsoft Intune. Dana digs into the latest in Intune, which is it's second version, both for small organizations and large. The basic version is a pure cloud offering for smaller organizations that allows you to push software, manage policy and track inventory with no on-premise infrastructure. And it works across platforms - Windows, Windows RT, Windows Phone 8 and Apple iOS! Dana talks briefly about large organization implementations using System Center Configuration Manager as well. Intune is shaping up to be a great way to manage configuration for all your organization's devices in one place.
Richard talks to Kevin Kline about what's coming in SQL Server 2014. Yes, the database continues to evolve and Kevin digs into many of the new features. The conversation also jumps into the NoSQL movement and it's many forms, including making simple data storage easier for developers as well as the creation and management of big data solutions. Kevin also talks about the impact of new licensing models and new hardware of SQL, and how the role of the database in the organization continues to evolve.
While at DevIntersection in Las Vegas, Richard chatted with Eric Shupps about his experiences dealing with Sharepoint after the deployment. Although the conversation starts out post-deployment, it becomes apparent that more training, more thinking and more planning are all good things to do with Sharepoint, whether after the deploy or before. How do you make governance palatable? And how do you introduce new processes to your users in a way that makes it not an obstacle, but an asset - Eric provides some great thinking here!
While at DevIntersection in Las Vegas, Richard sat down with Mark Minasi to talk about Windows 8.1. And some of the show is even about Windows 8.1! Mark dives into a discussion around Server 2012R2 (the server side of Windows 8.1) and how Hyper-V is all over VMWare these days. The conversation also explores the evolution of Active Directory, and possibly it's end. Lots of interesting thought and exploration over what it means to live in the latest Windows world.
While at SQLIntersection in Las Vegas, Richard moderates a panel of Kim Tripp, Paul Randal, Brent Ozar and Jonathan Kehayias. The panel takes questions from the audience about SQL Server and hilarity ensues.
Richard talks to Venkat Kalyanasundaram about using IPv6 in your internal networks. Since Vista, IPv6 has been on by default on all versions of Windows. Should you leave it on? What breaks if you turn it off? What is the overhead of leaving it on? Venkat discusses all of these issues, as well as the advantages of using IPv6. We aren't likely to be running in a pure IPv6 world any time soon, but you can start using IPv6 internally today!
Richard talks to Tom Hollingsworth about how Software Defined Networking (SDN) and IPv6 can work together. The conversation starts out talking about how SDN has brought virtualization to networking, with the same amazing impact that it has had on servers and storage. Tom then explains how SDN provides the ability to rapidly customize, deploy and tune networking for each application - and the problems that IPv4 brings to the table. So enter IPv6 and an approach to make IPv6 adoption less frightening and more gradual. Using SDN to deploy IPv6 as part of your application package one app at a time could revolutionize your network in just a few years!
Richard chats with Clint Huffman about memory management in Windows. But first a quick conversation about the state of affairs these days, including Clint's work on the Windows Performance Field Guide, due to be published in early 2014. Clint runs down the various elements that matter about memory, the effects of running 32 bit apps in a 64 bit OS and more. And along the way, he mentions lots of great resources, including the PFE Performance Guide, the Windows Performance Toolkit and a knowledge base article on How to Use Poolmon. Check 'em out!
Richard chats with Erin Stellato about being an accidental DBA. What's an accidental DBA? It's the guy who was standing closest to the SQL Server when the last guy quit! Erin talks about the key things that you need to know to handle the basic care and feeding of a SQL Server. The conversation digs into understanding what you have, how you back it up (and restore it), simple things to keep your databases healthy and knowing when to call for help. You don't have to be a DBA to do things right!
Richard chats with Stephen Foskett about where storage is at these days. The conversation spans far and wide, talking about how Microsoft's latest products (like Exchange 2013) are rather SAN-hostile, why we're all happy to get away from FibreChannel, our indifference toward iSCSI and the impact of NFS and SMB3 on file systems. Stephen also talks about just how fast fast is these days - whether it's SSDs, PCI-E based storage or USB3 thumb drives! It's all about the iOPs! Make sure you check out Tech Field Day!
Richard talks to Brian Komar about the issues around Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). Brian starts out talking about being a responsible PKI authority within your organization and how certificate revocation lists (CRLs) are a bigger issue than ever. From there, the conversation turns to the challenges of actually securing the delivery of certificates to devices that are never going to be joined to active directory. Actually understanding the costs of BYOD are an important part of the equation - maybe it's cheaper, simpler and safer to just distribute company devices to everyone?
Richard chats with Justin Morris about his experiences deploying Lync 2013 to customers. Lync 2013 has been out for a little less than a year and offers awesome levels of integration between email, instant messaging and telephony. Justin digs into some of the key features of using Lync before the conversation digresses into a debate on smartphones, comparing Skype with Lync and the idea of universal endpoints. Along the way there are some audio quality issues, the humor of which isn't lost on anyone when talking about Lync! Justin also talks about the advantages and disadvantages of on-premise, hybrid and cloud deployment options with Lync. They aren't the same features everywhere!
Richard chats with David Jones about identity security. The conversation starts out talking about the wonders of Single Sign On, followed by the horrors - the security exploits that can and do occur. David sites the Mandiant Security Report for more info on the exploits taking place. From there, David talks about using multi-factor authentication and the potential risks, as per the xckd on security. As we get more serious about managing identity, the idea of outsourcing to companies like PingIdentity is discussed. What's the best way to get identity right?
Richard chats with Mickey Gousset about System Center Orchestrator 2012. Mickey talks about the role orchestrator plays interacting between other System Center products (like Operations Manager and Service Manager), and/or third party apps, creating a place for all your scripts to live. Yes, it's true, scripts live on with Orchestrator, although you can use other tools to build runbooks using drag-and-drop tools as well. The conversation also digs into the thriving third-party community for Orchestrator, including Orchestrator on CodePlex. Check it out!
Richard talks to Brian Desmond about some of the new features coming to Active Directory in Server 2012 R2. The conversation starts off talking about the focus on Federation Services in Server 2012 R2, including support for non-Windows devices connecting to a domain via Workspace Join. Brian also digs into features that were added in Server 2012 like multi-factor authetication and refers to the Active Directory Team Blog post on Multi-Factor Security. Is Active Directory getting old? Perhaps, but it's getting regular work done to keep it relevant in the modern IT space.
Richard talks to Mitch Garvis about his experiences comparing vSphere and Hyper-V. Which one is better? Mitch gets right to the point - they're both incredibly capable virtualization solutions. It's all about the tools around the hypervisor - whether that's vSphere on the VMWare side and System Center on the Microsoft side. So they both have their merits, but Mitch is all about Hyper-V. The conversation dives deep on the evolution of IT using virtualization, not just in the data center, but all the way out to the desktop.
Richard chats with Robert Bogue about the current state of SharePoint 2013. As Robert states, there still isn't a shrink-wrap version of SharePoint 2013, but if you have a Volume License Agreement or similar, you can download SharePoint 2013 today. But should you? The conversation digs into the cloud focus of SharePoint 2013, and how installation and configuration has gotten substantially more complex - it's all about the certificates! Or you can run in the cloud. If you can, take a SharePoint 2013 VM out for a spin and decide for yourself!
Richard talks to Jeffrey Snover about Desired State Configuration (DSC). DSC is part of the Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview, although it is also available as the Windows Management Framework 4.0 Preview that can run on Windows 7 SP1 and Server 2008 R2 SP1. Jeffrey explains that DSC is all about building configuration information that can be applied to a server to install and configure services exactly to specification and resist 'drifting' of the configuration over time. DSC takes Powershell to the next level!
Richard chats with Scott Forsyth about IIS 8 and 8.5. IIS 8 shipped with Server 2012, and IIS 8.5 with Server 2012 R2 (which at publication was still in preview). Scott talks about the new features of IIS 8, many of which are focused on large scale web hosting, where hundreds of web sites are hosted together. The conversation also digs into the back porting of features, including dynamic IP restriction and FTP Login restrictions, while being released with IIS 8, are also now available for IIS 7. Scott also talks about specific features new to IIS 8.5, including dynamic web site activation and next generation logging. Lots of cool new features in the latest IIS!
Richard chats with Steven Murawski about building a DevOps culture at your organization. The conversation talks about the fundamentals of DevOps, digging into bringing operations and developers closer together to be able to iterate on features more rapidly - as Steve says, it's about deploying small changes more frequently. Steven refers to a .NET Rocks episode with Jez Humble about Continuous Delivery as well as a RunAs Radio episode with Jeffrey Snover on DevOps. Want to get going on DevOps? Check out the Server Fault blog and Steven's blog.
Richard brings Richard Hicks back to talk about Software Defined Networks (SDN). Windows Server 2012 brings many new capabilities to the role, but Hyper-V's advancements in virtual networking are especially important. Richard talks about how Windows Server 2012 R2 takes virtual networking to another level, making SDNs more a reality than ever before. The conversation digs into the challenges around bridging between the virtual network and the rest of the world, as well as new generation tools for monitoring your network. SDNs are in their early days on the Microsoft stack, but they are here to stay!
Back in the studio at last, Richard talks to Konstantinos Theos about disaster recovery strategies for Active Directory. Backup and restore, test environments, policy management and practice - all the essentials of keeping Active Directory alive through a disaster. AD isn't much different from any other system, it takes all of these things (and did we mention practice?) to be effective in a disaster.
While hanging at TechEd US in New Orleans, Richard chatted with Paula Januszkiewicz about her talks and experience working the 'black hat' side of security. Paula describes some of the amazing tools that hackers have today to break into servers and desktops - including an amazing discussion on how to break into a PC using the recovery options in Windows! This is a discussion that will get you thinking hard about your policies around patching, security-in-depth and auditing!
While at TechEd US in New Orleans, Richard sat down with Stephen Rose to talk about the new features in Windows 8.1. Don't call it a service pack! Stephen runs down all the cool features in Windows 8.1, including the return of the Start button (sort of), being able to boot directly to desktop and Mirrorcast - a wireless way to connect to external displays. Digging deeper into enterprise related features, the conversation also digs into new workplace join and the open mobile device management support. You're gonna want this update!
While at DevTeach in Toronto, Richard sat down with Ed Musters to talk about document management in SharePoint. The conversation starts out exploring why SharePoint is used for document management - resisting sending files in email, better security, document control and actually knowing where everything is. Ed describes the challenges of setting up a coherent taxonomy of documents, how everything needs to be tagged and organized in a way that makes it discoverable and controlled. And the same rules apply to outward facing web sites - great taxonomies make sure the right data is shown to the right people! Ultimately, everything is a document.
While at DevTeach, Richard chatted with Richard Baumet about his experiences at the 2012 PASS conference, including the sneak peeks at the upcoming version of SQL Server. The conversation largely focuses on how changes in hardware, including faster and more CPU cores, faster and larger memory and storage, ultimately shape how SQL Server works. An exciting time to be a DBA!
While at DevTeach in Toronto, Richard talks to Craig Utley about his experiences building business intelligence systems. The discussion starts out with the concepts of data warehousing, OLAP and business intelligence, and how many business owners get fooled into focusing only on the results of the business intelligence effort without acknowledging the huge body of work that goes into it with ETL, data cleansing and coherency. Craig talks about the right ways to get into a business intelligence project (it's about the business) so that you can avoid the pitfalls that lead to a failed project.
While at TechDays in San Francisco, Richard sat down with Steve Evans to talk about the new virtual networking features in Server 2012 Hyper-V. The conversation starts with a focus on the challenges of networking in a virtualized world - problems around assigning NICs to individual VMs, dealing with failover, etc. But as Steve describes, once you get to 2012, physical NICs are entirely about bandwidth - teaming as necessary. And the virtual side creates a separate NIC for each role, assigned to VLANs and moving across the collective physical hardware. It takes a lot of planning, but networking has never been more flexible!
While at TechDays SF, Richard moderated a panel on Women in IT. The panelists include Jennelle Crothers, Jessica DeVita, Christa Anderson and CA Callahan. The panel discussed the role of community in engaging more women into IT, finding peer support, and dealing with the various challenges of being a part of a still male-dominated industry. There are a number of questions posed by the audience and the conversation ultimately ends up focusing on getting kids involved in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) at an earlier age.
While in San Francisco at TechDays, Richard runs into Mark and ends up with a recording about their favorite science topics. Not exactly an IT show, but good fun!
Richard talks to Dana Epp about using cloud technology for disaster recovery. Dana digs into Microsoft Azure first, talking about how the new Azure Storage Services and secure connectivity make it much easier to maintain replicas of your virtual machines in Azure, synchronizing only the changes on a regular basis. The conversation also covers some of the Amazon EC2 features available for disaster recovery, as well as focusing on not giving up your responsibilities and an IT Pro - it's still your data and needs protecting, the cloud won't do everything for you! Dana also refers to Scott Guthrie's Blog Post on the new IaaS features of Azure, including even better pricing!
Richard talks to Johan Arwidmark about his experiences doing deployment with Windows, using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, Configuration Manager and more!
Richard chats with Aidan Finn about Windows 8 Hyper-V Client. With Windows 8, Microsoft brings Hyper-V support to the desktop. Aidan discusses a variety of use cases for Hyper-V on the client, including presentations, testing, security and that darn XP/IE6 app you just can't seem to get rid of. The conversation also digs into the licensing requirements for using Hyper-V on the desktop as well as the differences between Hyper-V on Windows 8 and Hyper-V on Server 2012.
Richard chats with Ed Horley about something other than IPv6 - building private cloud infrastructure. Ed talks about the innovations happening in the cloud space at the biggest level (large enterprise) and smallest (start ups)... but relatively little in between. The conversation digs into some of the standards emerging such as OpenStack to make utility computing even simpler. Also check out Microsoft's Private Cloud offering which explores the tooling and techniques for getting your own infrastructure more like the cloud.
Richard chats with Brent Ozar about his experiences deploying SQL Server 2012. The conversation digs into the challenges of running SQL 2012 on Windows 2008R2 - and why you'd want to upgrade to SQL 2012 in the first place. For Brent's projects, it came down to utilizing Always On technology, which depends on advanced clustering features that 2008R2 struggles with - so SQL 2012 is best on Server 2012! From there, Brent talks about the impact of the cloud on on-premise servers, the need for better instrumentation and understanding of your data when talking to business. It's a fun time to be a DBA!
Richard talks to PFE Jeff Stokes about the Microsoft Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK). The ADK is a web installer that pulls together a bunch of free tools from Microsoft that can help you understand how PCs are performing. Jeff talks about the Assessment Toolkit, which is a small app that can run on a PC and determine problems with drivers such as memory leaks, as well as whether or not a better video card would improve browser performance. Also mentioned in the show is KB 2775511, which is a roll up for 90 hotfixes for Windows 7 SP1 and Server 2008 R2 SP1 that can significantly improve performance and reliability. It's recommended for everyone, but doesn't show up in Windows Update - you have to go get it from the Windows Update Catalog. Finally, the conversation also digs into risk assessments done by PFE, and Jeff brings up a video on the new Risk Assessment As a Service. Check it out!
Richard chat with PFE Nibin PM from Microsoft Gulf in Kuwait about his work deploying Active Directory domain controllers in virtualized environments. Nibin digs into the history of virtualized domain controllers first, with the biggest caution of all: don't do snapshots of domain controllers! At least, not until Server 2012. The conversation digs into the challenges of Active Directory maintaining synchronization between different domain controllers, how virtualization influences that and ultimately how Server 2012 solves some of these problems. Nibin also recommends checking out the Premier Field Engineering blog as well as the Directory Services blog.
Richard talks to Microsoft Premier Field Engineer Heath Graves about the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF). MOF is Microsoft's guidance document for IT, covering every day practices and activities, as well as digging into governance, risk and compliance. Heath discusses how his experiences in the Air Force taught him to value clear documentation and procedure to not only get things working right, but to pass that information along to other reliably. Take a look at the Microsoft Operations Framework.
Richard talks to Robert Cain about getting started with business intelligence. The conversation starts out talking about the role of SQL Server, Analysis Service and various tools needed to get business intelligence up and running. Robert discusses using tools like Excel PowerPivot to do rapid prototyping for potential business intelligence solutions versus the big bang approach of building a data warehouse. Thinking about getting your company using business intelligence? Here's a place to start!
While at the MVP Summit, Richard chats with Tony Redmond about his experiences with Exchange 2013 so far. Exchange 2013 shipped in October of 2012, but as of mid-February, could only be deployed in greenfield scenarios - to get to co-existence with Exchange 2007 and 2010, you need current service packs as well as a yet-to-be-released cumulative update to Exchange 2013. Tony talks about how the interplay between Exchange 2013, Sharepoint 2013, Office 2013 and Lync offer awesome features, but at the expense of some additional deployment and configuration challenges. And don't forget about the cloud! Exchange 2013 is being rolled out to Office 365 as well, which has an impact on the on-premise features also. Awesome discussion about where Exchange is going!
Richard chats with Robert Smith about his experiences tuning Windows to operate with Virtualized Desktops. Robert starts out with dealing with boot times with Windows 7 - some customers were waiting up to ten minutes to boot! Careful boot log analysis finds answers. The conversation also digs into the whole cycle of patching, WSUS, service packs, hot fixes - every time a base image has to change, it impacts users. If you're even thinking about VDI, there's some great tips here!
Richard talks to Dana Epp about his on-going battles with password security. The conversation digs into various security issues, including public WiFi exploits, rainbow and hash tablets and more. Dana also talks about the rash of account hijacking in 2012 that made a mess of online identities - and the danger of single sign on when that happens. While he's still looking for the perfect solution to not having a password, Dana has a bunch of tips for doing a better job with yours, and your company's security.
Richard talks to Chris Conte about his experiences deploying SharePoint into the military. Chris talks about his early days in the Navy as a yeoman, first learning the potential of personal computers to make the work of handling the huge amount of data the military produces easier. The conversation digs into how SharePoint governance is as much a challenge for the military as industry, and how strong metadata infrastructure has made data more findable, understandable and useable. Chris also talks about the concept of 'Responsibility to Share' as opposed to 'Need to Know' - a deep change for the military, but also a huge one to apply to the enterprise. Are you sharing the data you need to share with the people who need to know it? Can SharePoint help?
Richard chats with Benny Lakunishok about storage performance in Exchange 2010. The new storage systems in Exchange 2010 substantially changed the way Exchange works with storage systems. Benny talks about the surprise of having performance problems with Exchange on SANs because of these changes - Exchange 2010 tends to write much larger blocks of data than older versions. Benny mentions JetStress, a free tool from Microsoft for testing the storage system of an Exchange server before Exchange is deployed on it. It can also be used to test how the system behaves under various failure modes, such as a missing LUN, failed disk or array recovery. Lots to think about for the future of your Exchange infrastructure!
Richard chats with Steven Murawski about his work at StackExchange. The conversation starts out digging into how StackExchange avoided hurricane Sandy by failing the site over from New York to Oregon. Steven also talks about the DevOps attitude at StackExchange, how the developers work closely with operations to test new features, keeping performance and reliability at peak. With his primary responsibility at StackExchange being SQL Server, Steven also discusses the benefits he's gotten from moving SQL Server 2012 over to Server 2012 from Server 2008 R2. Check out the blog posts on ServerFault about Moving to SQL 2012, Working towards failure and Failing over for Sandy.
Hey, it's show 300! For the 300th show, Richard chats with Mark Minasi about a variety of topics, including the good and bad of Windows 8. And somehow the metric system creeps in also.
Stick around for the next 300 shows!
Richard talks to Alan Burchill about some of the improvements to Group Policy in Server 2012. The conversation starts out with the new reporting features, including the infrastructure status report that will actually show you when policies have been synchronized between AD servers as well as improve group policy reports to help you understand what policies are (and are NOT) being applied to a given account. Alan then digs into local group policy features in Windows RT (yes, the ARM edition) - you can't join a domain, but you can push local policies onto tablets! For more information around group policy in Server 2012, check out Alan's blog.
Richard talks to Microsoft PFE Bruce Adamczak about the new high availability features for DHCP in Server 2012. The conversation digs into the problems in DHCP and some of the fundamental strategies for dealing with implementing DHCP to be survivable. Bruce then talks about how Server 2012 allows active-active and active-passive groups (don't call them clusters!) of DHCP servers in Server 2012. You can read more about DHCP high availability at Bruce's Blog. Also check out the Windows Team DHCP Blog. Time to think about a more robust DHCP implementation!
For the first show on 2013, Richard chats with Dan Rosanova about big data in the Microsoft space. While the conversation starts out speaking about big data in general, Don focuses in on Hadoop, an open source distributed data manipulation technology that Microsoft has adopted in a big way. Hadoop specializes in doing MapReduce across massive numbers of machines, and if you don't have that many machines, you can always use the cloud. Check out Windows Azure HDInsight for the simplest way to get Hadoop running on Azure. And don't worry if you think you need to run on premise, the SQL Server team is there with Microsoft Big Data. Happy New Year!
While on the US Thanksgiving break of the .NET Rocks Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Richard talked to Tom Canter about the changes in healthcare information technology going on today. The conversation starts out on the architectural challenges of healthcare information systems. Ultimately, Tom digs into what everyone can learn from building large scale integrated systems, showing advanced data discovery that can turn operations into profit centers. Healthcare technology can lead the way!
Richard talks to Aydin Aslaner about his work deploying IPv6 in the mideast and Europe. Aydin talks about how the Turkish government is mandating externally accessible web sites having IPv6 in the next year and government organizations having internal IPv6 in 2014. The conversation also walks through the evolution of IPv6 implementations in your organization, between internal networks, external networks, public facing and bridging. IPv6 can't be ignored any longer!
While on the US Thanksgiving break of the .NET Rocks Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Richard talked with Kamal Abburi about risk assessments around Exchange server. Kamal talks about the common issues he's found in doing risk assessments of Exchange for companies all over the world. Along the way, he talks about a number of powerful tools for doing your own assessment, including the Exchange 2010 Mailbox Server Role Requirements Calculator, the Exchange Performance Data Collection tool, Exchange 2010 Servicing and the Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Build Guide Templates.
During the US Thanksgiving break of the .NET Rocks Visual Studio 2012 Road Trip, Richard chatted with Stephen Rose about the new generation of Windows 8 tablets being deployed into the Enterprise. Stephen talks about the differences between Windows 8 RT and Windows 8 Pro and the strengths and weaknesses of each in the enterprise. He also suggests that we not focus solely on Surface devices - that there are lots of great third party hardware out there as well with their own unique advantages. Is it time for surface in the enterprise?
During the US Thanksgiving break of the .NET Rocks Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Richard chatted with Jeremy Moskowitz about the new group policy features in Windows 8. The discussion starts out with a digression talking about how to influence features in the Microsoft stack before steering back on the subject of Group Policy, specifically Group Policy Preferences with Server 2012 and Windows 8. Jeremy digs into some of the new features available, as well as talking about how his product PolicyPak can help with applying policies to third party products. He also mentions a number of blogs including his own GP Blog, Darren Mar-Elia's GPOGuy and Alan Burchill's Group Policy Central for finding out more about group policy.
While on the break week of the .NET Rocks Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Richard talked to Steve Evans about his experiences with Hyper-V in the field. Steve talks about a company he's working with that uses Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V (effectively version two) and runs down a number of specific tuning elements around networking, VM sizing, CPU allocation, hardware and software redundancy.
While on a break from the .NET Rocks Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Richard talked to Clint Huffman about some of the internal changes to Server 2012. The discussion starts out talking about better utilization of multiple cores, including new NUMA architecture and Performance Monitor counters. Clint also talks about scheduling of threads in relation to NUMA, memory fragmentation and processor allocations. Finally he talks about the new Automatic Memory Dump feature that deals with huge amount of memory you can have in Server 2012 more effectively.
During a break on the .NET Rocks Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Richard talks to Jeff Stokes about Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). Jeff digs into the differences between running a desktop in a virtual environment and a physical environment, especially when the environment resets on shut down. He talks about a script originally developed by Jonathan Bennett of Auto IT Script. This script is modified for the latest features, you can get it on Jeff Stokes Blog. The conversation also talks about the challenges of VDI in general, including a mention of The VDI Delusion.
During a break on the .NET Rocks Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Richard chats with Steven Murawski about web farm management in the Microsoft space. Steve helps to organize the thinking around an array of free Microsoft products including Web Platform Installer 2.0, Web Deploy v2.0, the Web Farm Framework and the Windows Management Framework 3.0.
While on the .NET Rocks Visual Studio 2012 Road Trip Richard chatted with Mark Minasi about some of the new features in Server 2012 - and ended up focusing on the new storage services. Mark explains that with Server 2012, Microsoft has taken software-based storage to a whole new level. No need for expensive SANs (at least at the low end) or even fancy RAID controllers, Server 2012 Storage Services will do it all for you!
While on the .NET Rocks Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Richard sat down with Robert Bogue to talk about ten of the most common mistakes made with Sharepoint. The conversation covers the gambit of Sharepoint infrastructure challenges including SQL Server, disk storage as a whole, networking, monitoring and more!
Richard chats with Rob Gillen about the myths and realities around WiFi security. Rob talks about how the release of passwords in the wild has weakened WPA2-PSK. You need to use an original SSID and long passwords to have a chance to keep your WiFi secure. The conversation also digs into the challenges of open WiFi access as places like coffee shops. Rob also talks about how WiFi Protected Setup has exploits like reaver-wps that can break into a home WiFi network in a matter of hours. He also debunks non-secure security features like hidden SSIDs and MAC address filtering. Finally, Rob rolls out the big guns to talk about WiFi Pineapple, a tool capable of exploiting the preferred wireless network features of smartphones to get them to connect to a man-in-the-middle attack system. Frightening and enlightening!
Richard chats with Mario Hewardt about what IT folks need to know about debugging Windows. Yes, that's right - IT folks should be able to debug Windows. Not the same way that programmers do, but rather focused on how Windows actually works so that they can solve program interaction problems. Mario talks through a scenario he ran into involving an occasionally crashing program and how he used the Debugging Tools for Windows tool kit from the Windows SDK and SysInternals Process Monitor to solve the problem.
Richard chats with former PFE Joe Sack about his work helping queries go faster in SQL Server. Joe talks about his techniques for figuring out what to fix as well as how to fix it, starting with studying wait statistics in dynamic management views - SQL Server knows what it's waiting for! From there the conversation digs into the ways that SQL Server fools itself to perform badly, including cardinality estimate issues and other problems with statistics. Joe also looks at the potential of column store indexes in SQL 2012 - still new cool stuff to come in SQL Server!
Mark Russinovich returns to the show to talk about his new book Trojan Horse and discuss the world of cyberwarfare and malware in general. After scaring the heck out of us with the potential exploitation of computing out there today, the conversation turns to solutions. Mark points out how the white listing approach of iOS and the Apple App Store has been so effective in keeping malware off iOS devices that it is being emulated everywhere, including Microsoft. Richard also pokes at Mark's role around Azure and the cloud - is that where the next generation of exploits will come?
Richard chats with Glenn Berry about SQL Server hardware. Microsoft changed the licensing of SQL Server in 2012 to per-core rather than per-socket, suddenly making SQL Server much more expensive if you've gone to lots of cores. Glenn talks about how to assess your workload to know if you need as many cores as you currently have, why you shouldn't upgrade in place and use old hardware for SQL Server 2012 and the differences between Intel and AMD CPUs in this new world. Lots of geeky hardware speak, but if you do it right, you can make your SQL hardware almost free! Glenn mentions a couple of important web sites related to SQL performance in relation to hardware, including the TPC-E stats and Geekbench to understand how your hardware performs.
Richard talks to Michael Steineke about the new clustering features of Windows 2012. Michael starts with the latest version of Network Load Balancing for clustering and goes from there - looking at how all the major products Microsoft makes, like SQL Server and Exchange, work with clustering. The conversation focuses in on the importance of the new file share clustering capabilities, combined with SMB3 to create awesome high performance shared storage with commodity equipment. Server 2012 changes everything!
Richard chats with Microsoft's Stephen Rose about Windows 8 in the enterprise. Does it make sense? Stephen talks about the specific features available in the enterprise edition of Windows 8. It's not just about tablets!
Richard chats with Microsoft Premier Field Engineer Kamal Abburi about his experiences putting together hybrid implementations of Exchange and Office 365. The conversation starts out focusing on why Exchange in the Cloud at all, and the challenges of making a full migration to Office 365. Kamal mentions some of the regulatory hurdles that some countries put in place requiring some mailboxes to remain in the country of origin. He then digs into the challenge of hybrid implementations, covering the role of ADFS in creating a single sign-on experience, challenges with security and how to do seamless migrations of mailboxes. In the end it appears that hybrid deployment is going to be the most common model used, especially going forward into the next version of Exchange! Check out Office 365 and the Office 365 Deployment Guide.
Richard talks to Victor Mushkatin from the System Center team at Microsoft about Operations Manager 2012. Victor is the former CTO of AVICode, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2010. AVICode's technology has been added to OpsMan to provide detailed instrumentation of .NET applications. The conversation explores how OpsMan 2012 can instrument web and client-based applications end to end to detect reliability and performance issues. Victor also digs into how OpsMan 2012 is a key part of Microsoft's DevOps tool chain strategy.
Richard chats with Justin Morris about the recently announced Lync 2013 Preview. The preview is available for download now, but the product itself is still several months away. Justin talks about how quickly Lync has evolved as an enterprise SIP phone technology into the concepts of presence, integrating email, instant messaging, voice/video calling and desktop sharing together.
Richard chats with Jeffrey Snover about DevOps at Microsoft. The concept of DevOps goes back to a talk that John Allspaw and Paul Hammond did at Velocity called 10 Deploys Per Day. DevOps focuses on having developers and operations working closely together to make rapid deployments possible. Jeff discusses his blog post on the subject of Windows Server 2012, PowerShell 3.0 and DevOps. DevOps is coming to the Microsoft world, are you ready?
Richard talks with Bhargav Shukla about some of the issues he encounters with Exchange 2010 out in the field. The conversation starts out with a long discussion about the impact of mobile device, especially the tendancy today to bring your own device to work. Most users have several devices now syncing with Exchange, not just one or two. This leads to a great knowledge base article on issues with Exchange Active Sync and third party devices. Bhargav then moves onto issues around mailbox size, the impact of active directory performance and load balancing. So many challenges, but only so much time - this show is chocked full of ideas on how to make Exchange perform better!
Richard chats with Jeff Stokes about Microsoft's Windows Assessment Toolkit. Download the ADK here. Another amazing free tool from Microsoft, the Assessment Toolkit gives detailed evaluations on performance, reliability, compatibility and functionality across multiple operating systems, software, low level and application level behavior. Jeff talks about testing new hardware with existing software, with new versions of software, any combination you like. Also mentioned is Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL), which should be in your toolkit also. The Windows Assessment Toolkit is a tool you need to have sitting right beside Microsoft Deployment Toolkit - test every change, every time!
Richard talks to Steve Goodman about mobile mail solutions. Steve starts out talking about getting iPhone to work well with Exchange. Turns out that much of what makes iPhone work well applies to other smart phone devices like Android as well. The conversation also explores the role of the cloud, tablets and where the market is headed. Who knew so much innovation is still coming around email?
Mark Minasi is back! Mark and Richard get into a debate about the role of ARM-based and Intel-based tablets. Mark references a couple of articles he authored. The first discusses how ARM tablets cannot join domains. The second digs into the idea domain joining isn't that big a deal. From there, the conversation turns to the hardware differences, how Intel is making moves to be more competitive with ARM from a power and performance perspective, perhaps eliminating the need for ARM in the enterprise at all. Expect lots of history lessons along the way, these guys are getting old!
Richard chats with Steve Murawski about how Server 2012 affects file sharing. Server 2012 includes SMB3, which allows NIC teaming to allow commodity 1GB NICs to work together to create awesome file transfer rates. But how far can we go with that? Steve talks about how clustering and other services in Server 2012 create a world where you may never need a SAN at all - everything can be a file share!
Richard chats with Rhonda Layfield about the now shipping version of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2012. Rhonda describes the relationship between MDT 2012 and System Center 2012 Configuration Manager - what MDT does and what SCCM does. The conversation continues over to how Group Policy packs are deployed by default in MDT 2012, which might surprise some IT folks. Rhonda also talks about Security Compliance Manager and how it can help you understand where your Group Policy is at, as well as provide policy configuration for specific Windows, Office and Internet Explorer features. You can get MDT and SCM at the Solution Accelerators page on TechNet. Also, check out the Microsoft Security Compliance Manager library page on TechNet for a list of the security baseline settings for various operating systems, Internet Explorer, Exchange and Office.
Richard talks to Robert Bogue about his Nine Keys to SharePoint Success. The conversation starts off with an acknowledgement that a SharePoint implementation, like any business-related project, needs a shared vision that creates value for a business for there to be any chance of success. After all, if you don't define success, how can you know when you've achieved it? From there, Robert discusses the impact of culture change on SharePoint implementations, honestly evaluating how the project is going, the relationship that IT has with the business and how platitudes can keep us from digging deep into problems. Finally, there are some simple things, like the right defaults, that can help make a SharePoint solution successful.
Richard and Mark Minasi go off the RunAs Rails a bit to talk about geek health. At the beginning of 2011 Mark embarked on a diet and exercise regime that a year later reduced his weight by 30%. The conversation is geeky, but that's what we like - Mark has learned how to get his body recalibrated to burn fat rather than carbs, take the weight off and keep it off. Here's the list of links talked about in the show: Nutrition Made Clear, Tap and Track, MyFitnessPal, FitBit, Withings, Zeo and Polar.
Richard chats with Eric Shupps about the process of improving SharePoint performance. Starting with the single-server implementation of SharePoint, Eric walks through each point of tuning SharePoint including database tuning, separating web front ends from application servers, separating off services, etc. Microsoft has a great site on Best Practices for SharePoint Server 2010.
Richard chats with Steve Murawski about the new features in Powershell V3. V3 comes with Server 2012, but should also make an appearance in 2008 R2 and Windows 7. Steve talks about how V3 is utilizing .NET 4 and the DLR for improved performance and flexibility. The new Command Source Adapter uses CDXML to create Powershell proxy commands against WMI API calls, which has made it possible for Server 2012 to ship with 1200 cmdlets, up from the 400 in 2008 R2. Steve also talks about workflows in V3, coming from the .NET 4 workflow foundation engine to create long running powershell tasks that survive the shutdown of the powershell enginer, even reboots. Microsoft seems to get it right on version threes - and Powershell V3 is no exception.
Richard chats with Microsoft Premier Field Engineer Jeff Stokes about his tools and techniques for improving boot performance. Jeff points out that it doesn't matter what version of Windows you're using, all of them can suffer from bad boot performance for a variety of reasons, including third party tools, logon scripts and even group policy.
The first tool on the list for diagnosing boot performance problems is xperf, specifically xbootmgr which is part of xperf. You can get xperf at the Windows Performance Analysis Development Center. xperf is great for all sorts of performance analysis beyond boot performance, and Jeff also points out the codeplex project xperf123 for making using xperf a whole bunch easier.
Jeff also points to Troubleshooting Group Policy Using Event Logs, using Netsh Commands for Network Trace, Richard chats with Microsoft Premier Field Engineer Jeff Stokes about his tools and techniques for improving boot performance. Jeff points out that it doesn't matter what version of Windows you're using, all of them can suffer from bad boot performance for a variety of reasons, including third party tools, logon scripts and even group policy.
The first tool on the list for diagnosing boot performance problems is xperf, specifically xbootmgr which is part of xperf. You can get xperf at the Windows Performance Analysis Development Center. xperf is great for all sorts of performance analysis beyond boot performance, and Jeff also points out the codeplex project xperf123 for making using xperf a whole bunch easier.
Jeff also points to Troubleshooting Group Policy Using Event Logs, using Netsh Commands for Network Trace, Microsoft Network Monitor 3.4, Microsoft Exchange Server Error Code Look-up (which is good for all sorts of error codes, not just Exchange) and of course, Windows Sysinternals as all tools to help you diagnose your boot performance.
Jeff mentions Justin Halls' article on Tools for Troubleshooting slow boots and slow logons. And don't forget to check out Jeff's blog Dude where's my PFE? and Yong Rhee's blog The troubleshooters and problem solvers for even more information!
Richard talks to Richard Hicks about the new features of DirectAccess in Windows Server 2012. DirectAccess first made its appearance in Server 2008 R2 as a way to make VPN connectivity to the network less painful for users. But the server requirements were arduous, to the point that many IT folks could not deploy DirectAccess at all. Richard talks about how this second version of DirectAccess solves many of those problems. Windows Server 2012 isn't here quite yet, but when it is, you're going to want DirectAccess!
Richard talks to Alan Sugano about using the cloud for disaster recovery. Alan discusses how the latest version of Site Recovery Manager (SRM) from VMWare works with certain cloud providers to provide an alternate site for your virtual machines in the event of a disaster. The conversation digs into how much bandwidth is needed, dealing with the initial 'big sync' of data and the on-going costs of operating the cloud as a remote site.
Richard talks to Aidan Finn about the new Hyper-V features in Windows Server 8. Aidan starts off talking about Hyper-V Replica, focusing on it as an awesome solution for virtual machine disaster recovery for small and medium businesses. The conversation continues into exploring how Microsoft has taken their experiences running Azure into improving Hyper-V and Server 8.
Richard chats with Jes Borland about SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). Jes talks about how SSRS has evolved into the latest version with SQL Server 2012, including some new features like reporting monitoring, where reports are generated automatically (and notifications sent out) when data changes. The conversation also digs into some of the administrative capabilities of SSRS including security and multi-tenancy features.
Richard chats with Allan Hirt about the new failover clustering features in SQL Server 2012. SQL Server 2012 has added a number of new features to make clustering more flexible and less wasteful of hardware. Allan talks about how Windows Server 8 will also amp-up the clustering offerings when it ships. The conversation also digs into the controversy around Microsoft deprecating database mirroring in SQL 2012 - it's not the end of the world, the technology won't explode when you upgrade!
Richard talks to Rory McCaw of Infront Consulting about the System Center 2012 suite. The conversation starts with the starting point of System Center - Configuration Manager or Operations Manager, depending on the focus of your organization. From there, the entire suite is explored, including Virtual Machine Manager, Orchestrator, Service Manager, Data Protection Manager, Endpoint Protection and App Controller. Rory explains how the different parts of System Center fit together and why you want to slowly add each product to your organization. This is about getting to preventative IT rather than constantly battling the crises!
Richard talks to Stacia Misner about the new features of Data Analytics 2012. The conversation starts with the evolution of data analytics from 2000 to 2005, 2008, 2008 R2 and now 2012. Then Stacia digs into how Excel has become the defacto client for analysis services, using PowerPivot and PowerPivot for Sharepoint mode. PowerPivot runs from Excel and doesn't require Analysis Services, at least not at first - but eventually you'll want to bring in the back end. Stacia also explains the evolution of the Unified Dimensional Model (UDM) into the Business Intelligence Seminatic Model (BISM) in Analysis Services 2012. Lots of incentive to upgrade to 2012!
Richard talks to Brent Ozar about the upcoming release of SQL Server 2012. While there's certainly lots to talk about around SQL Server 2012, Brent focuses on some of the odder features, like the ability to attach SQL Server to a database accessed over a NAS. Doesn't seem like the best idea, but Brent paints a few scenarios. The conversation also brushes over the NoSQL movement and how SQL Server still plays a role - Brent brings up the SQL Server Connector for Hadoop. Brent also talks about the SQL Server Certified Masters program, how it has evolved from a three week onsite class at Microsoft into a study-at-home, huge exam and six hour lab solution that has made it easier for more people to get certified.
Richard talks to Tony Redmond about DMARC, a new email specification for controlling spam and phishing emails. DMARC is an acronym for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance. It standardizes implementations of Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) so that email servers receiving mail can be sure that the domains the email identifies with are actually the sources of the email. Tony also digs into the deeper concepts of DMARC, including receiving servers being able to communicate back with source servers to indicate when email is being marked as spam. The conversation digs into the larger concepts of spam solutions, talking about how cloud is helping to create safer environments for email and how email will ultimately need to evolve to stay relevant in business environments.
Richard talks to Mike Jones about implementing IPv6 at home. After listening to RunAs Episode 205 about IPv6, Mike set about to get himself ready for World IPv6 day. Mike talks about discovering what his ISP (Comcast) was doing for IPv6, and how you can implement IPv6 in your network with or without ISP support. He almost mentions two key resources - one is knowledge base article 929852 on configuring IPv6 features in Windows. The other is the IPv6 test site so you can evaluate how your set up is working. Mike also blogs about his experiences with IPv6. June 6 2012 is World IPv6 Launch Day - are you ready?
Richard talks to Stephen Rose about the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Stephen talks about the features that IT Pros are particularily going to be interested in for Windows 8, such as the new version of BitLocker. The conversation also moves over to Server 8 and some of the capabilities there, including a new IPv4 version of DirectAccess. Now is a great time to get testing!
Richard talks to Justin Morris about the mobility component of Lync. Only just released, Microsoft has Lync clients for iPhone, Android, Symbian and Windows Phone 7. Justin talks about how the mobile Lync client extends Lync's concept of presence to the smartphone, so that people working in the enterprise can connect and communicate with their fellow employees on the road the same way. The conversation digs into the challenges of data connectivity versus cell telephony, and how Lync provides a call-via-work mechanism to centralize and control cellular call costs. And don't worry - Skype comes up in the conversation too!
Richard talks to Sean Deuby about Simple Cloud Identity Management (SCIM). SCIM is an evolving standard for simplifying federation of identity authentication and account information using common web-based protocols like REST and SAML. Sean talks about how services like Microsoft's Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) works fine for a handful of major cloud applications, but becomes a problem when the number of applications grows. SCIM looks to address this by simplifying the provisioning of identity services. You can read more about SCIM at http://www.simplecloud.info/ and Sean's article on SCIM at Windows IT Pro. Sean also mentions Ping Identity as a key driver behind SCIM and recommends watching a one hour webinar entitled SCIM: New Standard on the Block. It's early days for SCIM yet, but it's worth getting up to speed and asking your cloud vendors where their support for the standard is.
Richard talks to Tom Arbuthnot about how Microsoft Lync impacts business processes. Going beyond 'What is Lync', Tom talks about how the integration of IM, email and voice together presents opportunities for automating workflow. Tom sites the example of a timesheet that follows you around until you fill it in. He also discusses the goal of reducing email by creating opportunities for immediate response using the presence that Lync creates. Ultimately the goal is to see how Lync improves your business beyond just saving money on web seminars. Check out Tom's Lync'd Up Blog for more Lync goodness.
Richard talks to Stephen Foskett about building data centers for virtual servers. The conversation ranges over how virtualization has evolved from consolidating servers in data centers into the newer concepts of private cloud, where being able to move and/or duplicate a virtual machine quickly becomes paramount. Stephen focuses on the challenges around data in these scenarios and how traditional disaster recovery techniques for data migration are inadequate. In 2012 Stephen will be doing a series of seminars on building virtual infrastructure - check them out for more information!
Richard talks to Clint Huffman about understanding the health of IIS7. Clint points out some awesome resources for taking care of IIS7, especially learn.iis.net. Don't miss Clint's Blog Post on IIS7 PowerShell Scripts, how to TroubleShoot Failed Requests Using Tracing in IIS7 and where to get the IIS Log Analyzer. There's more to talk about here, but this is a great start on the toolkit for keeping IIS7 healthy!
Richard talks to Jeremiah Peshcka about how DBAs can work with Object Relational Mapping (ORM). ORMs are tools used by developers to speed development of object-oriented applications that use databases by automating the process of connecting application objects to database objects. While speed is good, crap is bad, and DBAs often struggle with the results of the ORMs generated data structures and queries. Jeremiah talks about how DBAs can work with developers to make better databases and queries, what tools can help out and how everyone can benefit from ORMs. Check out Jeremiah's awesome blog post on DBAs and ORMs.
Richard talks to Rodney Buike about how System Center 2012 facilitates the construction of private clouds. This is where System Center all comes together - utilizing Configuration Manager, Operations Manager, Virtual Machine Manager, Service Manager and Orchestrator to create effective private cloud infrastructure in your own data center. Rodney talks about how each of the System Center components work together to simplify the deployment of services - beyond the individual VM and into a suite of VM, networking rules, storage, etc. Each of the System Center products bring something to the table in this scenario. You should already be using them for their core purposes, now take it to the next level!
For the first show of 2012, Richard talks to Dana Epp about his eight rules of security. Dana wrote the original blog post back in December of 2003, you can read it here. The rules are technology agnostic, and revisiting them reminds us that they are still right, there's just new ways of implementing them. Have a read and think again about what you're focused on for your security!
Richard talks to Mark Minasi about the events of 2011 that happened and didn't happen. The conversation starts with Windows 8 and the Build conference - is it going to succeed? The debate drills into the role of the tablet in the enterprise. Next topic is IPv6. 2011 is the year that IANA ran out of IPv4 addresses, but the world didn't end. When will IPv6 ascend? Finally, Mark and Richard chat about the Kinect and the next generation of user interfaces. What a great year - and 2012 looks awesome. Happy New Year!
Richard talks to Todd Lamothe about how to use Windows Server 2008 to secure WiFi. No, this doesn't replace encryption, it just adds to it - with WPA2-RADIUS to have your access point communicate with the Network Policy Service in Windows 2008. Now every user on your WiFi connection is specifically associated with an active directory account. Todd talks through the challenges of certificates, configuration and how to integrate the service with a firewall to get a complete end-to-end view of what your users are doing on the wireless network.
Richard talks to Mitch Garvis about System Center Essentials (SCE). SCE brings the power of System Center Configuration Manager, Operations Manager and Virtual Machine Manager to the small-to-medium business. It limits to 50 servers (physical and virtual) and 500 workstations - plenty for lots of businesses! Mitch digs into a few tricks of the trade for being successful with SCE - check out his blog post on installing System Center Essentials. SCE is the tool you wish you knew about, now have a listen and you will!
Richard talks to Tony Redmond, formerly of Hewlett-Packard, about the state of affairs for Office 365. At the time of the interview Office 365 had been shipping for only five months. Tony talks about the outages suffered by Microsoft and Google for their cloud offerings, noting that Microsoft is still in the early days of learning how to run a massive multi-tenancy infrastructure. He also compares Gmail and Outlook/Exchange, as well as recognizing that Outlook and Exchange are not the same product from the same team - that they have different goals and don't always get along. The discussion wraps up with where we can expect Exchange to go in the future, and how important hybrid cloud implementations are and will be.
Richard talks to Steve Syfuhs at TechDays Toronto about IT Pros providing security services for developers using Active Directory Federated Services. IT and development talking to each other willingly? Perish the thought! But in truth, Steve makes it clear that ADFS provides a great wrapper for developers to access active directory or any other service that has security claims that an application might require. Azure depends on it, even Office 365 can take advantage of ADFS. Steve discusses how IT can work with developers to make the jobs of both groups easier.
While at TechDays in Toronto, Richard talks to Rodney Buike about virtualizing desktops. Rodney digs into how Citrix's XenDesktop can let you use Windows 7 applications on your iPad! The conversation also explores the use of application virtualization to minimize storage use and simplify software updates, as well as an approach to using desktop virtualization to keep older workstations up and running for longer. VDI is coming of age, and Rodney digs into how to get things done.
Richard talks to Rick Claus just before lunch on the second day of TechDays Toronto about diagnosing problems with DNS. Rick admits that much of his session was derived from Mark Minasi's session on DNS - but Rick adds his own twist. The conversation dives into the tools you can use to understand what's happening with DNS on your machine and the common problems that crop up with DNS. It's a tour back to the fundamentals of networking!
Richard flies solo at TechDays Toronto talking to Tom Moreau about some of the new T-SQL features in the next version of SQL Server, code named Denali. Tom waxed poetic about sequences and their advantages (and disadvantages) compared to identity columns. Other features Tom digs into include Lead and Lag and the new Throw feature that further extends the Try Catch capabilities in T-SQL.
While at TechDays Toronto, Richard talks to Jeff Woolsey about virtualization in the SMB space. Jeff walks through a scenario where a branch office with three servers in different roles sets up Hyper-V, uses P2V migration to virtualize the existing roles into the hardware and then repurposes the hardware to create failover and redundancy. The conversation continues into the role of Cloud and even a sneak peek of how Server 8 will make Hyper-V even more important to the equation!
Richard and Greg talk to Geoff Citron about the choices IT pros can make today around running applications on-premise, with a hosting provider or in the Cloud. Geoff discusses how small hosting providers are thriving in a Cloud world by providing great customer service and customizing services for their customers.
Richard flies solo to talk to Mike Laverick about VMWare. Mike starts out talking about the history of virtualization, from the early days of virtualization for testing into the later generation production virtualization. The conversation moves into the upcoming release of VMWare vSphere 5, including a discussion about the rather controversial new licensing model. Mike also talks about the relationship between virtualization and the Cloud, and the role of virtualization in disaster recovery.
Richard and Greg talk to Susan Bradley and Kevin Royalty about the latest edition of servers from Hewlett Packard specifically made for Small Business Server. Susan and Kevin talk about the ultra-small form factor of the HP ProLiant MicroServer, priced with Small Business Server Essentials for under a thousand dollars. You can see more about MicroServers and SBS at the SMB MVP Community Roadshow at http://mvptour2011.sbsmigration.com/.
Richard and Greg talk to Tim Barrett about Microsoft Windows MultiPoint Server. Originally for the academic market only, MultiPoint Server is now available for small businesses, allowing up to 20 users to share a single computer simultaneously via Remote Desktop. Tim talks about using MultiPoint to provide access to applications for iPads and other third party devices, as well as extending the life of older PCs. You can learn more about MultiPoint at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/multipoint/. Tim's blog is at http://www.nogeekleftbehind.com/ and he also mentioned a tour where you can see MultiPoint in action at http://mvptour2011.sbsmigration.com/.
Richard and Greg talk to the one-and-only Rhonda Layfield about the beta 1 of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2012. MDT 2012 is a free tool for doing operating system, driver and software deployments. Rhonda talks about how MDT is becoming more closely integrated with System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), to the point that you need to use MDT with SCCM to do zero touch deployment. The conversation digresses into a series of discussions around fundamentals of IT, talking a bit about networking, user profiles, disk performance and more - a good chat with a good friend about what matters in IT!
While at the Build conference in Anaheim, California, Richard sat down with Mark Minasi to get his first impressions of Windows Server 8. What happens next is almost an hour of high speed brain dumping, so hold on to your hats. For even more information about Windows Server 8, check out Mark's newsletter (which you should be subscribing to anyway).
Richard flies solo to talk to Barry Dorrans, now at Microsoft, about the recent spate of security breaches at Certificate Authorities like Comodo and DigiNotar. What can you as an IT Pro do about this recent set of hacks? Other than replacing your potentially exploited certificate, not a lot. Barry talks about how these exploits have happened, what Microsoft, Google and others are doing about it and some possible long term solutions to the problems. Check out Barry's blog at idunno.org. Barry also mentions an alternative solution to Certificate Authorities called Convergence and why Chrome won't be implementing it.
Richard and Greg talk to Donald Farmer about his new role over at QlikView. Don spent ten years working on Business Intelligence technologies at Microsoft and now has taken his experiences into QlikView and their business analytic products. Don also digs into how business analytics has evolved, reducing the cost of systems and making BI 'disposable' - low cost, agile and easily replaceable. Towards the end of the show, Don tells some great BI stories of different companies taking advantage of their BI systems.
Richard talks to Mark Russinovich and Aaron Margosis about the newly released Sysinternals Administrator's Reference. SysInternals is a vital part of any IT administrator's toolkit, but has never been well documented. The administrator's reference is that documentation, including details on every SysInternals tool as well as troubleshooting examples and a detailed overview of core Windows concepts. If you're using SysInternals (and who isn't), you need this book!
Richard flies solo to talk to Laura Hunter, now working at Microsoft IT about the identity infrastructure at Microsoft. Laura talks about the scale of the identity problem at Microsoft, the challenges of using smart cards instead of passwords (the passwords won). The conversation moves on to talking about identification in general, talking about different ways of recognizing users, the shared authentication via twitter, facebook, etc. Ultimately Richard and Laura end up back at ADFS and how cloud technology is facilitating the adoption of ADFS and claims-based security.
Richard talks to Jeremy Moskowitz about his latest version of PolicyPak. PolicyPak provides Group Policy templates for third party applications. This is one of those products that once you understand what it does, you can't live without it. There's a free community edition as well as a paid version that is ten bucks per PC! Check it out at www.policypak.com.
Richard and Greg to talk Yong Rhee from Microsoft Premier Field Engineering. Yong talks about optimization and health checks for Windows clients. He focuses on using the Windows Performance Analysis Tools (WPAT) which includes three tools: xperf, xperfview and xbootmgr. WPAT works with Event Tracing for Windows (ETW), available for Windows Vista and 7.
Richard and Greg talk to Cameron Fuller about System Center Operations Manager. Operations Manager is the instrumentation part of System Center - centralizing the status of all your servers into one console. The conversation moves into the concept of server and application health... looking beyond ping times and into knowing how healthy your application is. Cameron also helps us understand how Operations Manager interacts with other System Center products including Configuration Manager, Service Manager and Orchestrator. Check out http://systemcentercentral.com/ for more info on System Center.
Richard flies solo to talk to James Bannan about System Center Configuration Manager. Configuration Manager pulls together the administration of operating system, driver and application installs working alongside tools like Microsoft Deployment Toolkit. Check out James' blog at http://www.jamesbannanit.com/.
Early one morning at Kim and Paul's place, Richard sat down for a conversation about how they go about helping their customers make SQL Server go faster. The conversation wanders over index tuning, hardware issues and learning issues. Also listen for a special guest visit from Paul's nine year old daughter who knows that auto shrink is evil.
Richard and Greg talk to Stephen Foskett about storage technologies. Stephen gives a history of storage technologies from RAID arrays to SANs, including Microsoft's Storage Server. The conversation ranges over a huge number of storage technologies, including the new generation of low cost iSCSI targets, lamenting the death of Microsoft Home Server and even diving into obscure concepts like (get this) Fibre Channel over Token Ring! The show ends exploring the prospects of storage in the cloud and the possibilities going forward for data storage.
Richard and Greg talk to Steve Wright of SQL Sentry about the performance challenges with Analysis Services. Steve talks about how putting SSAS on the same box as SQL Server is not a good idea, how both products are greedy for memory and comparing query tuning techniques. Steve also gets into the performance counters that matter in SSAS.
Richard and Greg talk to Chris Ross from Catapult Systems. Chris talks to the boys about System Center Service Manager, an IT Service Desk application recently added to System Center. Service Manager is the front line application for doing problem support, routine maintenance, routine workflow processes, and so on. Chris discusses how Service Manager becomes a hub for the other System Center components, making it easier to have a clear picture of what's going on with your system and what to work on next. Check out Chris's Service Manager blog at http://blog.myscsm.com/.
Richard chats with Mark Minasi about his Tech Ed Atlanta experience. The conversation moves onto recent announcements around Windows 8. Richard and Mark argue over the viability of tablets like the iPad versus the latest generation of laptops. Mark also mentions a few web sites, including the Software Conspiracy. It's one of those rambling conversations we know and love!
While at DevTeach, Richard talked to Colin Melia about the challenges of securing applications using the phone and cloud. The discussion digs hard into Active Directory Federated Services, Azure Access Control Services and more.
While at Tech Ed Atlanta, Richard talked to Jeremy Thake from AvePoint about scaling Sharepoint. Jeremy talks about how Sharepoint decomposes into multiple servers to provide effective scale. The conversation also moves to the cloud, talking about the Sharepoint offering in Office 365.
Richard catches up with Kevin Kline at Tech Ed Atlanta to talk about the next version of SQL Server, code name Denali. Kevin discusses the new 'Always On' features, new column store and the updates to reporting services. The conversation also wanders over to SQLAzure, SQL Saturdays and how the major database products in the world can work together.
While at Tech Ed Atlanta, Richard talked to Mitch Garvis about Hyper-V. Mitch focuses on how Hyper-V has caught up with VMWare feature wise. The conversation ranges over what should be virtualized, what shouldn't, and the role the cloud plays in virtualization.
While at Tech Ed Atlanta, Richard talks to Dmitry Sotnikov from Quest Software about cloud technologies including virtualization. The debate ranges over Software as a Service, Platform as a Service and whether or not application migration to the cloud really makes sense.
Richard and Greg talk to to Dana Epp about CardSpace. Now that Microsoft has decided not to release CardSpace 2.0, where does that leave identity? Dana mentions Dick Hardt's Identity 2.0 presentation at Oscon 2005, take a look at it here: http://identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/.
Richard and Greg talk to Mike Crowley from Planet Technologies about infrastructure rights management (IRM) and Exchange. Rights Management Service (RMS) has been around for the past few versions of Windows Server, but the latest edition significantly improves its abilities. More than just encryption, IRM and Exchange together can actually block a sensitive file from going out via email!
Richard and Greg talk to Ted Pattison about how SharePoint 2010 is permeating every aspect of business. All of the major Microsoft product lines now have some part of their feature set connected to SharePoint. Ted is one of the authors of Inside Microsoft SharePoint 2010. Check out Ted's blog at http://blog.tedpattison.net/default.aspx.
While at SQLConnections, Richard sat down with Brent Ozar for a rolling discussion about the things Brent is working about these days - how SQLAzure is stacking up, and how many performance problems that can be solved by 10Gb iSCSI and SSD drives. The conversation also dives into disaster recovery strategies, thoughts around data loss vs. downtime, and more.
While at Exchange Connections in Orlando, Richard sat down with Tony Redmond, former CTO of Hewlett Packard. Tony talks about how Microsoft's Office 365 is the 800 pound gorilla on the minds of many folks in the Exchange community. The conversation digs into the differing viewpoints of cloud technologies for large enterprises and small-to-medium businesses. Along the way Tony pulls out some anecdotes from his experiences with messaging.
Richard and Greg talk to Ken Westin from ActiveTrak about mobile device security. The conversation ranges over securable smartphones, tablets and laptops. Ken also tells some stories about using GadgetTrak to break up a laptop theft ring. Check out GadgetTrak at www.gadgettrak.com.
Richard flies solo to talk to Ed Horley about getting IPv6 deployed. In February 2011, IANA exhausted all the reserve IPv4 addresses, allocating them out to the five regional internet registries. APNIC, the registry for the Asia-Pacific area, is expected to run out of IPv4 first. So 2011 is going to be a big year for IPv6, especially for content providers. If your responsible for your company putting content on the internet, you need to get thinking about IPv6. Check out http://isoc.org/wp/worldipv6day/ for World IPv6 Day on June 8, 2011, when all the major web sites of the world will be testing out their sites in IPv6 mode. Will you be ready?
Richard and Greg talk to Stephen Rose about where Windows is going. Stephen gives us some hints about Windows vNext and some ideas on how IT Pros are going to be able to manage the new diversity of devices coming into the workplace. Stephen also spends some time talking about the IE9 Release Candidate, Windows 7 SP1 and announces Windows inTune! inTune is a cloud-based management console for small to medium businesses - bringing together all the different tools built into Windows to manage them more effectively.
Richard flies solo to talk to the father of Powershell - Jeffrey Snover! Jeff talks about the core concepts of PowerShell, advances that happened from version 1 to 2 and some hints of what is coming in version 3. The discussion goes into some of the community extensions for PowerShell, including the PowerShell Community Extentions (PSCX) and PowerShell Management Library for Hyper-V. Jeff also talks about the upcoming PowerShell Deep Dive at TEC 2011 - if you love PowerShell, you'll want to be there. Check out the blog post at the Windows PowerShell Blog.
Richard and Greg talk to Steve Riley, late of Microsoft and Amazon, now with Riverbed Technology. Steve shares his thoughts on Riverbed's products, cloud technology and security. Steve mentioned Guy Rosen's Jack of All Clouds blog, and the State of the Cloud post at www.jackofallclouds.com.
Richard and Greg talk to Mark Russinovich, PhD, Technical Fellow and all around smart guy about Azure. In 2010 Mark moved from the Windows team to the Azure team, recognizing that the future of Microsoft lay in the cloud. Also, look for a quick conversation about Zero Day, Mark's upcoming cyberthriller novel.
Hey, it's the 200th show! Richard and Greg invite Kim Tripp and Paul Randal to share a celebration of the past 200 shows. This may not be the most technical show we've ever done, but hey, you only do 200 shows once! Topics range over SQL Server training, water cooled PCs, bursting aquariums and some of the history of RunAs Radio. The show ends with an oddly serious discussion on performance tuning. Thanks for listening!
Richard flies solo to talk to Peter Schmidt about federation in Exchange 2010. While federation has been around for awhile in Exchange, the 2010 version gets away from connection Active Directory together and into a web services model that allows simple, limited visibility for other Exchange 2010 users into your calendar and contacts. If you've ever wanted to give a third party the ability to see when you're available without emailing you, you need federation! Check out Exchange 2010 Federation at TechNet.
Richard and Greg talk to Karri Alexion-Tiernan, director of Product Management for Desktop Virtualization. Karri digs into desktop virtualization in general and application virtualization specifically. The conversation digs into some case studies with BMW and others to show the advantages of virtualization on the desktop. Check out the Springboard Series on Desktop Virtualization at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/gg276319.aspx and the Application Virtualization TechCenter at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/appvirtualization/default.aspx.
Richard and Greg talk to Doug Splinter from avtex about Microsoft Lync. Lync is the new name and new version of Office Communications Server. Lync, like OCS before it, pulls together telephone, instant messaging, email and collaboration into a common interface and address book. Check out Lync at http://lync.microsoft.com/En-us/launch/Pages/launch.aspx.
Richard and Greg talk to Brian Randell about Microsoft Lab Management. Lab Management is a tool aimed at the development crowd, bundled with Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate. But as Brian explains, Lab Management is also a powerful tool for IT Pros, making it easy to stand up a group of servers that emulate the production environment and do testing. You can get a copy of Lab Management as part of Visual Studio 2010 Test Professional edition as well. Check out Lab Management at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/ee712698.aspx.
Richard flies solo to talk to Pam Lahoud about SQL Server performance. Not just fighting slow queries, but planning in advance for poor performance behavior. The conversation digs into techniques to anticipate where performance problems will occur. Pam provides a list of great tools to use for understanding your performance problem in SQL Server, including SQL Nexus (http://sqlnexus.codeplex.com/) and PAL (http://pal.codeplex.com/).
Richard and Greg talk to Brad McGehee about the challenges of working remotely. The conversation ranges over getting your home office set up right, negotiating with the family over work time and convincing your boss that you're actually working.
Richard and Greg talk to Susan Bradley, the SBS Diva! Susan digs into the new features of Small Business Server 2011. Check out the Microsoft SBS site at http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/products/servers/Pages/sbs_overview.aspx. Susan also talks about the balance between SBS "on-premise" and the cloud offerings of Azure, BPOS and Office 365. Check out the SBS forums at http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/smallbusinessserver/threads. The conversation also explores the kinds of internet connections small businesses are going to need in the connected and cloud-enabled world. Susan is a Small Business Server Specialist, and points to http://www.microsoft.com/sbs/en/us/find-partner.aspx to find a specialist in your area if you want help setting up and maintaining Small Business Server.
Richard and Greg talk to Joel Oleson from Quest Software about Microsoft Office 365. Office 365 is Microsoft's cloud based offering for Office, Exchange, Sharepoint and Lync.
Richard talks to Amit Agarwal from Quest Software about Project Lucy. Projecy Lucy is a free Azure-based utility that analyzes SQL Traces to find performance bottlenecks and other problems. Check out Project Lucy at http://www.projectlucy.com/.
Richard talks to Ned Pyle from Microsoft Directory Services support. Ned, with his associate Ted Stephens, developed FRS2DFSR, a utility for assisting administrations migrating from File Replication Services (FRS) to Distributed File System Replication (DFSR). Check out Ned's blog post on the subject, with links to the white paper, the tool and operations guides on the subject at http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2010/05/27/frs-to-dfsr-migration-tool-released.aspx.
Richard flies solo in a discussion with Kevin Kline about PASS and all things SQL Server. The conversation ranges over business intelligence, OLTP, SSDs, you name it! Check out the upcoming PASS SQLRally at http://www.sqlpass.org/sqlrally/2011/.
Richard and Greg talk to Alan Sugano about migrating from VMWare ESX to ESXi. VMWare announced that the next version of ESX is the last one, only ESXi will be developed further.
ESXi is a far lighter weight version of ESX, lowering the security risk, memory consumption and a host of other advantages, but in exchange you give up a lot of the tools you're used to working with in ESX. Regardless, this is the direction that VMWare is going, so give a listen to how Alan has solved these challenges.
Another Connections conference show, Richard talks to the one-and-only Mark Minasi about his keynote at the conference. Mark aims his sights at cloud computing, asking the important questions about pricing, reliability and implementation challenges.
While at DevConnections, Richard talks to Jeremy Moskowitz about what every IT person needs to know about troubleshooting group policy.
Richard and Greg talk to David Mills about System Center Essentials (SCE). SCE is the core parts of the System Center suite aimed at the small to medium businesses. David digs into how SCE fits into your organization, how it works with existing infrastructure and the path to grow beyond it.
Richard and Greg talk to Clint Huffman about Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL) 2.0. PAL makes the performance counters in perfmon far more manageable - by providing a breakdown of important counters and reasonable values. With PAL you turn on perfmon, collect a log and use the tool to find important numbers. Check out PAL at http://pal.codeplex.com. You can find Clint's blog at http://blogs.technet.com/b/clinth/.
Richard and Greg talk to Sean Deuby about issues around identity in the cloud. The conversation explores both the consumer and enterprise aspects of identity in the cloud. Where Facebook and Google are helping things for consumers, the needs of the enterprise are more complex. The acronyms come out - oAuth, OpenID, ADFS and more!
Richard talks to Jeff Stokes about xPerf. xPerf is part of a suite of tools called the Windows Performance Analysis Toolkit (WPT). WPT digs into Windows where PerfMon leaves off, utilizing Event Tracing for Windows to see exactly how applications are behaving, even during bootup and shutdown. Get more information on WPT at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/performance/cc825801.aspx. Also, check out Jeff's blog at http://blogs.technet.com/b/jeff_stokes/.
Richard and Greg talk to Don Jones about PowerShell. The conversation starts off with a discussion on the fundamentals of PowerShell, but then dives into specific techniques and tools to make folks more productive with PowerShell. The show wraps up with exploring some favorite PowerShell projects. There's a ton of great information about PowerShell at Don's web site shellhub.com.
Richard and Greg talk to Adam Hall about Opalis, the latest product addition to System Center. Opalis provides automation and integration for IT tasks between the various products in System Center (Configuration Manager, Operations Manager, etc) and third party management tools like OpenView, Tivoli and the like.
Richard and Greg talk to Jose Barreto from the File Server Team at Microsoft. Jose talks about File Replication Services, Distributed File System and other technologies for file servers.
Richard catches Alan Burchill while at Tech Ed New Zealand. Alan digs into the new Group Policy Preferences features introduced with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 but available for XP, Vista, even Server 2000 and up! The conversation explores how group policy can now be used to map drives, printers and other features, leading to the virtual elimination of login scripts. Check out Alan's web site at http://www.grouppolicy.biz/ for videos and information on this and other group policy techniques.
Richard talks to Rhonda Layfield during Tech Ed Australia about her work with Microsoft Deployment Tools (MDT). Rhonda goes over the relationship between MDT and Windows Deployment Service (WDS) as well as the Windows Automation Installation Kit (WAIK). All these tools are free and make image-based deployment tools look wasteful and inefficient. The conversation tears off into deployment in virtualization just for fun. Rhonda mentions AppDeploy.com as a key resource for the MDT user, helping with all the details around configuration applications for deployment in MDT.
While at Tech Ed Australia, Richard caught up with Chris Jackson to talk about the latest problem in application compatibility - web applications dependent on IE6. When released ten years ago, IE6 was a paragon of web standards, but the world has moved on and now IE6 is a pariah. Chris talks about how web applications dependent on IE6 are actually blocking XP to Windows 7 upgrades, but that ultimately the reason to move your applications off IE6 is a web standards issue.
Richard flies solo to talk to Stephen Rose from Microsoft about the latest around Windows 7. The discussion roams around Service Pack 1, the new Microsoft Intune Beta (http://www.microsoft.com/online/windows-intune.aspx) and his experiences on the Get on the Bus tour down the eastern seaboard in spring 2010.
Richard and Greg talk to Adam Gent about Office Communications Server (OCS). OCS brings the PBX into the PC, so that email, instant messaging and telephone are integrated together. Adam digs into the details of what it takes to get going with OCS, where to find effective cost savings, and the overall plan of being successful with the product. Check out Adam's blog at http://blog.misthos.com.
Richard and Greg talk to Doug Finke about the OData PowerShell Explorer. The OData PowerShell Explorer makes it easy to make OData part of your PowerShell scripts. And with OData providing access to all sorts of data, the combination opens huge possibilities. Check out the OData PowerShell Explorer at http://psodata.codeplex.com/.
Richard talks to Adam Machanic about parallelism in SQL Server. Executing queries in parallel has been in SQL Server since version 7, but with the number of cores in servers rising dramatically, parallelism is more and more important. Adam digs into the details of how to make parallelism in SQL Server work effectively. Check out Adam's blog at http://sqlblog.com/blogs/adam_machanic/.
Richard and Greg talk to Isaac Roybal, late of Microsoft, now with Cisco, about the Unified Computing System. The Unified Computing System (UCS) is Cisco's hardware designed for virtualization, using blade-based hardware to create SAN-driven servers that can move seamlessly from machine-to-machine.
Richard and Greg talk to Dana Epp about finding and fixing a security vulnerability. Dana tells the story of how a customer found a bug in one of Scorpion Software's products that surfaced a weakness in a Microsoft security API. Ultimately Dana describes how they altered their application to protect their application from a whole class of exploits.
Richard and Greg talk to Kim Tripp and Paul Randal about how people can learn effectively. The discussion ranges over the different vehicles of learning, including user groups, training classes, conference sessions, and so on. Kim and Paul have taught in all these mediums and have great pointers for what you can do to select the right sort of medium and things you can do to get the most from it.
Carl Franklin drops into RunAs to host an episode where the guest is none other than Richard Campbell! Richard talks about the differences between IT Pros and developers. Lots of stories get told along the way, and maybe some ideas of how we can all work together better.
Richard talks to Mark Minasi about the things that Windows 8 is really going to need. It starts with getting rid of reboots and goes crazy from there. A significant part of this show is a discussion of where desktop virtualization is going. Got some thoughts on what should be in Windows 8? Send us an email at [email protected].
Richard talks to Mark Minasi about Office 2010. Mark talks about his frustrations with Office (mostly Outlook). The conversation spends more time on PowerPoint than you would think possible, leading to talking about presentation style and value. Ultimately, this is a conversation about how people learn, and how folks like Mark can make that work better for you.
Richard talks to Robert Smith from Premier Field Engineering about what the IT Pro can do to debug crashes. The focus of the conversation is on blue screens, but any application crash can be debugged with similar techniques. Check out http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/default.mspx for the tools Robert talks about for debugging in Windows!
Richard flies solo to talk to Vijay Tewari about the new features being added to Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1. The beta of Service Pack 1 was announced at Tech Ed US for release in July 2010. Vijay talks about two key new features being added to Hyper-V: dynamic memory and remoteFX. The conversation also explores the future directions of virtualization. You can read Vijay's blog at http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization.
Richard flies solo to talk to Joel Oleson about upgrading to Sharepoint 2010. Since Joel was last on the show (#27!) he's left Microsoft to work with Quest, but still focused on Sharepoint. In the conversation Joel talks about the importance of using the pre-checker provided with Sharepoint 2007 Service Pack 2 to check the state of your sharepoint installation as well as it's preparation for migration to Sharepoint 2010. There are numerous changes to the deployment environment of Sharepoint 2010 that can make an upgrade very challenging. Joel is also publishing a book on upgrading to Sharepoint 2010 with O'Reilly. You can look at the rough cuts at http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781449390457/.
Richard and Greg talk to Alex Payne about the online products at Microsoft. The focus steers toward the enterprise side of things with Exchange Online, specifically comparing it to the offerings that Google has. Office Online is also explored. Alex also points to whymicrosoft.com.
Richard and Greg talk to Daniel Parker, a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, about integrating Linux servers into Active Directory. The conversation not only digs into what's possible, but the huge range of choices that people have when making Linux and Active Directory interoperate, from LDAP to Kereberos to Samba.
Richard and Greg talk to the amazing Laura Chappell about WireShark. WireShark is an open source tool for analyzing network packets. You can download WireShark at www.wireshark.org. You can get Laura's definitive book on WireShark at www.wiresharkbook.com and learn more about getting certified in WireShark at www.wiresharktraining.com/certification.
Richard and Greg talk to Brent Ozar about his experiences doing the Certified Masters in SQL Server 2008 program at Microsoft - a three week intensive course that stretches your knowledge in every aspect of SQL Server. The conversation also ranges into SQL Server 2008 R2 and the latest features of SQL Azure. Check out Brent's blog posts at http://www.brentozar.com/sql-mcm/.
Richard and Greg talk to Francois Doremieux while he was in France, talking about Microsoft Communications Server. The discussion digs into how telecommunications is migrating into an integration between instant messaging, email and telephony. While most of discussion focuses on the current version of Microsoft Communications Server, listen for some tidbits of what's coming next.
Richard and Greg talk to Robert Hamilton about Data Loss Prevention (DLP). Modern DLP products actually inspect data as it moves around the network, identifying any information that might be at risk and offering a number of responses to that finding. The conversation also digs into the balance between security and impairing productivity.
Richard and Greg talk to Eriq Neale about mixing Apple Macs and PCs in networks. The conversation digs into how Macs can access file shares in Windows network. There are even options for allowing Macs to log into Active Directory and with some third party tools, some group policy can be pushed onto a Mac. Eriq also talks about printers, virus scanning and the effects of BootCamp and Parallels for Mac.
Richard and Greg talk to Nick Simons about the upcoming Microsoft office Web Apps. Web Apps are lightweight versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote available through Sharepoint 2010 or soon via Windows Live SkyDrive. The conversation digs into how users can interoperate between regular Office 2010 and Web Apps as well as the ability to collaborate (simultaneously edit) a document with multiple users using both Office 2010 and Web Apps.
Richard and Greg talk to Amy Babinchuk about Essential Business Server (EBS). Amy digs into the challenges of setting up EBS's Threat Management Gateway with an existing firewall and how Feature Pack 1 addresses those problems. The conversation also delves into the issues around integrating EBS into an existing environment, including using the Microsoft IT Environment Health Scanner to make sure your existing infrastructure is healthy enough to add EBS too successfully. The health scanner is a must have for any environment!
Richard talks to Dave Sobel of Evolve Technologies about how small businesses can benefit from virtualization technology. The conversation ranges over migration to virtualization, how upgrades change with virtualization, the benefits to disaster recovery and more. Virtualization on the desktop is explored as well.
Richard and Greg talk to Robert Crane from the Computer Information Agency in Sydney Australia about Sharepoint 2010. The show digs into the issues that companies face when using Sharepoint without careful governance to manage their data well. Check out Microsoft's Sharepoint Governance Resource Center for more information.
Richard and Greg talk to Kevin Royalty about Home Server. Intended for the home, Microsoft's Home Server works great for small businesses with ten or less workstations, providing shared file services, an awesome backup solution and even remote access! Home Server offers a starting point before Small Business Server, but even after you've moved to SBS, you'll want to keep using Home Server for backup.
Richard and Greg talk to Doug Toombs about more free tools! Doug has a knack for finding great free tools for IT Pros. Here's the list from this show: WinAudit, KeyFinder, MyDefrag, Eraser, PhotoRec, AD Change Reporter and NMap.
Richard and Greg talk to Rolly Perreaux about Microsoft Project 2010 and Project Server 2010. Project moves into the 64 bit world in 2010 and a host of other features. Rolly digs into Project Server to take project management to an even higher level.
Clint Huffman is back! Richard and Greg talk to Microsoft Premier Field Engineer Clint Huffman about performance tuning Hyper-V. Clint works out in the field with customers solving the problems they have with Hyper-V. He gives us a raft of tips on how to understand what Hyper-V is doing, including avoiding the Task Manager entirely (it'll lie to you) and focusing instead of Performance Monitor and xPerf. He also points us to Tony Voellm's blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/tvoellm. Also check out this article on Performance Tuning Hyper-V and BizTalk written by Clint and Ewan Fairweather.
Richard and Greg talk to Richard Hicks from Celestix about the Microsoft Forefront security suite. The conversation focuses on Threat Management Gateway, which is the replacement to ISA 2006. Check out Richard's blog at http://tmgblog.richardhicks.com.
Richard and Greg talk to Rodney Buike about the upcoming Office 2010. While he couldn't commit to a launch date (go search online, there's lots of rumors), it is safe to say that Office 2010 will ship in 2010. Rodney digs into the relevant changes in the suite, including the focus on Microsoft's "three screens" strategy, providing equal access online, on the desktop and on mobile devices. Check out the Office Product team blog at http://blogs.technet.com/office2010 and the Outlook 2010 Beta at http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/.
Richard and Greg talk to Brent Ozar from Quest Software about running SQL in the cloud. Part of the conversation focuses on SQL Azure, but Amazon's EC2 running SQL on a virtual machine is also a version of the same concept. The larger topic is really around DBAs providing services to their organizations - because that's what the cloud is offering!
Richard and Greg talk to Stephen Rose about how businesses are installing Windows 7. Stephen references the case studies on Windows 7 installations that started even before the product had shipped. The conversation digs into the ROI calculators that shows how an organization can save time, effort and money with Windows 7. Application compatibility is also an important story - Windows 7 offers built-in XP virtualization, shims and redirection to keep older apps working. Check out http://www.microsoft.com/map to figure out what applications you're running and help plan your migration. Also check out http://www.microsoft.com/springboard for more information!
Richard and Greg talk to Kevin Kline from Quest Software about SQL Server 2008 R2, the challenges of Business Intelligence, even a discussion around the No SQL Movement.
Richard and Greg talk to Laura Hunter about where Active Directory is at with Windows Server 2008 R2. This is the version of Active Directory called "Wave 10" and adds features like Recycle Bin, Managed Service Accounts, deep support for Powershell and more! The conversation progresses into Active Directory Federated Services v2. Check out more info at http://www.microsoft.com/activedirectory/ and http://blogs.msdn.com/card/.
Richard and Greg talk to Mitch Garvis about the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010. MDT 2010 helps you manage your installs of operating systems, drivers, applications and more. You can create deployment kits for machines quickly and easily. And as Mitch says, as soon as you have more than one computer, the effort to set up MDT 2010 is worth it. MDT 2010 is a freely downloadable toolkit here.
Richard and Greg talk to Rhonda Layfield about deployment technologies made by Microsoft. There's a variety of them, and Rhonda goes over the collage of acronyms including WAIK (Windows Automated Installation Kit), MDT (Microsoft Deployment Toolkit), WDS (Windows Deployment Service), DDPS (Desktop Deployment Planning Services) and SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager). Check out Rhonda's Deployment Doctor web site at http://www.deploymentdr.com/ and her upcoming book on deployment, published by Sybex should be out the June/July 2010 timeframe.
Bhargav is back! Richard and Greg talk to Bhargav Shukla about the High Availability features of Exchange 2010. Bhargav digs into the substantial changes in the high availability and "mailbox resiliency" capabilities in Exchange, including the idea that you can today build a web-farm-like Exchange architecture with inexpensive hardware.
Richard and Greg talk to Sumeet Bansal and Chris Featherstone about using solid state drives in the enterprise. SSDs have penetrated deeply into the workstation and laptop market, but are they robust enough to handle enterprise class workloads? Sumeet and Chris also focus on whether the traditional hard drive interfaces of SAS and SATA make sense for the ultra-low latency performance of SSDs.
Richard and Greg talk to Bhargav Shukla of Microsoft's Premier Field Engineering. Bhargav digs into the features of the newly released Exchange 2010 and why businesses still running Exchange 2003 should jump right to the latest version and skip 2007 entirely. For more info on Exchange 2010, check out http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/default.aspx and http://msexchangeteam.com/.
Richard and Greg talk to Clint Huffman from Microsoft's Premier Field Engineering (PFE) about the new version of Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL). PAL is available on CodePlex at http://pal.codeplex.com. It's job is to help you analyze performance monitor logs for various Microsoft applications and identify out-of-normal values. PAL solves the key problem of Performance Monitor - identifying what numbers are good, what numbers are bad, and what numbers are ugly. Check out Clint's blog at http://blogs.technet.com/clinth.
Richard and Greg talk to Susan Bradley, the SBS Diva, about her other life - patching servers. Susan digs into Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), including what it updates and what it doesn't (check out http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894199 for more info), as well as some third party tools for patching. WSUS lets administrators centralize patching of servers and workstations, so that your machines don't all go fetching the same patches. It also provides means to control what patches get installed and what don't. Susan also points us to http://www.patchmanagement.org/ for access to listservs about WSUS and patch management in general.
Richard and Greg talk to Andy Malone about the challenges of social networking for the enterprise. It's not enough just to cut your users off from social networking at the company - you need to protect the organization from impersonation. Andy digs into what the logical balance of exposure on social networking looks like.
Richard and Greg talk to Sahil Malik on what's coming in Sharepoint 2010. Sahil has been working with Sharepoint 2010 for more than a year, and the NDAs have finally been lifted, letting him talk about the cool new features of 2010 that will help the IT Pro.
Simon Goldstein comes back to the show to talk to Richard and Greg about what IT professionals need to know when being audited. Whether you're dealing with SOX, HIPAA, PCI or any other kind of IT audit, Simon digs into what you should be doing before, during and after an audit.
Richard and Greg talk to Lara Rubbelke about the Enterprise Policy Management Framework (EPM). EPM is a freely downloadable framework for managing detailed policies around SQL Server 2008, 2005 and 2000. You can get EPM at http://www.codeplex.com/EPMFramework
Richard and Greg talk to Dana Epp about DirectAccess. DirectAccess is Microsoft's new technology using Windows 7 (Enterprise or Ultimate) and Server 2008 R2 together to create remote connectivity that acts in all respects like you're still inside the corporate network. DirectAccess has the potential to put client-initiated VPN connection out to pasture. The conversation also dives into IPv6, which is required for DirectAccess, digging into how IPv6 has probably been functioning fine over your IPv4 network and you didn't even realize it!
Richard and Greg talk to Isaac Roybal about Microsoft's efforts in creating private cloud technologies. Private cloud focuses on using cloud technologies - within the organization's firewall. Isaac talks about how Microsoft has been using its own cloud technology internally for PSS and digs into the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit (http://www.microsoft.com/hosting/dynamicdatacenter/Home.html). Also take a look at the Private Cloud initiative at http://www.microsoft.com/privatecloud
Richard and Greg talk to Buck Woody about SQL CMS, a tool he's contributed to codeplex at http://sqlcms.codeplex.com. SQL CMS is actually a collection of tools that together provide content management of SQL Server and other servers in your network, allowing you to identify different servers, who's responsible for managing them, their current status and details of their configuration. It's a great synergy of tools built into SQL Server 2008, accelerators like MAPS and EPM - Enterprise Policy Management Framework, another project on codeplex.
Richard and Greg talk to Dana Epp about the free tools he uses to manage his networks. The list of tools include nmap (http://www.nmap.org), Microsoft's Baseline Security Analyzer (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/cc184923.aspx), Windows Server Update Services (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/wsus/default.aspx), the Application Compatibility Toolkit (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd562082(VS.85).aspx) and of course the SysInternals tools (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx).
Richard and Greg talk to the one-and-only Steve Riley, formerly of Microsoft and now working with the Amazon Cloud Computing group. Steve is focused on helping enterprise customers understand how to take advantage of Amazon's cloud computing services. As always, Steve has his eye on the security elements of cloud computing as well. There's also a great discussion about virtualization on the desktop.
Richard and Greg talk to Jessica Moss about SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). SSRS can replace typical reporting products like Crystal Reports, but also provides a tool for having users build their own reports. The conversation also moves into the Business Intelligence side of reporting, looking at how SSRS works with Analysis Services to provide a deeper level of reporting.
Richard and Greg talk to Sahil Malik about managing Sharepoint 2007. With the new version of Sharepoint just around the corner, it's time to dig into what the current version of Sharepoint does well and what is challenging. Sahil talks about solutions for challenges in Sharepoint 2007, including dealing with keeping profiles in separate farms. He points to his tool on codeplex, MOSS Profile Import at www.codeplex.com/mossprofileimport. There will be another show in the future to talk about how some of these issues are resolved in Sharepoint 2010.
Richard and Greg talk to Andy Malone about security in cloud computing. Once an application is moved to the cloud, where is the data itself? It could be distributed across multiple countries. Who is responsible for protecting it, for maintaining legal compliance, etc. Service level agreements are key, but how do you enforce them?
Richard and Greg talk to Daniel Nerenberg about Microsoft Online Services. Microsoft Online Services include Exchange, Sharepoint, Office Communicator and more. These are cloud services - you buy them by the user and month. Daniel digs into the advantages of using online services as well as the integration and migration challenges.
Richard and Greg talk to Andrew Hayter from ICSA Labs. ICSA Labs is the independent third party for validating security products such as anti-virus, malware, SSL security, etc. Andy digs into the state of the world around malware.
Richard and Greg talk to Phil Peery from Premier Field Engineering at Microsoft about the state of Active Directory out in the world. Phil works with a large variety of customers in the New York area in his PFE role, and explores some of the problems that his customers have had with Active Directory.
Richard and Greg talk to Mark Minasi about the state of Windows today. There's a bit of discussion about Vista (Mark seems to be its only fan), then over to Windows 7 (it's Vista with love!), but most of the discussion focuses on the chocolatety goodness of Windows 2008 R2. Mark digs into Active Directory Undelete, Managed Service Accounts and more.
Richard and Greg talk to David Lowe about the Microsoft Web Platform. The web platform spans from development and designer tools, through the web server (IIS) and the databases. David starts out digging into running PHP and mySQL on Windows before moving on into the IIS extensions, including: Application Resource Routing, Dynamic IP Restrictions, Live Smooth Streaming, Windows Media Services and Search Engine Optimization. Check out the web platform at http://www.microsoft.com/web and the IIS extensions at http://www.iis.net/extensions.
Richard and Greg talk to Phil Peery of Microsoft's Premier Field Engineering team about 64 bit operating systems. Phil also talks extensively about the /3GB switch for 32 bit operating systems - a tricky switch that has to be handled carefully. The discussion also digs into running 32 bit apps on 64 bit operating systems.
Richard and Greg talk to Mitch Garvis about System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). SCVMM handles Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) migration of computers into virtual machines. It also does Virtual-to-Virtual (V2V) migration from VMWare VMDK to VHD. Besides migration, SCVMM allows operators to understand the load across different VM host machines and move VMs from one machine to another, to handle failover clustering and to provision new VMs as needed.
Richard and Greg talk to Stephen Rose about Windows 7 RC. The show focuses on what the enterprise customer is going to care about around Windows 7, including reducing maintenance costs, managing compatibility and better remote access options.
Richard and Greg tak to Brian Gregor from Microsoft Premier Field Engineering about BizTalk. BizTalk has a variety of roles for IT Pros in the infrastructure: orchestration, integration, workflow.
Richard and Greg talk to Ken Brumfield from Microsoft Premier Field Engineering on the challenges of working in really large infrastructures. What's large? Try 250,000 workstations and 40,000 servers large! Ken talks about how tactical solutions create strategic problems in IT management at this scale, and how to balance "getting things done" with "not making the mess worse." Check out Ken's active directory utilities at http://activedirectoryutils.codeplex.com/.
Richard and Greg welcome Clint Huffman back to the show to talk about analyzing performance monitor logs. Clint is the author of Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL) at pal.codeplex.com. Clint has another collection of favorite tools, including Process Monitor (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx), xPerf (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/hh162920.aspx) and DebugDiag (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49924).
Richard and Greg talk to Buck Woody... they had planned on talking about sqlcms.codeplex.com but ended up instead digging into what it takes to be in an IT career in today's economy. The discussion ranges from the advantages of generalists vs. specialists, consulting vs. employment and how technology is evolving to support these different styles.
Richard and Greg welcome Susan Bradley back on the show. The SBS Diva (www.sbsdiva.com) talks about Windows Server 2008 Foundation, the smaller cousin of Small Business Server. Foundation is aimed at businesses of 15 users or less. Think Microsoft Home Server for small business!
Richard and Greg talk to Jeff Atwood of Stack Overflow (www.stackoverflow.com) fame about being a developer who also maintains infrastructure. Jeff also talks about his new site, Server Fault (www.serverfault.com), which is a Question and Answer site for the IT Professional. Great discussions about adventures in RAID controllers and NIC drivers and how FireBug can diagnose your network problems.
Richard and Greg talk to Pedro Manfredi from Microsoft about High Performance Computing. HPC is the next generation of supercomputing - using off-the-shelf hardware rather than custom built supercomputers. Pedro digs into the new style of applications that are best served with HPC and how development is done. Check out http://www.microsoft.com/hpc for more information.
Richard and Greg talk to Robert Smith from Microsoft Premier Field Engineering about understanding storage performance. The discussion digs into SAN, iSCSI, direct-attached storage, also looking at tools like PerfMon and the Windows Performance Toolkit. Check out WPT at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc305187.aspx and the disk performance issues talked about in the show at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=929491.
Richard and Greg talk to Allan Hirt about failover clustering in SQL Server 2008. SQL Server got a major update in the clustering side of things for 2008, Allan talks about the changes, improvements and why you'd want to do this in the first place. Check out an alpha version of Allan's book at http://www.apress.com/book/view/1430219661.
Richard and Greg talk to Rhonda Layfield about what's coming in the Microsoft deployment tools for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. They talk about Windows PE - the Windows Preinstallation environment that presents a minimum install environment (fits on a CD or USB key) which is part of Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK). Improvements in the new Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT 2010) that deploys operating systems and application software. Finally, they explore the Windows Deployment Service (WDS).
Richard and Greg talk to Kim Tripp about how developers and DBAs inter-relate around SQL Server. Kim tells a story of how she encountered developers who saw SQL Server as a "set it and forget it" technology. What should the relationship between developers, DBAs and database be? We tackle the topic!
Richard and Greg talk to Bill Graziano about performance tuning in SQL Server. Bill digs into using SQL Profiler to focus on where the problems lie. The discussion digs into the procedure cache and how you can optimize your queries for caching. He also talks about ClearTrace, a free tool he distributes to help understand trace data. Check it out at http://www.cleardata.biz.
Richard and Greg talk to Randy Williams about how Sharepoint fits into an organization. Is it a developer's product or an IT product? Who brings Sharepoint to the table? Why use it over other document management solutions or good old ASP.NET? Randy digs into the answers to these questions and more.
Richard and Greg talk to Alan Sugano of ADS Consulting about everything storage. The conversation ranges over the different types of RAID, direct attached storage, iSCSI, Fibre Channel, Fibre Channel Over Ethernet, SANs... you name it!
Hey, its our 100th show! Just for fun, Richard decides to interview Greg, and ends up in a serious discussion about security. Who knew? Anyway, thanks for sticking with us for 100 shows! Here's to the next 100!
Richard and Greg talk to David Sengupta from Quest about all things cloud computing. The discussion ranges from outsourced email to building cloud-based applications. Azure gets a mention, but so does Google and Amazon... and all the concerns in between!
Richard and Greg talk to Bob Beauchemin about the new spatial data features in SQL Server 2008. Don't think you have spatial data in your database? Bob explains how every address can be spatial data. Check out Bob's blog at http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/bobb/
Richard and Greg talk to Dana Epp about the challenges around Virtual Machine security. Not just stopping someone from taking your virtual machine away on a USB key, but also the controlling of creation, duplication, distribution and configuration of virtual machines. Oh, and Dana goes off on a couple of serious security rants. Check out his blog at http://silverstr.ufies.org/blog/
Richard and Greg talk to Richard Hicks about ISA Server, including 2000, 2004, 2006 and the upcoming Threat Management Gateway product. The discussion also explores dedicated ISA hardware.
Richard and Greg talk to John Bocharov from Microsoft's IIS Media team. John talks about Microsoft Media Services in general and the upcoming Smooth Streaming technologies utilizing IIS7 and Silverlight. Check out John's blog at http://blogs.iis.net/jboch/
Richard and Greg talk to Ed Wilson, one of the Scripting Guys from Microsoft's Script Center (www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter). Ed talks about the evolution of scripting, from batch files to VBScript to PowerShell. He digs into what folks need to know about scripting today and in the future.
Richard and Greg talk to Chris Jackson from the Microsoft Windows Application Experience SWAT Team about Windows compatibility. Chris is part of a small team at Microsoft that helps enterprise customers fix their application compatibility issues with older Windows applications running in new operating systems like Vista and Windows 7.
Back in the studio at last, Richard and Greg talk to Clint Huffman of PAL fame about WMI. Windows Mangement Instrumentation has been around since Windows 2000 and provides detailed data about your machines and a variety of methods for altering the behaviour, even remotely!
Richard and Greg talk to Stephen Rose, Senior Community Manager for Windows Client. Stephen announces the release of the beta of Windows 7 simultaneously with Steve Ballmer at CES. Check it out at www.microsoft.com/windows7
While still at Windows Connections in Las Vegas, Richard and Greg talked more with Mark Minasi. This time the conversation was a bit more serious, digging into Microsoft's Cloud Computing technology called Azure. Happy New Year!
At Windows Connections in Las Vegas, Richard and Greg talk to Mark Minasi about... well, just about everything. It's a silly show, but Mark does dig into the history of Windows and his thoughts on the upcoming Windows 7. Hey, it's Christmas, have some fun!
As Tech Ed 2008 IT Pro in Barcelona was wrapping up, Richard and Greg talked to Michael Nystrom about Microsoft's new Essential Business Server (EBS). EBS looks like the big brother of Small Business Server (SBS), but its more than that. Check out EBS at http://www.microsoft.com/ebs
Another of the Tech Ed EMEA 2008 shows from Barcelona, Richard and Greg talk to Jeff Woolsey about Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, what's coming for Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2 and even some hints of what comes after that.
Another show from Tech Ed EMEA 2008 IT Pro in Barcelona, Richard and Greg talk to Baldwin Ng and Jay Sauls about the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP). MAP is a Solution Accelerator, combining guidance and tools to help IT pros understand the equipment in their network, virtualization opportunities as well as desktop upgrade challenges. You can download MAP for free at http://www.microsoft.com/map.
Richard and Greg talk to Iain McDonald, General Manager for Windows Server while at Tech Ed EMEA 2008 IT Pro in Barcelona. Iain gives us a look into what's coming up for Windows Server 2008 R2.
While at Tech Ed EMEA IT Pro 2008 in Barcelona, Richard and Greg talk to John Rodriguez, a Premier Field Engineer focused on Exchange Server. John walks through the strategies and tactics for troubleshooting problems with Microsoft Exchange Server.
Richard and Greg talk to Chris Stoneff of Lieberman Software about the challenges of passwords. The discussion ranges from password alternatives to complexity policy and privileged account password management.
Richard and Greg talk to Clint Huffman about the Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL) Tool. The tool can be downloaded at http://www.codeplex.com/PAL. PAL helps identify what performance counters to monitor and what are reasonable thresholds for Microsoft products like IIS, MOSS, SQL Server, Exchange and Active Directory. Clint has a blog at http://blogs.technet.com/clint_huffman/.
Richard and Greg dig deep into PerfMon with Shane Creamer. Shane works with Microsoft Premier Field Engineering and runs the Vital Signs workshop, a three day course teaching everything the administrator needs to know about performance monitor. Download the video Here. Also, a link to the 25 key perfmon counters is in Stephen Choy's article at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc718984.aspx?pr=blog.
Richard and Greg talk to Itzik Ben-Gan about all things T-SQL in SQL Server 2008. Itzik doesn't just talk about what's new, he talks about what's missing (in his opinion). This is a must-listen for serious SQL geeks! Check out Itzik's web site at http://www.sql.co.il/
Michael Anderburg returns to talk to Richard and Greg about code security. Focused around the book The Security Development Lifecycle (http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/8753.aspx), Michael describes the role of IT in making code security work. While it sounds like a topic for developers, the book is equally applicable to IT Pros and what they can do to help development and even third-party applications be more secure.
Richard and Greg bring back Wes Miller to talk about Windows Rights Management Services (RMS). RMS secures email and other Office documents to have precise security options, limiting the ability to view, print, copy and so on.
Richard and Greg talk to Stephen Choy about measuring and managing server performance. Stephen digs into the intricacies of performance monitor and other tools for measuring server performance. One of the tools mentioned is Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL) Tool at http://www.codeplex.com/PAL.
Richard and Greg talk to the illustrious Kim Tripp, in a rare interview without her husband Paul Randal. The conversation delves deep into the wonders of indexes in SQL Server, including the value of clustered indexes, their impact on non-clustered indexes and a huge number of details on why some indexes rock and other suck. Check out Kim's blog at http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/kimberly.
Richard and Greg talk to Michiel Wories about Powershell for SQL Server 2008. The latest version of SQL Server implements several object models through Powershell to let folks manage SQL Server without using the management tools. Michiel's blog is at http://blogs.msdn.com/mwories/
Richard and Greg talk to Paul Randal about the new file stream technology in SQL Server 2008. File streams provide a solution to very large files being connected with SQL Server transactionally while still storing the files themselves in the file system, rather than the database. Check out Paul's blog at http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul
Richard and Greg talk to Jeff Goodwin about Microsoft Unified Communications. Jeff lays out the relationship between Exchange, Office Communicator and Unified Messaging Server to combine email, telephone and instant messaging. Check out Jeff's TechNet articles at http://www.shrinkster.com/11mj and http://www.shrinkster.com/11mk.
Richard and Greg talk to Paul Randal about the involuntary DBA - those folks that end up being the DBA without previous training or expectations. Kim Tripp (Paul's wife) pops in here and there to support her husband's ideas. Check out Paul's blog at http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/
Richard and Greg talk to Laura Hunter about all things Active Directory. Laura digs into the key aspects of Active Directory, breaking down the differences between simple single domain installations and complex environments. Laura also shares her favorite resources, including the Ask the Directory Services Team (blogs.technet.com/askds).
Richard and Greg bring Erin Welker back to talk about Performance Point Planning. Performance Point Planning is part of the Office Server suite that ties SQL Server, Analysis Services, Integration Services and Reporting Services together to provide budget and forecasting services. You can read Erin's blog at www.sqlblog.com/blogs/erin_welker.
Richard and Greg talk to Brian Randell about what the IT Pro needs to know around virtualization for developers. The topics range from automating (and limiting) the creation of virtual machines for developers, licensing issues, testing, using virtualization to control IP and work the remote developers.
Richard and Greg talk to Keith Mayer about Microsoft's Infrastructure Optimization initiative. The conversation ranges across the optimization of the data center, productivity applications and custom development. More information on Microsoft Infrastructure Optimization can be found at http://www.microsoftio.com/ and http://www.microsoft.com/optimization.
Richard and Greg bring back Simon Goldstein to tackle another challenging IT Management topic: IT Risk Management. Simon outlines a plan for getting started with Risk Management, including how to "manage up" to get budget for risk management solutions.
Richard and Greg talk to Daniel Nerenberg, the Lazy Admin (www.thelazyadmin.com)! Daniel talks about the great free tools Microsoft provides for facilitating the migration and updating of Windows XP, Vista, 2003 Server and 2008 Server. Tools include Microsoft Deployment Tools (www.shrinkster.com/zq8), USMT (www.shrinkster.com/zq6) and the Application Compatibility Toolkit (www.shrinkster.com/zq9).
Richard and Greg talk to Mark Minasi of the Mastering Windows Server series (and more)! While the conversation ranges around a lot, listen for a serious dig into the networking stack of Server 2008 (and Vista).
At Tech Ed IT Pro 2008 in Orlando Florida, Richard and Greg talk to Hal Rottenberg and Carter Shanklin about VMWare's support for Powershell. VMWare has added an extensive Powershell accessible interface to VMWare to simplify the automation of virtual machine related tasks.
Live from the floor at Tech Ed IT Week in Orlando Florida, Richard and Greg talk to Frank Simorjay and Dan Griffin about NAP and Forefront. Network Access Protection (NAP) is a technology for controlling access to the network for workstations, especially laptops that might fall behind in patches and upgrades. Forefront is the client protection technology from Microsoft. Together they make an effective solution for keeping mobile worker systems safe.
A year after his first show (number 10!) Isaac Roybal comes back to talk about the state of IIS7 and the new modules being released by Microsoft. Recorded on the main floor of Tech Ed 2008 IT Pro in Orlando, Florida. And check out the new modules at www.iis.net/downloads.
Richard and Greg run a panel discussion on the compliance features of SQL Server 2008 while at Tech Ed US IT Pro week in Orlando, Florida. The discussion focuses around the tools built into SQL Server to make it easier to support compliance requirements like SOX and PCI.
Richard and Greg talk to Allan Hirt about using virtualization with SQL Server. Allan digs into where virtualization makes sense for SQL Server and when it doesn't. And yes, its true, sometimes virtualizing SQL Server really does make sense!
Richard and Greg talk to Matthew Roche about SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS). SSIS comes with SQL Server 2005 and 2008, replacing Data Transformation Services (DTS) from SQL Server 2000. Matthew digs into the dramatic improvements SSIS has over DTS and some of the best practices for using SSIS. Check out Matthew's blog at bi-polar23.blogspot.com.
Richard and Greg talk to Erin Welker about Data Partitioning in SQL Server 2005 and 2008. Erin digs into the advantages of partitioning for OLTP and OLAP, as well as the changes between 2005 and 2008. Check out Erin's blog at www.sqlblog.com/blogs/erin_welker.
Richard and Greg talk to Susan Bradley, the SBS Diva herself, about Small Business Server (SBS). The discussion digs into the various features of SBS including the upcoming 2008 edition. Susan blogs at http://www.sbsdiva.com.
Richard and Greg talk to Mark Beckner about using BizTalk Server for Integration. The discussion explore understanding the integration needs of an organization as a whole, how BizTalk can be utilized without development and how Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) has improved in BizTalk Server 2006 R2.
Richard and Greg talk to Greg Lamothe about Windows SteadyState. SteadyState allows administrators to configure PCs to roll back to a base configuration after every reboot. Combined with Group Policy for restricting access to resources you can create the perfect kiosk computer that cleans off all traces of the previous user, ready for the next.
Richard and Greg talk to Garth Jones about SMS 2003 and its new version, System Center Configuration Manager 2007. Configuration Manager takes over where SMS left off, handling software distribution, updates, asset management, even working with Windows Deployment Services to do bare metal installations!
Richard and Greg talk to Sean Siler from Microsoft about IPv6. Sean talks about what Microsoft is doing to make IPv6 work and how IPv4 and IPv6 will be living side-by-side for many years.
Richard and Greg dig into Hyper-V with guest Anil Desai. Hyper-V is the virtualization product that shipped as a beta with Windows Server 2008, the release version to be available 180 days later. This show was recorded while Hyper-V was still a release candidate. Anil digs into the strengths and weaknesses of Hyper-V and how it compares to products like VMWare's ESX Server.
Richard and Greg talk to Val Matison about Microsoft's Business Intelligence technologies. Val digs into the fundamentals of why you would want to use BI software and how the different products Microsoft makes work together.
Richard and Greg talk to Nelson and Danielle Ruest of Resolution Enterprises (www.reso-net.com) about implementing virtualization technologies in small businesses. Nelson and Danielle are the authors of the book Microsoft Windows Server 2008: The Complete Reference.
Richard and Greg talk to Michael Manos, Senior Director of Data Center Services at Microsoft about building efficient data centers. Michael talks about how Microsoft is doubling its data center capacity every year and sees no end in sight, putting a heavy requirement on building efficiently. The conversation explores making greener data centers as well as the process of measuring efficiency in the data center.
Richard and Greg talk to Chad Jones about Microsoft Application Virtualization - formerly known as SoftGrid. The conversation explores the differences in various kinds of virtualization and how application virtualization fits into the picture.
Richard and Greg talk to Noel Bruton about the challenges of help desks and tech support in general. The interview digs down into the real value of great tech support in your organization. Check out Noel's web site at www.noelbruton.com.
Richard and Greg talk to Marco Shaw about the growth of PowerShell in the Windows server community. Marco's blog at marcoshaw.blogspot.com provides info on PowerShell and his virtual user group meetings on PowerShell. We also dig into the role of WMI in PowerShell and Microsoft's focus on making PowerShell a key tool for managing all Microsoft products in the future.
Richard and Greg talk to Adam Cogan about extracting and reporting data from Exchange Server. Adam's consulting business, SSW, uses Exchange as the primary communication method to their customers - even phone calls are logged as emails. This has led Adam to discover some great KPIs from his Exchange data. You can learn more about ExchangeReporter at www.ssw.com.au.
Richard and Greg talk to Scott Kveton about OpenID. OpenID is a single sign-on solution that could very well make the classic username and password obsolete. This is a fast half hour - you'll find yourself wanting to listen again!
Richard and Greg talk to Bil Simser about the challenges of managing Sharepoint 2007. Bil points us to the SharePoint Capacity Tool (www.shrinkster.com/uhw) and comparisons between Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (www.shrinkster.com/ui1). Check out Bil's blog at www.shrinkster.com/uhv.
Richard and Greg talk to Kirk Munro about PowerShell and PowerGUI. PowerGUI is a free utility created by Quest Software, you can download it at www.powergui.org.
Richard and Greg talk to Dominick Baier about what it takes to secure an ASP.NET 2.0 application. The conversation ranges across least-privlege programming, involving security at the design point and why SSL should be on by default!
Replacing a failed recording from Tech Ed Barcelona, Richard and Greg talk to George Morbargha about Microsoft's Distributed File System (DFS). George works with Brocade who develops a set of tools called StorageX for managing DFS.
While at Tech Ed Europe IT Forum in Barcelona, Richard and Greg talked to Joel Frauenheim and Martin Booth about Microsoft's new Windows System Center Mobile Device Manager.
Steve Riley sits down with Richard and Greg to share his thoughts on current security concerns. This show was recorded at Tech Ed Europe IT Forum in Barcelona.
While at Tech Ed Europe IT Forum in Barcelona, Richard and Greg talked to Michael Anderberg, an IT Pro Evangelist from Microsoft about ISA Server. Michael digs into the history of ISA Server and how it has evolved into the latest versions.
At Tech Ed Europe IT Forum in Barcelona, Richard and Greg sit down with Paul Randal and Kim Tripp to talk about everything new in SQL Server 2008.
Richard and Greg have a second interview with Chris Avis while at Connections in Las Vegas. This time the focus is on that scourge of the Internet, email spam. Chris digs into how the 2007 edition of Exchange extends the spam fighting capabilities of the product.
While at the Connections conference in Las Vegas, Richard and Greg talked to Chris Avis about Windows Deployment Services (WDS). WDS replaces Remote Installation Services (RIS) to provide automated installation of operating systems onto bare-install machines using network boot (PXE).
Richard and Greg talk to Tony Redmond from Hewlett Packard about utilizing Powershell with Microsoft Exchange. Powershell (code-named Monad) is Microsoft's technology for providing command-line interface control.
Richard and Greg talk to Jeremy Moskowitz of gpanswers.com fame about Group Policy in Active Directory. As Jeremy says, if you have Active Directory, you have Group Policy, and you might as well learn how to take advantage of it.
Richard and Greg talk to Randy Smith about locking down Vista for the enterprise. While we can't help making fun of UAC, we do dig into the techniques around using BitLocker and restricting the use of USB keys, etc. Who says security can't be fun?
Richard and Greg talk to Brien Posey about the issues around securing Exchange Server effectively. The discussion ranges over Outlook Web Access, Outlook Mobile Access, RPC over HTTP, SSL, VPNs and more!
Richard and Greg talk to Doug Toombs about tools that every IT Pro needs! Here are the tools talked about on the show:
Richard and Greg talk to Tony Howlett and Glenn Kramer of Network Security Services about Information Security. More than just protecting credit card numbers, InfoSec is a complex area of security that takes a lot of thinking to get right.
Joel Oleson talks to Richard and Greg about the IT management of Sharepoint. Sharepoint has a knack for showing up everywhere in an organization whether you want it to or not. A solid plan at the IT level to provide Sharepoint services to the organization can solve that problem.
Mitch Garvis talks to Richard and Greg about Microsoft Business Desktop Deployment (BDD). BDD is the evolution of earlier versions, along side products like SMS, Vista and Office to do zero touch and light touch deployments of operating systems and applications.
Richard and Greg talk to Trey Johnson from Cizer about Microsoft's Business Intelligence offerings. The product line up from Microsoft is expanding beyond SQL Server, Analysis Services and Excel to include Microsoft Office Sharepoint Services, the new PerformancePoint Server and ProClarity Analysis Tools.
Brad McGehee discusses the career path of a professional database administrator. Often the DBA role is thrust upon an IT professional or developer without much in the way of specific training. Growing into the role is largely a self-motivated exercise. Brad talks about the habits that successful DBAs have, focused on on-going education and working to protect their organizations data.
Tom Clark talks to Richard and Greg about iSCSI and how its bringing SAN solutions to the medium-scale enterprise. iSCSI uses TCP and Ethernet to provide SAN features and connectivity at a substantially lower cost than Fibre Channel.
Charles Betz talks to Richard and Greg about the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). The ITIL provides guidance on all aspects of an IT operation, including service support and delivery, implementing service management, asset management, security, application, communications and even business perspectives.
David Lowe of the Windows Server Team talks to us about Windows Server 2008 Core installation. The Core installation removes most of the GUI, Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer and other overhead of the operating system that you don't need for a remote access server. The result is a server with an 80% smaller footprint in diskspace and substantially less memory consumed.
We chat with Donald Farmer about data mining with the Analysis Services components of Microsoft's SQL Server 2005. Donald takes us away from the traditional business-use of data mining (like a 'people who liked this book also liked' application) and into the idea that we can mine our application and event logs for data that will help the IT pro optimize and anticipate problems in the information systems.
Bob Roudebush talks to us about how disaster recovery works when Microsoft Virtual Server and/or VMWare is involved. We dig into the details around backing up within the guest VM and via the host.
Richard and Greg talk with Sarbjit Singh Gill calling all the way from Singapore about Sharepoint 2007. Along the way they explore the history of Sharepoint, and how Microsoft has learned from earlier versions to create a powerful focal point for your information system.
Richard and Greg chat with Stephen Rose about Server Virtualization, including Microsoft's Virtual Server and VMWare's products. Stephen digs into the advantages (and disadvantages) of server virtualization, talks about migrating existing servers and getting the maximum use out of your hardware.
Our most requested topic is finally addressed! Steve Whitner from Quantum talks to us about disk-based backup and how it fits into the ecosystem of backup solutions along with tape backup and replication over WAN connections. We also dig into how disk backup solution use de-duplication to be more space efficient.
Three months after the first discussion on the client side of CardSpace (Show #3), Dana Epp returns to the show to talk about the server side of CardSpace and how quickly the technology is evolving into the future of authentication across multiple platforms.
Richard and Greg dive into a discussion with Charlie Russel on Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services RemoteApp, but not before a detour to talk about Charlie's networking disaster around Service Pack 2 for Windows 2003 Server R2. RemoteApp is a new feature for Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008 that allows users to remotely access an application as if it was running locally on their own machine.
The final installment of interviews from Microsoft Tech Ed US 2007 in Orlando, Richard and Greg talk to Jeff Sigman, the Release Manager for Network Access Protection (NAP). Jeff digs into exactly what NAP is all about, how it interact with Windows Server 2008, Vista and Windows XP.
Another Tech Ed US 2007 interview from Orlando, Richard and Greg sit down with Richard Turner and discuss how CardSpace impacts the IT professional. CardSpace (formerly codenamed "InfoCard") is a key technology in Microsoft's Identity Platform.
Richard and Greg talk to Bill Varga about what IP (that's Internet Protocol) Intelligence is all about. They also dig into how IP geolocation helps with regulatory compliance and fraud detection. Bill also talks about the new technology Quova (his employer) has developed that can deal with geolocation of satellite and megaproxy IP addresses.
While at Tech Ed US 2007 in Orlando, Richard and Greg sat down to talk to Isaac Roybal, a Product Manager on the Windows Server team who is deeply involved in Web Workload, especially IIS 7. Isaac digs into the details of the new management features in IIS 7, now available as part of Windows Server 2008 Beta 3.
Richard and Greg talk to Eric Marvets about securing laptop drives and other portable media using TrueCrypt. Along the way they dig into different levels of security and the entropy of passwords.
Links:
Richard and Greg talk to Brian Komar about the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), Extended Validation (EV) Certificates and whether or not anybody notices the green bar in Internet Explorer 7.
Rory McCaw talks with Richard and Greg around Microsoft Operations Manager 2007.
Wes Miller talks with Richard and Greg about Vista x64 and Longhorn Server x64, and the issues that surround 64-bit Windows.
Author and MVP John Savill talks to Richard and Greg about Application Virtualization.
Simon Goldstein talks to Richard and Greg about making sense out of compliance with rules and regulations around Information Technology.
Richard and Greg speak to Microsoft Security MVP Dana Epp about Microsoft's CardSpace initiative for secure authentication. They hint at another show focusing on the server side.
Exchange MVP David Sengupta discusses issues and best practices around email policy and related strategies.
Patrick Hynds from Critical Sites kicks off this all-new Microsoft-centric IT podcast with a discussion about storage. This show is atypically long. We're trying for 30 minutes per show.
En liten tjänst av I'm With Friends. Finns även på engelska.