RunAs Radio

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!