RunAs Radio

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!