RunAs Radio

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/.