RunAs Radio

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.