RunAs Radio

Is it time to migrate to Server 2019? Richard chats with Dave Kawula who says YES! After a bit of a bumpy start, Server 2019 is good to go and offers a ton of great features - and some pretty painless in-place upgrades too. Dave points out that this is a version of Server 'born in the cloud' and since Microsoft does in-place upgrades, for certain roles, it makes sense for you to do it too. File servers and VM hosts are great for in-place upgrades, but domain controllers and app servers, you need to think things through more carefully - and they're likely virtual machines anyway, so build new... and use automation while you're at it!

What's a data lake and why do you need one? Richard chats with Stacia Varga about the evolving landscape of data analytics - focusing on how the cloud is changing the way a company can gather, store and analyze data. This leads to a conversation about the role of the data lake, a place where raw data can arrive and then be processed on-demand for analytics. The cloud provides the elasticity and scaling to be able to analyze data quickly on demand - you just need to take advantage of it!

WIndows Server 2019 has been out since November 2018 - is it time to install it? Richard talks to Jason Helmick about how the creation of Windows has evolved and how Microsoft's new practices around building Windows has affected adoption and interest in the latest operating system. Jason talks about how the continuous improvement model of Microsoft products including Windows can be a challenge for some folks, but provides huge benefits also. Should you install Server 2019? Jason says YES!

SharePoint is not just a product, it's a tool for helping your organization manage critical information. Are you taking advantage of it? Richard chats with Susan Hanley about what information architecture is about and how SharePoint can play a key role in helping an organization find, store and share data. Every organization needs this capability, successful organizations do it well - how well do you do it?

IT may be evolving, but are all aspects of your IT organization advancing? Richard chats with Jeff Stokes, former Microsoft PFE and now working at Tanium about the challenges IT people have around improving performance. Arguably the least advanced part of much of IT infrastructure is the network - so what does a modern network look like? Jeff talks about being able to get visibility into what servers and desktops are talking to each other, and how to set logical boundaries around them. At least know when your machines are speaking out of turn!

How do you make your SQL queries go faster? Richard chats with Erin Stellato about how Query Store in SQL Server 2017 and its ability to provide detailed information on query performance, including where SQL Server is compiling new query plans for repeated calls. Erin talks about how ORMs can cause repeated ad-hoc queries and how Query Store can be used to help educate developers and explore options for tuning those queries with stored procedures or parameterization. But you can't blame code by default - Query Store can be used for a variety of performance tuning options, on-premises and in the cloud!

Firewalls and MFA are awesome, but how's your physical security? Richard chats with Ned Pyle about a story surrounding a consultant able to walk into a data center, take a VM host server and walk out - and then was able to exploit it to pull all sorts of information out of the Active Directory service on it! Ned talks about taking both physical security and policies seriously, and then moves to the next phase: How do you protect a virtual machine even when its stolen? Enter Guarded Fabric and Shielded Virtual Machines, first introduced in Server 2016 and improved in Server 2019 - go beyond BitLocker protections and really digitally secure your VMs!

The next DevOps Report Survey is out, and Nicole Forsgren needs your help! Richard chats with Nicole about the changes at DORA (now part of Google) - but the work to understand how to make high performing teams continues! Nicole discusses her now expanded team of researchers getting to the heart of what it takes to make great software in your organization. Its never one simple thing, but many aspects that work together so that everyone involved in the creation and operation of software can be as effective as possible - take the survey today and contribute to the effort!

Office 365 is growing in popularity - but is it fast enough? Richard chats with Paul Keely about how IT needs to monitor Office 365 to understand performance problems and worse. Paul talks about all the various aspects of performance that can be impacted by working with Office 365, including needing more overall bandwidth. The discussion turns to the Azure Service Map tool that runs on workstations and in the cloud to understand what services are eating resources - and how that can turn up potential malware and security breaches! There are a lot of aspects to understanding exactly what's going on with Office 365 in your org, but it is a solvable problem - dig in!

Is Artificial Intelligence part of your data analytics strategy? Richard chats with Jen Stirrup about how data analytics and business intelligence continue to evolve to include different elements of artificial intelligence. Natural language interfaces are one aspect, but machine learning can play an even larger role - if you continue to do your diligence! Jen talks about needing quality data to feed to machine learning algorithms and the challenges of dealing with data bias and confirmation bias. We've had these battles all along in analytics, but the new AI tools can amplify your mistakes - there are no shortcuts to good data!