RunAs Radio

Self-Service Test Labs in Azure! While at Build in Seattle, Richard talked with Claude Remillard about the on-going evolution of Azure Dev Test Labs. Azure Dev Test Labs allows you to define a set of templates and services for building up a set of VMs for doing testing - or anything else you like. The set can have run limits, billing limits and more, so you can control costs as well as make sure things get cleaned up when done. Claude digs into using Azure Dev Test Labs for demos, training and more - maybe the name should be changed to Azure Lab Services!

Data Warehousing is for everyone! While at Build in Seattle, Richard sat down with Matt Usher to talk about the latest version of Azure SQL Data Warehouse. Matt talks about how the cloud has made the barrier of entry for data warehousing trivially low - costs that are dollars per hour, so that you can afford to experiment at almost any scale. What can data warehousing do for you? Make your company more competitive and efficient!

Linux on Windows! While at Build in Seattle, Richard talked to Tara Raj and Sarah Cooley about Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). While you've been able to run Linux in virtual machines and containers for a long time, WSL actually lets you run Linux in a command line inside Windows. Why would you do that? Sarah and Tara focuses on the biggest benefit, which is taking advantage of great Linux command line tools and scripts.

The Exchange story continues to evolve - how about an update! Richard chats with Gareth Gudger about his work with a variety of companies using Exchange both on-premises and in Office 365. Gareth digs into older versions of Exchange that are coming out of support (time to upgrade) and the announcements around Exchange 2019 - the features come to the cloud first, but we get them in our own data centers eventually. There are plenty of ways to operate mail successfully for your organization, and Gareth talks through a number of those choices.

SQL Server runs on Linux and in containers! Richard talks to Bob Ward about the on-going evolution of SQL Server and how the latest version literally has a common codebase between the Windows and Linux versions - feature-for-feature identical! The tooling is different, but the new SQL Operations Studio is built to be cross-platform, running on Windows, Mac and Linux! The conversation also dives into container strategies using Docker and Kubernetes, both on-premises and in the cloud. Lots of data choices!

What can you automate in the cloud? Everything! Richard chats with Dana Epp about how the tooling in Azure allows for automating a huge range of tasks, starting with Dana's personal focus - security. Dana talks about using automation to catch whenever security rules change anywhere, just for logging if not for direct action. The combination of Azure ARM Templates, Automation and Azure Functions is hugely powerful. The challenge is in managing that tooling, which leads to a conversation around source control, just enough administration and DevOps!

What does it take to build a great cybersecurity team? Richard chats with Paula Januszkiewicz about the work she's doing to create more cybersecurity professionals. The challenge is that cybersecurity still isn't really a profession - there are no certifying bodies out there that take on responsibility for their members. Paula talks about different certifications you can get, but in the end, doing the work is the most important thing - and how you approach security problems. It's a full-time task - if you can't think about security all the time, it's hard to keep up!

So many collaboration offerings - what's the right way to go? Richard chats with Tom Arbuthnot about his experiences around the modern digital collaboration world - using technologies like Slack, WebEx and Skype. Today, Microsoft is pouring its energy into Office 365 Teams. Tom discusses what the strengths of Teams are and the choices moving forward. The conversation also dives into the etiquette of these new tools. For those that grew up with them, it's easy to do the right thing. But people are new to these collaboration tools make mistakes - training is worthwhile!

What does modern service management look like? Richard talks to ex-Microsoft Carroll Moon about his experiences modernizing service management at Microsoft, and now for his customers at CloudFit. The cloud has made compute and infrastructure effectively unlimited for the right price - how does a great IT group take advantage of this? Carroll talks about applying DevOps principles effectively in the operations space to focus on the applications that cause you the most grief, and where improvements can have the biggest impact. You have to measure to know where to work!

Spring in Orlando - time for a SQL Server Questions and Answer panel! Richard hosts a panel of Kim Tripp, Paul Randal, Bob Ward, Aaron Bertrand, David Pless, Tim Radney and many more to answer the questions that the SQL Intersection attendees have. The conversation ranges over challenges around partitioning, scaling, various disaster recovery strategies, the advantages of upgrading to the latest version and providing direct feedback to the SQL team members in the room! These question and answers shows provide a snapshot about the thinking around SQL Server and database administration - have a listen!