RunAs Radio

JSON for IT folks? Yes! Richard talks to Aidan Finn about his experiences actually getting into configuration-as-code. Aidan talks about discovering the Azure Quickstart Templates as a starting point to automating setting up test and training labs. JSON is a simple file format but takes a little getting used to, and with Azure you can specify virtually every aspect of a virtual machine so that it can be created on-demand. And there are great tools available to make it easier to build and maintain these configuration files. Ultimately, if you are creating anything in Azure more than once, you need to get up to speed on this kind of automation - it's the future!

VPNs don't have to suck! Richard chats with Richard Hicks about the latest in DirectAccess, Microsoft's built in VPN technology that makes maintaining a secure connection for a remote PC a bit less painful. Richard talks about how the server-side of DirectAccess being pretty solid for Server 2012R2 and 2016. But the big improvement comes from deploying Windows 10 Enterprise - bringing key features like multi-homing so that remote PCs can choose from a variety of geographically dispersed data centers. The conversation also goes to the mobile device management side of things, since DirectAccess requires a domain-joined version of Windows, it's not for everything. What are the alternatives?

Have you used WireShark? Richard chats with Tim Warner of Pluralsight about his experiences working with this super-powerful open source network inspection tool. The conversation dives into the challenges of understanding what's going on with your network, both wired and wireless. WireShark gathers up traffic coming and going from a machine and analyzes it to identify what its for and where it's from. Tim talks about the challenges of seeing the network as a whole when it comes to Layer 3 routing, but there are tools to help. There are many reasons to want to understand your network traffic, but there are privacy challenges also - know the rules for your world!

The cloud is secure, right? Richard chats with J Peter Bruzzese about Office 365 Security - focusing primarily on Exchange Online. The social engineering of email is hitting new highs, with ransomware, wire transfers and other approaches to exploiting people. Is the only solution education of the user? While an important part of the equation, J Peter also talks about building a robust email infrastructure that fights back from various attacks.

Microsoft had a pretty good year in 2016 - or did it? Richard chats with Paul Thurrott about his impressions on Microsoft in the past year with an eye to the future. And while there have been some successes, there have also been some duds in 2016 too. Looking at you, Windows Phone! Paul talks about Microsoft's battles with hardware, from the killing of Band to the problems with Microsoft Surface Book. At the same time, he still loves his Book and is in awe of the Surface Studio. There's lots of great things going on at Microsoft and more to come - have a listen and a great 2017!

Still have applications that depend on Internet Explorer? Richard talks to Fred Pullen from the Edge team about IE Enterprise Mode, allowing IT folks to strictly control what sites run in IE11, and what sites can run in Edge. The Edge browser breaks with the legacy of Internet Explorer, making it smaller, faster and more secure. But IE has a 20+ year history and there are plenty of apps, especially internal apps, that still depend on it. Fred talks about using Enterprise Mode to specify exactly what apps run in IE11 and what ones can run in Edge - and automating the switching between browsers so that users don't have to think about it at all.

SQL Server 2016 SP1 has shipped - what's new? Richard chats with Bob Ward about the latest in SQL Server, some of which was announced at the Connect event in New York. Huge on the list was the addition of many more of what was once enterprise-only features on the Standard and Express editions of the database. Bob discusses architectural changes that have come to SQL Server 2016 to better reflect the latest hardware, which has resulted in the same workloads on the same hardware actually running faster just by upgrading the database to the latest version. Finally, there's a discussion of migration and the tools available today to help you test your workloads to see any variation in behaviour for your application from one version to the next. Check it out!

The DevOps Handbook is finally released! Richard chats with the one-and-only Gene Kim about the five years of effort that have gone into making the DevOps handbook. Gene talks about how the Handbook was supposed to come out before the Phoenix project, but as the scope of the book grew, they realized it needed more time. The benefit of time has been a ton of case studies and great detailed evidence of how automating workflows, instrumenting systems deeply and a culture of experimentation leads to better applications, happier employees and customers, and a better business all around. You need to read this book!

What does it take to make Azure networking actually work? Richard chats with Microsoft VP Albert Greenberg about the whole of Azure networking. The conversation starts out talking about the complexity of building massive virtual networks for Azure so that every customer has their own private space to work in, while not impacting or being impacting by any of the other customers. Albert talks about the need for no central point of focus when scaling to public cloud sizes when it comes to network - there's no hardware available at this size!

How does your Active Directory data look? Richard chats with Chris Johnson of Hyperfish about how important AD personnel data is, and the terrible condition that most organizations leave it in. Chris talks about how the point of Active Directory was to be the authoritative source of personnel information in an organization - but most companies just use it for login credentials! It was Microsoft Exchange that first took on AD for all its user information, and more systems are doing so. The challenge is finding efficient ways to allow users to keep their data up to date and accurate.