RunAs Radio

Are you ready for Windows 10? Richard chats with Mark Minasi about the impending release of Windows 10. Mark talks about the new features of Windows 10 that will make you happy you're upgrading, including Universal Apps (no really, they're good!), the new store mechanism and the new browser - Edge. This leads to a conversation about managing updates, browser compatibility and keeping your business environment stable. Not everything will be ready in July, but the upgrades will be ongoing through the rest of 2015, so keep your eyes open!

Desired State Configuration and SQL Server? Richard talks to Patrick Curran about using DSC for more than just setting up a web farm. In fact, Patrick uses DSC to set up an entire SharePoint infrastructure - including SQL Server! And that is the tricky bit, since SQL Server isn't quite as PowerShell friendly as IIS. Patrick talks about battling the SQL PowerShell bits which sometime install, sometimes not so much - ultimately you're better off using SQL internal scripting for a reliable install. Lots of interesting thoughts about taking DSC to the max!

Does your organization need Yammer? Richard talks to Chris Poteet about the whys and hows of Yammer. The conversation starts out on the why of Yammer - what does this tool bring to the table? There are lots of pseudo-social-media products out there for the enterprise, but they only work if people use them. But Yammer's approach makes it familiar and easy to have conversations within the organization that can be searched and shared. Chris then digs into the install process: There almost isn't one! Totally cloud based, you sign up to Yammer with your business email and things pretty much start happening from there. Check it out!

How does Microsoft use SharePoint? Richard chats with MS IT SharePoint Server owner Jared Shockley about how Microsoft uses SharePoint internally. As it turns out, Jared has been part of the team moving Microsoft SharePoint sites into Office 365 - according to him, 93% of the on-premise sites are now in the cloud! The last 7% represent the tricky bits. Serious customizations are the main issue, and the mechanisms for customizing SharePoint on-premise are very different from SharePoint in Office 365. Jared talks about evaluating projects for rewriting - SharePoint isn't the only choice these days!

An update on Windows update? Richard talks to PFE Robert Smith about the announcements coming out of build around how Windows will be updated going forward. No more rollups! Well, almost. The conversation digs into the on-going evolution of updating Windows, the lack of Service Packs (and their meaning), rollups, hotfixes, and so on. As Terry Myerson said on stage at Ignite, for unmanaged environments, updating is going to be far more automatic. If you run a strict update environment with WSUS, nothing needs to change, expect that hotfixes will now appear in the Windows Update Catalog. So things are getting better!

What burning questions do you have about SQL Server? Richard moderates a panel discussion with Paul Randal, Kim Tripp and Brent Ozar and a host of other folks at the SQL Intersection conference in Scottsdale Arizona. Taking questions from the audience, which are sometimes answered by other audience members (who happened to be speakers and/or Microsoft employees), the conversation ranges over SQL 2016, indexing, high availability, federation, data types, query governors and more!

PAL is growing up! After a few months of rest from publishing his book Windows Performance Analysis Field Guide, Richard talks to creator Clint Huffman about the latest update to PAL - Performance Analysis of Logs. PAL helps you sort out PerfMon to understand your performance problems in all sorts of Microsoft products. Clint has added a new auto-detect feature to check through your perfmon log file and know what profiles from PAL to pull in. And the latest features is the PAL Collector tool, which will analyze your machine and auto-configure PAL for data collection - and you can set it up to start on boot!

Rights Management in the Cloud? Richard talks to Morgan Simonsen about Azure Rights Management. Azure RMS works with Office 2010-13 and a variety of other applications to provide rights like read-only, modifiable, even limit viewing times - as well as letting you know when secured docs are viewed. And it can work outside of your systems as well, through Azure Active Directory. For other applications, there is the general RMS service that handles text files and images at portal.aadrm.com. It doesn't work with everything (gmail for example), but it does work in the field - if you need rights management, you should check it out!

So what happened at Ignite? Stephen Rose chats with Richard about the keynotes, sessions and announcements at Ignite. One of the biggest shows Microsoft has ever done, more than 22,000 people soaked up a huge amount of knowledge over a week in Chicago. Stephen also talks about the upcoming Mobility Transformed Tour around the US in May and June 2015!

Are Public Folders evil? Peter Schmidt says no! Richard chats with Peter about Modern Public Folders that come with Exchange 2013. Treated more like regular mailboxes (only BIGGER), the public folders in Exchange 2013 are much easier for the administrator to handle while being essentially the same as far as the users are concerned. The migration is a bit tricky, but you can do it on-premise as well as to Office 365. Peter has a great video about migrating to 2013 public folders from NICConf. Check it out!