RunAs Radio

Richard talks to Martin Booth from Microsoft about their vision of the People-Centric IT. A cornerstone of this vision is unified device management, covering desktops, laptops, tablets and phones across all platforms. Martin digs into how tools like Intune, Configuration Manager and Window Server 2012 R2 work together to be able to deal with Bring Your Own Device, effective Information Security and data sharing. The conversation gets beyond the devices and into the diversity of services such as multi-part authentication, file sharing and computing. A great set of thoughts to end the year! Merry Christmas!

Richard chats with Steven Murawski about implementing Microsoft's Desired State Configuration (DSC) in the Stack Exchange infrastructure. DSC is part of the Windows Management Framework 4.0 that comes with Windows Server 2012 R2 but is also backward compatible for Server 2012 and 2008 R2. Steven talks about being able to create detailed configuration documentation as part of DSC that then actually works with tools to generated pre-configured virtual machines in detail. The conversation also dives into the magic of using source control to handle these files and how it helps connect Ops folks to developers to support self-service configuration, reduce problems between the teams and generally spread the DevOps goodness.

Richard talks to Scott Lowe about VMWare's NSX product, which provides network virtualization to the vSphere world. NSX came from VMWare's acquisition of Nicira in July 2012 and their own development efforts to bring Software Defined Networking to life. Scott talks about being able to provision and configure networking the same way that you do with virtual machines, and what that means to networking, applications, security and performance. The conversation also looks to the future where applications and infrastructure are smart enough to move themselves together for speed, a part for reliability and know what hardware to use and how. Great thinking beyond the basics of virtualization!

Richard chat with Dana Epp about the latest on Microsoft Intune. Dana digs into the latest in Intune, which is it's second version, both for small organizations and large. The basic version is a pure cloud offering for smaller organizations that allows you to push software, manage policy and track inventory with no on-premise infrastructure. And it works across platforms - Windows, Windows RT, Windows Phone 8 and Apple iOS! Dana talks briefly about large organization implementations using System Center Configuration Manager as well. Intune is shaping up to be a great way to manage configuration for all your organization's devices in one place.

Richard talks to Kevin Kline about what's coming in SQL Server 2014. Yes, the database continues to evolve and Kevin digs into many of the new features. The conversation also jumps into the NoSQL movement and it's many forms, including making simple data storage easier for developers as well as the creation and management of big data solutions. Kevin also talks about the impact of new licensing models and new hardware of SQL, and how the role of the database in the organization continues to evolve.

While at DevIntersection in Las Vegas, Richard chatted with Eric Shupps about his experiences dealing with Sharepoint after the deployment. Although the conversation starts out post-deployment, it becomes apparent that more training, more thinking and more planning are all good things to do with Sharepoint, whether after the deploy or before. How do you make governance palatable? And how do you introduce new processes to your users in a way that makes it not an obstacle, but an asset - Eric provides some great thinking here!

While at DevIntersection in Las Vegas, Richard sat down with Mark Minasi to talk about Windows 8.1. And some of the show is even about Windows 8.1! Mark dives into a discussion around Server 2012R2 (the server side of Windows 8.1) and how Hyper-V is all over VMWare these days. The conversation also explores the evolution of Active Directory, and possibly it's end. Lots of interesting thought and exploration over what it means to live in the latest Windows world.

While at SQLIntersection in Las Vegas, Richard moderates a panel of Kim Tripp, Paul Randal, Brent Ozar and Jonathan Kehayias. The panel takes questions from the audience about SQL Server and hilarity ensues.

Richard talks to Venkat Kalyanasundaram about using IPv6 in your internal networks. Since Vista, IPv6 has been on by default on all versions of Windows. Should you leave it on? What breaks if you turn it off? What is the overhead of leaving it on? Venkat discusses all of these issues, as well as the advantages of using IPv6. We aren't likely to be running in a pure IPv6 world any time soon, but you can start using IPv6 internally today!

Richard talks to Tom Hollingsworth about how Software Defined Networking (SDN) and IPv6 can work together. The conversation starts out talking about how SDN has brought virtualization to networking, with the same amazing impact that it has had on servers and storage. Tom then explains how SDN provides the ability to rapidly customize, deploy and tune networking for each application - and the problems that IPv4 brings to the table. So enter IPv6 and an approach to make IPv6 adoption less frightening and more gradual. Using SDN to deploy IPv6 as part of your application package one app at a time could revolutionize your network in just a few years!