RunAs Radio

Richard chats with Clint Huffman about memory management in Windows. But first a quick conversation about the state of affairs these days, including Clint's work on the Windows Performance Field Guide, due to be published in early 2014. Clint runs down the various elements that matter about memory, the effects of running 32 bit apps in a 64 bit OS and more. And along the way, he mentions lots of great resources, including the PFE Performance Guide, the Windows Performance Toolkit and a knowledge base article on How to Use Poolmon. Check 'em out!

Richard chats with Erin Stellato about being an accidental DBA. What's an accidental DBA? It's the guy who was standing closest to the SQL Server when the last guy quit! Erin talks about the key things that you need to know to handle the basic care and feeding of a SQL Server. The conversation digs into understanding what you have, how you back it up (and restore it), simple things to keep your databases healthy and knowing when to call for help. You don't have to be a DBA to do things right!

Richard chats with Stephen Foskett about where storage is at these days. The conversation spans far and wide, talking about how Microsoft's latest products (like Exchange 2013) are rather SAN-hostile, why we're all happy to get away from FibreChannel, our indifference toward iSCSI and the impact of NFS and SMB3 on file systems. Stephen also talks about just how fast fast is these days - whether it's SSDs, PCI-E based storage or USB3 thumb drives! It's all about the iOPs! Make sure you check out Tech Field Day!

Richard talks to Brian Komar about the issues around Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). Brian starts out talking about being a responsible PKI authority within your organization and how certificate revocation lists (CRLs) are a bigger issue than ever. From there, the conversation turns to the challenges of actually securing the delivery of certificates to devices that are never going to be joined to active directory. Actually understanding the costs of BYOD are an important part of the equation - maybe it's cheaper, simpler and safer to just distribute company devices to everyone?

Richard chats with Justin Morris about his experiences deploying Lync 2013 to customers. Lync 2013 has been out for a little less than a year and offers awesome levels of integration between email, instant messaging and telephony. Justin digs into some of the key features of using Lync before the conversation digresses into a debate on smartphones, comparing Skype with Lync and the idea of universal endpoints. Along the way there are some audio quality issues, the humor of which isn't lost on anyone when talking about Lync! Justin also talks about the advantages and disadvantages of on-premise, hybrid and cloud deployment options with Lync. They aren't the same features everywhere!

Richard chats with David Jones about identity security. The conversation starts out talking about the wonders of Single Sign On, followed by the horrors - the security exploits that can and do occur. David sites the Mandiant Security Report for more info on the exploits taking place. From there, David talks about using multi-factor authentication and the potential risks, as per the xckd on security. As we get more serious about managing identity, the idea of outsourcing to companies like PingIdentity is discussed. What's the best way to get identity right?

Richard chats with Mickey Gousset about System Center Orchestrator 2012. Mickey talks about the role orchestrator plays interacting between other System Center products (like Operations Manager and Service Manager), and/or third party apps, creating a place for all your scripts to live. Yes, it's true, scripts live on with Orchestrator, although you can use other tools to build runbooks using drag-and-drop tools as well. The conversation also digs into the thriving third-party community for Orchestrator, including Orchestrator on CodePlex. Check it out!

Richard talks to Brian Desmond about some of the new features coming to Active Directory in Server 2012 R2. The conversation starts off talking about the focus on Federation Services in Server 2012 R2, including support for non-Windows devices connecting to a domain via Workspace Join. Brian also digs into features that were added in Server 2012 like multi-factor authetication and refers to the Active Directory Team Blog post on Multi-Factor Security. Is Active Directory getting old? Perhaps, but it's getting regular work done to keep it relevant in the modern IT space.

Richard talks to Mitch Garvis about his experiences comparing vSphere and Hyper-V. Which one is better? Mitch gets right to the point - they're both incredibly capable virtualization solutions. It's all about the tools around the hypervisor - whether that's vSphere on the VMWare side and System Center on the Microsoft side. So they both have their merits, but Mitch is all about Hyper-V. The conversation dives deep on the evolution of IT using virtualization, not just in the data center, but all the way out to the desktop.

Richard chats with Robert Bogue about the current state of SharePoint 2013. As Robert states, there still isn't a shrink-wrap version of SharePoint 2013, but if you have a Volume License Agreement or similar, you can download SharePoint 2013 today. But should you? The conversation digs into the cloud focus of SharePoint 2013, and how installation and configuration has gotten substantially more complex - it's all about the certificates! Or you can run in the cloud. If you can, take a SharePoint 2013 VM out for a spin and decide for yourself!