RunAs Radio

Richard talks to Jeffrey Snover about Desired State Configuration (DSC). DSC is part of the Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview, although it is also available as the Windows Management Framework 4.0 Preview that can run on Windows 7 SP1 and Server 2008 R2 SP1. Jeffrey explains that DSC is all about building configuration information that can be applied to a server to install and configure services exactly to specification and resist 'drifting' of the configuration over time. DSC takes Powershell to the next level!

Richard chats with Scott Forsyth about IIS 8 and 8.5. IIS 8 shipped with Server 2012, and IIS 8.5 with Server 2012 R2 (which at publication was still in preview). Scott talks about the new features of IIS 8, many of which are focused on large scale web hosting, where hundreds of web sites are hosted together. The conversation also digs into the back porting of features, including dynamic IP restriction and FTP Login restrictions, while being released with IIS 8, are also now available for IIS 7. Scott also talks about specific features new to IIS 8.5, including dynamic web site activation and next generation logging. Lots of cool new features in the latest IIS!

Richard chats with Steven Murawski about building a DevOps culture at your organization. The conversation talks about the fundamentals of DevOps, digging into bringing operations and developers closer together to be able to iterate on features more rapidly - as Steve says, it's about deploying small changes more frequently. Steven refers to a .NET Rocks episode with Jez Humble about Continuous Delivery as well as a RunAs Radio episode with Jeffrey Snover on DevOps. Want to get going on DevOps? Check out the Server Fault blog and Steven's blog.

Richard brings Richard Hicks back to talk about Software Defined Networks (SDN). Windows Server 2012 brings many new capabilities to the role, but Hyper-V's advancements in virtual networking are especially important. Richard talks about how Windows Server 2012 R2 takes virtual networking to another level, making SDNs more a reality than ever before. The conversation digs into the challenges around bridging between the virtual network and the rest of the world, as well as new generation tools for monitoring your network. SDNs are in their early days on the Microsoft stack, but they are here to stay!

Back in the studio at last, Richard talks to Konstantinos Theos about disaster recovery strategies for Active Directory. Backup and restore, test environments, policy management and practice - all the essentials of keeping Active Directory alive through a disaster. AD isn't much different from any other system, it takes all of these things (and did we mention practice?) to be effective in a disaster.

While hanging at TechEd US in New Orleans, Richard chatted with Paula Januszkiewicz about her talks and experience working the 'black hat' side of security. Paula describes some of the amazing tools that hackers have today to break into servers and desktops - including an amazing discussion on how to break into a PC using the recovery options in Windows! This is a discussion that will get you thinking hard about your policies around patching, security-in-depth and auditing!

While at TechEd US in New Orleans, Richard sat down with Stephen Rose to talk about the new features in Windows 8.1. Don't call it a service pack! Stephen runs down all the cool features in Windows 8.1, including the return of the Start button (sort of), being able to boot directly to desktop and Mirrorcast - a wireless way to connect to external displays. Digging deeper into enterprise related features, the conversation also digs into new workplace join and the open mobile device management support. You're gonna want this update!

While at DevTeach in Toronto, Richard sat down with Ed Musters to talk about document management in SharePoint. The conversation starts out exploring why SharePoint is used for document management - resisting sending files in email, better security, document control and actually knowing where everything is. Ed describes the challenges of setting up a coherent taxonomy of documents, how everything needs to be tagged and organized in a way that makes it discoverable and controlled. And the same rules apply to outward facing web sites - great taxonomies make sure the right data is shown to the right people! Ultimately, everything is a document.

While at DevTeach, Richard chatted with Richard Baumet about his experiences at the 2012 PASS conference, including the sneak peeks at the upcoming version of SQL Server. The conversation largely focuses on how changes in hardware, including faster and more CPU cores, faster and larger memory and storage, ultimately shape how SQL Server works. An exciting time to be a DBA!

While at DevTeach in Toronto, Richard talks to Craig Utley about his experiences building business intelligence systems. The discussion starts out with the concepts of data warehousing, OLAP and business intelligence, and how many business owners get fooled into focusing only on the results of the business intelligence effort without acknowledging the huge body of work that goes into it with ETL, data cleansing and coherency. Craig talks about the right ways to get into a business intelligence project (it's about the business) so that you can avoid the pitfalls that lead to a failed project.