RunAs Radio

Richard flies solo to talk to Peter Schmidt about federation in Exchange 2010. While federation has been around for awhile in Exchange, the 2010 version gets away from connection Active Directory together and into a web services model that allows simple, limited visibility for other Exchange 2010 users into your calendar and contacts. If you've ever wanted to give a third party the ability to see when you're available without emailing you, you need federation! Check out Exchange 2010 Federation at TechNet.

Richard and Greg talk to Karri Alexion-Tiernan, director of Product Management for Desktop Virtualization. Karri digs into desktop virtualization in general and application virtualization specifically. The conversation digs into some case studies with BMW and others to show the advantages of virtualization on the desktop. Check out the Springboard Series on Desktop Virtualization at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/gg276319.aspx and the Application Virtualization TechCenter at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/appvirtualization/default.aspx.

Richard and Greg talk to Doug Splinter from avtex about Microsoft Lync. Lync is the new name and new version of Office Communications Server. Lync, like OCS before it, pulls together telephone, instant messaging, email and collaboration into a common interface and address book. Check out Lync at http://lync.microsoft.com/En-us/launch/Pages/launch.aspx.

Richard and Greg talk to Brian Randell about Microsoft Lab Management. Lab Management is a tool aimed at the development crowd, bundled with Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate. But as Brian explains, Lab Management is also a powerful tool for IT Pros, making it easy to stand up a group of servers that emulate the production environment and do testing. You can get a copy of Lab Management as part of Visual Studio 2010 Test Professional edition as well. Check out Lab Management at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/ee712698.aspx.

Richard flies solo to talk to Pam Lahoud about SQL Server performance. Not just fighting slow queries, but planning in advance for poor performance behavior. The conversation digs into techniques to anticipate where performance problems will occur. Pam provides a list of great tools to use for understanding your performance problem in SQL Server, including SQL Nexus (http://sqlnexus.codeplex.com/) and PAL (http://pal.codeplex.com/).

Richard and Greg talk to Brad McGehee about the challenges of working remotely. The conversation ranges over getting your home office set up right, negotiating with the family over work time and convincing your boss that you're actually working.

Richard and Greg talk to Susan Bradley, the SBS Diva! Susan digs into the new features of Small Business Server 2011. Check out the Microsoft SBS site at http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/products/servers/Pages/sbs_overview.aspx. Susan also talks about the balance between SBS "on-premise" and the cloud offerings of Azure, BPOS and Office 365. Check out the SBS forums at http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/smallbusinessserver/threads. The conversation also explores the kinds of internet connections small businesses are going to need in the connected and cloud-enabled world. Susan is a Small Business Server Specialist, and points to http://www.microsoft.com/sbs/en/us/find-partner.aspx to find a specialist in your area if you want help setting up and maintaining Small Business Server.

Richard and Greg talk to Joel Oleson from Quest Software about Microsoft Office 365. Office 365 is Microsoft's cloud based offering for Office, Exchange, Sharepoint and Lync.

Richard talks to Amit Agarwal from Quest Software about Project Lucy. Projecy Lucy is a free Azure-based utility that analyzes SQL Traces to find performance bottlenecks and other problems. Check out Project Lucy at http://www.projectlucy.com/.

Richard talks to Ned Pyle from Microsoft Directory Services support. Ned, with his associate Ted Stephens, developed FRS2DFSR, a utility for assisting administrations migrating from File Replication Services (FRS) to Distributed File System Replication (DFSR). Check out Ned's blog post on the subject, with links to the white paper, the tool and operations guides on the subject at http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2010/05/27/frs-to-dfsr-migration-tool-released.aspx.