Richard and Greg welcome Clint Huffman back to the show to talk about analyzing performance monitor logs. Clint is the author of Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL) at pal.codeplex.com. Clint has another collection of favorite tools, including Process Monitor (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx), xPerf (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/hh162920.aspx) and DebugDiag (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49924).
Jun 03, 2009•38 min•Ep. 112
Richard and Greg talk to Buck Woody... they had planned on talking about sqlcms.codeplex.com but ended up instead digging into what it takes to be in an IT career in today's economy. The discussion ranges from the advantages of generalists vs. specialists, consulting vs. employment and how technology is evolving to support these different styles.
May 27, 2009•34 min•Ep. 111
Richard and Greg welcome Susan Bradley back on the show. The SBS Diva (www.sbsdiva.com) talks about Windows Server 2008 Foundation, the smaller cousin of Small Business Server. Foundation is aimed at businesses of 15 users or less. Think Microsoft Home Server for small business!
May 20, 2009•35 min•Ep. 110
Richard and Greg talk to Jeff Atwood of Stack Overflow (www.stackoverflow.com) fame about being a developer who also maintains infrastructure. Jeff also talks about his new site, Server Fault (www.serverfault.com), which is a Question and Answer site for the IT Professional. Great discussions about adventures in RAID controllers and NIC drivers and how FireBug can diagnose your network problems.
May 13, 2009•31 min•Ep. 109
Richard and Greg talk to Pedro Manfredi from Microsoft about High Performance Computing. HPC is the next generation of supercomputing - using off-the-shelf hardware rather than custom built supercomputers. Pedro digs into the new style of applications that are best served with HPC and how development is done. Check out http://www.microsoft.com/hpc for more information.
May 06, 2009•33 min•Ep. 108
Richard and Greg talk to Robert Smith from Microsoft Premier Field Engineering about understanding storage performance. The discussion digs into SAN, iSCSI, direct-attached storage, also looking at tools like PerfMon and the Windows Performance Toolkit. Check out WPT at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc305187.aspx and the disk performance issues talked about in the show at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=929491.
Apr 29, 2009•37 min•Ep. 107
Richard and Greg talk to Allan Hirt about failover clustering in SQL Server 2008. SQL Server got a major update in the clustering side of things for 2008, Allan talks about the changes, improvements and why you'd want to do this in the first place. Check out an alpha version of Allan's book at http://www.apress.com/book/view/1430219661.
Apr 22, 2009•46 min•Ep. 106
Richard and Greg talk to Rhonda Layfield about what's coming in the Microsoft deployment tools for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. They talk about Windows PE - the Windows Preinstallation environment that presents a minimum install environment (fits on a CD or USB key) which is part of Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK). Improvements in the new Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT 2010) that deploys operating systems and application software. Finally, they explore the Windows Deploymen...
Apr 15, 2009•29 min•Ep. 105
Richard and Greg talk to Kim Tripp about how developers and DBAs inter-relate around SQL Server. Kim tells a story of how she encountered developers who saw SQL Server as a "set it and forget it" technology. What should the relationship between developers, DBAs and database be? We tackle the topic!
Apr 08, 2009•32 min•Ep. 104
Richard and Greg talk to Bill Graziano about performance tuning in SQL Server. Bill digs into using SQL Profiler to focus on where the problems lie. The discussion digs into the procedure cache and how you can optimize your queries for caching. He also talks about ClearTrace, a free tool he distributes to help understand trace data. Check it out at http://www.cleardata.biz.
Apr 01, 2009•31 min•Ep. 103
Richard and Greg talk to Randy Williams about how Sharepoint fits into an organization. Is it a developer's product or an IT product? Who brings Sharepoint to the table? Why use it over other document management solutions or good old ASP.NET? Randy digs into the answers to these questions and more.
Mar 25, 2009•32 min•Ep. 102
Richard and Greg talk to Alan Sugano of ADS Consulting about everything storage. The conversation ranges over the different types of RAID, direct attached storage, iSCSI, Fibre Channel, Fibre Channel Over Ethernet, SANs... you name it!
Mar 18, 2009•45 min•Ep. 101
Hey, its our 100th show! Just for fun, Richard decides to interview Greg, and ends up in a serious discussion about security. Who knew? Anyway, thanks for sticking with us for 100 shows! Here's to the next 100!
Mar 11, 2009•36 min•Ep. 100
Richard and Greg talk to David Sengupta from Quest about all things cloud computing. The discussion ranges from outsourced email to building cloud-based applications. Azure gets a mention, but so does Google and Amazon... and all the concerns in between!
Mar 04, 2009•30 min•Ep. 99
Richard and Greg talk to Bob Beauchemin about the new spatial data features in SQL Server 2008. Don't think you have spatial data in your database? Bob explains how every address can be spatial data. Check out Bob's blog at http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/bobb/
Feb 25, 2009•41 min•Ep. 98
Richard and Greg talk to Dana Epp about the challenges around Virtual Machine security. Not just stopping someone from taking your virtual machine away on a USB key, but also the controlling of creation, duplication, distribution and configuration of virtual machines. Oh, and Dana goes off on a couple of serious security rants. Check out his blog at http://silverstr.ufies.org/blog/
Feb 18, 2009•38 min•Ep. 97
Richard and Greg talk to Richard Hicks about ISA Server, including 2000, 2004, 2006 and the upcoming Threat Management Gateway product. The discussion also explores dedicated ISA hardware.
Feb 11, 2009•35 min•Ep. 96
Richard and Greg talk to John Bocharov from Microsoft's IIS Media team. John talks about Microsoft Media Services in general and the upcoming Smooth Streaming technologies utilizing IIS7 and Silverlight. Check out John's blog at http://blogs.iis.net/jboch/
Feb 04, 2009•30 min•Ep. 95
Richard and Greg talk to Ed Wilson, one of the Scripting Guys from Microsoft's Script Center (www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter). Ed talks about the evolution of scripting, from batch files to VBScript to PowerShell. He digs into what folks need to know about scripting today and in the future.
Jan 28, 2009•40 min•Ep. 94
Richard and Greg talk to Chris Jackson from the Microsoft Windows Application Experience SWAT Team about Windows compatibility. Chris is part of a small team at Microsoft that helps enterprise customers fix their application compatibility issues with older Windows applications running in new operating systems like Vista and Windows 7.
Jan 21, 2009•36 min•Ep. 93
Back in the studio at last, Richard and Greg talk to Clint Huffman of PAL fame about WMI. Windows Mangement Instrumentation has been around since Windows 2000 and provides detailed data about your machines and a variety of methods for altering the behaviour, even remotely!
Jan 14, 2009•35 min•Ep. 92
Richard and Greg talk to Stephen Rose, Senior Community Manager for Windows Client. Stephen announces the release of the beta of Windows 7 simultaneously with Steve Ballmer at CES. Check it out at www.microsoft.com/windows7
Jan 07, 2009•38 min•Ep. 91
While still at Windows Connections in Las Vegas, Richard and Greg talked more with Mark Minasi. This time the conversation was a bit more serious, digging into Microsoft's Cloud Computing technology called Azure. Happy New Year!
Dec 31, 2008•32 min•Ep. 90
At Windows Connections in Las Vegas, Richard and Greg talk to Mark Minasi about... well, just about everything. It's a silly show, but Mark does dig into the history of Windows and his thoughts on the upcoming Windows 7. Hey, it's Christmas, have some fun!
Dec 24, 2008•30 min•Ep. 89
As Tech Ed 2008 IT Pro in Barcelona was wrapping up, Richard and Greg talked to Michael Nystrom about Microsoft's new Essential Business Server (EBS). EBS looks like the big brother of Small Business Server (SBS), but its more than that. Check out EBS at http://www.microsoft.com/ebs
Dec 17, 2008•31 min•Ep. 88
Another of the Tech Ed EMEA 2008 shows from Barcelona, Richard and Greg talk to Jeff Woolsey about Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, what's coming for Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2 and even some hints of what comes after that.
Dec 10, 2008•21 min•Ep. 87
Another show from Tech Ed EMEA 2008 IT Pro in Barcelona, Richard and Greg talk to Baldwin Ng and Jay Sauls about the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP). MAP is a Solution Accelerator, combining guidance and tools to help IT pros understand the equipment in their network, virtualization opportunities as well as desktop upgrade challenges. You can download MAP for free at http://www.microsoft.com/map.
Dec 03, 2008•31 min•Ep. 86
Richard and Greg talk to Iain McDonald, General Manager for Windows Server while at Tech Ed EMEA 2008 IT Pro in Barcelona. Iain gives us a look into what's coming up for Windows Server 2008 R2.
Nov 26, 2008•28 min•Ep. 85
While at Tech Ed EMEA IT Pro 2008 in Barcelona, Richard and Greg talk to John Rodriguez, a Premier Field Engineer focused on Exchange Server. John walks through the strategies and tactics for troubleshooting problems with Microsoft Exchange Server.
Nov 19, 2008•28 min•Ep. 84
Richard and Greg talk to Chris Stoneff of Lieberman Software about the challenges of passwords. The discussion ranges from password alternatives to complexity policy and privileged account password management.
Nov 12, 2008•38 min•Ep. 83
