Richard and Greg talk to Laura Hunter about where Active Directory is at with Windows Server 2008 R2. This is the version of Active Directory called "Wave 10" and adds features like Recycle Bin, Managed Service Accounts, deep support for Powershell and more! The conversation progresses into Active Directory Federated Services v2. Check out more info at http://www.microsoft.com/activedirectory/ and http://blogs.msdn.com/card/.
Jan 06, 2010•35 min•Ep. 142
Richard and Greg talk to Mitch Garvis about the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010. MDT 2010 helps you manage your installs of operating systems, drivers, applications and more. You can create deployment kits for machines quickly and easily. And as Mitch says, as soon as you have more than one computer, the effort to set up MDT 2010 is worth it. MDT 2010 is a freely downloadable toolkit here.
Dec 30, 2009•30 min•Ep. 141
Richard and Greg talk to Rhonda Layfield about deployment technologies made by Microsoft. There's a variety of them, and Rhonda goes over the collage of acronyms including WAIK (Windows Automated Installation Kit), MDT (Microsoft Deployment Toolkit), WDS (Windows Deployment Service), DDPS (Desktop Deployment Planning Services) and SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager). Check out Rhonda's Deployment Doctor web site at http://www.deploymentdr.com/ and her upcoming book on deployment, publishe...
Dec 23, 2009•38 min•Ep. 140
Bhargav is back! Richard and Greg talk to Bhargav Shukla about the High Availability features of Exchange 2010. Bhargav digs into the substantial changes in the high availability and "mailbox resiliency" capabilities in Exchange, including the idea that you can today build a web-farm-like Exchange architecture with inexpensive hardware.
Dec 16, 2009•35 min•Ep. 139
Richard and Greg talk to Sumeet Bansal and Chris Featherstone about using solid state drives in the enterprise. SSDs have penetrated deeply into the workstation and laptop market, but are they robust enough to handle enterprise class workloads? Sumeet and Chris also focus on whether the traditional hard drive interfaces of SAS and SATA make sense for the ultra-low latency performance of SSDs.
Dec 09, 2009•36 min•Ep. 138
Richard and Greg talk to Bhargav Shukla of Microsoft's Premier Field Engineering. Bhargav digs into the features of the newly released Exchange 2010 and why businesses still running Exchange 2003 should jump right to the latest version and skip 2007 entirely. For more info on Exchange 2010, check out http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/default.aspx and http://msexchangeteam.com/.
Dec 02, 2009•33 min•Ep. 137
Richard and Greg talk to Clint Huffman from Microsoft's Premier Field Engineering (PFE) about the new version of Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL). PAL is available on CodePlex at http://pal.codeplex.com. It's job is to help you analyze performance monitor logs for various Microsoft applications and identify out-of-normal values. PAL solves the key problem of Performance Monitor - identifying what numbers are good, what numbers are bad, and what numbers are ugly. Check out Clint's blog at http:...
Nov 25, 2009•36 min•Ep. 136
Richard and Greg talk to Susan Bradley, the SBS Diva, about her other life - patching servers. Susan digs into Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), including what it updates and what it doesn't (check out http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894199 for more info), as well as some third party tools for patching. WSUS lets administrators centralize patching of servers and workstations, so that your machines don't all go fetching the same patches. It also provides means to control what patches get ins...
Nov 18, 2009•33 min•Ep. 135
Richard and Greg talk to Andy Malone about the challenges of social networking for the enterprise. It's not enough just to cut your users off from social networking at the company - you need to protect the organization from impersonation. Andy digs into what the logical balance of exposure on social networking looks like.
Nov 11, 2009•33 min•Ep. 134
Richard and Greg talk to Sahil Malik on what's coming in Sharepoint 2010. Sahil has been working with Sharepoint 2010 for more than a year, and the NDAs have finally been lifted, letting him talk about the cool new features of 2010 that will help the IT Pro.
Nov 04, 2009•34 min•Ep. 133
Simon Goldstein comes back to the show to talk to Richard and Greg about what IT professionals need to know when being audited. Whether you're dealing with SOX, HIPAA, PCI or any other kind of IT audit, Simon digs into what you should be doing before, during and after an audit.
Oct 28, 2009•36 min•Ep. 132
Richard and Greg talk to Lara Rubbelke about the Enterprise Policy Management Framework (EPM). EPM is a freely downloadable framework for managing detailed policies around SQL Server 2008, 2005 and 2000. You can get EPM at http://www.codeplex.com/EPMFramework
Oct 21, 2009•37 min•Ep. 131
Richard and Greg talk to Dana Epp about DirectAccess. DirectAccess is Microsoft's new technology using Windows 7 (Enterprise or Ultimate) and Server 2008 R2 together to create remote connectivity that acts in all respects like you're still inside the corporate network. DirectAccess has the potential to put client-initiated VPN connection out to pasture. The conversation also dives into IPv6, which is required for DirectAccess, digging into how IPv6 has probably been functioning fine over your IP...
Oct 14, 2009•34 min•Ep. 130
Richard and Greg talk to Isaac Roybal about Microsoft's efforts in creating private cloud technologies. Private cloud focuses on using cloud technologies - within the organization's firewall. Isaac talks about how Microsoft has been using its own cloud technology internally for PSS and digs into the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit (http://www.microsoft.com/hosting/dynamicdatacenter/Home.html). Also take a look at the Private Cloud initiative at http://www.microsoft.com/privatecloud
Oct 07, 2009•35 min•Ep. 129
Richard and Greg talk to Buck Woody about SQL CMS, a tool he's contributed to codeplex at http://sqlcms.codeplex.com. SQL CMS is actually a collection of tools that together provide content management of SQL Server and other servers in your network, allowing you to identify different servers, who's responsible for managing them, their current status and details of their configuration. It's a great synergy of tools built into SQL Server 2008, accelerators like MAPS and EPM - Enterprise Policy Man...
Sep 30, 2009•35 min•Ep. 128
Richard and Greg talk to Dana Epp about the free tools he uses to manage his networks. The list of tools include nmap (http://www.nmap.org), Microsoft's Baseline Security Analyzer (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/cc184923.aspx), Windows Server Update Services (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/wsus/default.aspx), the Application Compatibility Toolkit (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd562082(VS.85).aspx) and of course the SysInternals tools (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-u...
Sep 23, 2009•35 min•Ep. 127
Richard and Greg talk to the one-and-only Steve Riley, formerly of Microsoft and now working with the Amazon Cloud Computing group. Steve is focused on helping enterprise customers understand how to take advantage of Amazon's cloud computing services. As always, Steve has his eye on the security elements of cloud computing as well. There's also a great discussion about virtualization on the desktop.
Sep 16, 2009•37 min•Ep. 126
Richard and Greg talk to Jessica Moss about SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). SSRS can replace typical reporting products like Crystal Reports, but also provides a tool for having users build their own reports. The conversation also moves into the Business Intelligence side of reporting, looking at how SSRS works with Analysis Services to provide a deeper level of reporting.
Sep 09, 2009•31 min•Ep. 125
Richard and Greg talk to Sahil Malik about managing Sharepoint 2007. With the new version of Sharepoint just around the corner, it's time to dig into what the current version of Sharepoint does well and what is challenging. Sahil talks about solutions for challenges in Sharepoint 2007, including dealing with keeping profiles in separate farms. He points to his tool on codeplex, MOSS Profile Import at www.codeplex.com/mossprofileimport. There will be another show in the future to talk about how s...
Sep 02, 2009•39 min•Ep. 124
Richard and Greg talk to Andy Malone about security in cloud computing. Once an application is moved to the cloud, where is the data itself? It could be distributed across multiple countries. Who is responsible for protecting it, for maintaining legal compliance, etc. Service level agreements are key, but how do you enforce them?
Aug 26, 2009•33 min•Ep. 123
Richard and Greg talk to Daniel Nerenberg about Microsoft Online Services. Microsoft Online Services include Exchange, Sharepoint, Office Communicator and more. These are cloud services - you buy them by the user and month. Daniel digs into the advantages of using online services as well as the integration and migration challenges.
Aug 19, 2009•41 min•Ep. 122
Richard and Greg talk to Andrew Hayter from ICSA Labs. ICSA Labs is the independent third party for validating security products such as anti-virus, malware, SSL security, etc. Andy digs into the state of the world around malware.
Aug 12, 2009•37 min•Ep. 121
Richard and Greg talk to Phil Peery from Premier Field Engineering at Microsoft about the state of Active Directory out in the world. Phil works with a large variety of customers in the New York area in his PFE role, and explores some of the problems that his customers have had with Active Directory.
Aug 05, 2009•34 min•Ep. 120
Richard and Greg talk to Mark Minasi about the state of Windows today. There's a bit of discussion about Vista (Mark seems to be its only fan), then over to Windows 7 (it's Vista with love!), but most of the discussion focuses on the chocolatety goodness of Windows 2008 R2. Mark digs into Active Directory Undelete, Managed Service Accounts and more.
Jul 29, 2009•42 min•Ep. 119
Richard and Greg talk to David Lowe about the Microsoft Web Platform. The web platform spans from development and designer tools, through the web server (IIS) and the databases. David starts out digging into running PHP and mySQL on Windows before moving on into the IIS extensions, including: Application Resource Routing, Dynamic IP Restrictions, Live Smooth Streaming, Windows Media Services and Search Engine Optimization. Check out the web platform at http://www.microsoft.com/web and the IIS ex...
Jul 22, 2009•34 min•Ep. 118
Richard and Greg talk to Phil Peery of Microsoft's Premier Field Engineering team about 64 bit operating systems. Phil also talks extensively about the /3GB switch for 32 bit operating systems - a tricky switch that has to be handled carefully. The discussion also digs into running 32 bit apps on 64 bit operating systems.
Jul 13, 2009•33 min•Ep. 117
Richard and Greg talk to Mitch Garvis about System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). SCVMM handles Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) migration of computers into virtual machines. It also does Virtual-to-Virtual (V2V) migration from VMWare VMDK to VHD. Besides migration, SCVMM allows operators to understand the load across different VM host machines and move VMs from one machine to another, to handle failover clustering and to provision new VMs as needed.
Jul 01, 2009•36 min•Ep. 116
Richard and Greg talk to Stephen Rose about Windows 7 RC. The show focuses on what the enterprise customer is going to care about around Windows 7, including reducing maintenance costs, managing compatibility and better remote access options.
Jun 24, 2009•39 min•Ep. 115
Richard and Greg tak to Brian Gregor from Microsoft Premier Field Engineering about BizTalk. BizTalk has a variety of roles for IT Pros in the infrastructure: orchestration, integration, workflow.
Jun 17, 2009•35 min•Ep. 114
Richard and Greg talk to Ken Brumfield from Microsoft Premier Field Engineering on the challenges of working in really large infrastructures. What's large? Try 250,000 workstations and 40,000 servers large! Ken talks about how tactical solutions create strategic problems in IT management at this scale, and how to balance "getting things done" with "not making the mess worse." Check out Ken's active directory utilities at http://activedirectoryutils.codeplex.com/.
Jun 10, 2009•38 min•Ep. 113
