Linux on Windows! While at Build in Seattle, Richard talked to Tara Raj and Sarah Cooley about Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). While you've been able to run Linux in virtual machines and containers for a long time, WSL actually lets you run Linux in a command line inside Windows. Why would you do that? Sarah and Tara focuses on the biggest benefit, which is taking advantage of great Linux command line tools and scripts.
Jun 20, 2018•31 min•Ep. 589
The Exchange story continues to evolve - how about an update! Richard chats with Gareth Gudger about his work with a variety of companies using Exchange both on-premises and in Office 365. Gareth digs into older versions of Exchange that are coming out of support (time to upgrade) and the announcements around Exchange 2019 - the features come to the cloud first, but we get them in our own data centers eventually. There are plenty of ways to operate mail successfully for your organization, and Ga...
Jun 13, 2018•32 min•Ep. 588
SQL Server runs on Linux and in containers! Richard talks to Bob Ward about the on-going evolution of SQL Server and how the latest version literally has a common codebase between the Windows and Linux versions - feature-for-feature identical! The tooling is different, but the new SQL Operations Studio is built to be cross-platform, running on Windows, Mac and Linux! The conversation also dives into container strategies using Docker and Kubernetes, both on-premises and in the cloud. Lots of data...
Jun 06, 2018•33 min•Ep. 587
What can you automate in the cloud? Everything! Richard chats with Dana Epp about how the tooling in Azure allows for automating a huge range of tasks, starting with Dana's personal focus - security. Dana talks about using automation to catch whenever security rules change anywhere, just for logging if not for direct action. The combination of Azure ARM Templates, Automation and Azure Functions is hugely powerful. The challenge is in managing that tooling, which leads to a conversation around so...
May 30, 2018•33 min•Ep. 586
What does it take to build a great cybersecurity team? Richard chats with Paula Januszkiewicz about the work she's doing to create more cybersecurity professionals. The challenge is that cybersecurity still isn't really a profession - there are no certifying bodies out there that take on responsibility for their members. Paula talks about different certifications you can get, but in the end, doing the work is the most important thing - and how you approach security problems. It's a full-time tas...
May 23, 2018•35 min•Ep. 585
So many collaboration offerings - what's the right way to go? Richard chats with Tom Arbuthnot about his experiences around the modern digital collaboration world - using technologies like Slack, WebEx and Skype. Today, Microsoft is pouring its energy into Office 365 Teams. Tom discusses what the strengths of Teams are and the choices moving forward. The conversation also dives into the etiquette of these new tools. For those that grew up with them, it's easy to do the right thing. But people ar...
May 16, 2018•36 min•Ep. 584
What does modern service management look like? Richard talks to ex-Microsoft Carroll Moon about his experiences modernizing service management at Microsoft, and now for his customers at CloudFit. The cloud has made compute and infrastructure effectively unlimited for the right price - how does a great IT group take advantage of this? Carroll talks about applying DevOps principles effectively in the operations space to focus on the applications that cause you the most grief, and where improvement...
May 09, 2018•33 min•Ep. 583
Spring in Orlando - time for a SQL Server Questions and Answer panel! Richard hosts a panel of Kim Tripp, Paul Randal, Bob Ward, Aaron Bertrand, David Pless, Tim Radney and many more to answer the questions that the SQL Intersection attendees have. The conversation ranges over challenges around partitioning, scaling, various disaster recovery strategies, the advantages of upgrading to the latest version and providing direct feedback to the SQL team members in the room! These question and answers...
May 02, 2018•1 hr•Ep. 582
Your developers want to do some DevOps - what does it mean to you? Richard chats with Tim Warner about what operations needs to care about and learn when the organization wants to roll out software faster. DevOps is an umbrella term for a lot of different technical changes, but also procedural and culture changes too. Tim hits on the key points for operations folks, including understanding source control (and learning to value it), automating all the things, and being able to get to a known reli...
Apr 25, 2018•32 min•Ep. 581
After email, what's the next thing you want from Office 365? Peter Schmidt says its OneDrive for Business. Starting with the ability to get rid of file attachments in email and instead make the files links to OneDrive for Business - but it goes both ways. Peter talks about how Office 365 Flow can automate the process of moving incoming attachments into OneDrive for Business folders automatically. And then there's the new versioning and backup/restore features in OneDrive for Business. This is no...
Apr 18, 2018•28 min•Ep. 580
Why should you care about containers? Richard chats with Jennelle Crothers about what container technology does for operations. Like virtualization before it, containers allow you to densify your infrastructure into fewer machines and VMs - and all container tech focuses on configuration-as-code. Containers make sense when you have services that are regularly updated or need to scale elastically. And they work on-premises as well as in the cloud. There are some tricky bits to containers, but if ...
Apr 11, 2018•32 min•Ep. 579
What can Microsoft Graph do for you? Richard talks to Sahil Malik about his experiences working with Microsoft Graph - starting with rationalizing all the different versions of Graph that have come along in recent years. While largely they're back to a single version, there still are aspects that are more Active Directory oriented as opposed to broader mobile mindsets. But the issues of identity with users, devices that users use and the rights that applications have with those users and devices...
Apr 04, 2018•34 min•Ep. 578
What does it mean to be a System or Network Administrator? Richard talks to Tom Limoncelli about his experiences and book around the subject. Tom talks about how networking and sysadmin roles have evolved recently, where all the roles are being impacted by automation and DevOps practices - nobody is immune, nor should they want to be! The conversation dives into providing value to the organization, both in the form of keeping the employees productive, as well as safe and secure. It's not just ab...
Mar 28, 2018•32 min•Ep. 577
The challenge of hiring new people into the world of IT is getting harder every day - what does it take to grow your skilled staff? Richard talks with Don Jones about his book Be the Master, where Don focuses on the fact that there are plenty of apprentices out there, but not enough masters to teach them well. And the masters exist - it's just easy to forget that you know things that others don't know, and need to know. The conversation spans around where learning responsibilities lie - it's not...
Mar 21, 2018•31 min•Ep. 576
If you're writing PowerShell, you're writing code - now debug it! Richard chats with Josh Duffney about tools and techniques for debugging your PowerShell code. The conversation starts out with the admission that as PowerShell coders, you really are doing development work, just for sysadmin tasks. That means you need source control, testing, coding practices and hopefully, a continuous integration pipeline - DevOps all the things! Josh talks about how VSCode has made his life of debugging PowerS...
Mar 14, 2018•29 min•Ep. 575
Modern security is complex - how can the cloud help? Richard chats with Paul Keely about his work with organizations helping to secure workstations and using the cloud to get insight into the kind of attacks going on and how to mitigate them. Paul talks about security starting with administrators, who are now the key vector to exploits in the modern cybersecurity age. Just Enough Administration, where there are individual accounts for each service that an admin uses and the accounts are logged, ...
Mar 07, 2018•37 min•Ep. 574
How do you ETL? Richard chats with Tom Kerkhove about Azure Data Factory, now previewing V2 features. We've had Extract-Transform-Load workflows since databases were first invented, but the concept was really formalized back in the data warehouse days. With the cloud, there are more tools, more data sources and more compute to enhance your ETL experiences. Tom talks about how V2 of Data Factory adds SQL Server Integration Service functionality so that you can put your SSIS packages directly into...
Feb 28, 2018•31 min•Ep. 573
Ready to manage SQL Server with PowerShell? Richard chats with Rob Sewell about dbatools, an open source effort to build an amazing set of PowerShell commands for SQL Server. Yes, Microsoft has a few PowerShell commands implemented, but when you see the dbatools set, you'll see what PowerShell can really do for you! Rob talks about the focus on migration for continuous integration purposes, upgrading from one version of SQL Server to another, even into the cloud. If you wanted to get to a place ...
Feb 21, 2018•33 min•Ep. 572
What's a company intranet look like in 2018? Richard chats with Susan Hanley about her work helping companies find value in their internal information management systems - after all, it's where you keep a lot of company value! The conversation starts out with a discussion around search, the bane of most intranet implementations. Sure people want Google, but do they really? The indexing system that Google relies on doesn't make sense in an internal website. Susan points out that today's modern in...
Feb 14, 2018•37 min•Ep. 571
SQL Server keeps getting smarter! Richard talks to Erin Stellato about Query Store and Automatic Tuning. First introduced in SQL Azure, these features showed up in SQL Server 2016 and improved substantially in 2017. Erin describes Query Store as a kind of black box for databases, similar to an aircraft, but you don't need to wait for a crash to value the data stored in it. Query Store is a real-time record of the queries happening in your database, along with the query plan and what caused the q...
Feb 07, 2018•34 min•Ep. 570
SharePoint has never been more manageable! Richard chats with Andrew Connell about his experiences around using the latest programming models for SharePoint and how they stick to more standardized client-side development models that are easier to secure, audit and don't mess with your servers quite so much. The conversation starts out with a discussion around the Office 365 APIs and the programmability they bring to Office 365 as a whole, while also sticking to good secure standards - this is th...
Jan 31, 2018•33 min•Ep. 569
How does Office 365 help teams collaborate? Richard chats with Tony Redmond about his insights into Microsoft's on-going effort to make Office 365 the most efficient place for people to work together. Tony talks about two primary hubs of team work - collaboration around email and collaboration around chat. The chat product is, of course, the new Office 365 Teams. The conversation dives into how different people like to collaborate in different ways, and that Office 365 has carved out spaces so t...
Jan 24, 2018•32 min•Ep. 568
Your company is sold on the idea of data analytics, but is it ready for it? Richard talks to Jen Stirrup about her experiences getting organizations started with data analytics, which means really focusing on the quality of the data that a company is collecting. Jen discusses her process of figuring out how data is collected, how often it needs to be corrected and how much gets missed and stays incorrect inside the data stores. The conversation also explores the other locations of important data...
Jan 17, 2018•41 min•Ep. 567
Desired State Configuration now works boths ways! Richard talks to fellow Canadian Nik Charlebois, a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, about his work building ReverseDSC. The open source tool is available in the PowerShell Gallery and opens the door to a ton of interesting possibilities. Nik talks about how his work as a PFE is made much easier when he can use ReverseDSC to create a copy of the configuration of a system he is trying to troubleshoot so that he can explore and experiment with no r...
Jan 10, 2018•32 min•Ep. 566
How do you make your work visible to your team, your division, your entire organization? Richard talks to Dominica DeGrandis about her book 'Making Work Visible' and the challenges that IT folks have showing workloads and flow. The discussion turns to the Kanban board, both digital and physical. Dominica talks about methods for identifying work items, showing them flow and making it easy for everyone to see the huge scope of work the average IT team handles.
Jan 03, 2018•32 min•Ep. 565
Office macros need security? Yes! Richard chats with Karim El-Melhaoui about the issues around Office macros. With default settings, VBA macros in the Office suite are incredibly powerful and are an effective malware vector. While Microsoft has some built-in capabilities to warn users about enabling macros, modern malware makers have been socially engineering users to bypass those protections. You can go heavy handed and disable macros with group policy, but what if you need them? Karim talks ab...
Dec 27, 2017•27 min•Ep. 564
Data analytics has evolved - have you kept up? Richard chats with Andrew Brust about the revolution taking place in data analytics in general and Microsoft efforts in the space specifically. Andrew talks about how tools like SQL Server OLAP Services renamed to become Analytics Services, and then moved into the cloud. Not that you need to be in the cloud to do analytics - there are plenty of on-premises tools as well, but it sure does help to be in the cloud. Data analytics workloads are very bur...
Dec 20, 2017•32 min•Ep. 563
Can SQL Server be part of a DevOps practice? It has to be! While at Connect in New York, Richard sat down with Michael Upton to discuss the role of SQL Server in the DevOps practice and the tooling that can make your life easier. The conversation digs into the hard bit - not destroying data. Michael works at Red Gate, who have been building SQL Server data management tools for decades. And they know you can't afford to lose data, so the process of updating has to be done carefully. It can be don...
Dec 13, 2017•31 min•Ep. 562
Service Fabric is not just for Azure! While at Connect in New York, Richard sat down with Mikkel Mork Hegnhoj to talk about what Service Fabric can do for your applications. Mikkel talks about the ability to host both Windows and Ubuntu VMs in Service Fabric, on Azure and on-premises. Think of Service Fabric as software to facilitate the architecture of cloud as much as the product - you can configure failover rules, scaling settings and more. And it will run on pretty much anything!
Dec 06, 2017•30 min•Ep. 561
Have you looked into CosmosDB? While at Connect in New York, Richard sat down with Kirill Gavrylyuk of the CosmosDB team to talk about the latest features. CosmosDB an update to Azure DocumentDB that focuses on global distribution and ultra-high performance. On top of that, CosmosDB has different API layers you can call through, including MongoDB and now the Apache Cassandra API. Kirill talks about being a drop-in replacement for these existing data stores, typically when confronted with an appl...
Nov 29, 2017•28 min•Ep. 560
