Instrumentation and Automation across clouds and on-premise? Yes! Richard chats with Jeremy Winter about his work bringing Microsoft Operations Management Suite to life in the cloud. Think of it as Monitoring and Management as a Service, although it works just fine with your on-premise systems as well. OMS comes from the System Center world, but it isn't dependent on it - you can use OMS with and without System Center. Jeremy also talks about how other existing instrumentation and automation too...
May 11, 2016•31 min•Ep. 472
How much administration do you need? Richard chats with Tech Fellow and Father-of-PowerShell Jeffrey Snover about Just Enough Administration (JEA). The goal of JEA is to get administrators to stop living in admin accounts, to operate day-to-day with regular domain accounts and only escalate up to admin for a specific task, typically written in PowerShell. Jeffrey talks about creating a "break glass in emergency" account that is the superadmin, only to be used when there's no other way to do some...
May 04, 2016•36 min•Ep. 471
How do you know your systems are compliant with security and industry standards like CIS, SOX, HIIPA, PCI and so on? Chef evangelist Jessica DeVita talks to Richard about the free Chef compliance tools that can help you understand where your systems are exposed and help get you into a compliant state - and stay there. If your only check of compliance is an audit, things are going to be rough. Audits are just spotchecks, not comprehensive evaluations, and it takes time to get things into order. H...
Apr 27, 2016•34 min•Ep. 470
How do you manage your infrastructure like its code? Enter the release pipeline! Richard chats with Steven Murawski and Michael Greene about their recent white paper on the Release Pipeline Model. The conversation digs into the stages of developing and management configuration-as-code, including source code management, building, testing and deploying. There's a ton of tooling around each of these aspects, what you choose is very personal - and it makes sense to use what you already have onsite. ...
Apr 20, 2016•29 min•Ep. 469
Ransomware is in the news, but do you know what to do about it? Richard talks to Paula Januskiewicz about how ransomware works and what you can do to prevent an attack, and how to clean up after one. An awful lot of the power of ransomware is blunted by having a good backup strategy - one that you actually know how to restore from. Paula also talks about running your workstations in a whitelist configuration, where only a known good list of software can run. There are tools built into Windows th...
Apr 13, 2016•30 min•Ep. 468
What's the state of DevOps coming into 2016? Richard chats with Gene Kim, one of the godfathers of the DevOps movement, about what he's seen over the past year and how DevOps is evolving into "the way we build and operate software." Gene talks about getting management more involved in the DevOps process, recognizing that when software is built and operated in a rapidly iterating model, the way that software is sold and utilized changes as well. More and more Gene can see that DevOps is not just ...
Apr 06, 2016•34 min•Ep. 467
What is coming in SQL Server 2016? Richard chats with Brent Ozar about his thoughts on the upcoming version of SQL Server. The conversation digs into how the cloud is impacting SQL Server - features like Query Store were available first in the cloud are now showing up in this new on-premise edition! Speaking of Query Store, who wouldn't want a record of query plans so you can find out exactly why a query in production took a long time? Brent discusses other features including the stretch table t...
Mar 30, 2016•33 min•Ep. 466
Does the cloud represent the end of the world for ISPs? Hardly, according to Barnaby Jeans. Barnaby and Richard chat about how service providing is still an important part of the equation for many customers, but the workloads are evolving. Microsoft has a Cloud Solution Provider Program to help ISPs utilize features of Azure and Office 365 as part of their overall offering. Every service provider has some unique element to their own product line up, and Azure can be used to augment or expand tha...
Mar 23, 2016•31 min•Ep. 465
How do you diagnose performance problems in Windows? Richard chats with Microsoft Senior Premier Field Engineer Clint Huffman about the tooling he builds and use to get Windows running as fast as possible. The conversation starts out with a bit of a digression around Clint's efforts to get his Surface RT devices running fast - using the same techniques he uses everywhere! A huge long list of links in the show notes reflect all the different tools available for free to tune Windows - including Cl...
Mar 16, 2016•33 min•Ep. 464
Is the cloud really secure? Richard chats with Orin Thomas about his work developing a doctoral thesis on cloud security. Recognizing that security at this level is less about products and more about principles, Orin digs into thoughts around encryption, physical security, breach identification and more. Inevitably there are some references to particular tools like the Azure Key Vault, but the challenge is in evaluating a technology in the context of a broader principle. Lots of great thinking a...
Mar 09, 2016•34 min•Ep. 463
How do you host Linux in the cloud? Richard talks to Tim Warner about his experience managing Linux instances in Azure. According to Microsoft, about 25% of Azure's VMs are Linux! Tim focuses on the key issue of working with Linux, which is getting familiar with the command line approach of management. Sure, there are GUIs for Linux, but it's all about the command line. The CLI is becoming central to Windows server management as well, and Tim talks about setting up tooling for managing both from...
Mar 02, 2016•31 min•Ep. 462
What are your disaster recovery plans? Richard chats with Jennelle Crothers about Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery products - two different types of backup into the cloud. Jennelle talks about getting started simply with file backup into the cloud - being able to get copies of data outside of your organization without the mess and reliability problems associated with tapes. You can do the backup rotation style that you like, and just pay for the storage you use. Site Recovery is a far more s...
Feb 24, 2016•36 min•Ep. 461
How are you managing desktop updates? Richard chats with Andrew Laurence about his work using IBM BigFix to manage updates for Windows and OSX desktop machines. Most update technologies are platform specific, which means in an environment with Windows PC and Macs, you're doing many things twice. Andrew talks about using IBM BigFix to provide a comprehensive update solution, but only if you work with its strengths, rather than insist that it works the way you've always done things. Living in a cr...
Feb 17, 2016•36 min•Ep. 460
How can you increase the digital resilience of your organization's systems? Richard chats with Alan Sharp-Paul about exactly what it means to be resilient, starting with knowing when your systems are changing, either intentionally or otherwise. All too often security starts and stops at the edge, which means when a breach happens, the breach is total. Worse yet, as Alan discusses, the organization often doesn't even know there's a breach for months! Resilience really focuses in on being able to ...
Feb 10, 2016•32 min•Ep. 459
Ready to put your PBX in the cloud? Richard chats with Tom Arbuthnot about the Cloud PBX offering as part of Office 365 Skype for Business. Skype for Business has been around for awhile, as part of an overall cloud-based unified communication strategy - so what makes the Cloud PBX offering unique? Tom talks about how Microsoft is talking on the PSTN services as well - in the United States (at least for now), they've become a full-fledged carrier and can sell you PSTN numbers that bridge into Off...
Feb 03, 2016•34 min•Ep. 458
Have you looked at Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS)? Richard chats with Cameron Fuller about OMS and its relationship with System Center Operations Manager - other than caring about operations, they aren't the same thing at all. Cameron discusses the cloud-centric nature of OMS, but not necessarily an Azure-centric view: OMS can help with instrumentation and management of Amazon's cloud as well as other platforms as a whole. While OMS will integrate with Operations Manager, it will al...
Jan 27, 2016•34 min•Ep. 457
Patching is hard, but patching clusters is worse! Richard chats with Luke Sword about the challenges of getting patches done right when systems are mission critical and complex. Luke runs down the range of options for managing patch, including Windows Update Services, the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and System Center Configuration Manager (which depends on the previous two). But that only works when the patches are all independent - what happens if you have to patch one server before another? T...
Jan 20, 2016•33 min•Ep. 456
Are you using Chef for your configuration management? Richard chats with Steven Murawski about the on-going open source project that is Chef. Steven talks about how the community leads and builds the project as much as the folks from Chef themselves do - and its free to use, but Chef offers pay services above and beyond the core product to make your life easier. The conversation also digs into the relationship between Chef, PowerShell and Desired State Configuration - they all work together to k...
Jan 13, 2016•34 min•Ep. 455
When should move your storage to the cloud? Richard chats with Kevin Evans about migrating off of an on-premise SAN onto Azure's StorSimple hybrid cloud storage solution. Kevin discusses the data requirements of a graphics packaging company, making multi-gigabyte files for printing. When the on-premise storage solution was due for replacement, looking at the massive increase in storage available in the cloud was hard to resist. When combined in a hybrid configuration so that you have the perform...
Jan 06, 2016•35 min•Ep. 454
How is Windows 10 working out for you? To finish 2015, Richard chats with Mark Minasi about the on-going changes to Windows that should result in this idea of Windows-as-a-Service. Mark talks about the almost continuous building process going on with Windows, and how various rings of folks get access to those builds. Most of those builds are only visible to Microsoft employees, but you can see them at BuildFeed - and you can get further into the new builds with the Windows Insider Program. The c...
Dec 30, 2015•39 min•Ep. 453
With last names like Claus and Snow, what else could we talk about but Christmas gifts? Richard chats with Patch and Switch, aka Joey Snow and Rick Claus, about all the gifts you wish you'd thought of for your IT loved ones. Oh wait, that's the listeners, isn't it? Right, offer this show up to your loved ones and let them know this is the kind of stuff you want - geeky and cool! Whatever you celebrate this time of year, all the best to you and yours!
Dec 23, 2015•37 min•Ep. 452
Ready for SharePoint 2016? Richard chats with Todd Klindt about what's coming in SharePoint 2016, comparing the differences in on-premise and Office 365 versions. Todd talks about the dark times a couple of years ago where it seemed like SharePoint on-premise was over - it was cloud or nothing. But that has changed, today the hybrid option of some SharePoint elements in the cloud and some on-premise is possible. Want to keep your files on-premise but search in the cloud? No problem! How about ju...
Dec 16, 2015•34 min•Ep. 451
Can you use the cloud as backup? Richard chats with Aidan Finn about Microsoft Azure Backup and Site Recovery services. The conversation starts out talking about the challenges of earlier versions of Azure backup, which could really only handle files. If you wanted more comprehensive backup, you needed System Center Data Protection Manager, which was more complex (and expensive) than most SMB businesses wanted. But the latest incarnation of Azure Backup Services covers everything at a much more ...
Dec 09, 2015•32 min•Ep. 450
Data breaches are a fact of life - how can you resist them, and when that fails, deal with them effectively? Richard talks to Troy Hunt about his experience studying a huge variety of data breaches over the past few years. Having a plan for dealing with breaches is key, but so is actually being able to detect a breach, and knowing what to do when someone tells you that you have been breached - ignoring it won't make it go away! As far as resisting breaches, have you tried hacking your own site? ...
Dec 02, 2015•36 min•Ep. 449
So what can go wrong with Windows 10 and what do you do about it? Richard chats with Mike Halsey about his experiences troubleshooting Windows 10. Mike talks about driver issues - standard fare for a new version of Windows, especially with the huge number of upgrades. Hardware vendors are not always diligent about getting new drivers made for old hardware, they'd much rather focus on new drivers for new hardware that they can sell. The conversation also digs into badly behaved software and how i...
Nov 25, 2015•35 min•Ep. 448
Time for another SQL Q and A! Richard moderates discussion between Kim Tripp, Paul Randal and Brent Ozar with the audience of SQLIntersection in Las Vegas, Oct 2015. The questions come fast, the answers almost as fast (but certainly longer) as the discussion ranges over a variety of disaster recovery approaches, federation, upgrading strategies and recovering from a lost quorum file (don't judge). Twice a year we capture an hour long conversation about concerns around SQL Server, and this one is...
Nov 18, 2015•56 min•Ep. 447
Where is Exchange 2016 on your radar? Richard chats with Tony Redmond about the current history of Exchange, from 2003 onward. Tony talks about the growth of Exchange Online with Office 365, and the impact that has had on the shape of Exchange on-premise. This leads to a discussion about Exchange 2016 which looks to be a maturing of Exchange 2013 without really disruptive changes. One of the biggest changes in the past three years has been the improvement in updates, to the point where they are ...
Nov 11, 2015•35 min•Ep. 446
Nobody's data security is perfect, but do you know the security state of your data? Richard chats with Luke Babarinde about his work helping companies secure their data effectively and understand where the risks exist. The rules vary from company to company, and it takes time to education management on what risks exist for data, and ultimately to get feedback on what levels of security are reasonable. Luke talks about how every system is breachable, its just a question of what happens next - how...
Nov 04, 2015•33 min•Ep. 445
Are you thinking about Microsoft Nano Server yet? Richard chats with Jason Helmick about what we can do today to get ready for Nano Server. As announced by freshly minted Tech Fellow Jeffrey Snover, Nano Server represents an ultra-light version of Windows Server and the new foundation of the server side of the operating system. So what can you do to get ready? Jason talks about working with the Core edition of Windows Server, preferably 2012, as a great starting point. This gets you started on a...
Oct 28, 2015•34 min•Ep. 444
Does it matter what virtualization technology you use? Richard chats with Greg Shields, one of the few folks out there with certifications in Microsoft's Hyper-V, VMWare's vSphere and Citrix Xen about the relatively merits of the stacks. Turns out, they're pretty close together, at least when it comes to virtualization. But the conversation goes deeper into the instrumentation - how do you know that you have the right loads on the right hardware? Can you make your own cloud effectively - it's go...
Oct 21, 2015•36 min•Ep. 443
