How do you do your business intelligence? While at DevIntersection in Las Vegas, Richard sat down with Jason Himmelstein to talk about PowerBI, the latest reporting and analytics tool from Microsoft. Jason talks about how PowerBI fits into Azure and Office365, but today there is also the PowerBI Reporting Server, which is an advanced version of SQL Server Reporting Services that runs on-premises. This leads to a discussion about how you build a hybrid reporting solution between the cloud and you...
Nov 22, 2017•35 min•Ep. 559
Fall in Vegas - time for a SQL Server Questions and Answer panel! Richard hosts a panel of Kim Tripp, Paul Randal, Aaron Bertrand, Jes Borland, David Pless and Tim Radney to answer the questions that the SQL Intersection attendees have. The conversation ranges over SQL 2017, containers, partitioning, mirroring and what the modern DBA will be doing in the future. SQL continues to evolve and there's a lot to explore!
Nov 15, 2017•54 min•Ep. 558
Are you using SysInternals? Richard chats with Aaron Margosis about the venerable SysInternals tools originally developed by Mark Russinovich. But first, a discussion about Aaron's main job at Microsoft, developing security baseline guidance for operating systems. Aaron talks about the recommended security configurations for operating systems and how you can check the workstations you're responsible for to put those configurations in place. SysInternals also has a role in security, understanding...
Nov 08, 2017•30 min•Ep. 557
Hybrid Cloud is the new normal! Richard chats with Scott Hoag about his experiences migrating organizations onto Office 365 and embracing the reality that no one is ever 'pure' cloud - on-premises hardware is here to stay and necessary. Scott talks about what services make more sense in the cloud and what works best on-premises, and how to connect the different elements together. The key part of the equation is identity, whether you're using Active Directory or not, working with mobile devices -...
Nov 01, 2017•34 min•Ep. 556
What IT certifications do you hold? Richard chats with Greg Shields about the value proposition behind various IT certifications. In the fast moving software industries, it's pretty difficult to effectively measure the capabilities of someone. The conversation digs into the purpose behind an IT exam, and the dangers of focusing purely on an exam, rather than the body of work the exam represents. Greg discusses Microsoft certifications and the latest software for helping to talk broadly about you...
Oct 25, 2017•37 min•Ep. 555
In May 2018, the EU General Data Protection Regulation laws take effect. Are you ready? Richard chats with Seb Matthews about what IT Pros can do to get ready for the GDPR. The regulations are broad, covering personally identifiable information, data breaches, the right to be forgotten and more. Whether you're an EU company or just do business with EU residents, the GDPR can affect you. Seb talks about the six Ps to compliance: Placement, Process, People, Products, Privacy and Protection. And he...
Oct 18, 2017•33 min•Ep. 554
What's next for SharePoint? While at Ignite in Orlando, Richard sat down with Todd Klindt to talk about the next version of SharePoint - announced at Ignite as Office 2019. Todd talks about the recurring nightmare of the end of on-premises versions of SharePoint, and the ever-increasing call of the cloud - Office 365 just gets more compelling every month. What form of SharePoint makes sense for you? There's still a ton of choices to make!
Oct 11, 2017•33 min•Ep. 553
Microsoft has a DevOps practice too! While at Ignite in Orlando, Richard sat down with Donovan Brown and Martin Woodward to talk about their experiences helping various Microsoft teams move along the DevOps journey. The conversation starts out on Visual Studio Team System (VSTS), Microsoft's source and project management software running in Azure, that also builds Azure, as well as many other Microsoft products, including Windows! Donovan and Martin talk about pressing against the edges of what ...
Oct 04, 2017•35 min•Ep. 552
Databases still need to be reliable, but what does that look like in 2017? Richard chats with Allan Hirt about how he makes databases reliable today. The conversation also turns to how reliability works with the Linux version of SQL Server - clustering is definitely different when you change operating systems! Alan also digs into what the cloud brings to the table - on-premises databases are never going away, and have certain advantages in some scenarios, but you better have a plan for how the c...
Sep 27, 2017•32 min•Ep. 551
Desired State Configuration continues to evolve, are you? Richard chats with Missy Januszko about her work (with Don Jones) on The DSC Book. DSC is short for Desired State Configuration, and a key part of PowerShell and the Windows Management Framework. Missy talks about how DSC is a key part of creating 'cattle' style infrastructure, where servers can be replaced on demand and changes are handled through code, not mouse-clicks. The conversation digs into the limits of the 'cattle-ness' of serve...
Sep 20, 2017•28 min•Ep. 550
Here come the acronyms! Richard chats with Cameron Fuller about Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS), the cloud-based instrumentation, diagnostics and automation tool from Microsoft that is all the rage - and not just for cloud related products! Cameron talks about being able to feed any kind of log data into OMS for analysis. The conversation then turns to the on-premises System Center Operations Manager and its role in providing deep analytics into specific Microsoft products, and able ...
Sep 13, 2017•35 min•Ep. 549
Still on the fence about moving services to the cloud? Richard chats with Tim Warner about the on-going evolution of the cloud and the increasing pressure that IT folks feel to incorporate it into the infrastructure strategy of an organization. The conversation starts out with budgeting when it is time to talk about buying new hardware and renewing co-lo space. How does the cloud fit in? Tim talks about what services move easily to the cloud but admits that hybrid is permanent. Is the cloud elim...
Sep 06, 2017•34 min•Ep. 548
So what is a reporting ecosystem? Richard chats with David Pless about the modern Microsoft reporting ecosystem, which can involve SQL Server Reporting Servers, Excel and the new Power BI tools. David talks about how you can work from the space you're most familiar with, and still be able to move data and reports between the different tools. But they aren't the same - different tools for different purposes. Power BI is the relative new comer and brings the power of the cloud to reporting, but th...
Aug 30, 2017•32 min•Ep. 547
Turn off SMB1! Richard talks to Ned Pyle about the ongoing battle to retire SMB1, a 30-year-old file transfer protocol at the heart of recent malware attacks. While there are patches to eliminate the vulnerability, the best patch is removing the protocol entirely. Already on the schedule for deprecation, Ned talks about how ransomware like WannaCry has accelerated the process. Windows hasn't depended on SMB1 since 2006, the challenge other devices and software - some are current. Patch your syst...
Aug 23, 2017•32 min•Ep. 546
Azure is growing, and Azure Stack is taking orders! Richard chats with Aidan Finn about his work with companies implementing Azure and looking at Azure Stack. Azure Stack is Azure, but it's your own private Azure - you run it where you want. What you don't choose is what hardware (just how much) and any of the configuration, since that is handled by Microsoft. You're always patched at the same level that public Azure is. Does Azure Stack make sense for you? Aidan digs into the various reasons wh...
Aug 16, 2017•33 min•Ep. 545
Lots of news around NanoServer - what's it all mean? Richard chats with Jason Helmick about NanoServer - but first, a quick discussion around a comment from a listener on the ongoing evolution of PowerShell. This ties nicely into the broader topic of Microsoft getting opinionated about how NanoServer should be used, which is to say, designed for containers. Jason talks about containers being light-weight virtual machines with configuration-as-code at their core. Microsoft is picking containers a...
Aug 09, 2017•32 min•Ep. 544
Windows 10 has been out for two years now, are you ready to move? Richard chats with Steve Thomas about the latest tools Microsoft provides to help you migrate your clients over to Windows 10. Steve talks about the Windows Upgrade Readiness tools that are part of Operations Management Suite. Not using OMS? Don't worry, there's a free version available for Windows Readiness. OMS brings your readiness evaluation to the cloud, checking against all sorts of hardware configurations and the organizati...
Aug 02, 2017•37 min•Ep. 543
Change is scary, how do you keep people from resisting? While at the DevOps Enterprise Summit in London, Richard sat down with fellow Kiwi Rob England to talk about his experiences bringing DevOps practices to very conservative organizations - like the New Zealand government! The conversation starts out with the idea that DevOps is not just for unicorns, that is, companies that are all about leading edge technologies. DevOps works for horses too, it just has to be approached the right way....
Jul 26, 2017•31 min•Ep. 542
Ready to go off the IT rails? Mark Minasi is back! Richard chats with Mark about his favorite subject at the moment - automated vehicles. Mark takes a humorous poke at the role of computing, cloud and sensors that should bring automated driving to fruition. Are we really ready for this tech? That's a big shift in the workforce, a change in the cost of technology and a change in how we all travel. What comes next? Meantime, Mark's life is changing too, what's next for him?
Jul 19, 2017•50 min•Ep. 541
DevOps for Mainframes? Really? Yes really! While at DevOps Enterprise Summit in London, Richard sat down with Rosalind Radcliffe and David Rizzo to talk about how mainframes can be part of a DevOps practice! The conversation starts out with Rosalind talking about the modern mainframe, which in IBM parlance is all about z/OS operating system and hardware. It's not just CICS anymore; Java runs there too! And with z/OS available for IBM Linux, you can run the same operating system setup on traditio...
Jul 12, 2017•31 min•Ep. 540
How can PowerShell improve your help desk? Richard chats with David das Neves about his work improving the efficiency of a help desk by writing PowerShell scripts. Not the most obvious role for PowerShell, but David walks through the process of finding common tech support requests that can benefit significantly from automation, rather than mouse click - like uninstalling and reinstalling Java! This leads to a conversation about creating mature, shareable and maintainable PowerShell scripts that ...
Jul 05, 2017•38 min•Ep. 539
ITIL and DevOps together? Yes! While at the DevOps Enterprise Summit in London, Richard sat down with Akshay Ananad and Kaimar Karu of AXELOS to talk about how the DevOps practices apply to service management. ITIL was born in a slower time for IT, but the core axioms are still relevant - you just need to focus on service rather than technology. The conversation also goes to including your service management folks in the conversations around software, the same way that operations, infosec and bi...
Jun 28, 2017•33 min•Ep. 538
How is DevOps evolving? While at the DevOps Enterprise Summit in London, Richard sat down with Nicole Forsgren to talk about her latest data finding and analysis on DevOps. The conversation starts with a discussion about making good reports, including who the data is collected from. Ideally you'd want a fully random data set, but as Nicole explains, that's not possible - you have to go with as large a set as possible. In the case of the 2017 report, that's 3200 survey responses. And what do they...
Jun 21, 2017•34 min•Ep. 537
More questions answered at SQLIntersection! Richard hosts a panel discussion of Kim Tripp, Paul Randal, Bob Ward, Brent Ozar and many other SQL speakers from SQLIntersection. The questions are far ranging this time around, talking about business intelligence, data science, reliability approaches and a record-setting answer on data partitioning from You-Know-Who!
Jun 14, 2017•55 min•Ep. 536
More database services in Azure! While at the Build conference, Richard sat down with Jason Anderson and Sunil Kamath to discuss both MySQL and Postgres coming to Azure Database services. Sure, you've been able to run MySQL and Postgres in virtual machines on Azure, but why would you want to maintain an operating system and patching yourself? Jason and Sunil talk about all the cloud aspects of a database service - update policies, resiliency, backup and extension options. There's more coming, bu...
Jun 07, 2017•34 min•Ep. 535
Azure Stack is coming soon! While at the Build conference in Seattle, Richard sat down with Jeffrey Snover to dig into the latest developments around Azure Stack. If you like cloud architecture but are not prepared to go to the public cloud, Azure Stack offers many of the capabilities of Azure but in a private configuration. Jeffrey talks about the various scenarios that make sense for Azure Stack and how it is likely to be made available through a number of third party providers. Azure Stack wi...
May 31, 2017•36 min•Ep. 534
What's the latest on Exchange 2016? Richard chats with Microsoft PFE Mike O'Neill about some the things he's seen lately in Exchange world. Mike talks about the hybrid world of mail these days, with on-premises Exchange servers working alongside of Office 365 Exchange Online. The conversation also digs into the affect that feature testing in the cloud has had on the on-premises edition of Exchange - the quality of updates is better and you can have confidence in doing updates during the day with...
May 24, 2017•32 min•Ep. 533
Why would you run Linux on Hyper-V? Richard chats with Microsoft Premier Field Engineer Kevin Kelling about his experiences working with a customer that had tens of thousands of virtual machines running Hyper-V - enough that the licensing of the VMs became an issue! And since Windows Server Data Center edition allows for unlimited Hyper-V instances, the effort was on to make those Linux-based VMs run well in Hyper-V - and with the right tweaking, they do! Great story about digging deeply into ho...
May 17, 2017•32 min•Ep. 532
How do you build sustainable PowerShell? By testing it! Richard talks to Adam Bertram about his work with Pester, the testing library for PowerShell. Adam talks about building mature PowerShell scripts, that is, scripts you're willing to share with others. As those scripts become important parts of your application deployment process, they end up in source control and need to be tested before being run. That's where Pester comes in. And Pester does more than just test your scripts, it can test y...
May 10, 2017•35 min•Ep. 531
How do you get identity into the cloud? Richard talks to Joey Snow about his role helping folks with Azure Active Directory. Azure AD is more than just extending your on-premises Active Directory into the cloud, it provides single-sign-on to a variety of SaaS applications, and not just Microsoft ones either! Joey talks about the different techniques available to get and protect identities with the cloud, including multi-factor authentication, Azure Identity Protection and more. There are lots of...
May 03, 2017•33 min•Ep. 530
