What do you know about software-defined networking (SDN)? Richard chats with Claudia de Luna about her work in SDN, including implementing Cisco's Application-Centric Infrastructure (ACI). While the physical topology of your network isn't all that different when technology like ACI is in play, your apps see a much simpler network, and strict controls over what your applications can connect with. SDN is changing the networking game - are you playing?
Aug 14, 2019•32 min•Ep. 649
What questions do you have for the SQL community? While in Orlando at SQL Intersection, Richard hosts the semi-annual question and answer session for SQL at the end of the conference. Panelists include Bob Ward, Kim Tripp, Paul Randal, Brent Ozar, Glenn Berry, Kevin Farlee, Pam Lahoud, Pedro Lopes, Ben Miller and Tim Radney. Questions around SQL Server 2019, reporting and integration services, running SQL in AWS and of course, the obligatory partitioning question.
Aug 07, 2019•48 min•Ep. 648
Does Windows still matter? Richard and Paul Thurrott spend the better part of an hour debating back-and-forth about the state of Windows and the need for Windows. Microsoft has split the Windows team and largely concealed its revenue from reporting, so we don't know how Windows is actually doing. What do we want from Windows today? Is it just part of the plumbing now?
Jul 31, 2019•54 min•Ep. 647
Ready for a new Windows administration console? Richard chats with Haley Rowland about Windows Admin Center, a browser-based administration tool that puts a graphical console over top of PowerShell commands to your on-premises servers and workstations - and your Azure-based resources as well! Haley talks about making hybrid cloud easier, using Windows Admin Center to provide coherent connections between on-premises servers and their Azure-based backup solutions. Doing the same task in Windows Ad...
Jul 24, 2019•32 min•Ep. 646
Is it time for a new Windows Terminal? Richard talks to Richard Turner about the announcement at Build of the new Windows Terminal. The conversation starts with: Why? Richard explains that the ConHost.exe based console of Windows has hit its limits - the need for backward compatibility exceeds the ability to make changes to it effectively anymore. A new open source project has been developed to allow all the features you've always wanted in a terminal, like tabs, font choices, customization per ...
Jul 17, 2019•44 min•Ep. 645
Is DevOps only for startups? Rosalind Radcliffe says no! The largest enterprises can benefit from DevOps practices, the challenge is finding the right approach to changing practices. Rosalind talks about getting buy-in from senior leadership by focusing on reducing waste and improving efficiency. Picking the right project is important also - you want a project that is important, but not the crown jewels of the company. Understanding how work actually gets done in the enterprise helps lead you to...
Jul 10, 2019•35 min•Ep. 644
It's 2019 - what's new with the Internet of Things? While at the Build conference in Seattle, Richard sat down with Sam George to talk about the latest initiatives Microsoft is taking to bring IoT to the mainstream of business. As Sam explains, its starts with instrumentation - knowing what is happening in your business in more detail. That informs ways to make improvements and further roles for IoT. It's a digital feedback cycle, and it can transform your business!
Jul 03, 2019•30 min•Ep. 643
What can PowerApps do for you? Richard chats with Sandy Ussia about her work with PowerApps and Flow to help organizations build custom applications that run in the browser, on the tablet and phone. On the backend, Flow provides access to many Software-as-a-Service platforms, including all of Office 365 and all sorts of other third-party services. Sandy calls PowerApps a low-code solution, and the code you write is more algorithmic like Excel than C++.
Jun 26, 2019•34 min•Ep. 642
The cloud-based distributed database is a product you can buy by the minute! While at Build, Richard chats with Mark Brown about CosmosDB, Microsoft's high performance distributed database. The conversation turns to the modern thinking around storage - you have lots of space, you need speed and reliability. So what does your data storage architecture look like? Mark talks about how CosmosDB reflects this modern thinking, utilizing the cloud to provide fast data services anywhere you need them....
Jun 19, 2019•35 min•Ep. 641
Machine learning has brought new terms and language to data - do you speak it? Richard chats with Jen Underwood about how machine learning has added capabilities to data analytics, but also a number of new terms that need to be understood to take this capability into the business. If you're coming from the DBA role and adding machine learning to your skills, you need to know the language well enough to teach it to others!
Jun 12, 2019•32 min•Ep. 640
How do you maintain Windows Server Update Services? Richard chats with Adam Marshall about all the maintenance that WSUS needs over time - and the toolset he has built to automate it. This leads to a conversation about Windows Update in general... which hasn't been great lately. Can you really count on Windows as a Service? What about InTune? Adam also talks about Windows Update for Business which is a free option for managing updates without having an on-premises update server. Lots of choices!...
Jun 05, 2019•35 min•Ep. 639
Microsoft Teams is popular, but is it effective? Richard talks with Melissa Hubbard about how to get the most of out of Teams. Melissa talks about the natural chaos that comes from adding a new collaboration tool and how that can be a good thing for adoption but ultimately needs some governance. At the same time, too much governance up-front can stop people from using a new tool - so allow a little chaos! Teams is all about collaboration, and works with other Microsoft products like Yammer and S...
May 29, 2019•33 min•Ep. 638
Is it time to migrate to Server 2019? Richard chats with Dave Kawula who says YES! After a bit of a bumpy start, Server 2019 is good to go and offers a ton of great features - and some pretty painless in-place upgrades too. Dave points out that this is a version of Server 'born in the cloud' and since Microsoft does in-place upgrades, for certain roles, it makes sense for you to do it too. File servers and VM hosts are great for in-place upgrades, but domain controllers and app servers, you need...
May 22, 2019•38 min•Ep. 637
What's a data lake and why do you need one? Richard chats with Stacia Varga about the evolving landscape of data analytics - focusing on how the cloud is changing the way a company can gather, store and analyze data. This leads to a conversation about the role of the data lake, a place where raw data can arrive and then be processed on-demand for analytics. The cloud provides the elasticity and scaling to be able to analyze data quickly on demand - you just need to take advantage of it!
May 15, 2019•38 min•Ep. 636
WIndows Server 2019 has been out since November 2018 - is it time to install it? Richard talks to Jason Helmick about how the creation of Windows has evolved and how Microsoft's new practices around building Windows has affected adoption and interest in the latest operating system. Jason talks about how the continuous improvement model of Microsoft products including Windows can be a challenge for some folks, but provides huge benefits also. Should you install Server 2019? Jason says YES!...
May 08, 2019•36 min•Ep. 635
SharePoint is not just a product, it's a tool for helping your organization manage critical information. Are you taking advantage of it? Richard chats with Susan Hanley about what information architecture is about and how SharePoint can play a key role in helping an organization find, store and share data. Every organization needs this capability, successful organizations do it well - how well do you do it?
May 01, 2019•34 min•Ep. 634
IT may be evolving, but are all aspects of your IT organization advancing? Richard chats with Jeff Stokes, former Microsoft PFE and now working at Tanium about the challenges IT people have around improving performance. Arguably the least advanced part of much of IT infrastructure is the network - so what does a modern network look like? Jeff talks about being able to get visibility into what servers and desktops are talking to each other, and how to set logical boundaries around them. At least ...
Apr 24, 2019•36 min•Ep. 633
How do you make your SQL queries go faster? Richard chats with Erin Stellato about how Query Store in SQL Server 2017 and its ability to provide detailed information on query performance, including where SQL Server is compiling new query plans for repeated calls. Erin talks about how ORMs can cause repeated ad-hoc queries and how Query Store can be used to help educate developers and explore options for tuning those queries with stored procedures or parameterization. But you can't blame code by ...
Apr 17, 2019•35 min•Ep. 632
Firewalls and MFA are awesome, but how's your physical security? Richard chats with Ned Pyle about a story surrounding a consultant able to walk into a data center, take a VM host server and walk out - and then was able to exploit it to pull all sorts of information out of the Active Directory service on it! Ned talks about taking both physical security and policies seriously, and then moves to the next phase: How do you protect a virtual machine even when its stolen? Enter Guarded Fabric and Sh...
Apr 10, 2019•36 min•Ep. 631
The next DevOps Report Survey is out, and Nicole Forsgren needs your help! Richard chats with Nicole about the changes at DORA (now part of Google) - but the work to understand how to make high performing teams continues! Nicole discusses her now expanded team of researchers getting to the heart of what it takes to make great software in your organization. Its never one simple thing, but many aspects that work together so that everyone involved in the creation and operation of software can be as...
Apr 03, 2019•36 min•Ep. 630
Office 365 is growing in popularity - but is it fast enough? Richard chats with Paul Keely about how IT needs to monitor Office 365 to understand performance problems and worse. Paul talks about all the various aspects of performance that can be impacted by working with Office 365, including needing more overall bandwidth. The discussion turns to the Azure Service Map tool that runs on workstations and in the cloud to understand what services are eating resources - and how that can turn up poten...
Mar 27, 2019•40 min•Ep. 629
Is Artificial Intelligence part of your data analytics strategy? Richard chats with Jen Stirrup about how data analytics and business intelligence continue to evolve to include different elements of artificial intelligence. Natural language interfaces are one aspect, but machine learning can play an even larger role - if you continue to do your diligence! Jen talks about needing quality data to feed to machine learning algorithms and the challenges of dealing with data bias and confirmation bias...
Mar 20, 2019•35 min•Ep. 628
Whitelisting is a good idea - but not easy to make happen! Richard talks to Aaron Margosis about his work making it easier to use AppLocker to implement whitelisting on Windows, a set of scripts and tools named by Chris Jackson as AaronLocker. Aaron talks about implementing the whitelisting strategies outlined in the NSA whitepaper on the subject, making it easier to maintain the whitelist when apps need to be updated. Admins can choose how locked down to make a machine, providing flexibility ar...
Mar 13, 2019•33 min•Ep. 627
How do you understand what's going on in your applications? Richard talks to Isaac Levin about Azure Application Insights - now part of the Azure Monitor Suite that can help with monitoring of PCs, virtual machines as well as a large variety of applications. As Isaac explains, Insights is really a reporting tool that feeds off of a standard SDK that can be installed in a variety of applications - but in the case of .NET applications, you don't have to install the SDK, AppInsights can still instr...
Mar 06, 2019•34 min•Ep. 626
Every organization has information hoarders; the question is, do you know where it is? Richard talks to Stephanie Donahue about the challenges around discovering information hoards and helping to unwind them - finding out why people hoard data and get them to share it to the larger organization that can benefit from it. Part of the challenge is tooling, and part of it is personal. Either way, it's worthwhile to get that hoarded data shared and help everyone be more productive!
Feb 27, 2019•37 min•Ep. 625
It's 2019 - do you know where your IPv6 network is? Richard chats with Ed Horley about the current state of IPv6 and his new business, HexaBuild, that specifically provides services to companies implementing IPv6. Ed points out that the cell industry has pretty much moved entirely to IPv6 - if you're using a current generation smartphone, it's running across an IPv6 network. All the cloud providers offer IPv6 addressing, so the laggards at this point are the big, older corporations. The real que...
Feb 20, 2019•35 min•Ep. 624
Machine Learning is all around us - are you getting ready for your company to use it? Richard chats with Ginger Grant about what you need to understand around machine learning to be successful. Not all data is created equal - often we think if we just store everything, it'll be useful for machine learning analysis in the future. Ginger talks about some of the mistakes she's seen in the space, and that analysis can't be an after thought. There are lots of great tools in the show notes to help you...
Feb 13, 2019•43 min•Ep. 623
It's a container world - we're just living in it! Richard chats with Microsoft VP Corey Sanders about how containers have taken off in the cloud world. Starting the conversation with the previous show done with Corey in 2017, the discussion dives into how containers in general and Kubernetes specifically have dominated deployment and operations in the cloud. Corey runs down the gamut of advantages, including hybrid and cross-platform options, and how Microsoft is using containers under the hood ...
Feb 06, 2019•31 min•Ep. 622
How do you get developers and DBAs to collaborate more effectively? Richard moderated a panel discussion at the PASS conference in Seattle with panelists Amy Herold, Angela Henry, Lyndsey Padget and Tim Corey to share their experiences and debate methods and mechanisms that can help. Lots of participation from the audience as well!
Jan 30, 2019•31 min•Ep. 621
Why does DevOps work? Richard chats with Martin Woodward about the key aspects of DevOps and how they make a difference in an organization - even one as large as Microsoft! Martin talks about how developer often drive a DevOps practice from their Agile development experiences, and how that is a challenge to translate to operations. There's a natural tension between shipping more often with smaller changes and keeping the system stable - how do you find the right balance point?
Jan 23, 2019•39 min•Ep. 620
