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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast What does your security plan look like? Richard chats with Dana Epp about the ever increasing attack surface of our organizations and the ongoing battle to provide better tools and techniques to keep the lights on. Hackers are getting more clever, even hacking cars - how do you keep up? Dana talks through a series of policy approaches to deal with the reality that you are going to be breached, but how to you detect the breach and limit the damage caused? Check out Dana's article on credential th...
Oct 14, 2015•36 min•Ep 442•Transcript available on Metacast There are lots of reasons to instrument your apps in production - but one of the most powerful is to understand how your users actually use your apps. Richard talks to Andreas Grabner of DynaTrace about the variety of instrumentation approaches possible for applications - some driven by operations, and some by development. But everyone in the organization can benefit from a deeper understanding of how applications are used. Andreas talks about the diversity of metrics that can be taken, from you...
Oct 07, 2015•36 min•Ep 441•Transcript available on Metacast Well, that's it - ARIN is out of IPv4 addresses. Richard chats with Ed Horley who has been warning of this day for a number of years now. So what does it really mean? No, the internet isn't going to stop working. Ed talks about how much IPv6 is already going on - some ISPs have double-digit adoption already! And certain marketplaces need it the most, such as smartphones. There are billions of smartphones, and the Internet of Things looks to bring many more billions of devices online as well... w...
Sep 30, 2015•37 min•Ep 440•Transcript available on Metacast Windows 10 has shipped - but has it really, really shipped? Richard chats with Paul Thurrott about his take on Microsoft's on-going efforts to get the operating system just right. After some history discussion about how Windows 10 came to be, from Vista on up, Paul digs into the truth of the matter - Windows 10 isn't quite done yet, it's fine for consumers, but IT Pros need to look carefully. It's a powerful operating system that alongside the upcoming Server 2016 should be able to take infrastr...
Sep 23, 2015•33 min•Ep 439•Transcript available on Metacast Docker is coming to Windows and it's going to be huge! Richard chats with Taylor Brown of the Windows Core Virtualization team about the new Windows Server containers coming in Server 2016. With the TP3 release of Server 2016, you can start experimenting with Windows Containers! The discussion also focuses on the upcoming Hyper-V Containers, and the differences and reasoning behind having two different types of containers. Taylor digs into the focus on configuration-as-code for containers, so th...
Sep 16, 2015•32 min•Ep 438•Transcript available on Metacast So where is remote access going these days? Richard talks to Richard Hicks about Microsoft DirectAccess and more. Recognizing that VPNs don't make people happy, Richard Hicks talks about how DirectAccess did a good job of making remote connectivity seamless and invisible - at the price of being a challenge to set up in the first place. Having your remote access roles as isolated VMs in your network has distinct advantages! However, the domain join requirement is a significant limitation, and one...
Sep 09, 2015•33 min•Ep 437•Transcript available on Metacast Have you looked at everything available in an Office 365 subscription? It's easy to stop at Exchange or SharePoint online, but what about the services side of Office 365 including OneDrive for Business and Azure Active Directory Applications. Office 365 is more than just the Office suite in the cloud, there are APIs available to allow developer to build mash-up style applications that integrate with Exchange, SharePoint (both on-prem and cloud) as well as a huge number of third party application...
Sep 02, 2015•37 min•Ep 436•Transcript available on Metacast 
