It's 2020 - why are we still using passwords? Richard chats with Libby Brown about the on-going efforts to make passwordless authentication work great for everyone. The problems with passwords are well-known, but can we really get to a place where we don't have them at all? Libby talks about the challenges of using multi-factor authentication, including authenticator applications, FIDO keys, facial recognition and more. You need multiple methods of authentication and recovery strategies availabl...
Feb 12, 2020•43 min•Ep 675•Transcript available on Metacast What does it take to get your team learning new skills? Richard chats with Don Jones about the entire learning process in the IT profession. Don discusses outcomes - why are we learning? What new skills will help the company? Answering these questions leads to budgets and times, but also commitment and deadlines. You can't just learn for fun (although you should), you have to provide value to the company. The good news is, we already learn all the time, we just have to remember that we do!...
Feb 05, 2020•36 min•Ep 674•Transcript available on Metacast Links: SQL Server 2019 Query Tuning Assistant Learn T-SQL Querying Azure SQL Database SQL Workshops...
Jan 29, 2020•39 min•Ep 673•Transcript available on Metacast Azure Sphere continues to evolve - what's the latest? While at Ignite in Orlando, Richard sat down with James Scott to talk about how Azure Sphere has progressed. Azure Sphere is a highly secure IoT solution that follows the seven properties of highly secure devices (check show notes for the white paper). James also talks about how Azure Sphere will be in general availability in February 2020 - and it should be your IoT solution!
Jan 22, 2020•34 min•Ep 672•Transcript available on Metacast SharePoint custom solutions are powerful - but how do you get them into the cloud? Richard talks with Christina Wheeler about her work moving complex on-premises SharePoint applications into the Power Platform that includes Office 365, Power BI, Power Apps and more. Christina talks about the cultural shift that happens both to her and her customers as the cloud becomes a compelling option for business. That cultural shift opens up a world of best-of-breed options for CRM, CMS and other tools - a...
Jan 15, 2020•41 min•Ep 671•Transcript available on Metacast What are SQL people concerned about at the end of 2019? While in Las Vegas 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, SQL in the cloud, new clustering services, challenges around working with developers and more!
Jan 08, 2020•55 min•Ep 670•Transcript available on Metacast Happy New Year! It's 2020 - the future is here! What is the career of an IT Professional going to look like in this decade? Richard flies solo, pulling together a summary of the past few decades and how they will shape this new decade just starting. Don't expect any crazy predictions - the IT industry moves carefully, with logical progressions. In some ways, you can expect more of the same - more computers that people rely on, more security challenges, and more of the new technology being used i...
Jan 01, 2020•38 min•Ep 669•Transcript available on Metacast How do you share company data outside of the company? While at Ignite in Orlando, Richard talked to Joanna Podgoetsky about Azure Data Share, a new tool specifically designed to make it easy to share data outside your organization in a controlled and measurable way. Joanna talks about the various Azure data sources you can use to share data, and how to provide access to it for individuals and applications as well as being able to measure who has accessed the data.
Dec 25, 2019•32 min•Ep 668•Transcript available on Metacast You know about DevOps - but what about MLOps? While at Ignite in Orlando, Richard talked to Damian Brady about how Machine Learning projects need to go through the same kind of lifecycle as any other software project. Damian emphasizes how important good instrumentation is for MLOps - because it can be hard to tell how well a given machine learning model is working. And good instrumentation often involves development, so get with your devs and talk through how you're going to measure success!...
Dec 18, 2019•37 min•Ep 667•Transcript available on Metacast Python and SQL Server together? Julie Smith says yes! Richard chats with Julie about the strengths of Python in various tasks around databases including ETL. Julie talks about the tooling available for doing data extraction, transformation and loading - you can find existing Python implementations on most tasks you need to do! And as of SQL Server 2017, Python is directly supported, so you can call Python code from within T-SQL. And that's just the beginning - wait til you see Python in data ana...
Dec 11, 2019•39 min•Ep 666•Transcript available on Metacast Gene Kim is out with a new book - The Unicorn Project! Richard chats with Gene about his latest book - a fictionalized story of an organization struggling to build software that is critical to the survival of the company. The conversation explores a core aspect of The Unicorn Project known as the Five Ideals. Think of these ideals as a Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs when it comes to teams building software - this is how you do it!
Dec 04, 2019•45 min•Ep 665•Transcript available on Metacast Are you managing your infrastructure with code? Richard chats with Josh Duffney about his current toolset for writing infrastructure as code, including PowerShell, Chocolatey and Ansible. Ansible is an open-source project from Red Hat that includes some retail components if you need them. Josh dives into the playbook model, how Ansible helps make testing that infrastructure code easier, and the challenge of using virtual machine based application deployment in the modern world.
Nov 27, 2019•33 min•Ep 664•Transcript available on Metacast Collaboration continues to evolve - how do you do it? Richard chats with Heather Newman about the tooling and techniques that have changed over the years to let teams work together remotely and in-person. SharePoint has been around a long time, but do you remember Groove? Heather talks about her current favorite stack including Teams, Planner, OneNote, OneDrive and SharePoint, all working together under the Office 365 banner. It's a great time to collaborate!
Nov 20, 2019•44 min•Ep 663•Transcript available on Metacast What is Microsoft 365, and why do you need some? Richard chats with Stephen Rose about the superset that is Microsoft 365, encompassing Office 365, Windows, InTune and more. Stephen talks about how Microsoft is organizing the products that work together with the cloud to be productive, making it easier for folks to put them to work and take advantage of all the features. This includes the latest incarnation of Windows Virtual Desktop, allowing any device to act like a high-end Windows workstatio...
Nov 13, 2019•37 min•Ep 662•Transcript available on Metacast Does DevOps make sense for DBAs? Richard chats with Kendra Little about how DevOps practices have spread throughout the development process - and yet somehow, in some organizations, the database folks aren't all that involved. Kendra talks about what practices work for those responsible for the care of feeding of data, including things like source control and automating deployments. Can it be done? Yes! Is it worth it? Also yes!
Nov 06, 2019•50 min•Ep 661•Transcript available on Metacast How do you keep your groups and teams in Office 365 under control? Richard chats with Tony Redmond about Office 365 and how individual users can create their own groups, essentially on demand. In large organizations, this can lead to a huge proliferation of so-called dead groups - how do you manage them? Tony digs into the policy tools, and what really constitutes a dead group. The conversation also dives into how this keeps happening - making it easy for users to use a feature means it gets use...
Oct 30, 2019•39 min•Ep 660•Transcript available on Metacast Your organization is using Azure - but is it under control? Richard chats with Phoummala Schmitt about policy, compliance, and governance in Azure. Often moving to the cloud starts as an experiment - and then suddenly it's live! While it's great to work through governance in advance, it's not always possible. So how do you get things right? Phoummala talks about account management, monitoring utilization, security and cost controls, all key parts of good governance. Azure gives you lots of tools...
Oct 23, 2019•41 min•Ep 659•Transcript available on Metacast Can deploying software and updates enable a hack? Richard chats with Mikael Nyström about doing secure deployments - and this leads to a conversation about how modern hackers are exploiting systems today. Modern hackers can break into machines, but security restrictions limit their ability to exploit - until an administrator logs into the machine. Mikael talks about limiting your use of super-user accounts, including for deployment - and keeping your systems difficult for hackers to exploit!...
Oct 16, 2019•28 min•Ep 658•Transcript available on Metacast Are you compliant? What does that even mean? Richard chats with Erica Toelle about the various security and compliance features in Office 365. Erica talks about regulated industries such as oil and gas that have very specific rules around reporting and regulations - but every organization can benefit from the security and compliance tooling! Document retention, inappropriate communications across email, chat and other tools are all part of compliance, and Office 365 can help!
Oct 09, 2019•33 min•Ep 657•Transcript available on Metacast Are you using SysInternals? Richard chats with Sami Laiho about Mark Russinovich's masterwork. Sami talks a bit about the history of SysInternals and how Microsoft came to acquire them and Mark - and the tool development continues! Process Explorer and Monitor are the best known of the suite of over a hundred tools - and they focus on diagnostics. But once you know what an issue is, there are more tools to help you resolve them. Check out Sami's Pluralsight series on SysInternals - he considers ...
Oct 02, 2019•40 min•Ep 656•Transcript available on Metacast Is your cloud secure? Richard chats with Paula Januszkiewicz about what it takes to secure your cloud - that is, the cloud services that you're paying for. Paula talks about how cloud services are not automatically secure, that many security features are off by default and it takes time to figure out how to configure them to help protect your accounts and services. And since cloud products are relatively new, there aren't many experts around - you have to figure out what is right for you and you...
Sep 25, 2019•37 min•Ep 655•Transcript available on Metacast How are you managing mobile device? Richard chats with Jeremy Moskowitz about the world of mobile device management and how it continues to evolve. Jeremy talks about the balancing act between supporting Windows-centric concepts that group policy did extremely well alongside what it takes to manage the broader diversity of devices today - and in the future! If you want to dig deep on MDM, check out Jeremy's new book!
Sep 18, 2019•36 min•Ep 654•Transcript available on Metacast It's 2019 - has DevOps 'crossed the chasm'? Richard chats with Nicole Forsgren and Dustin Smith about the latest DevOps report, showing that in all aspects of software development and operations, things are getting better - but not evenly! The conversation digs into the latest research showing that it is large enterprises today struggling the most to improve development and delivery of software, while retail operations seem to be leading the pack! There's a lot to explore in the DevOps report, t...
Sep 11, 2019•39 min•Ep 653•Transcript available on Metacast What is it to teach, and what is it to learn when you're in IT? Richard chats with Don Jones about his on-going work on his book Be The Master and how it has evolved since its first publication in 2018. Don talks about how readers connected with him around the book and discussed their own efforts in mastery and teaching - which encouraged Don to revise the book! Remembering how we learn helps inform how to teach, and teaching strengthens knowledge, so everyone benefits - and there's a lot to kno...
Sep 04, 2019•40 min•Ep 652•Transcript available on Metacast Office 365 has a ton of features - how do you manage them effectively? Richard chats with Martina Grom about the various aspects of Office 365 that affect the way the folks in your organization collaborate with each other and get work done. As Martina explains, there are great tools inside Office 365 to make it easier to apply policies and governance around the various services that Office 365 provides, including onboarding and offboarding employees, self-service for collaboration, even policies...
Aug 28, 2019•35 min•Ep 651•Transcript available on Metacast How much is the cloud costing you? Richard chats with Corey Quinn about his work as a consultant for cloud billing - finding ways to reduce the cost of cloud while maintaining the quality of service. Corey talks about his focus on AWS, but every cloud has similar problems - instances that aren't turned off, over-provisioning and more. In the end, you have to take the time to understand what your organization really needs from the cloud to optimize, but it is worth it!
Aug 21, 2019•32 min•Ep 650•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 
