RunAs Radio

How does your organization work with files in Microsoft 365? Richard chats with Jason Moore about the role of OneDrive for Business, SharePoint, and the many tools available for files, folders, and lists in the M365 world. Jason talks about how under the hood, every file ends up in some pretty standard spots, like Azure Blob Storage - so you know that compliance, governance, and policy are consist...

Does Windows need a package manager? Richard talks to Sarah Lean about Windows Package Manager, aka winget. Of course, there have been package managers for Windows before winget, and Sarah talks about her favorite, Chocolatey. But winget is destined to be a part of Windows itself and opens the door to some great deployment automation. The conversation also dives into exporting - making a copy of t...

It's a hybrid and multi-cloud world - how do you manage it? Richard talks to Microsoft VP Jeremy Winter about Azure Arc and its ability to work across on-premises and multiple clouds to give you a view of your whole infrastructure - and ways to govern, manage and secure it! Jeremy talks about the role that Kubernetes plays in the hybrid world to help manage applications and how Azure Arc helps you...

There's value in the data your organization has gathered - do you know how to use it to help your company succeed? Richard chats with Jen Stirrup about the new tools and techniques for data analytics. Jen talks about how cloud-based tools like PowerBI and Power Automate open the door to rapid interaction of analytics so that folks can get value in a short amount of time, and you can bring new capa...

How do you respond to a ransomware attack? Richard talks to Dana Epp about dealing with a ransomware attack. Dana discusses making a plan - if you don't have a plan already, dealing with an attack is very difficult. And make sure your plan exists outside of your regular network since one of the first things you're going to do during an attack is shut down the network. The conversation focuses on h...

How can Azure AD Conditional Access help to protect your organization? Richard chats with Nitika Gupta about the tooling available to detect and react to unusual sign-ins and access to data. Nitika talks about how Conditional Access lets you set policies in place to require additional authentication and even lockout an account when certain things happen - like a change in device, application, loca...

Paul is back! Richard chats with Paul about the recently released preview of Windows 11. Paul talks about being a bit surprised by the timing of Windows 11, and how it looks an awful lot like an update to Windows 10, with a UX refresh. The conversation digs into the current controversy around the Trusted Platform Module requirement in the hardware for Windows 11, while also discussing what should...

As the pandemic starts to wind down in some parts of the world, the conversation is turning to - do we go back to the office? Richard talks to Martina Grom about how some of her customers are responding to a need for hybrid workspaces, with some mixture of working from home and in the office. Martina also digs into the governance challenges of M365 with hybrid workers, and how folks who moved quic...

The SQL Server & AzureSQL Conference is BACK!   After more a year away, the SQL Server & AzureSQL conference happened in Orlando in June 2021. And that means a SQL Question and Answers session at the end of the show.   Bob Ward, Anna Hoffman, Buck Woody, David Pless, and many other great speakers answered questions from the attendees of the conference both in-person and online.   Topics ranged ove...

Can you have a private platform on the public cloud? Richard chats with Jennelle Crothers about her work with organizations setting up private Platform-as-a-Service infrastructure in Azure. Jennelle talks about using private DNS Zones, private container registries, and other services to provide a public-like platform experience for a company while not exposing it to the open internet at all.  Link...

Ned Pyle is back and he's got cool news! Richard chats with Ned about some of the features coming down the pipe for file storage in Windows Server 2022. First up is encryption - Server 2022 will have direct support for AES-256. Sure, it's overkill for many scenarios, but some organizations are demanding it, so here it is. Ned also talks about SMB Compression - while it has existed for xcopy et al...

What's it like to build a tool for SQL DBAs? Richard chats with Kendra Little about her role at Red Gate being a product manager for the SQL DevOps tools. Kendra talks about moving to the UK to be closer to the main offices of Red Gate - just in time for pandemic lockdowns to start. The conversation digs into the various strategies around including databases in a DevOps approach, and how tooling c...

What happened to Windows 10X? Richard chats with Paul Thurrott about the ongoing saga at Microsoft to create a lighter version of Windows that can compete with iOS and ChromeOS. Paul talks about various incarnations along the way, including Windows ARM and Windows 10S - Windows 10X is just the latest victim of an extremely challenging problem. Windows has always been about maintaining backward com...

What happens when you bring Teams into an organization that already uses SharePoint? Richard chats with Susan Hanley about the intimate relationship between Teams and SharePoint, especially when it comes to files. Susan talks about aligning SharePoint folders and Teams groups to be able to connect existing SharePoint information into Teams - and how Teams can become the interface to everything, es...

What is Microsoft Viva? Richard chats with Hilton Giesenow about the recently announced Microsoft Viva as part of Microsoft 365. Hilton discusses how Viva is a group of products focused on Employee Experience (EXP). Employee Experience being the things that employees need to do at the company outside of the actual work, such as submitting timesheets, requesting vacation, getting training, and unde...

How do you protect your PowerApps? Richard chats with April Dunnam about backing up and maintaining versions of PowerApps over time. April talks about how many PowerApps are developed by people that are more domain experts than developers. That lack of experience in development means that issues like source control and disaster recovery are not on their minds. There is excellent tooling available...

What does cybersecurity look like today? Richard talks with Troy Hunt about the recent news around the Hafnium exploits. The FBI utilized the vulnerability created in Exchange servers to patch the servers and remove the exploit. Is this a good idea? Is it legal? The actions of the FBI lead to a broader conversation about modern cybersecurity - when time is of the essence, should the so-called whit...

How do you get started with the Power Platform? Richard chats with Sandy Ussia about the familiar places that Power Platform first appears - domain users trying to automate work like approvals, improve or replace forms-over-data tooling, and more! Sometimes it relates to existing custom applications in the organization, and sometimes it is a set of connectors between SaaS services - or is so far d...

So many ways to store data in the cloud, so little time! Richard talks to Karl Rautenstrauch about the array of offerings for your files in Azure Storage. Karl talks about how the rush to move to the cloud last year created some regrets - in the form of large bills for certain services! Planning migrations help because there are several storage choices based on your needs. The conversation digs in...

You moved your data into the cloud - but have you moved your thinking? Richard chats with Jes Schultz about going beyond the lift-and-shift of databases into the cloud to thinking more broadly about what you can do with data once it's there. Jes talks about how the cloud changes your approach to disaster recovery and database storage, opening the door to experimenting with different database capab...

Windows Server 2022 is in preview - have you checked it out? Richard chats with Robert Smit about the early stage preview of Server 2022 released to Windows Insiders. Anyone can be an insider if you want to check it out! Robert mentions a minor problem with the early build that broke sysprep. Check out his blog post in the links below for the workaround. The focus of Server 2022 seems to be on sec...

Ready to have your Azure virtual machines auto-managed? Richard chats with Phoummala Schmitt about Azure Automanage, recently released into public preview. Phoummala talks about how Automanage sits atop Azure Update, Azure Backup, Azure Security Center, and more. The combination of tools gives you an overview of all of the virtual machines in your tenant and the ability to managing patches, govern...

How can Azure Security Center help you? Richard talks to Yuri Diogenes about the array of security tools in Azure, starting with Azure Security Center (ASC). ASC is free, and you enable it as soon as you set up your Azure tenant. Yuri talks about how ASC analyzes your Azure tenant and points out potential vulnerabilities, culminating in a security score. Your score goes up as existing resources in...

What did the pandemic do to your infrastructure? Richard chats with Stephanie Donahue about the array of digital transformations that have taken place in the past year. Stephanie talks about moving workloads to the cloud - and how it is not just an IT problem. Work-from-home and other remote aspects of work have helped drive cloud adoption, but the opportunities are much larger than that! The conv...

A severe set of exploits have hit the on-premises Exchange server world. Richard talks to Tony Redmond about the so-called Hafnium exploits, a collection of four zero-day exploits that can allow an attacker to run arbitrary code on Exchange servers visible to the internet. Exchange Online is not affected, and it appears that on-premises Exchange servers only accessible by VPN are also safe. The pa...