RunAs Radio

Now that folks are working from home, how do you re-image their machines? Richard chats with Johan Arwidmark about the changes coming in Configuration Manager and a library for MDT. Johan talks about how the ConfigMgr responded to the pandemic by adding work-from-home features now in technical preview. You can deploy images onto a VM in your Azure tenant that remote workstations can deploy from, n...

If you're using Office 365, do you know about FastTrack? Richard talks to Erica Toelle about how FastTrack can help you get more value from your Office 365 subscriptions. One of the big services available in Office 365 is compliance around the retention and protection of information. If you have enough seats and the right levels of licensing, Microsoft will help you to take advantage of the advanc...

The pandemic rushed some work into the cloud - but getting up to the cloud in an organized way takes some preparation, starting with Active Directory. Richard talks to Jess Dodson about the various clean-up processes we always meant to do for AD, but never got around to it. And now with a move to Azure Active Directory, those cleanups are important - not doing them can be expensive! Jess talks abo...

Where did Azure SQL come from and where is it going? Richard chats with Bob Ward about his new book, Azure SQL Revealed. The conversation starts out at the beginning of SQL Server in the 90s, all the way to SQL 2005, when the first discussions of a database in the cloud happened at Microsoft. Bob talks about the early days of SQL Server for Windows Azure that eventually became Azure SQL. Today Azu...

The Pandemic has moved a lot of applications into the cloud. Are you automating the deployment? Richard chats with Steve Buchanan about the ever-advancing tooling for Infrastructure-as-Code. ARM Templates are the standard approach to IaC for Azure, but they can get complex. Terraform is HashiCorp's tool for IaC that utilizes ARM Templates under the hood. But as Steve says, it takes time for new fe...

Artificial Intelligence is here to stay - how did this happen? Richard chats with Amy Boyd about where artificial intelligence came from, starting back in the 1950s - and how it was overpromised and under-delivered, resulting in an AI winter. And this cycle happened more than once! But along the way, some interesting technology developed that leads us to the modern era of AI, where cloud computing...

The pandemic has accelerated the move to the cloud - but it's not the only reason to migrate. Richard talks to Sonia Cuff about the effects of the pandemic on business transformation. Sonia talks about the response to the pandemic, such as working-from-home and moving to the cloud, as an adaptation to the crisis: Not transformation. The transformation part comes later, as you dig deeper into the n...

You're moving virtual machines to the cloud - how do you keep them organized and maintained? Richard chats with Samuel Erskine about all the things Azure provides to make the life of a virtual machine better. The conversation starts on organization, using dynamic groups and tags to identify servers - not the machine names! Samuel digs into patch management and monitoring as well. Virtual machines...

Is the deployment of IPv6 impacted by the pandemic? Richard talks to Ed Horley about how IPv6 deployment has continued through the crisis - and also how enterprises continue to lag behind home services when it comes to IPv6! Ed discusses the latest data around IPv6 usages showing that work-from-home has actually increased the amount of IPv6 traffic because the majority of consumer ISPs now provide...

What does it take to get started with data science? Richard talks with Ayodele Odubela about her new book on learning data science. Ayodele talks about how often data science starts out just defining a good question to ask - and how that question evolves as you learn more. The example explored is getting new customers - which starts with understanding what customers you already have. Often we are...

Ever had a conversation take a twist you didn't expect? Richard talks to Lauren Malhoit about the state of networking during the pandemic. The conversation evolves into a broader view on IT in the pandemic, thinking longer term, and that the changes we're making today are not going to magically disappear with the virus. While it may not be the conversation planned, it is two experienced IT folks s...

Windows can protect itself from exploits – but you need to turn it on! Richard talks to Chris Jackson about his recently published document about exploit protection. Chris talks about the long list of mitigation strategies that exist inside of Windows to stop arbitrary code (read: malware) from executing. Each strategy comes with the risk of breaking your application. You need to apply the mitigat...

Enterprise Mobility is no longer optional! Richard talks to Richard Hicks about his work during the pandemic around remote connectivity. The early days of the pandemic were a scramble to get folks working from home, often needing to scale up VPN services. Now that a few months have gone by, other problems have appeared: Are the remote workstations getting patched? How do you know? What about self-...

Can you go serverless with databases? Monica Rathbun says yes! Richard chats with Monica about Microsoft's serverless mode for SQL Azure. Same SQL database, but now it is billed by the second and will automatically suspend itself after a set amount of time - incurring no costs to you while suspended! It doesn't work for every database scenario, but Monica talks through some options that have great...

How can Windows Virtual Desktop improve productivity? Richard chats with Jen Sheerin about the kinds of applications better served by virtualization. Jen talks about her work with Citrix XenDesktop and Windows Virtual Desktop, and how the pandemic has accelerated adoption. The challenge is especially acute for thick client applications - you can deploy them to a home machine, but that is a securit...

Perimeter security is one thing - what about beyond the edge? Richard chats with Ned Pyle about a series of blog posts (links in the show notes) to help you harden security on every machine in your network. Ned talks about various settings available on Windows clients and servers that can help protect your systems from bad actors - and there's nothing to install, just adjusting policy and settings...

How can compassion help during the pandemic? Richard talks to April Wensel about the importance of compassion at this difficult time. April talks about how compassion has always been important and powerful for work and the rest of life, but today it's essential. Everyone has been affected by the pandemic to some degree, and everyone is grieving, whether they know or not. We all need more compassio...

SCCM or Intune? Do you need to choose? Should you choose? Richard chats with Greg Shields about device management using SCCM and/or Intune. Greg admits that it is his own journey coming from SCCM but developing an Intune class that led him to admire what Intune is good at. The two products definitely overlap, and understand each other - you can run both very successfully. It comes down to your org...

What does incident response look like during the pandemic? Richard talks to Julie Gunderson of PagerDuty about what it takes to respond to an incident effectively when you can't necessarily be in the same room together. The conversation starts out with the fundamentals of incident response - how to report an incident, how an incident unfolds, what it looks like to resolve an incident and then, mos...

What is your preferred SQL Server tool? Richard chats with Vicky Harp, who oversees the development of many of the tools you count on to manage all sorts of databases in the Microsoft world. From SSMS to Azure Data Studio to SQL CLI - there's a lot of ways to manage and maintain databases on-premises and in-the-cloud. What tool is right for you? Don't worry, you can use more than one! Links: SQL S...

Ready for some cloud snark? Richard chats with Corey Quinn, the cloud economist and snarky commenter on all things cloud. The conversation digs into how the use of the cloud has evolved rapidly during the pandemic, and the reality that people may want to spend less on the cloud, but more importantly, they want consistency in their spend. Getting off virtual machines and into "real" cloud...

Are you ready to become Ansible? Richard chats with Josh Duffney about his book on Ansible - using a play on the term "become," which is the privilege elevation command in Ansible. The conversation turns to how you evolve as an infrastructure-as-code person, doing basic automation tasks first, but ultimately turning into a source-code-controlled library-building-team that makes deploymen...

The pandemic has sent everyone home to work - how do you support them? Richard chats with Jessica Deen about her work doing remote support both before and now during the COVID-19 pandemic. Jessica starts out talking more philosophically about support work in this challenging time, with lots of patience and empathy. But that also takes effective remote communication - being able to see the person y...

With folks working remotely more than ever, how do you keep your team together? Richard chats with Tracy van der Schyff about her work building tools in organizations that become the focal point of work. Whether with SharePoint in the old days, or Teams today, you can make a place that is great for work and connecting the team - and the power of transparency!

The Hybrid Workforce is here to stay - how do you update Windows? Richard chats with Dave Backman about what it means to manage a hybrid workforce, where most of your staff work both from home, and occasionally in the office. The pandemic made this happen, and it's likely to continue indefinitely. So how do you keep Windows up-to-date? Dave talks about the modern update strategies beyond Windows U...