RunAs Radio

SharePoint has never been more manageable! Richard chats with Andrew Connell about his experiences around using the latest programming models for SharePoint and how they stick to more standardized client-side development models that are easier to secure, audit and don't mess with your servers quite so much. The conversation starts out with a discussion around the Office 365 APIs and the programmab...

How does Office 365 help teams collaborate? Richard chats with Tony Redmond about his insights into Microsoft's on-going effort to make Office 365 the most efficient place for people to work together. Tony talks about two primary hubs of team work - collaboration around email and collaboration around chat. The chat product is, of course, the new Office 365 Teams. The conversation dives into how di...

Your company is sold on the idea of data analytics, but is it ready for it? Richard talks to Jen Stirrup about her experiences getting organizations started with data analytics, which means really focusing on the quality of the data that a company is collecting. Jen discusses her process of figuring out how data is collected, how often it needs to be corrected and how much gets missed and stays in...

Desired State Configuration now works boths ways! Richard talks to fellow Canadian Nik Charlebois, a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, about his work building ReverseDSC. The open source tool is available in the PowerShell Gallery and opens the door to a ton of interesting possibilities. Nik talks about how his work as a PFE is made much easier when he can use ReverseDSC to create a copy of the co...

How do you make your work visible to your team, your division, your entire organization? Richard talks to Dominica DeGrandis about her book 'Making Work Visible' and the challenges that IT folks have showing workloads and flow. The discussion turns to the Kanban board, both digital and physical. Dominica talks about methods for identifying work items, showing them flow and making it easy for every...

Office macros need security? Yes! Richard chats with Karim El-Melhaoui about the issues around Office macros. With default settings, VBA macros in the Office suite are incredibly powerful and are an effective malware vector. While Microsoft has some built-in capabilities to warn users about enabling macros, modern malware makers have been socially engineering users to bypass those protections. You...

Data analytics has evolved - have you kept up? Richard chats with Andrew Brust about the revolution taking place in data analytics in general and Microsoft efforts in the space specifically. Andrew talks about how tools like SQL Server OLAP Services renamed to become Analytics Services, and then moved into the cloud. Not that you need to be in the cloud to do analytics - there are plenty of on-pre...

Can SQL Server be part of a DevOps practice? It has to be! While at Connect in New York, Richard sat down with Michael Upton to discuss the role of SQL Server in the DevOps practice and the tooling that can make your life easier. The conversation digs into the hard bit - not destroying data. Michael works at Red Gate, who have been building SQL Server data management tools for decades. And they kn...

Service Fabric is not just for Azure! While at Connect in New York, Richard sat down with Mikkel Mork Hegnhoj to talk about what Service Fabric can do for your applications. Mikkel talks about the ability to host both Windows and Ubuntu VMs in Service Fabric, on Azure and on-premises. Think of Service Fabric as software to facilitate the architecture of cloud as much as the product - you can confi...

Have you looked into CosmosDB? While at Connect in New York, Richard sat down with Kirill Gavrylyuk of the CosmosDB team to talk about the latest features. CosmosDB an update to Azure DocumentDB that focuses on global distribution and ultra-high performance. On top of that, CosmosDB has different API layers you can call through, including MongoDB and now the Apache Cassandra API. Kirill talks abou...

How do you do your business intelligence? While at DevIntersection in Las Vegas, Richard sat down with Jason Himmelstein to talk about PowerBI, the latest reporting and analytics tool from Microsoft. Jason talks about how PowerBI fits into Azure and Office365, but today there is also the PowerBI Reporting Server, which is an advanced version of SQL Server Reporting Services that runs on-premises....

Fall in Vegas - time for a SQL Server Questions and Answer panel! Richard hosts a panel of Kim Tripp, Paul Randal, Aaron Bertrand, Jes Borland, David Pless and Tim Radney to answer the questions that the SQL Intersection attendees have. The conversation ranges over SQL 2017, containers, partitioning, mirroring and what the modern DBA will be doing in the future. SQL continues to evolve and there's...

Are you using SysInternals? Richard chats with Aaron Margosis about the venerable SysInternals tools originally developed by Mark Russinovich. But first, a discussion about Aaron's main job at Microsoft, developing security baseline guidance for operating systems. Aaron talks about the recommended security configurations for operating systems and how you can check the workstations you're responsib...

Hybrid Cloud is the new normal! Richard chats with Scott Hoag about his experiences migrating organizations onto Office 365 and embracing the reality that no one is ever 'pure' cloud - on-premises hardware is here to stay and necessary. Scott talks about what services make more sense in the cloud and what works best on-premises, and how to connect the different elements together. The key part of t...

What IT certifications do you hold? Richard chats with Greg Shields about the value proposition behind various IT certifications. In the fast moving software industries, it's pretty difficult to effectively measure the capabilities of someone. The conversation digs into the purpose behind an IT exam, and the dangers of focusing purely on an exam, rather than the body of work the exam represents. G...

In May 2018, the EU General Data Protection Regulation laws take effect. Are you ready? Richard chats with Seb Matthews about what IT Pros can do to get ready for the GDPR. The regulations are broad, covering personally identifiable information, data breaches, the right to be forgotten and more. Whether you're an EU company or just do business with EU residents, the GDPR can affect you. Seb talks...

What's next for SharePoint? While at Ignite in Orlando, Richard sat down with Todd Klindt to talk about the next version of SharePoint - announced at Ignite as Office 2019. Todd talks about the recurring nightmare of the end of on-premises versions of SharePoint, and the ever-increasing call of the cloud - Office 365 just gets more compelling every month. What form of SharePoint makes sense for yo...

Microsoft has a DevOps practice too! While at Ignite in Orlando, Richard sat down with Donovan Brown and Martin Woodward to talk about their experiences helping various Microsoft teams move along the DevOps journey. The conversation starts out on Visual Studio Team System (VSTS), Microsoft's source and project management software running in Azure, that also builds Azure, as well as many other Micr...

Databases still need to be reliable, but what does that look like in 2017? Richard chats with Allan Hirt about how he makes databases reliable today. The conversation also turns to how reliability works with the Linux version of SQL Server - clustering is definitely different when you change operating systems! Alan also digs into what the cloud brings to the table - on-premises databases are never...

Desired State Configuration continues to evolve, are you? Richard chats with Missy Januszko about her work (with Don Jones) on The DSC Book. DSC is short for Desired State Configuration, and a key part of PowerShell and the Windows Management Framework. Missy talks about how DSC is a key part of creating 'cattle' style infrastructure, where servers can be replaced on demand and changes are handled...

Here come the acronyms! Richard chats with Cameron Fuller about Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS), the cloud-based instrumentation, diagnostics and automation tool from Microsoft that is all the rage - and not just for cloud related products! Cameron talks about being able to feed any kind of log data into OMS for analysis. The conversation then turns to the on-premises System Center Ope...

Still on the fence about moving services to the cloud? Richard chats with Tim Warner about the on-going evolution of the cloud and the increasing pressure that IT folks feel to incorporate it into the infrastructure strategy of an organization. The conversation starts out with budgeting when it is time to talk about buying new hardware and renewing co-lo space. How does the cloud fit in? Tim talks...

So what is a reporting ecosystem? Richard chats with David Pless about the modern Microsoft reporting ecosystem, which can involve SQL Server Reporting Servers, Excel and the new Power BI tools. David talks about how you can work from the space you're most familiar with, and still be able to move data and reports between the different tools. But they aren't the same - different tools for different...

Turn off SMB1! Richard talks to Ned Pyle about the ongoing battle to retire SMB1, a 30-year-old file transfer protocol at the heart of recent malware attacks. While there are patches to eliminate the vulnerability, the best patch is removing the protocol entirely. Already on the schedule for deprecation, Ned talks about how ransomware like WannaCry has accelerated the process. Windows hasn't depen...

Azure is growing, and Azure Stack is taking orders! Richard chats with Aidan Finn about his work with companies implementing Azure and looking at Azure Stack. Azure Stack is Azure, but it's your own private Azure - you run it where you want. What you don't choose is what hardware (just how much) and any of the configuration, since that is handled by Microsoft. You're always patched at the same lev...