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RunAs Radio

Richard Campbell

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RunAs Radio is a weekly Internet Audio Talk Show for IT Professionals working with Microsoft products.

RunAs Radio

Available episodes

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Zero Trust Adoption Guidance with Nicolas Blank

We're all using zero trust - but are we using it well? Richard talks to Nicolas Blank about his work helping to develop the Zero Trust Adoption Framework. Nicolas talks about resisting the buzzword effect and avoiding looking at zero trust as a set of products because it isn't - it's really about the people and processes in your organization that keep things secure. The conversation also digs into the tabletop exercises needed to create priorities for security - not everything in your organization needs the same level of protection or effort. It pays to work through scenarios! Links: * Zero Trust Adoption Framework * Microsoft Entra ID * Ransomware Recovery Readiness * MimiKatz Recorded October 12, 2023

Azure Operator Nexus with Jennelle Crothers

How do telcos use the cloud? Richard talks to Jennelle Crothers about her work with Azure Operator Nexus, a set of services and tooling for telecommunications companies. Jennelle talks about a meeting of the minds between telcos like AT&T and Microsoft - both organizations have a lot of infrastructure, but the cloud is also an architecture that can help provide more sophisticated and resilient services. It's an area of the cloud you may not have seen much of, but it will impact devices going forward - this is our connectivity we're exploring here! Links: * Introducing Azure Operator Nexus * Azure Operator Nexus * What is Azure Operator Nexus? * Azure Stack * Rancher Recorded October 12, 2023

Microsoft Entra Security Service Edge with Richard Hicks

So, what's Microsoft Entra all about? Richard chats with VPN guru Richard Hicks about his experiences with Microsoft Entra. More than just a new name for Azure Active Directory, Entra includes essential tooling to provide secure access to all sorts of services - and not only Microsoft ones! Richard talks about how Azure Conditional Access can be applied across all types of Microsoft products and with Entra Application Proxy, you can access your internal services and servers. Many of the capabilities are in preview now - but the future looks bright for Entra and Conditional Access! Links: * Microsoft Entra * Microsoft Global Secure Access Client * Azure Conditional Access * Microsoft Entra Private Access * Microsoft Entra Application Proxy * RDP using NPS and Entra * Microsoft Secure Access Service Edge * Implementing Always On VPN Recorded October 10, 2023

Large Language Models in Business with Ulrika Hedlund

How do large language models fit into your organization? Richard chats with Ulrika Hedlund about the challenges sysadmins face with large language models in their company. Ulrika talks about how employees are already using large language models like ChatGPT - potentially risking leaking company data. Tools like Bing Chat Enterprise bring the same capabilities as ChatGPT but with a focus on keeping company data secure. Once you're comfortable with Bing Chat, you can explore Microsoft 365 Copilot, which can index company data as part of its model. Training is essential, as is good data protection management, but the productivity benefits can be huge! Links: * Bing Chat Enterprise * Microsoft 365 Copilot * Copilot Licensing Recorded October 10, 2023

Green IT with Mike Halsey

How does green fit into IT? Richard talks with Mike Halsey about his book The Green IT Guide. Mike starts out talking about not waiting for government regulation - there are things we can do today to reduce our organization's environmental impact. The trend is to keep PCs longer, but what happens when you need new ones? There are more organizations than ever for repurposing old PCs and other devices and recycling. The conversation also digs into right-to-repair, with replaceable batteries and upgradable parts. We can do a lot just by including environmental impact in our buying decisions! Links: * The Green IT Guide * Framework Laptop Recorded October 12, 2023

Choosing Azure Data Storage Solutions with Nicole Stevens

How do you choose an Azure data storage solution? Richard talks to Nicole Stevens about her experiences helping companies move data into the cloud - typically in SQL Server. The obvious answer is Azure SQL, but that doesn't always make it the best solution! Nicole talks about a customer moving to Cosmos DB for the unstructured data capabilities and a lot of speed. But does the price make sense? All these factors are in play in choosing a data storage solution, and there is never one right choice - often, a mix of services makes the most sense! Links: * Azure SQL * Azure Cosmos DB * APIs in Cosmos DB * Azure Table Storage * Azure Queue Storage * Azure Messaging Services * dapr - Distributed Application Runtime * Microsoft Certifications * Data Architecture Guide * Data Landing Zones Azure Security Baselines Recorded September 6, 2023

Large Language Models for IT Pros with Seth Juarez

What can large language models do for you and your organization? Richard chats with Seth Juarez about the reality behind large language models like ChatGPT – how they are built, what they are good at, and most importantly, what they are not suitable for. Seth talks about the tremendous hype around these technologies and how to cut through the noise to focus on the value they can provide. As an IT Pro, you will be asked how to utilize large language models, so it is helpful to clearly understand their potential and help your company benefit from them while minimizing the risks. Links: * ChatGPT * GitHub Copilot * Microsoft Security Copilot Recorded September 18, 2023

Security Chaos Engineering with Kelly Shortridge

Ready to inject a little chaos into your systems? Richard talks to Kelly Shortridge about her book Security Chaos Engineering. Kelly discusses the challenges of modern cybersecurity - how do you find weaknesses in your infrastructure and security systems? This leads to a discussion about challenging assumptions by exploring the workflows that exist in your infrastructure today. Exploring the workflows shows where assumptions exist, and that opens the door to testing them. There's sure to be some low-hanging fruit you can deal with, but eventually, you're left with tests that have to be set loose on your system - and you'll find out how resilient you really are! Links: * Fastly * Security Chaos Engineering * Deciduous Recorded August 22, 2023

It's episode 900! Richard brings friend Dana Epp onto the show to talk a bit about the last one hundred episodes of RunAs Radio - and a little look to the future as well. With Dana around, you know there will be lots of security conversation. Over the past hundred shows, ransomware has had quite the story arc, especially around Exchange Server and other products. The conversation then turns to more future-looking topics, including the various Microsoft Copilots being built - could these be tools to help sysadmins? Probably a topic for episode 1000! Links: * Windows Sandbox * Microsoft Viva * Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention Recorded September 15, 2023

SharePoint Online Features On-Prem with Sandy Ussia

Your SharePoint is on-premises (at least for now), but you want to take advantage of some of those cool SharePoint Online features - is there a way? Richard talks with Sandy Ussia about her talk at the Thrive Conference in Slovenia about how on-premises SharePoint can use Power Automate and other tools to create powerful workflows. Sandy discusses the limits of the free version of Power Automate and how paying for the premium edition lets you build workflows that will more than cover the license cost. The conversation also dives into the subscription model of on-premises SharePoint 2019, which looks to be the final destination for on-premises SharePoint, with ongoing support and features being added! Links: * Thrive Conference * Lightning Tools * Upgrade to SharePoint Server Subscription Edition * Power Automate and SharePoint * Power Automate Desktop * Power Automate Pricing * SharePoint On-Premises Data Gateway Recorded August 1, 2023

PowerBI and Fabric with Mike Carlo

How do PowerBI and Microsoft Fabric work together? Richard talks to Mike Carlo about his experiences with Fabric so far. Mike explains how it is early days for Fabric and something you should experiment with, not roll out to production. The conversation dives into how we structure data analytics and the potential of Fabric to bring forward more of the pipeline work that analytics needs - so you can explore and get results faster. This leads to the idea of a new relationship between analysts and data engineers, one where you generate results first, then can optimize them with back-end engineering. There is enormous potential in PowerBI and Fabric together to change the data analytics game! Links: * PowerBI.Tips * DataBricks * PowerBI * Azure Synapse Analytics * Microsoft Fabric * Azure Data Factory * The Infinite Game Recorded August 4, 2023

Doing More with Less with Sonia Cuff

2023 has been a challenging year for sysadmins so far - how do we do more with less? Richard talks to Sonia Cuff about the current climate for IT in organizations and how we can still be successful. It's not all about building new things but being more efficient. Sonia talks about measuring more precisely - making sure that the expenses that IT has get assigned to revenue centers so that you're not cutting indiscriminately but associating costs with income - then those costs will more naturally adjust. The conversation also dives into new technologies that can be explored on the basis that they can improve efficiency - like large language models and their associated products. There's still a lot to do, but with a slightly different focus! Links: * Reality-Based Leadership * Azure Sticker Shock * FinOps Foundation * ChatGPT * M365 Copilot * Old People's Home From 4 Years Olds Recorded July 27, 2023

Breach Reporting with Troy Hunt

How would your organization report a data breach? Richard talks to Troy Hunt about his experiences with Have I Been Pwned and some good and not-so-good breach reporting. Troy talks about the importance of planning - making decisions about how to report is hard to do when you're under stress. And who do you report to? Are there regulatory requirements? What about your customers? Most people want to know if the data they entrusted to you has been stolen. And if you did want to contact every customer involved in a breach, how would you do that? This is a conversation for the C-suite, but you can start it! Links: * Have I Been Pwned * security.txt * Beg Bounty Recorded July 17, 2023

Getting Ready for M365 Copilot with Karoliina Kettukari

Are you ready for M365 Copilot? Richard talks with Karoliina Kettukari about what we can expect from M365 Copilot and how you can help your organization prepare for it. Karoliina discusses the more straightforward aspects of M365 Copilot we can expect, such as taking advantage of more of the features in the Office suite of products like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The situation is more interesting when considering how Copilot could surface information from within your organization. Now you need to be thorough about identifying sensitive information and data governance as a whole. Plenty of policy and training is needed around these tools, but the benefits could be huge! Links: * Microsoft 365 Copilot * Microsoft Copilot Sales * Office Delve * Collaboration Governance Recorded August 8, 2023

Microsoft Fabric with Andrew Snodgrass

What is Microsoft Fabric, and why do you want some? Richard talks to Andrew Snodgrass of Directions on Microsoft about Microsoft's recently announced Fabric product. Andrew explains that Fabric is an effort to integrate the various data products, including PowerBI, DataLake, Data Factory, and Data Warehousing, under a standard banner. It is early days for Fabric, but it's a great time to take it out for a spin for those who haven't dug into Azure data analytics products. But if you have existing implementations of PowerBI and many other data products, test carefully - the migration paths aren't simple! Links: * Microsoft Fabric * Azure Synapse Analytics * Azure Data Factory * Power BI * Fabric Workspaces * OneLake * Kusto Query Language (KQL) * Parquet Files in Fabric * Microsoft Purview * OneLake File Explorer Recorded July 12, 2023

PowerShellGet in 2023 with Sydney Smith

PowerShellGet V3 is getting close to release - what should we expect? Richard chats with Sydney Smith about the key features of PSG3 - especially the support for third-party and private repositories. Sydney talks about how developing the tool in the open on GitHub has helped steer the module into a great version. While there are some breaking changes, there's also a Compat module to help bridge the gap. And now PSG3 is part of PowerShell 7.4 - so we should see some exciting news this fall! Links: * PSReadLine * PowerShell 7.4 Preview * PowerShellGet * PowerShell Gallery * Artifactory * PowerShellGet 3 Beta * PowerShellGet on GitHub Recorded July 10, 2023

Azure Innovations with Mark Russinovich

How does Azure continue to evolve and grow? While at Build in Seattle, Richard chatted with Azure CTO Mark Russinovich about the evolution of Azure and where it is going. Mark talks about the challenges of the recent explosion in large language models like GPT3 and ChatGPT - the sheer amount of cloud computing resources necessary to generate these enormous models, much less operate them at scale. The conversation explores ongoing innovation in architecture and hardware design, including a discussion on the results of Project Natick, the underwater data center experiments of a few years ago. There are more innovations to come! Links: * Project Natick Recorded May 25, 2023

Windows 11 and Windows Update for Business with Julie Andreacola

What are your options for upgrading to Windows 11? Richard talks to Julie Andreacola about her experiences helping organizations make the move from Windows 10 to 11. Julie talks about the power of Windows Update for Business Deployment Services to simplify the OS update while still giving the users some control - you can set a deadline for when they must update, but the user can pick a time within that deadline to let it happen. Applications don't have a problem with the OS update, since, under the hood, it's Windows 10.1. Same for group policy - do some testing, but expect things to go well - the migration to Windows 11 looks good! Links: * Windows 11 Onboarding Toolkit * Focus Assistant * Windows 11 Live Captions * Windows Update for Business Deployment Service * Windows Autopilot * Windows Update for Business Recorded June 16, 2023

Future of Integrated Communication with Bob Serr

Integrated communication is everywhere! While at Build in Seattle, Richard talked with Bob Serr, the VP of Azure Communication Services (ACS) at Microsoft. Bob discusses how ACS provides tooling to integrate voice, text, and video into any application through Azure. This leads to a broader conversation about the power of deeper communication, especially for difficult discussions like tech support. Can adding video make it easier to diagnose a problem? And what is the role of the new large language model technologies coming from OpenAI in providing automated communications? There are a lot of possibilities available today! Links: * Azure Communication Services * Azure OpenAI Service Recorded May 25, 2023

Securing Sprawling Services with Karinne Bessette

How do you secure the sprawling array of services your organization depends on? Richard talks to Karinne Bessette about her experiences working with companies with virtually no internal infrastructure - using Software-as-a-Service products from various providers and finding their glue to keep multiple bits working together. Karinne talks about putting together teams to understand how workflows function first - then trying to put some governance around it. Single sign-on is a great place to start, but the solutions depend on what tools you're using. This is the new reality we're working in - we must find a way to secure it! Links: * Azure Single Sign On * Okta * Zero Trust * Data Loss Prevention * Azure Purview * Microsoft Syntex Recorded June 5, 2023

Windows 11 Deployment with Johan Arwidmark

Windows 11 is coming to your organization - do you know how to deploy it? Richard talks to Johan Arwidmark about the need to get to work testing the deployment of Windows 11: Microsoft isn't giving us much of a choice about moving to it! Johan discusses the available deployment strategies, including Configuration Manager, Intune/Autopilot, Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, and more. Odds are, you will have to make some changes to how you deploy Windows to make things go smoothly with Windows 11, so it's a good time to get testing! Links: * Windows 11 * Support for Windows 11 in Configuration Manager * Microsoft Deployment Toolkit * Windows Autopilot * Microsoft Intune * PowerShell Deployment * PSAppDeployToolkit Recorded May 30, 2023

Power Platform Proliferation with Luise Freese

Whether you know it or not, Power Platform apps are proliferating! While at Techorama in Antwerp, Richard chatted with Luise Freese about her work with companies discovering that users are building Power Apps at alarming rates. Luise talks about the ability of users to find solutions in the Power Platform tools, often because they have enough security privileges (or demand them) to get access to data and systems... without many controls in place to ensure those resources are used correctly or securely! This leads to a conversation around providing guide rails for Power Platform developers, using security and governance. Get your telemetry cranked up - likely, you already have Power App proliferating! Links: * Create Reusable Custom Functions * Component Libraries * Dynamics 365 * Microsoft Dataverse * Microsoft Power Platform Center of Excellence Starter Kit Recorded May 16, 2023

Patching in 2023 with Sami Laiho

It's 2023 - are you able to keep your systems patched? Richard talks to Sami Laiho about the emerging patching crisis. Sami talks about how MFA and user security have improved enough that they are no longer the primary path of exploitation for ransomware. Today, the main way to get breached is through unpatched computers. But patches are risky and can occasionally cause downtime - so we control when patches are installed and (hopefully) test extensively. Is it worth it? Is it better to be down for an hour due to a lousy patch versus down for months due to a breach? It's time to talk to leadership about a change of tone around patches - and get moving faster! Links: * Microsoft Authenticator * Windows Autopatch * Center for Internet Security * Sami Laiho Website Recorded May 10, 2023

Windows Update for Business with Aria Carley

Should you use Windows Server Update Services or Windows Update for Business? Richard talks to Aria Carley about the different update mechanisms available today - and some new ones that are coming! Aria talks about how Windows is evolving to routine, incremental feature updates - but that can be challenging for managed workstations. The conversation explores the roles of Configuration Manager, WSUS, WSUB, Group Policy, Intune, and the new Azure Update Management tools. Plus, a hint of what is to come - could there be an Update Copilot in our future? Links: * Configuration Manager * Azure Update Management * Microsoft Intune * Windows Server Update Services * Windows Update for Business * Widows Client Roadmap Update * Windows Autopatch Recording May 4. 2023

High Availability in 2023 with Allan Hirt

What does high availability look like in 2023? Richard chats with Allan Hirt about his work with high-availability solutions today - not just on-premises but also in the cloud. Allan talks about the frustration folks had with moving workloads in the cloud during the pandemic panic, lift-and-shifting workloads focusing on getting things working quickly rather than cost-effectively. The results can be costly, to the point where some folks considering moving back off the cloud again - but does that make sense? Allan talks about creating high availability efficiently wherever you want to run your workloads! Links: * Always On on SQL Server with Azure VMs * SQL Server 2022 * Azure Regions and Availability Zones * Operations Manager Recorded May 11, 2023

Microsoft Sentinel with Sarah Young

Are you using Microsoft Sentinel? Richard talks to Cloud Security Advocate Sarah Young about Sentinel, Microsoft's Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solution. Sarah talks about the role of the SIEM in creating a common place for all security-related data to arrive. She mentions some of the many tools in the Microsoft suite to feed into Sentinel - Defender for Endpoints, Identity, and Cloud as examples. Specialized analysis tools send summaries to Sentinel, but Sentinel can also process raw logs as well - make sure you need the data because billing for Sentinel is connected to the number of ingress sources. There's a lot to learn, but also a lot of great documentation and information to work from. Check the show notes for links! Links: * Microsoft Sentinel * ArcSight * Defender Security Alerts * Defender for Endpoint * Defender for Identity * Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2022 * Defender for Cloud * What is CSPM? * Security Baselines Blog * Micros…

Azure Sticker Shock with Aidan Finn

Are your finance people suffering from Azure sticker shock? Richard talks to Aidan Finn about his experiences with organizations discovering they spend far more on Azure than expected. Aidan talks about designing systems based on on-premises requirements where hardware is over-provisioned, and new features in Azure are added without a thought to cost. Getting finance involved in an Azure migration from the beginning can help mitigate the shock and balance features and costs. Plus, there are great tools for cost management in Azure that can allow for budget projections, catch unusual spending early, and point out opportunities to save money with specific services available today! Links: * Azure Firewall Premium * Azure Advisor * Cloud Adoption Framework * Azure Pricing Calculator * Microsoft Cost Management * Azure Monitor * Azure Reservations * Azure Hybrid Benefit Recorded April 6, 2023

Incident Response Readiness with Paula Januszkiewicz

Is your organization ready to respond to a security incident? Richard talks to Paula Januszkiewicz about her experience helping organizations respond effectively when a security incident occurs. Paula talks about detection - attackers often have breached your infrastructure months before their attacks become visible. Once you've detected a potential breach, the next steps are to determine where the breach comes from, or as Paula says, who is patient zero? And what are the indicators of compromise? It's not enough to slam the door shut on an attack - how do you keep it from happening again? The conversation explores the idea of threat hunting, of understanding what the black hats are doing by being able to respond effectively to isolate exploited machines but not necessarily shut them down. An attack is an opportunity - seize it! Links: * Cqure * Attack Surface Reduction Rules * Local Administrator Password Solution * Security Information and Event Management * Azure Sentinel…

Dealing with Vulnerable Exchange Servers with Gareth Gudger

Is your Exchange server one of the vulnerable ones? Richard talks to Gareth Gudger about the ongoing security concerns around on-premises Exchange servers. The conversation addresses a blog post by the Exchange server team about restricting access of potentially vulnerable Exchange servers to Exchange Online. But, as Gareth explains, this has to do with hybrid Exchange, where your on-premises server can access Exchange Online in a privileged state. What is the right thing to do to limit exploits in Exchange? Keeping up with the latest versions, patching, and ultimately maintaining your entire infrastructure, especially Active Directory - all play a role in securing on-premises infrastructure. Stay vigilant! Links: * Blocking Email from Vulnerable Exchange Servers * Tony Redmond's Comment on the Blog Post * Deprecation of Remote PowerShell * Re-enabling or Extending RPS * Exchange Online PowerShell v3 * Exchange Server 2013 End of Support * Turning off your Last Exchange…

Azure Virtual Desktop Accelerator with Jen Sheerin

Moving to Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) has never been easier! Richard talks to Jen Sheerin about her work with the Azure Virtual Desktop Accelerator tools. Jen describes how moving workloads to AVD is part of the Cloud Adoption Framework that helps you integrate virtual desktop workloads with standard security and licensing practices. The conversation explores the different folks who use the accelerator - even for greenfield implementations of new virtual desktops! There are more great tools to help you optimize your AVD implementation. Check the links in the show notes! Links: * Azure Virtual Desktop * Remote Desktop Services * Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework * AVD Remote Desktop Web Client * Bicep * Azure Virtual Desktop Accelerator * Virtual Desktop Optimization Tool * Windows 10 vs Windows 11 Benchmark * License Universal Print Recorded April 7, 2023

Large Language Models and Windows with Paul Thurrott

Large Language Models like ChatGPT are all the rage, but how will they impact work going forward? Richard chats with Paul Thurrott about the role of LLMs in the Windows ecosystem. Paul digs into the history of ChatGPT and how this whole wave of technology started more or less by accident until Microsoft grabbed on and created BingAI. Now with announcements for Copilot for security and M365, where else can the technology go? The conversation digs into the power of having a tool that can help you make sense of all the products you own and to go down the checklist of the right things to do when taking on a new task. We're still in the early days for large language models - the next version of Windows should be interesting! Links: * OpenAI * Microsoft Security Copilot * Microsoft Viva * Microsoft 365 Copilot * Removing the Bing Button from Microsoft Edge 111 Recorded April 3, 2023

Building Your Data Analytics Team at SQLBits!

The demand for effective data analytics within organizations continues to grow – how do you build your analytics team? While at SQLBits in Wales, panelists Maria Zakourdaev, Falek Miah, and Anupama Natarajan discussed their experiences with building teams - from recruiting to training, up-skilling, and retention. The discussion spans the different roles, including architects and data modelers, that help to provide the data sets analysts need. Do you train from within, hire into the role, or use consultants? There are many choices for growing your data analytics team! Links: * SQLBits Recorded March 18, 2023

Project Zero Trust with George Finney

Ready to get some zero trust security inspiration? Richard chats with George Finney, author of Project Zero Trust, a fictional narrative about a company dealing with a security breach and the efforts to make the company more secure. George talks about the challenges of being a security professional and learning to speak to leadership in terms they can appreciate in their efforts to improve security overall. The conversation digs into the reality that security is about people, most of all, not so much as the problem but as the only viable solution. Want some help getting more resources for security? Read and share this book! Links: * Project Zero Trust * Zero Trust Maturity Model * Well Aware Security Recorded March 21, 2023

Team Metrics with Angela Dugan

How do you measure the productivity of your team? Richard talks to Angela Dugan about her work at 3Cloud, supporting groups that are primarily work-from-home and working with remote clients. What do you measure when you can't be face-to-face? Angela talks about using objective and subjective measures - time spent on a project- and how people feel about the work they are doing and the people they are doing it with. The conversation also turns to skill growth as part of measuring a team - making new skills portion of the work, sharing them with the team, and growing your value as an employee! Links: * Microsoft Viva Recorded February 23, 2023

IPv6 and Azure Active Directory with Pierre Roman

Are you ready for more IPv6 in your life? Richard talks to Pierre Roman about recent support added to Azure Active Directory for IPv6 - specifically around Conditional Access. Pierre talks about how in the past, IPv6 addresses weren't a part of Conditional Access - but now they are. This could cause problems for folks connecting to an Azure tenant via IPv6 if those IPv6 ranges aren't included as named locations. Even if this update hasn't impacted you yet, it can - changes to your ISP or when connecting to the internet can result in IPv6 access being required - don't get locked out! Links: * Google IPv6 Adoption * Pierre's Blog Post on IPv6 * IPv6 Support in Azure Active Directory * Azure DNS FAQ Recorded March 27, 2023

When Does Multi-Cloud Make Sense with Phoummala Schmitt

Does multi-cloud make sense? Richard chats with Phoummala Schmitt about her explorations into building workloads that can survive a cloud outage. Phoummala begins the conversation with some definitions because most organizations are multi-cloud already, using more than one cloud provider. Referencing Gartner and Thoughtworks, the term "polycloud" covers that idea. Then the hard part - a workload that needs perfect uptime, even in the face of a cloud provider outage. That is a more complex and expensive proposition, but it is possible once you work through the details. The question is - is it worth it? Links: * Polycloud * Kubernetes * Kubernetes Cloud Controller Manager * Azure Arc Recorded February 16, 2023

SMB over QUIC File Servers with Ned Pyle

Secure remote file access without OneDrive or VPNs? Richard chats with Ned Pyle about the power of SMB over QUIC. Ned talks about the ongoing battle to put older versions of SMB to bed and how QUIC is becoming the de facto standard for moving files around, both within the network and across the internet. While a lot of business files can be served effectively from OneDrive for Business, often, you have applications and infrastructure that depend on UNCs and other file mapping approaches. SMB for QUIC through Azure VMs and Azure Stack HCI allows the same UNC paths to work securely inside and outside your office network. Check it out! Links: * SMB1 Product Clearinghouse * Windows Server * SMB Compression * SMB Signing * SMB over QUIC * Azure Stack HCI * Learn SMB over QUIC * SMB Insecure Guest Auth Recorded February 3, 2023

Incident Management with Hila Fish

What is your approach to incident management? While at NDC London, Richard talks to Hila Fish about her work in incident management. Hila talks about understanding when you have an incident and trying to grasp the scope before acting - is it impacting customer value? The goal is to learn from an incident to stop them from happening, and often immediate mitigations, like rebooting, destroy information needed for later analysis. Making the dashboard lights turn green is not enough - you want to get to a place where they never turn red! Links: * Jira Ticketing * PagerDuty * Grafana * Swimm Documentation Engine Recorded January 27, 2023

FIDO2 and Passwordless with Kyle Kotowick

Ready to go passwordless? While at NDC in London, Richard chatted with Kyle Kotowick about the FIDO2 specification and how it is being implemented to provide more passwordless options for authentication. Kyle talks about how FIDO2 does not necessarily mean physical keys like the Yubikey - there are more options! The TPM chip in your PC or smartphone can act as the token generator when combined with a second authenticator, like fingerprint or facial recognition in Windows Hello. Ideally, this superior level of authentication is effortless - you use multifactor without even realizing you are! Links: * Fido Alliance * YubiKeys * Windows Hello for Business * WebAuthn * CTAP2 Recorded January 25, 2023

Reliability Management with Lesley Cordero

Managing reliability means being available when things go wrong. But how do you make the on-call time productive? While at NDC in London, Richard talked to Lesley Cordero about her work with the New York Times on reliability management teams. Lesley talks about how putting regular sprint work into on-call time causes more problems than it solves - the quality of work suffers, and people get frustrated. Better to focus on preventative work, which is more contemplative. Even better to have an array of preventive efforts that can be worked on over time. The goal is to have fewer outages and more reliability, and that means being able to communicate reliability needs to leadership - document all the things! Links: * Honeycomb Recorded January 25, 2023

Migrating to Windows 11 with Michael Niehaus

Are you ready to move your organization to Windows 11? Richard talks to Michael Niehaus about the upcoming end of support for Windows 10 in 2025 and the pressure to get to Windows 11. Michael talks about how slow Windows 11 adoption has been, mainly because there hasn't been a significant reason to do so. But as of October 14, 2025, organizations will have to pay for long-term support - and it's cheaper to move to Windows 11. The conversation digs into how Microsoft seems to be updating Windows 11, deployment strategies, and the optimal ways to move your workforce to a new operating system. Links: * Tanium * Windows 11 * Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC * Microsoft Deployment Toolkit * Windows Autopilot * Supporting Windows 11 in MDT * Michael's Blog post on MDT and Windows 11 Recorded January 12, 2023

Strengthening Security with Jess Dodson

How do you improve the security of your organization? Richard talks to Jess Dodson about the current security environment we're living in and what you can do to improve your security posture. Jess talks about how breaches happen and what you can do to detect them early before things get worse. The conversation dives into getting more resources - in most cases, improving security means having the time to work on preventative measures, like implementing multi-factor authentication, security information and event management, and setting up Just Enough Administration. And you need the time to review the activities in your network to let you stop a breach before it turns into something worse! Links: * Privileged Identity Management * Just Enough Administration * Microsoft Sentinel * Local Administrator Password Solution Recorded January 20, 2023

dbatools Update with Rob Sewell

How about a free suite of over 500 tools for SQL Server best practices, administration, development, and migration? Richard talks to Rob Sewell about the ever-growing dbatools PowerShell module. While its origins are in migrating SQL Server databases from one environment (and version) to another, the range of capabilities is extensive. Rob talks about the power of repeatability when attempting to do these potentially complex tasks - which is best served by scripting. But why write the scripts when they already exist? The conversation also digs into learning as a DBA, including getting involved with conferences like SQLBits! Links: * dbatools * dbachecks * dbatools on PowerShell Gallery * SQL Server Management Objects * dbatools in a month of lunches * RunAs at SQL Bits! Recorded January 10, 2023

Moving Your Intranet to the Cloud with Susan Hanley

Are you ready to move your intranet into the cloud? Richard talks to Susan Hanley about her work helping organizations migrate intranets into Microsoft 365 Sharepoint Online. Susan talks about avoiding lift-and-shift implementations for intranets - or anything going to the cloud. Better to take what you have learned about your intranet and build a governance plan in M365 to migrate content piece by piece. The good news is most of your old SharePoint customizations are now built-in capabilities in SharePoint Online! The conversation also digs into building pages to replace documents and what should be searchable - an intranet migration is a great chance to build an even better intranet! Links: * Viva Connections * Private Channels in Microsoft Teams * SharePoint News Part Recorded January 6, 2023

Application Identities in Azure with Martin Ehrnst

Do your applications need identities? Richard talks to Martin Ehrnst about how all Azure resources, including your applications, need an identity to function well in the Azure ecosystem. Martin talks about registering an application with Azure AD, a process that includes a manifest showing how it should be authenticated and what resources it needs. Then to the more confusing part - the service principals that show up as enterprise applications to provide access to the application within your tenant or even across tenants! The conversation goes further into managed identities and this emerging world of many-to-many identity relationships. Ultimately it's the most powerful way to deal with access rights, but that doesn't mean it's simple! Links: * Azure Active Directory * Azure Entra * Azure AD Application Model * Key Vault * Managed Identities for Azure Resources * Bicep Recorded December 14, 2022

DevOps in 2023 with April Edwards

How is the DevOps movement evolving, and why should sysadmins care? Richard talks with April Edwards about how DevOps continues to grow with better tools and results! April talks about how often developers lead DevOps initiatives but that so much value comes from operations. The conversation digs into the tools that can facilitate deploying more frequently, measuring more accurately, and understanding how customers work. Everyone writes code these days, even if they aren't developers - and the DevOps cycle also applies there! Links: * Azure DevOps * Policy as Code * Repeatable Infrastructure * DevContainers * Virtual Machine Scale Sets * Azure Load Testing * Phoenix Project * The DevOps Lab Recorded December 14, 2022

Local Administrator Password Solution with Jeremy Moskowitz

Have you used LAPS? Richard chats with Jeremy Moskowitz about the Windows Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS). Jeremy talks about how the Premier Field Engineers originally developed LAPS at Microsoft to deal with having different local administrator passwords on every workstation in an organization. The passwords change automatically regularly, and sysadmins can retrieve the password for a given machine using PowerShell and other tools. Today there is an updated version of LAPS that works with Azure Active Directory and provides more control over password changes and restrictions - you need this tool! Links: * Netwrix Endpoint Management * Windows Local Administrator Password Solution Recording December 13, 2022

M365 Governance in 2023 with Martina Grom

What are the new governance challenges in M365? Richard chats with Martina Grom about her ongoing work helping organizations provide governance over the growing surface area of Microsoft 365. Martina talks about the challenges around identity and multi-factor authentication and the improvements that Microsoft is making to MFA to make it easier for users to do the right thing. The conversation also turns to data loss prevention and the approaches to minimizing a company's legal exposure to data loss - starting with not storing data if you can avoid it! Martina also talks about the new challenges in governance with Power Apps, including the tools available to help sysadmins see what apps exist, how they touch data, and what privacy and security controls are in place. Governance is an ongoing effort! Links: * Microsoft Entra * Privileged Identity Management * Privileged Access Management * Azure Purview * Data Loss Prevention * California Consumer Privacy Act * Microsoft P…

Being a SysAdmin in 2023

It's the end of 2022, and time to reflect on the work coming up in the next year – what will it be like for SysAdmins in 2023? Richard flies solo for his annual year-in-review show, looking back on last year's predictions (including what he got wrong!) and projecting forward into 2023. Security continues to be a top priority, but the situation has evolved. Current economic conditions likely will impact your business – how does it affect your work? How will the cloud continue to evolve, and how can you take advantage of it? 2022 was another unusual year, and 2023 looks even more so – thanks for sticking with us! Links: * CycloneDX

Reflecting on Microsoft with Mary Jo Foley

Mary Jo Foley moves on! No, not entirely from Microsoft - away from writing several times a week about the latest enterprise topics. MJ is going to Directions on Microsoft, where she will spend more time on analysis but still communicate it to the world. The conversation digs into current subjects like the state of the cloud and Microsoft's focus on building industry-specific cloud implementations, and precisely what is happening with Windows these days? Lots of great thinking from MJ, as usual, and a hint of what's to come! Links: * Mary Jo Foley Leaves ZDNet * Directions on Microsoft * Microsoft Industry Cloud * Windows 10 22H2 * Windows Server 2022 * Azure Arc * Google Anthos Recorded November 11, 2022

Securing Apps in the Cloud with Carroll Moon

You're moving to the cloud; how does your application security look? Richard talks with Carroll Moon of CloudFit about moving applications into the cloud with better security and governance using the Azure Landing Zone approach. Carroll talks about the various patterns that allow existing applications to work in the zero-trust environment, with containerization, platform-as-a-service changes, and even desktop virtualization! The blackhats are improving, and the cloud is less vulnerable than existing on-premises solutions, but only if you embrace the cloud security models. New standards for cybersecurity are emerging - are you up to speed? Links: * Azure Landing Zone * Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification * Microsoft Power Platform * Microsoft Purview * Microsoft Defender for the Cloud * Azure Virtual Desktop Recorded October 31, 2022

Getting Rid of Excel with Jennifer Stirrup

Is Excel damaging your company? Richard talks with Jen Stirrup about how Excel gets used far too much in businesses and for too many things. Jen talks about the lack of data integrity in Excel and how it's easy to make small mistakes that can damage data - and give you little to no methods to detect the damage! While Excel can often be a starting point for a new business opportunity, as soon as it becomes essential, it's time to pivot to tools that can protect data quality more effectively! Don't let your company be the next news story about a flawed spreadsheet! Links: * Jen's Blog Post on Excel * TransAlta Excel Mistakes * Excel Inquire Add-In * Snowflake Recorded October 28, 2022

What SysAdmins Want for Christmas with Rick Claus and Joey Snow

What do SysAdmins want for Christmas? Richard chats with Rick Claus and Joey Snow about their favorite gadgets for SysAdmins. From the gadgets that help us at work to the toys that make us happy at home, it's a shopping spree of goodies! Share this episode with your loved ones to give them ideas on what to get you for Christmas, you impossible-to-shop-for SysAdmin! Links: * DalStrong Call of Duty Knives * PhotoStick Omni * Permatrack * Dr Zzs LED Shop * Bluetooth Beanie Hat * Rosewood Block * Star Wars Ice Cube Blocks * Ember Temperature Control Mug * Edge Lit Acrylic * Reel View * Galaxy Tab S8 * Floppy Disk Coaster * AstroReality * Satechi USB Headphone Stand * Anker LC40 Flashlight * LG Laser Projector

Post-Pandemic Team Building with Stephanie Donahue

The pandemic has put a lot of stress on teams - how do we make them stronger? Richard talks to Stephanie Donahue about strengthening teams and communities as we emerge from the pandemic. Steph talks about the water cooler and happy hour conversations lost the past couple of years and the value they once provided and should again. Does that mean going back to the office? What are the alternatives? Maybe the new tools can help, or we should just have lunch? Links: * Weak Ties BBC Article * Chris Voss Negotiation Training * Viva Insights * Meta Quest Pro * Viva Engage Recorded October 25, 2022

Azure Vs AWS Billing with Corey Quinn

How are Azure and AWS Billing different? Richard chats with Corey Quinn of Screaming in the Cloud about his experiences experimenting with all the other clouds. Corey talks about his concerns around the security issues with Azure this past year - not the problems themselves, but how Microsoft handled them. The conversation also digs into using Cognitive Services and being unsure what things will cost until the end of the month. What about GCP and Oracle as well? Corey has tried them all and has thoughts! Links: * Last Week in AWS * Cognitive Services Computer Vision Recorded October 26, 2022

Azure Stack HCI with Sarah Lean

Why do you need Azure Stack? Richard chats with Sarah Lean about the capabilities Azure Stack HCI brings to your organization. Sarah describes the three flavors of Azure Stack, including Hub, Edge, and HCI - short for Hyper-Converged Infrastructure. While all the options act like a part of Azure, they are optimized for different needs, but primarily focus on putting Azure-style compute closer to where you need it, perhaps as part of a machine learning solution, IoT, and so on. Azure Arc plays a role in giving you a broad view of your cloud assets, Stack assets, and regular on-premises resources also! Links: * Azure Stack HCI * Azure Arc * Azure Stack HCI Pro 2 * FastTrack for Azure Recorded October 24, 2022

SQL Server 2022 Hybrid Data Platform with Bob Ward

What can SQL 2022 do for you? Richard chats with Bob Ward about the upcoming release of SQL Server 2022 and its evolution toward data anywhere. Bob talks about running SQL on edge devices, on-premises, in containers, virtual machines, and, of course, in the cloud. The management tools like Azure Arc make it easy to take care of all the places your SQL data can now live - and let you be the data administrator you can be! Check out Bob's latest book on SQL Server 2022 and all its hybrid data capabilities! Links: * SQL Server 2022 * SQL Server 2022 Revealed * Microsoft Purview * Azure Role-Based Access Control * Azure Data Lakes * Azure Arc-Enabled SQL Managed Instance * Azure SQL Managed Instance * Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform * SQL Server 2022 Preview Recorded October 26, 2022

Modernizing your Scripting using RPA with Christina Wheeler

What is the state of scripting in your organization? Richard talks to Christina Wheeler about Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and its role in the array of tooling in M365 to take existing scripting and wrap it into modern automated workflows. Christina talks about how Power Automate for Desktop can work with an Excel macro to further automation to make an entire process hands-off or reduce the number of touches you need to make. It can be a bit messy at times, but there are lots of tools, and there is always Teams to put a collaborative UI over top of it. Automation has never been easier! Links: * Robotic Process Automation * Power Automate Desktop * CONA Services * Azure Logic Apps * Office Scripts * Power Canvas Apps * MS Learn * M365 Developer Platform * UiPath Recorded September 10, 2022

Windows 11 One Year Later with Paul Thurrott

The return of Two Grumpy Old Men Complain about Windows! Richard chats with Paul Thurrott about a year of Windows 11 - the good, the bad, and the meh. Paul talks about the bits of Windows 10X that became Windows 11 and how simplifications in Win11 may annoy power users but are beneficial to regular folks. But nobody benefits from the ads on the desktop - except Microsoft. The conversation turns to the hardware side of the world and the soon-to-be-announced ARM-based Windows laptop. After all, there are already ARM servers in Azure, so when do we get a new generation of great workstations? Links: * Thurrott Recorded September 8, 2022

Viva Learning and Productivity with Ulrika Hedlund

How can Viva Learning improve your team's productivity? Richard chats with Ulrika Hedlund about how the latest generation of tools from Microsoft helps measure productivity and focus on learning opportunities. The M365 platform can show where employees struggle with tools that lead to learning opportunities - and then measure the results! Ulrika talks about the various kinds of learning needed within an organization, including compulsory learnings for regulated industries, standard corporate training, and then moving more into productivity and industry-focused knowledge. Viva Learning and the related tools make it easier than ever to build custom learning materials that can make learning more specific to your company and fun as well! Links: * Microsoft Productivity Score * LinkedIn Learning * Viva Learning * Learning API for Viva Learning Recorded August 9, 2022

Manageable Infrastructure as Code using Pulumi with Joe Duffy

How do you make manageable Infrastructure-as-Code? Richard talks to Joe Duffy about his open-source project called Pulumi, helping you build Infrastructure-as-Code solutions in almost any language for virtually any cloud platform or service. Joe talks about how infrastructure folks are headed down a similar path to developers from a few years ago, needing better source control, testing, and tooling for their infrastructure. And these are solved problems in the development space. By taking advantage of developer tooling, you can make Infrastructure-as-Code that is reusable and modular so that you can solve complicated problems like security implementations once. Then, when changes need to happen, they're made in one place and easy to propagate to all your projects. Links: * Pulumi * VSCode Recorded September 6, 2022

PowerShell and GitHub with Barbara Forbes

What can GitHub do for your PowerShell scripts? Richard talks to Barbara Forbes about using GitHub and PowerShell together. Barbara first discusses the fundamentals - using GitHub as your source code repository for PowerShell. It takes some time to learn, but you can start just using it for yourself. Things get more complex when multiple people start to work on the scripts, but they also get better. Then the conversation turns to the fun stuff - using Github Copilot to help you write your scripts, incorporating GitHub Actions to automate testing and deployment. PowerShell code is code and should have all the protections and power tools that GitHub provides! Links: * PowerShell on GitHub * Visual Studio Code * GitHub Skills * GitHub Flow * GitHub Copilot * GitHub Actions * Pester * PSProfiler * Barbara's Blog Recorded August 3, 2022

Developer Practices that Help SysAdmins with Rick Taylor

What can a sysadmin learn from a developer? Richard chats with Rick Taylor about his experiences learning from developers to write better code - sysadmin code, of course, like PowerShell, Python, and even YAML. Rick talks about how PowerShell code works across all the clouds and how organizations need well-managed PowerShell the same way developers create well-managed compiled code. The conversation explores the various developer techniques that can help sysadmins be more productive - call it DevOps if you like, but it mostly looks like getting work done! Links: * PowerShell for GCP * PowerShell for AWS * PowerShell for Azure * Azure DevOps * GitHub Recorded August 9, 2022

Artificial Intelligence in PowerBI with Priscilla Camp

Can you use artificial intelligence technologies in data analytics? Richard chats with Priscilla Camp about using cognitive services in PowerBI for image recognition, natural language processing, and even sentiment analysis. Priscilla describes her experience doing analysis on data from the Universal Studio theme parks in Orlando, going beyond simple happy/neutral/sad ranking into analyzing the thousands of comments made by folks in the park. Through sentiment analysis and key phrase extraction, those comments can be turned into actions the park can take to improve people's experiences - and potentially increase revenues! Links: * Azure Data Factory * Azure Synapse Analytics * PowerBI * Cognitive Services in PowerBI * Azure Cognitive Services * Key Phrase Extraction * Kaggle * Learning Cognitive Services Recorded August 5, 2022

Learning PowerShell with Jeff Hicks

How do you learn PowerShell effectively? Richard chats with Jeff Hicks about his experiences teaching PowerShell from the beginning. Jeff talks about strategies to learn more about PowerShell as you code, not just searching for cut-and-paste examples. The danger of cut-and-paste is that you don't get a chance to understand what you're working on - you need to write some code to get better. This line of reasoning turns the conversation to routine learning, ensuring you're writing a little PowerShell daily to grow your skills - whether that's code you need in your work or more practice-related code. PowerShell is a superpower. You just need to learn it! Links: * PowerShell * VMware PowerCLI * PowerShell.org * PowerShell on Discord * PowerShell Practice Primer * Behind the PowerShell Pipeline * Jeff's Blog Recorded July 26, 2022

Managed Environments for PowerApps with April Dunnam

PowerApps are proliferating - how do you keep them under control? Richard talks to April Dunnam about managed environments for PowerApps, providing oversight and governance. April talks about the Microsoft Power Platform Center of Excellence Starter Kit as a way to get started in the governance model with tooling for insights, auditing, compliance, and even helping connect the folks building PowerApps in your organization. It's early days for the tooling, but worth the effort to help get PowerApps to be part of the same application lifecycle management processes that already exist in your organization! Links: * Managed Environments * Microsoft Power Platform Center of Excellence Starter Kit * Express Design * Power Platform Extension for VS Code Recorded July 15, 2022

The Rogers Outage and Resiliency with Dana Epp

On July 8, the Rogers company in Canada had a total network outage for 15 hours - what happened? Richard talks to Dana Epp about what we can learn from an outage like this. Dana talks about having an open root cause analysis to provide detailed discussion without accusation or blame. You understand the potential when you look at how the airline industry has become incredibly safe through open root cause analysis. Outages are bad - but learning from them is what makes up better! Links: * Microsoft Defender for Endpoint * Rogers Outage Press Release * Cloudflare View of Rogers Outage * CSE Russia cyber threat Recorded July 15, 2022

New Viva Modules with Sandy Ussia

Viva continues to evolve - what's the latest? Richard talks to Sandy Ussia about her work with the various Viva modules and approaches to customizing Teams. Sandy talks about how it's possible to shape a Teams experience to fit your organization, including using third-party components - there are many choices! When your Teams is in good shape, there are plenty of new Viva modules to explore, including Topics, a knowledge management system using machine learning to extract critical aspects of your organization. And related to that machine learning module are upcoming Sales and Goals! The Viva family keeps growing! Links: * Accessible PowerApps * Lightning Tools * Microsoft Viva * Viva Connections * SharePoint News * Adaptive Cards * Microsoft Viva Topics * Office Delve * Microsoft Viva Sales * Microsoft Viva Goals Recorded July 15, 2022

Getting Hybrid Certified with Orin Thomas

What's the best Windows Server and Azure hybrid configuration? Richard talks to Orin Thomas about the new Windows Server Hybrid Administrator Associate certification. Orin digs into how the hybrid certifications pick up where regular Windows Server certifications leave off, adding Azure's role as backup, extended storage, telemetry, and security solutions. The conversation explores how different organizations implement services like file storage and how Azure can add to those solutions without needing significant user retraining but still add essential capabilities. Hybrid is a logical destination for some organization workloads, and certification can get you up to speed on all the options! Links: * Windows Server Hybrid Administrator Associate * Azure File Sync * Azure Sentinel * Migrating Hyper-V VMs to Azure Recorded July 5, 2022

Migrating Group Policy Objects into Intune with Katy Nicholson

Can you migrate group policy objects to Intune? Richard chats with Katy Nicholson about her work modernizing Windows client machines through Microsoft Endpoint Manager, making on-premises Active Directory optional. Katy discusses using the Group Policy Analyzer to understand what policies will work through Endpoint Manager and Configuration Service Providers. The next question is, what policies are irrelevant or obsolete? This leads to a conversation around refreshing security for an organization - why does this policy exist. How is it applied to non-Windows devices? Does it still make sense? Ultimately, all policies are about security, which means getting to zero trust. How does policy work in a zero trust environment, and where do you have to make exceptions? Links: * Katy's Blog * Microsoft Endpoint Manager * Configuration Service Provider * Group Policy Analyzer * Importing Group Policy Objects into Intune * Azure AD and Windows Hello Recorded July 5, 2022

Microsoft Loop with Stephen Rose

How does Microsoft Loop help you collaborate? Richard talks to Stephen Rose about the recent addition of Loop to Teams. Loop uses the Fluid Framework to provide collaborative spaces to create to-dos and other lists with multiple people working simultaneously, marking up and responding to information. Documents and other assets brought into a workspace can be added to emails and other documents while remaining live. Every time you open them, they grab the latest info from the documents in the Loop workspace. Appropriate security privileges still apply, but Loop makes it easier for folks to work the way they want to and take advantage of up-to-date info from the M365 accounts in your organization! Links: * Inside Microsoft Teams * Microsoft Loop * Fluid Framework * Data Loss Prevention * Forms * OneDrive for Business Recorded June 3, 2022

SharePoint News with Emily Mancini

Your Intranet needs news, and SharePoint can help! Richard chats with Emily Mancini about the power of the News part in SharePoint to keep your Intranet more dynamic with a steady stream of new content. Emily talks about creating an ecosystem of evolving content on your Intranet so that it is more than just a set of links to HR information. The conversation dives into targeting news effectively within your organization to keep it relevant and how a good Intranet is ultimately a reflection of its culture - so take it seriously! Links: * SharePoint News Part * Audience Targeting in SharePoint * People Web Part * Microsoft 365 Community Content * Sharing Is Caring * How to Share Org-Wide Communication in Microsoft 365 * Emily's Blog Recorded Monday, June 6, 2022

Windows Admin Center in Azure with Prasidh Arora

Windows Admin Center in Azure? Richard talks to Prasidh Arora about the preview of WAC in Azure - giving admins that familiar Windows Admin Center view of Azure Virtual Machines running Windows Server 2016 or later. Prasidh talks about creating a unified view and admin access to your servers, whether they are running on-premises, in Azure, or even on other cloud infrastructures. Installing Azure Arc on a server makes it available from WAC in Azure. The conversation also digs into the privileges challenges - making sure you have rights on the server for WAC's different capabilities. But with WAC for Azure, we're one step closer to a unified view and control of infrastructure. Links: * Windows Admin Center * Azure Arc * Manage Azure Arc-enabled Servers with WAC * Azure Stack HCI * Azure RBAC Recorded June 3, 2022

Updating Windows with Aria Carley

How do you keep Windows devices updated? Richard talks to Aria Carley about Microsoft's array of update services, including Windows Update for Business, Windows Server Update Services, Intune, Configuration Manager, and more! The host of products can be intimidating, but Aria lays out their role in your organization in a triangle of cost, time, and risk. The options range from allowing consumer-style automatic updates to controlling every install and the order they take place. Where is your comfort level on the triangle? Links: * Windows Update for Business * Windows Server Update Services * Microsoft Intune * Configuration Manager * Update Management in Azure * Windows Update for Business Deployment Service Recorded Wednesday, June 8, 2022

Creating a Data Culture with Rohan Kumar and Santosh Jamadagni

Does your organization have a data culture? Richard talks with Microsoft CVP Rohan Kumar, and Mars VP Santosh Jamadagni about building organizations focused on data rather than opinion to drive the company forward. Rohan talks about getting data out of silos and into the hands of folks that can act on the information to make better business decisions. Santosh discusses how Mars has empowered workers throughout the Mars organization with real-time information. The conversation digs into the need to apply security rules to data as it enters the organization so that it is immediately available to the right people at the right time. Data availability is the key to a data culture! Links: * Microsoft Data Platform * Azure Synapse Link * Azure Purview Recorded May 4, 2022

Viva Insights with Karoliina Kettukari

How can Viva Insights improve personal productivity and the productivity of the team? Richard talks to Karoliina Kettukari about the role of Viva Insights - starting with that daily email you likely already get. Karoliina talks about folks using M365 leaving traces of their work and how Insights puts that information to work. Insights help you be more productive by helping you block out time for meaningful work, make sure you follow through on commitments you make, and even identify when you may be working too much. The conversation also explores the management tooling for Insights to help leaders see their team's productivity in the aggregate! Links: * Microsoft Viva * Viva Insights * Goverance for Teams Recorded May 4, 2022

Turning off Your Last Exchange Server with Tony Redmond

Are you ready to turn off your last exchange server? Richard talks with Tony Redmond about the recent announcement by Microsoft around management tools for Exchange Hybrid. Tony discusses how organizations that migrated Exchange to Office 365 are stuck with one last server: The server that hosts management tools. The management tools move to a workstation, but they are PowerShell only. And the process of shutting down your last Exchange Server is very much a one-way trip, at least for now. Should you do it? Tony says it's time to get started! Links: * Office 365 for IT Pros * Retiring Your Last Exchange Server * Project Monad * FastTrack Eligibity * Microsoft Replication Service Recorded May 2, 2022

Cloud Infrastructure for Healthcare with Lynn Langit

How does healthcare function in the cloud? Richard talks to Lynn Langit about her work helping healthcare-related workloads move into the cloud. Lynn talks about how lift-and-shift is a great starting point - it stops analysis-paralysis and gets a baseline on costs in the cloud, which helps plan high return-on-investment activities around workloads. The conversation digs into the visualization challenge: It is hard to see what is being moved into the cloud and how it is operating there. Lynn digs into the cloud-as-architecture side of things since most customers do not know how working in the cloud is supposed to look, and there are distinct differences from on-premises operations! Links: * Lynn's Website * Azure FastTrack * Microsoft R Application Network Recorded May 2, 2022

IT in War with Sami Laiho

What happens when your neighbor starts a war? Richard chats with Sami Laiho about how his work has changed since the conflict between Russia and Ukraine began. Sami talks about splitting the active directory infrastructure of companies that have offices in both Finland and Russia. The conversation dives into the complexities of making two AD solutions from one - splitting admins, FSMO roles, etc. Then there is the cyber warfare problem - countries bordering Russia have dealt with many cyber attacks over the years and have some excellent practices. Do you? Links: * Sami's Blog Recorded May 2, 2022

Top Technical Skills for Modern IT Pros with Sonia Cuff

What are the technical skills that the modern IT Pro needs? Richard chats with Sonia Cuff about a recent blog post that digs into the array of technical skills she sees today. Many are old standbys, like networking and server configuration. And the cloud is undoubtedly an essential part of the current skill set. But there are newer aspects to explore, like source control for scripts and Infrastructure-as-Code. While you don't have to have every skill, it's worth thinking about how you're expanding your skill set and what new things you can add to be more effective! Links: * Sonia's Blog Posts * Azure Monitor * Dynamic Thresholds * Azure Bicep * Setting up Windows Terminal Recorded April 21, 2022

SQL Q&A from SQL Server & Azure SQL Conference Spring 2022

In Las Vegas, once again, this is the Q&A session from the SQL Server & Azure SQL Conference in April 2022. Richard moderated questions and answers from SQL luminaries, including Bob Ward, Buck Woody, Pam Lahoud, Bradley Ball, Des Fitzgerald, Davide Mauri, Rie Merritt, and Kevin Farlee. The conversation ranges over Azure SQL migration, new features in SQL Server 2022, challenges in scaling, reliability, disaster recovery, and more! Links: * SQL Server and Azure SQL Conference Recorded April 7, 2022

Backup and Ransomware with Karinne Bessette

How can backups protect you from ransomware? Richard chats with Karinne Bessette about how backup technology has responded to the need for ransomware protection. Whether it's intelligent backup tape systems that automatically pop out tapes so they won't overwrite or other air-gap strategies for backups, you need to have a backup you can rely on to recover from a ransomware attack without paying the ransom. Backups can also be a part of the requirements for ransomware insurance - and if your backups aren't sufficient, they can void the insurance! It is also crucial to know what it takes to restore from backup, how long it takes, and the order of things when recovering, even from the ground up. Backups aren't going away any time soon! Links: * Malware and Ransomware Protection in Microsoft 365 * Veeam Disaster Recovery Orchestrator * Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery * Microsoft Sentinel Recorded March 25, 2022

Moving Away from Active Directory with Travis Roberts

Can we move away from Active Directory? Richard talks to Travis Roberts about the prospect of moving organizations off of Windows Active Directory and solely onto Azure Active Directory with Microsoft Intune. Travis talks about the critical aspects of Windows Active Directory - NTLM and Kerberos. Can your organization live without them? That means file shares and printing for most places. Microsoft has recommended that hybrid AD is the long-term solution, and for most sites, that's probably right. But how can you depend on Windows AD less? Can new machines coming into the organization avoid being AD-joined? Lots of great thinking about moving forward with Active Directory! Links: * Azure Active Directory * Azure Active Directory Domain Services * Active Directory * Azure Universal Print * Windows 365 Business * Microsoft Intune * Hybrid Azure AD * Travis' Blog * Travis' YouTube Recorded March 3, 2022

Managing Teams Sprawl with Erica Toelle and John Gruszczyk

How do you manage the sprawl of Teams? Richard chats with Erica Toelle and John Gruszczyk about the governance of Teams, starting with allowing a bit of sprawl in the first place - people give up on tools that are too locked down. You have to leave room to explore! But once folks engage with Teams and the sprawl gets a bit out of control, there are tools to help you protect people and information shared there. John talks about controlling access to different parts of Teams, depending on your role in the organization and external guests. Erica dives into labeling data as sensitive and how the Data Loss Prevention tooling can help protect data and indicate where it might be exposed inappropriately. There are many approaches to controlling sprawl. You can choose what is best for your organization! Links: * Microsoft Teams * Multifactor Authentication * Access Governance in Teams * Data Loss Prevention Policy * Power Automate * Virtual Agents * Teams and SharePoint Integrat…

Fixing Problem WiFi Devices using Tonic with Ryan Woodings

We all have those problem WiFi devices - how do you fix them? Richard chats with Ryan Woodings about Tonic, the latest product from MetaGeek that helps you analyze WiFi traffic by the device to understand its problems. Ryan talks about tracking WiFi-specific information, including what AP a client is connecting to and all the intimate details of WiFi connection negotiating. Tools like Tonic can identify a broken antenna in a device based on that traffic or just poor decision-making by the WiFi chipset - and what you can do about it! Links: * Signifi for Business * WireShark Recording March 3, 2022

Query Performance Tuning Strategies with Monica Rathbun

How do you keep your SQL queries fast? Richard chats with Monica Rathbun about her approaches to SQL Server query tuning. Monica starts with defining the problem - how do we know that the database is the performance bottleneck? The conversation dives into measuring query performance and the power of Query Store, but only on SQL Server 2016 and above, so get upgrading! Entity Framework is a standard tool for developers to automate access to SQL. Still, it can generate some pretty ugly queries, and Monica talks about different ways to improve them, including the old standby of writing a stored procedure. Lots of ideas for folks struggling to make their databases go fast! Links: * Monitoring Performance with Query Store * Common Table Expressions * Cursors in SQL Server * SQL Server Profiler * Glenn's SQL Server Performance Blog Recorded February 22, 2022

Learning Bicep with John Downs

Ready to flex your Bicep? Richard talks to John Downs from Azure Fast Track about configuring Azure resources using Bicep. John talks about Azure Resource Manager (ARM) being the under-the-hood way to create Azure Infrastructure-as-a-Service, but folks don't enjoy working directly in the JSON that makes up an ARM template. Enter Bicep, a domain-specific language that generates the JSON for you. Today Bicep is Microsoft's recommended way to build Azure resources, offering access to source control, testing, and automation that makes your Azure site more reliable and easier to maintain! Links: * Bicep Docs * Azure Resource Manager * Bicep Modules * Bicep Registry * Testing Bicep * Azure AD Privileged Identity Management * Learn Bicep Recorded March 3, 2022

PowerShellGet 3 with Sydney Smith

What's coming in the next version of PowerShellGet? Richard chats with Sydney Smith about PowerShellGet in general and version 3 specifically. Sydney talks about how PowerShellGet appears like a command in PowerShell but is a separate module installed by default with PowerShell and is getting more features and some breaking changes. But version 3 also includes some compatibility features so that you can use your scripts dependent on PowerShellGet 2 within PowerShellGet 3. While there are some breaking changes, they make it easier to find and install the packages you need from the PowerShell Gallery or any other PowerShell repository you want to access. Links: * The PowerShell Gallery * MyGet * PowerShell Gallery * PowerShellGet Preview 12 * Desired State Configuration * PowerShellGet vNext on GitHub Recorded February 17, 2022

Chocolatey for Business with Gary Ewan Park

What can Chocolatey do for you? Richard talks to Gary Ewan Park about the latest version of Chocolatey, including Chocolatey for Business. Originally a free, open-source product for application management primarily targeted at software developers, Chocolatey has evolved into a modern software automation product for managing software deployment on workstations and servers. Gary talks about keeping deployments self-contained and straightforward - use the Internet if you want to, but you can also do all deployments from a local package manager as well. With self-service and central management tools, you should look at the latest version of Chocolatey for Business! Links: * Chocolatey * Chocolatey for Business * Puppet * Chef * Boxstarter * Chocolatey Community Repository * Windows Autopilot Recording February 17, 2022

How Azure Arc Facilitates Digital Transformation with Erin Chapple

Is Azure Arc a crucial part of bringing the cloud into your organization? Richard talks with Microsoft CVP Erin Chapple about how Arc helps with digital transformation. Erin discusses the challenges of adding the cloud into an organization from a governance, regulatory, and security perspective, how Azure Arc provides oversight and control for those issues, and more. The conversation also gets into a survey done by Harris Polls for Microsoft that showed how the digital transformation process continues in most organizations, with hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure being a common outcome. All the more reason to use Azure Arc to manage it all! Links: * Arc at Ferguson * Arc at Nokia * Arc at Siemens Healthineers * Hybrid & Multicloud Perceptions Survey * MultiCloud and Hybrid Using Azure Arc with Jeremy Winter * Inside Azure for IT Recorded February 17, 2022

Email Transport Security with Gareth Gudger

How do you secure your email transport? Richard talks to Gareth Gudger about the various additional protocols and approaches essential to transporting email. Gareth reminds us that SMTP, like the Internet, was not designed with security in mind, so we have to add layers to try and improve things. It is an acronym soup of SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MTA-STS, and DANE - but every acronym gets a definition! Sure, there is more to email security than just transport, but arguably, this is the place to start. And after that - focus on identity security! Links: * Office 365 for IT Pros * HAFNIUM Exploit * MTA-STS for Exchange Online * Email Encryption in M365 * Advanced Message Encryption * M365 Maps * SPF in M365 * Gareth's Blog Recorded February 15, 2022

Windows Virtual Desktop Becomes Azure Virtual Desktop with Jen Sheerin

Windows Virtual Desktop is now Azure Virtual Desktop! Richard chats with Jen Sheerin about how Windows Virtual Desktop has evolved to become Azure Virtual Desktop - it's much more than a name change! Jen talks about how AVD is fully integrated into Azure, using ARM for configuration, tied in with Insights, and all the other Azure products you count on to manage, monitor, and maintain infrastructure. The conversation also dives into the Azure Fast Track program to help you get started with AVD and the kind of proof-of-concept projects you can build. There are many choices, but the best time to start is now! Links: * Windows Virtual Desktop QuickStart * Autoscale Preview for Azure Virtual Desktop Host Pools * What is Azure Virtual Desktop? * Windows Enterprise Multi-session Remote Desktop * Azure Virtual desktop for on-premises Azure Stack * FastTrack for Azure * Azure Active Directory Domain Services * US Azure Virtual Desktop User Group * Azure Migrate * Azure Exp…

SQL Server 2022 with Bob Ward

It's 2022, time for a new version of SQL Server! Richard chats with Bob Ward about Microsoft's latest release of their ubiquitous database. The conversation starts out with a little bit of history of how SQL Server has evolved over the decades - and how there's still a need for a database in organizations, but the feature set has changed. Bob talks about making hybrid really work, whether it's an on-premises database that backs up and fails over to the cloud, or how tools like Azure Purview can live in the cloud and help monitor and govern on-premises databases. And if you do choose to migrate to the cloud, these hybrid options make life easier - especially with SQL 2022! Links: * Azure SQL Revealed * SQL Server 2022 * Azure SQL Managed Instance * Azure Synapse Analytics * SQL Query Store with Erin Stellato * Azure Purview * Azure Arc Recorded January 13, 2022

Bringing Viva into your Intranet with Tracy van der Schyff

How does Microsoft Viva work alongside your Intranet? Richard talks to Tracy van der Schyff about her recent projects integrating Viva into existing intranet infrastructures. Tracy explains that Viva, specifically Viva Connections, does not change your Intranet but does assist in organizing access to various aspects of your Intranet with dashboards and the SharePoint App Bar. This leads to a conversation about managing both curation and customization of views of an organization to its employees. A single view doesn't work for everyone, and uncontrolled customization leads to chaos - where is the balance? The new tools in Viva can help! Links: * Microsoft Viva * Viva Connections * Viva Learning * SharePoint App Bar * Microsoft Yammer * Microsoft Viva in Docs * Microsoft Viva Essential Training * Microsoft Viva Roadmap * Microsoft Viva Blog * Microsoft Viva at Ignite * Tracy's Blog Recorded January 17, 2022

Getting Beyond Internet Explorer with Joel Hawks

The Internet Explorer 11 desktop application retires and goes out of support on June 15, 2022. Are you ready? Richard talks to Joel Hawks about what retirement actually means - the IE11 icon disappears, and only the Edge browser remains. But IE is not gone, it runs inside of Edge instead. Joel talks about getting away from depending on IE at all, by going through an evaluation process of web applications to see whether or not they actually depend on IE, or can run properly using the Edge rendering engine. There are a number of tools to help with this migration, including the Microsoft FastTrack service - give them a call! Links: * Enterprise Mode Site List * Site Discovery with SCOM * Disable Internet Explorer 11 Policy * Cloud Site List * Azure AD Application Proxy * Edge Setup Guide * Edge Policies * Microsoft FastTrack Recorded January 13, 2022

Modern Client Management with Julie Andreacola

It's 2022, how do you manage your client machines? Richard chats with Julie Andreacola about modern client management. Julie talks about how the pandemic accelerated the need for modern client technologies, including being able to provision and configure computers that will never be in the office. The conversation digs into Windows Autopilot and Microsoft Intune compared with more traditional deployment and configuration approaches. While the new approaches are broader and don't have as many detailed options as the old approaches, security is a key strength in modern client architecture - and that could be the key driver to change up your client management approach! Links: * Microsoft FastTrack * Windows Autopilot * Microsoft Intune * Azure AD Joined Devices * Windows 11 * DFCI on Surface Devices * Deploying Win32 Apps via Intune * Windows 365 Cloud PC * Azure Virtual Desktop * M365 Data Loss Prevention Recorded December 27, 2021

SQL Q&A from SQL Server & Azure SQL Conference Fall 2021

Back in Las Vegas and in person, this is the Q&A session from the SQL Server & Azure SQL Conference in December 2021. Bob Ward, Anna Hoffman, Buck Woody, Bradley Ball, Tim Chapman, Pedro Lopes, and a host of other great SQL speakers fielded questions from an audience of database professionals and developers - and the questions are wide-ranging! Links: * SQL Server and Azure SQL Conference

Getting a Security Audit with Paula Januszkiewicz

What's a security audit, and why do you need one? Richard talks to Paula Januszkiewicz about auditing security, technical reviews, and so-called penetration testing. Paula talks about needing outside experts who focus on the scope of exploits out in the world today to help make sure all aspects of your company's systems are reasonably secure - there is no such thing as perfect security! The conversation gets into the details around finding a good auditor, what to expect from them, and what they will expect from you - a good security audit takes time, and is a conversation! Recorded December 21, 2021

Getting Certificates Right using Intune with Richard Hicks

Getting your Public Key Infrastructure right can be tricky - and getting wrong can be very bad. Richard talks to Richard Hicks about the right way to go about setting up and operating a PKI infrastructure in your organization. Different from the public certificates you use for websites and servers, Richard focuses on how to use certificates to authenticate and authorize users and devices. Tools like Intune and Autopilot can help you get certificates out to devices and users, as well as bootstrap new equipment security into your infrastructure. There's a lot to learn! Links: * Server Certificate Deployment * Active Directory Auto-Enrollment * Certificates in Intune * Windows Autopilot * Certificate Connector for Microsoft Intune * Hybrid Azure AD Joined Devices * Azure AD Kerberos Authentication * Richard Hicks Blog * Implementing Always On VPN Recorded December 13, 2021

DevSecOps in 2022 with Jess Dodson

2021 was a tough year for security - how can we do better in 2022? Richard chats with Jess Dodson about working to get better at information security in your organization. Jess talks about the log4j exploit as a great example of "what don't we know" - and the need for a software bill of materials as part of your configuration management database. Having a list of the libraries that internal applications depend on helps you respond in a time of crisis, being able to answer the question "where are we vulnerable?" This leads to a conversation about better DevSecOps - where development, security, and operations all take security seriously and help each other to help the organization succeed! Links: * Power Apps * Azure Sentinel * Software Bill of Materials * Configuration Management Database Recorded December 20, 2021

Happy holidays! Another year, another set of predictions around the life of IT Pros – now in 2022! The pandemic continues to evolve, with new variants appearing and vaccination levels getting high. Will the pandemic still be a significant factor next year? What about back-to-work plans? Or is working-from-home the new normal? The past year was tough on the security side of things with notable ransomware and business-email-compromise attacks – are you prepared? What will we be doing differently in the next year? And how did Richard's predictions from last year stand up to reality? Thanks again for listening! Recorded December 2021

Hybrid Identity with Sonia Cuff

Does your organization need hybrid identities? Richard talks to Sonia Cuff about Hybrid Active Directory, connecting your on-premises Active Directory infrastructure to M365 and Azure. There's essentially no choice in larger organizations - too many identities and applications exist that replicating identities would be a huge problem. But what about a small organization? Sonia talks about folks living in the Small Business Server and Windows Essential worlds that really could make a go of moving entirely in the cloud without hybrid - but it all comes down to applications that the organization needs. The conversation also digs into modern identity using password managers and authenticators - even going passwordless! Links: * Azure AD Connect * Microsoft Intune * Azure Arc * Microsoft Authenticator * Passwordless Identity Recorded November 25, 2021

Deprecating Basic Auth with Greg Taylor

Basic authentication is going away in Exchange Online - how will it impact you? Richard talks to Greg Taylor about the long-planned end of basic authentication support in Exchange Online. Greg talks about the fundamental vulnerability of basic authentication systems like POP and IMAP - and how many systems still use them by default. Too many business email compromise and ransomware attacks happen through an email hack, and getting rid of basic authentication will help. Basic auth goes away in October of 2022, and Greg discusses the many ways that Microsoft is assisting IT Pros to get to secure email protocols running before that happens! Links: * iOS 11 Supports OAuth 2 * Exchange Web Services Recorded October 25, 2021

Your Adaptability Quotient with Sara Caldwell and Angela Dugan

What's your adaptability quotient? Richard chats with Sara Caldwell and Angela Dugan about the ideas behind the adaptability quotient - the ability to respond to change. The pandemic certainly forced a lot of change on a lot of folks - and different people coped with the changes in different ways. Sara talks about thinking about your ability to adapt and strengthening that ability, starting with asking for help where needed. Angela digs into the changes that have happened for her and Sara just recently with the acquisition of their company - more opportunities to adapt! Change is inevitable. It's just a question of what we keep from the past and what we let go of: How are you adapting? Links: * Adaptability Quotient * Miro * 3 Cloud Solutions Recorded October 25, 2021

IT Christmas Gifts with Joey Snow and Rick Claus

Christmas Gifts for IT Pros! Richard chats with Joey Snow and Rick Claus about their favorite gift ideas for your favorite IT Pros. Yeah, IT folks are hard to buy for, but here are some stocking stuffers and other gifts you will be excited to receive. Whether it's items that will help you work more effectively, home automation to make living a little easier, or maybe just something geeky and fun, there are many cool things to choose. And if you're an IT Pro listening to this show, share the list of links with your loved ones - maybe you'll get some good stuff! Links: * ROG Strix XG32VQ * LG 49 inch Monitor * Dell 43 inch 4K Monitor * Smartphone Controlled Paper Airplane * Raspberry Pi Zero W * Echo Show 15 * Echo Show 10 * Amazon Astro * Sky Lie Laser Galaxy Projector * Home Assistant Blue * Glencairn Glass Leather Travel Set * Polaroid OneStep+ * Anker Nano Pro * Anker Portable Power * Pureport * iFixit Repair Kit * iFixit Magentic Project Mat * O…

Windows 11 is Released with Mary Jo Foley

Windows 11 Ships! So now what? Richard chats with Mary Jo Foley about her thoughts around the release of Windows 11. Mary Jo talks about how quiet the conversation has been around Windows 11, other than a few bits of outrage like the TPM requirements - which, as it turns out, aren't actually required. Is there a reason to move to Windows 11? Most IT folks seem happy to wait for further updates - there's nothing wrong with Windows 10. Maybe operating system releases just aren't as exciting as they used to be? Links: * Upgrading to Windows 11 * Windows Weekly * All About Microsoft Recorded October 22, 2021

Cloud Security Thoughts with Corey Quinn

Is the cloud secure? Richard chats with Screaming in the Cloud's Corey Quinn about the latest spate of security issues in AWS and Azure - and the responses to those issues. Corey talks about the risks the cloud providers are creating, not being clear when an exploit is found, to let people know how much visibility they have into the problem. Mitigating an exploit is not enough - you have to be able to answer the question about whether or not the cloud is secure. The alternatives are worse! Links: * CosmosDB Exploit * Insecure AWS Buckets * Azure Container Services Exploit * Microsoft Zero Trust * Amazon Zero Trust Recorded September 9, 2021

Chaos Engineering with Julie Gunderson

Should you inject a little chaos into your systems? Julie Gunderson says yes! Richard chats with Julie about how deliberate failing portions of your system teach you more about your dependency and resiliency. But it's not just about breaking things - you need to build a hypothesis around how you see the reliability of the system and then create tests to challenge that reliability - and how to recover quickly if the test does harm to productivity! Julie talks about starting small, maybe just a development pipeline before moving on to more significant systems like production. The goal is to be resilient, but you're only resilient if you test! Links: * Chaos Monkey * Gremlin Bootcamps * Page it to the Limit Podcast Recorded October 12, 2021

Episode 800! Richard chats about making 800 episodes of RunAs with Microsoft Technical Fellow Jeffrey Snover. The conversation digs into the state of the IT business today, with the huge role of the cloud and digital transformation, and how it impacts the nature of work. Jeffrey talks about how the artificial intelligence in M365 is emerging as a tool to help people be more productive, by watching what they're working on and helping them to organize their information and efforts better. This leads to a discussion about privacy, understanding objectives and key results, and the ultimate goal of any system - better outcomes. Could this actually be the next generation of Microsoft technology? Hopefully it won't take another 800 shows to find out! Links: * The Strength of Weak Ties Recorded October 11, 2021

The Rise of Ransomware with Ann Johnson

Is ransomware getting worse? Richard talks to Microsoft VP of Cybersecurity Ann Johnson about the state ransomware today. Ann quotes Sutton's law: "Why do criminals rob banks? Because that's where the money is." An increasing number of cybercriminals have successfully extorted money from companies using ransomware. So yes, ransomware is becoming more popular amongst criminals and will continue to do so until it doesn't pay. Ann explains that the Zero Trust Security Model is essential - as are data backups that you know how to restore! Beyond our efforts at the IT level, Ann talks about ongoing relationships with organizations like the FBI to go after cybercriminals at a higher level, shutting down infrastructure and charging the criminals with crimes. Ransomware is getting worse, and it's up to us to fight back! Links: * Cybersecurity During the Pandemic * RiskIQ * Afternoon Cyber Tea with Microsoft's Ann Johnson Recorded August 23, 2021

From Citrix Cloud to Azure Virtual Desktop with Aidan Finn

What's the right way to have virtual desktops in the cloud? Richard talks to Aidan Finn about a virtualization project he was involved with that started with Citrix Cloud, which runs in Azure. Aidan talks about the number of virtual machines involved in a large-scale VDI implementation, many of which are infrastructure and plumbing. Why own the plumbing when you can get it as a service? The conversation then digs into Azure Virtual Desktop, which doesn't have all the bells and whistles of Citrix Cloud, but does simplify implementation a great deal. No virtualization implementation is ever simple, but working at the platform level can make it easier! Links: * Citrix Cloud * Remote Desktop Services * Azure Virtual Desktop * Packer * Azure Monitor * Azure VM Image Builder * MSIX Recorded September 9, 2021

Azure Communication Services with Mary Anne Noskowski

How do you add custom audio, video, and text communications into your organization? Richard chats with Mary Anne Noskowski about Azure Communications Services (ACS), a set of APIs and tooling that brings the features of Teams communications into custom applications and more. Mary Anne talks about Teams integration, providing a means to customize the guest access features into Teams via ACS. The conversation also digs into a few different scenarios for optimizing customer, vendor, and employee experience in communications. It's early days for ACS, but they are taking the reins from the Skype for Business APIs - and it's the same APIs that Teams depend on, so you know they will scale! Links: * Azure Communication Services * Azure Active Directory * ACS on Microsoft Mechanics * ACS Health Care Demo App * ACS Retail Demo App Recorded August 5, 2021

PrintNightmare with Jeremy Moskowitz

Are you stuck in the print nightmare? Richard talks to Jeremy Moskowitz about the ongoing battle over potential exploits through the point-and-print system in Windows. Jeremy talks about the discovery of the vulnerability in July 2021 and how it has led to a series of patches and registry key changes to resist a potential exploit. Meantime, people need to print! There are several workarounds with Group Policy, and Jeremy's own PolicyPak has some practical solutions. If you put some time into thinking through how your organization prints, you can find a solution that works and is secure! Links: * July Windows Print Spooler Remote Code Execution Vulnerability * August Windows Print Spooler Remote Code Execution Vulnerability * RestrictDriverInstallationToAdministrator * Group Policy Settings for Controlling Printers * Ultimate Guide to PrintNightmare * PDQ Deploy Recorded September 9, 2021

Trusting PowerBI Reporting with Melissa Coates

Making mistakes with reporting or analytics can lead to mistakes in business and a loss of trust - now what? Richard chats with Melissa Coates about building mechanisms in tools like PowerBI to make it easier to get correct results. Melissa talks about having a diligent core of analytics and a flexible edge - making sure the expert data stewards and building data flows and repositories for accurate analytics, allowing the self-service PowerBI users to explore. Sure, everyone needs some guard rails, but over-governance leads to tools going unused. Let them experiment and find value, then look at how to keep things under control! Links: * Coates Data Strategies * PowerBI * Azure Purview * Azure Data Catalog * PowerBI Adoption Roadmap Recorded August 5, 2021

Files, Folders, Lists, and More in Microsoft 365 with Jason Moore

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 consistent. The conversation also ranges over how different organizations come to different solutions based on their past experiences and skill sets - there's a lot of choice for a reason! Links: * One Drive for Business * M365 To Do App * M365 Lists * Ransomware Detection and Recovery in OneDrive * M365 and Microsoft Defender * OneDrive Personal Vault * OneDrive Photo Storage * Sharing OneDrive Files and Folders Recorded August 6, 2021

Windows Package Manager with Sarah Lean

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 the manifest of applications currently on a workstation. Could we get to full local workstation localization, where you could build and re-build workstations on demand? Maybe some next-level hot-desk workstations are possible! Links: * Windows Package Manager on GitHub * Chocolatey * InTune, aka Microsoft Endpoint Manager * AZCopy * Techielass - Blog of Sarah Lean Recorded August 13, 2021

Multi-Cloud and Hybrid Using Azure Arc with Jeremy Winter

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 manage Kubernetes itself with consistent security and implementation policies. It takes some training, but Azure Arc can play a key role in your infrastructure and application modernization! Links: * Azure Arc * Azure Arc Enabled Data Services * Azure Kubernetes Service * Azure FastTrack * Containerizing Java Applications * Azure Stack * Azure Security Center * Azure Stack HCI Recorded August 5, 2021

Help Your Business Succeed using Data with Jen Stirrup

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 capabilities quickly. The conversation digs into getting beyond data-driven reporting into more insight-inspired: That good analytics can help you understand the true value of different customers, even to the point of recognizing that some customers are actually costing you money! Links: * Power Automate * Microsoft Forms/a> * PowerBI * Jen's Blog Recorded July 8, 2021

Responding to a Ransomware Attack with Dana Epp

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 how ransomware attacks are a crime and need to be treated accordingly - it's a business problem, not just a technical problem. Links: * Canadian Center for CyberSecurity * Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency * Ransomware Detection and Recovery in OneDrive * Azure Backup * Twilio Recorded July 19, 2021

Azure Active Directory Conditional Access with Nitika Gupta

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, location, and more. The conversation also digs into providing additional security requirements for company leadership and admin accounts - the kinds of accounts that, when exploited, can do significant harm to the company. Links: * Azure AD Conditional Access * Microsoft Cloud App Security * Microsoft Endpoint Manager * Passwordless Authentication for Azure AD * Microsoft Zero Trust * Azure AD Privileged Identity Management * Azure AD Identity Protection Recorded July 9, 2021

Windows 11 with Paul Thurrott

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 be controversial - requiring a Microsoft account to log into Windows 11. The controversy is helping to shape the product, you should be a part of the discussion! Links: * Windows 11 Preview 1 Recorded July 19, 2021

The Post-Pandemic Hybrid Workspace with Martina Grom

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 quickly to the cloud during the pandemic are still struggling to use their tools in a sustainable way. There's lots to learn still! Links: * Microsoft 365 * Microsoft Defender for Office 365 * Guest Access to Azure Active Directory * Governance Toolkit 365 Recorded June 30, 2021

SQL Questions and Answers from SQLIntersection Spring 2021!

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 over migrating to AzureSQL, securing data effectively, failover strategies, keeping up with the endless stream of new technologies coming, and much more! Recorded June 10, 2021

Your Private Cloud Platform with Jennelle Crothers

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. Links: * Azure ExpressRoute * Azure Container Registry * Azure Kubernetes Service * Azure Private Link * Azure Private DNS * Azure ARM Templates

Encryption, Compression, and Sharing in Server 2022 with Ned Pyle

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 for a while, now you'll be able to enable compression across any mapped drive. Finally, there is SMB over QUIC - file sharing over the internet that is secure by default, and much more efficient than VPNs. File sharing is never going away - how can you do it better! Links: * Windows Server 2022 Preview * SMB Compression * Server 2019 Hot Patching * Azure Files

Building SQL DevOps Tools with Kendra Little

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 can help. Kendra also explores the challenges of making the right thing, working with the team effectively through the pandemic, and software development teams have evolved in this strange time in history. Links: * SQL Compare * SQL Server Data Tools

What Happened to Windows 10X with Paul Thurrott

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 compatibility - but does that still make sense today? What are we willing to do to increase security and reduce complexity? Links: * Windows Virtual Desktop * Windows Server 2022 * Project Reunion

How Teams works with SharePoint with Susan Hanley

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, especially with Viva! Links: * Information Governance in Microsoft 365

Microsoft Viva with Hilton Giesenow

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 understanding company procedures. The conversation turns to the different components of Viva: Learning focuses on employee education with LinkedIn Learning. Connections provide an interface to SharePoint pages for employees that the organization may already have. Topics is a discovery tool, identifying key terminology in the organization from within chats on Teams and elsewhere to bring information together. Finally, there are Insights, which looks at employee wellness. The interface to Viva is Teams - so that employees have everything they need in one place! Links: * Microsoft Viva * Projec…

Backing up PowerApps with April Dunnam

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 to help manage PowerApps: You just need to set it up! Links: * Power Platform * Backup and Restore Environments * PowerApps Dataverse * Application Lifecycle Management with Power Platform * Power Platform Extension for Visual Studio Code * Azure DevOps * Debugging Canvas Apps with Monitor * Fusion Development

The New Cybersecurity with Troy Hunt

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 white hats be able to get legal authority to act to protect people, companies, and property? What's the alternative? Links: * The HAFNIUM Exploits * FBI BotNet Testimony * Vastaamo Ransomware Podcast * The Hafnium Podcast Episode * Apollo Breach on HIBP

Getting Started using Power Platform with Sandy Ussia

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 down the to-do list, who knows when someone will get to it! Sandy talks about how culture impacts the evolution of Power Platform in an organization - will the people using the tool reach out when they hit an access restriction, or work around it? This is where IT can help - and maybe find some opportunities to use Power Platform as well! Links: * Lightning Tools Chat * Power Platform * Power Automate * Microsoft Power Apps Community * Power Apps * PowerBI * PowerBI Gateway * Shane Young on YouTube * Explore Power Platform

The Azure Storage Landscape with Karl Rautenstrauch

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 into the role of Azure Disk, Azure Files, and Azure Blobs - including their relationship to OneDrive for Business, and even a quick chat about NAS products like NetApp! Links: * OneDrive for Business * Azure Storage Services * Azure Migrate * Azure NetApp Files

Getting the most from your Cloud Database with Jes Schultz

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 capabilities, even different databases entirely! With core operations more automated, you have time to do more tuning - improving performance and saving money! Links: * Azure SQL * Azure PostgreSQL * Azure Databricks * Azure Data Warehouse

Looking at the Windows Server 2022 Preview with Robert Smit

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 security, although not all the features are in place for the preview. But this is the version of Windows Server that will be in long-term support - and worth checking out! Links: * Windows Server 2022 Insider Preview * Robert's Blog Post on Installing Server 2022 Preview * Azure Active Directory

Governing your Cloud VMs using Azure Automanage with Phoummala Schmitt

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, governance: All the things you'd typically do by hand or in ARM templates. Virtual machine management is getting easier! Links: * Azure Automanage * Azure Backup * Azure Update Management * Azure Security Center

Azure Security Center with Yuri Diogenes

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 Azure are secured, or when you add already-secured resources - and your score goes down when the opposite happens! Talk of security leads to a conversation around Azure Defender for threat detection, Azure Sentinel for security event management, and ultimately to Azure Arc providing security access beyond Azure, into AWS, GCP, and even on-premises servers! Links: * Azure Security Center * Microsoft Defender * Azure Defender * Azure Defender for DNS * Azure Defender for AppService * Securing Privileged Access * Azure Sentinel * Azure Arc * Azure Security Center in the Field…

Managing Digital Transformation with Stephanie Donahue

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 conversation dives into new ways to collaborate, understanding how people work together on projects, and the potential for the latest tools available today!

The Hafnium Exchange Exploits with Tony Redmond

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 patches are available for Exchange 2010 on upward, but it is likely too late for tens of thousands of Exchange servers. What happens now? Links: * Office 365 IT Pros * John Hammond Hafnium Analysis * Tony's Blog Post on Hafnium * Microsoft Post on Hafnium Exploit

Data Governance using Azure Purview with Laurie Litwack

What is Azure Purview, and how can it help you with data governance? Richard chats with Laurie Litwack about the preview version of Azure Purview. Laurie discusses how Purview focuses on an overall view of data in an organization - collecting metadata about data wherever it is stored. That means collecting information about data in databases, file shares, on-premises, in the cloud, even on the various SaaS platforms like Salesforce. The result is a data catalog that can help your organization utilize data more effectively, as well as understand where sensitive data exists and is being created! Links: * Azure Purview * Try Azure Purview

Securing Teams with Tobias Zimmergren

Are your teams secure? Richard chats with Tobias Zimmergren about securing Office 365 Teams - both internally and externally! The challenge of Teams collaboration is the risk of sharing too much - and as Tobias says, by default, everyone can see everything. Certain teams in your organization, like HR, legal, and RnD, have to limit who can see their collaborations: Teams has information barriers to protect sensitive collaborations. Tobias also dives into eDiscovery and Data Loss Prevention, two huge topics on their own, and typically connected with Exchange: But also important with Teams. Get secure! Links: * Managing Teams Security * Managing External Access in Teams * Security and Compliance in Teams * Information Barriers in Microsoft Teams * eDiscovery Solution in Microsoft 365 * Office 365 Data Loss Prevention * Microsoft Defender for Office 365 * Microsoft Cloud App Security

Migrating to Azure SQL with Anna Hoffman

What's the right way to migrate SQL workloads to the cloud? Richard chats with Anna Hoffman about the expanding array of choices we have today for moving your SQL Server to Azure. Anna talks about the great support for running SQL Server in an Azure Virtual Machine - and why that sometimes makes the most sense for folks! Then there's moving into Azure SQL, which has some differences to regular SQL Server, but you will find it familiar. The conversation also turns to migrating other databases as well - and the migration tools that provide guidance and tooling to make it easier than ever! Links: * Data Exposed * SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machine * Azure Data Migration Guidance

The Evolution of Your IT Career with Michael Levan

How does your IT career evolve? Richard chats with Michael Levan about his career journey and some ideas of how your career can evolve as well! The conversation starts out at the help desk, where many IT folks get started, interacting with the various applications in the organization as well as the staff. Michael talks about thinking more broadly about your career, whether self-employment makes sense, how you learn, how you teach, and how you grow! Links: * Deep Work * CloudSkills

Source Control for IT Pros with Nicole Stevens

Everyone needs source control! Richard chats with Nicole Stevens about what IT Pros need to know around source control. Normally the purview of developers, source control is useful anywhere you have text that needs to be stored, versioned, and protected. Nicole talks about how you can use GitHub in a private repository to manage your own scripts - keep track of the changes you make over time, be able to go back to old versions, and so on. And when the whole team gets involved, it gets even more interesting! Links: * GitHub * GitHub Workflow

The Vastaamo Ransomware Event with Sami Laiho

What happens when our most private thoughts are ransomed? Richard talks to Sami Laiho about the Vastaamo Ransomware hack. Sami talks about how the hacker succeeded over months to steal private healthcare records, including transcripts of therapy sessions, and then attempted to ransom the company to get the data back. When the company refused to pay, the hacker contacted the individual patients with ransom demands and released several hundred private records in the process. Ransomware attacks are no joke - and Sami was both a victim and one of the folks fighting against the hack. In the end, spending time, energy, and money on protecting data your organization's data is important - you can't wait until after an attack to fix it. Not all genies will go back into the bottle. Links: * Wired Story of the Vastamo Hack

Secrets Management in PowerShell with Sydney Smith

Secrets Management ships for PowerShell! Richard chats with Sydney Smith who is the product manager for Secrets Management about how this PowerShell extension helps you access and manage multiple key stores in your organization and provides secrets for your PowerShell scripts. Sydney talks about how the development process of Secrets Management was done out in the open, on GitHub, with lots of feedback from the community. It works with multiple key stores, including its own, and leaves room for you to provide very granular security to your secrets - take a look! Links: * PowerShell Gallery * Azure Key Vault * KeePass * AWS Key Management Service * Windows CredMan * PowerShell SecretStore on GitHub * PowerShell SecretManagement on GitHub

Microsoft 365 for Small Business with Ian Williamson

Does M365 work for small business? Richard chats with Ian Williamson about his work as a sole IT person in a small business trying to move into Microsoft 365. Ian talks about how many of the features (and documentation) for Microsoft 365 is aimed at organizations much bigger than what he is working in - and often digging into features his tenant doesn't have! The conversation also focuses on the challenges of identity: Making sure your personal Microsoft identities don't collide with your M365 identities, how to untangle that mess, and perhaps, at some point, actually get some real benefits from M365! Links: * Perform an Internal Admin Takeover * Determining Tenant Type * Microsoft Hibernates SMB Support * M365 Security Defaults

The Technology of Work Life Balance with Heather Newman

Do your tools help you work the way you want to? Richard chats with Heather Newman about the concepts of work-life balance and how your tools can make it harder to do the right thing for you and your organization. Heather also dives into the new etiquette around communication, the value of attention, using time and energy wisely. Can our tools help? It's all in how you use them! Links: * Debbie Ireland Work Life Balance * Office Delve * The Power of Full Engagement * Driving Adoption Blog * Jason Stephenson Music * Modern Workplace Change

PowerShell Crescendo with Jason Helmick

It's 2021 - does PowerShell really need any new features? Jason Helmick says yes! Richard and Jason talk about Jason's move to Microsoft into the PowerShell team and the cool new things coming down the pipeline. First up is Secrets Management, providing a great means to avoid putting passwords in scripts and to be able to utilize secure accounts without ever knowing the secrets in the first place. Jason also explores IntelliSense and IntelliCode with PowerShell and how new AI technologies can make your PowerShell coding experience even better. Finally, Crescendo - tooling to make it easier to wrap native command line tools with PowerShell. 2021 looks to be a great year for PowerShell! Links: * Secrets Management Module * IntelliCode * Visual Studio Code * PowerShell Crescendo * Crescendo on GitHub

Doing More using Teams with Christina Wheeler

What else can Teams do? Richard chats with Christina Wheeler about going beyond the default features of Teams, turning it into the hub of work that it can be. Christina talks about the various plugins available for Teams available from third-party companies, as well as the kinds of add-ins you can build yourself. The conversation focuses on app templates as useful tools unto themselves, like the request-a-team template that lets you control the creation of Teams. But since it is an open-source project, you can customize it, or use it as a starting point for something more extensive. With excellent security and governance features, you can extend Teams to help your users have one place to look for all their work! Links: * App Templates for Microsoft Teams * Teams Integration with Salesforce * Teams Admin Center * MS-600: Building Applications and Solutions with Microsoft 365 Core Services * Microsoft Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio * QnA Maker

Disaster Recovery Strategies to Fight Ransomware with Dave Kawula

Ransomware attacks are a disaster! Can your disaster recovery strategy cope? Richard talks to Dave Kawula about his experiences battling ransomware attacks - and how failed backup strategies facilitate the bad guys getting paid. Dave talks about securing your backups with separate credentials - the ransomware folks count on getting all-powerful administrator accounts! When you granularize your security (call it Just Enough Admin) you make it harder for ransomware to succeed. Get smarter about protecting your backups! Links: * Azure Storage Blobs * Azure Key Vault * Azure Backup and Disaster Recovery * Azure Site Recovery * Cybersecurity Insurance

Productivity in 2021 with Ulrika Hedlund

What's your Productivity Score? Richard talks to Ulrika Hedlund about productivity in 2021 - the impact of the pandemic on work, and how IT can help. Ulrika discusses the rush to work remotely and the move into the cloud, including Microsoft 365. But the move is not enough - you have to train and learn how to use the new tools available. The conversation focuses on the etiquette of chat, email, video, and audio meetings - and the difference in formality between work and home uses! Ulrika also talks about the Productivity Score that M365 can provide to help IT understand how folks are using the technology so that they can provide support where needed. Links: * Microsoft Teams * Microsoft Surface Hub * Microsoft Productivity Score * Storyals

Happy New Year! A year ago Richard flew solo to talk about what IT looked like in the new decade. And then the pandemic hit and changed everything. With vaccines beginning to roll out, it's a good time to look at what 2021 is going to look like. What changes have been made in your organization, and how many of them will stay as the pandemic ends? Richard also dives into the predictions he made at the beginning of 2020, and how they look a year later. This is also the end of the Pandemic Series - thanks so much for listening!

GitHub and DevOps in 2020 with Nicole Forsgren

What can GitHub tell us about DevOps? Richard talks to Nicole Forsgren about her new role at GitHub, studying the behavior of developers (and many others) using the massive set of aggregate data that exists within GitHub. Nicole talks about expanding the annual State of the Octoverse report to dig deeply into development productivity, security, and the community of source code contributors. This opens the door to some great ideas on how operations and development can work together - and isn't that what DevOps is all about? Links: * Accelerate * DevOps Research & Assessment * State of the Octoverse * GitHub Security

COVID Christmas with Mary Jo Foley

Christmas time with COVID! Richard invites Mary Jo Foley on the show to celebrate a bit of Christmas and reflect on what a crazy year 2020 has been. Mary Jo talks about the early days of the pandemic when the tech companies sent everyone home and the challenge of keeping the internet and cloud providers working while the loads went up... it may have been a near thing! The conversation ultimately turns to gratitude for friends, family, and a great career in this industry. All the best to you and yours! Links: * All About Microsoft

PowerShell for DevOps with Rick Taylor

What role does PowerShell play in DevOps? Richard talks to Rick Taylor about his experiences building deployment pipelines for development and operations using a variety of tools, including PowerShell. Rick talks about how each tool, including PowerShell, can be the easiest solution to a given task. The conversation also turns to cross-platform deployments, where the implementations of tooling vary from platform-to-platform. PowerShell can help there too, but you do have to learn the platform you're working from! In the end, even PowerShell is just a tool, and DevOps is more about culture and process - and the conversation goes there too! Links: * Terraform * Ansible * PowerShell for macOS * PowerShell for Linux * Azure DevOps * Pester * ServiceNow

The Impact of the Pandemic on IT with Stephen Rose

A year into the pandemic - how have things changed for IT? Richard talks with Stephen Rose about his experiences working with organizations during the pandemic, from the rapid move to the cloud, facilitating work-from-home, sending all work online, and more. Stephen talks about the social changes happening at work that aren't likely to go away when the virus does. The relationship with IT has evolved also - how are we going to be different in the years to come? Links: * Office 365 MFA * Azure Power Platform

DBA DevOps using Query Store with Erin Stellato

How can Query Store help you participate in the DevOps cycle? Richard chats with Erin Stellato about the power of SQL Query Store - born out of Azure SQL, Query Store keeps a record of every unique query that is run, along with its query plan and stats. How does this help with DevOps? By providing data for DBAs to talk to developers about how to make improvements to applications that will have a real impact on customer value in the long run! Links: * Erin's Blog * Docs on SQL Server Query Store

Modern Work using Teams with Karoliina Kettukari

How has the pandemic affected work? Richard chats with Karoliina Kettukari about the concept of Modern Work and the tools that make it possible. Karoliina points out that only a year ago, the discussion was about the modern workplace - but with the pandemic, the workplace can be anywhere, and the focus is on work. The conversation digs into the role that Office 365 Teams plays in helping teams to collaborate, keep track of cooperative work, and to maintain the connection between team members! Links: * Teams

Rick Claus and Joey Snow with Gadgets for the Pandemic

What do you get an IT person for Christmas? Richard chats with Rick Claus and Joey Snow about what's on their list for Christmas - some gadgets expensive, some not so much... but all cool stuff that you could get for yourself, or put on your list for a loved one! Heck, play the show for them - we'll share the ideas directly. The best gadgets are things you'll use, but perhaps not buy for yourself because they are a bit indulgent... or maybe you just haven't thought about it. Here's to a great holiday season! Links: * iFixIt Pro Tech Toolkit * Amplifi Alien * USB Power Meter * Fizzics * UKeg Nitro * Cell Phone Stands * Smartphone UV Sanitizer * Meater * Thermoworks Mini Thermocouple Meter * Logitech Gaming Headsets * Razer BlackShark * Rode VideoMic * Kaotica Eyeball

Self-Service Passwords with Jan Bakker

How can you empower your users to change their own passwords? Richard chats with Jan Bakker about the self-service password options in Azure and Microsoft 365. With more people working from home, the usual ways of changing passwords using the help desk have gotten harder - you can't do in-person authentication! Jan talks about utilizing Azure AD and M365 features to get additional authentication methods available for users with Microsoft Authenticator, text messaging and more. Once that's set up, you have more choices to make, including allowing Microsoft's Identity Protection to recognize when a password should be changed! Links: * Microsoft Authenticator * Microsoft Identity Protection * Have I Been Pwned * Password Reset Writeback * Azure AD Authentication Options * Jan's Blog

From Documents to Lists with Lise Rasmussen

How do you keep documents alive and maintained? Make them lists! Richard chats with Lise Rasmussen about Microsoft 365 Lists, the latest versions of lists from SharePoint with lots of extensibility and templates to build up sophisticated workflows. Lise talks about not making documents since they tend to be endpoints for discussions and work - rather, make lists with views and automation so that the work continues to evolve! Links: * SharepointBabe Blog * Microsoft Forms * Power Platform * Lists in Microsoft 365 * Microsoft Planner * Microsoft To-Do * List Templates in Microsoft 365

Culture during the Pandemic with Tracy Brower

Every organization has a culture, and every culture has been affected by the pandemic. How is yours? Richard talks to Dr. Tracy Brower about how the COVID-19 Pandemic has impacted company culture. Tracy starts out talking about how most folks planned for a short pandemic and have attempted to sprint through these challenging times. But the reality is that the pandemic is a marathon, and thinking through your culture and how to strengthen the important parts of it can make for better work experiences and more successful business! Links: * Bring Work to Life by Bringing Life to Work * Daniel Pink Drive

Exchange vNext with Gareth Gudger

What's coming for Exchange? Richard talks to Gareth Gudger about all the news coming out of Ignite and beyond around Exchange server. Gareth talks about Exchange 2019 not being the last version of Exchange - there will be another on-premises version, although likely it will be an in-place upgrade, and without a year designation - call it the last version of Exchange. This leads to a conversation about folks still on-premises, staying hybrid with the cloud, and making it easier to make mail work no matter what, in the cloud or otherwise! Links: * Exchange Online PowerShell V2 * Exchange Team Blog

Deployment and Work from Home with Johan Arwidmark

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, no VPN needed. Also, Johan and Michael have built a PowerShell Extension for MDT that works over the cloud as well - check the links for more info! Links: * Configuration Manager on Azure * iPXE Anywhere * PowerShell Deployment (MDT) * Windows Autopilot * Configuration Manager Version 2006 * Deployment Research * ViaMonstra

Microsoft Office 365 FastTrack with Erica Toelle

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 advanced compliance features in Office 365! Links: * Microsoft FastTrack * Office 365 FastTrack * Office 365 Security & Compliance Center * Microsoft Trust Center * Microsoft Compliance Manager * Microsoft Information Governance in Microsoft 365 * Microsoft Information Protection * Microsoft FastTrack Documentation and Resources

Getting Active Directory Ready for Azure with Jess Dodson

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 about getting your admin accounts in order, cleaning up services accounts, modernizing onboarding and offboarding, and taking advantage of multifactor authentication. There is lots to do! Links: * Azure Sentinel * Azure Role-Based Access Control * Azure AD Privileged Identity Management * Azure Monitor * Azure Conditional Access * Local Administrator Password Solutions

Azure SQL Revealed with Bob Ward

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 Azure SQL works from the simplest of SQL Server workloads to some of the biggest hundred terabyte hyperscale servers - have a read! Links: * Pro SQL Server for Linux * SQL Server 2019 Revealed * Azure SQL Revealed * Cosmos DB * Azure PostgreSQL * Azure SQL Elastic Pools * Azure SQL Hyperscale * Azure Arc

Terraform vs Bicep/ARM with Steve Buchanan

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 features of Azure to surface in Terraform. And Microsoft is developing Bicep as a new domain-specific language for IaC over ARM as well. What do you choose? Links: * Microsoft 365 Desired State Configuration with Nik Charlebois * Terraform * Ansible * Chef * Puppet * Azure Resource Manager * Azure Cloud Shell * Azure Bicep * Pulumi

The Evolution of AI with Amy Boyd

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 and huge data sources have created conditions for some really remarkable software - and a great story! Links: * Shoe Dog * Azure Cognitive Services

From Pandemic Adaptation to Transformation with Sonia Cuff

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 new world the pandemic has brought you to. Can you go beyond surviving, and actually thrive? Links: * COVID-19 Did Not Lead Your Digital Transformation

Azure IaaS Management with Samuel Erskine

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 are not going away; keeping them organized and maintained continues to be a crucial part of the job! Links: * Sam's Books on Amazon * Sam's Blog Series on IaaS Management * Phoenix Project * Azure Analytics * Azure Update Management

IPv6 During the Pandemic with Ed Horley

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 IPv6 services. This leads to an interesting discussion on the instrumentation of IPv6 traffic for business. If you're not using IPv6 in your work network, you likely aren't watching what traffic moves across it! Links: * National Suicide Prevention Lifeline * Crisis Services Canada * Practical IPv6 for Windows Administrators * IPv6 Fundamentals 2nd Edition * IPv6 Buzz * IPv6 Deployment Stats

Getting Started in Data Science with Ayodele Odubela

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 unconsciously filtering potential customers, so knowing what bias you have in data is key - as is improving the quality of the data you collect! Visit Ayodele's web site (links below) and use the code RunAs to get a 50% discount on her book! Links: * Getting Started in Data Science * Julia Computing

The Pandemic is Not Going Away Any Time Soon and Other Stories with Lauren Malhoit

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 sharing their tales of coping in these challenging times!

Windows Exploit Protection with Chris Jackson

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 mitigations on an application-by-application basis, and with some testing around it. But if you want to make your Windows desktops more secure, these exploit protections are enormous! Links: * Enable Exploit Protection * Microsoft Security Baselines * Image File Execution Options * Enable Code Integrity * Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection * AppCompat Shims * Exploit Protection Reference

Enterprise Mobility in the Pandemic with Richard Hicks

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-service password changes with remote machines? Richard digs into the details of not being on the local network and how you can tune up your remote connectivity to bring back all the goodness! Links: * Defender Advanced Threat Protection * Always On VPN * NetMotion * Windows Autopilot * DirectAccess * Richard's Blog on Forced Tunneling

Serverless Databases with Monica Rathbun

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 potential. You need to understand the limitations as well as the benefits, but serverless SQL is a great new tool! Links: * Azure SQL Database Serverless * SQLEspresso Blog

Improving Productivity using Windows Virtual Desktop with Jen Sheerin

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 security risk and has VPN performance challenges. Windows Virtual Desktop gives you more control, more security, and more ability to keep your users working efficiently. Get the power of "any any" - any location on any device with desktop virtualization! Links: * Windows Virtual Desktop * Azure Active Directory * Azure ExpressRoute * Windows 10 Enterprise Multi-Session * Windows Virtual Desktop for Windows 7 * FSLogix

Security Beyond the Edge with Ned Pyle

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! In the end, you can make your security much deeper and difficult to exploit. Links: * SMB1 Product Clearinghouse * IT Ops Talk Blog * Beyond the Edge * SMB over QUIC * Interception Attack Protections * UNC Hardening Group Policy * Windows Hello for Business * Kerberos Armoring * ADSecurity * Passwordless Strategy

Compassion During the Pandemic with April Wensel

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 compassion in our lives, for ourselves, family, neighbors, co-workers, and the world. Links: * Practicing Compassion During a Pandemic * Jane Goodall on the Pandemic

From SCCM to Intune and Back with Greg Shields

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 organization's needs! Links: * Configuration Manager * Service Manager * Intune * Greg's Pluralsight Courses * Internet-Based Client Management * Azure VPN * Windows Autopilot

Incident Response During the Pandemic with Julie Gunderson

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, most importantly, the post mortem. The pandemic just makes it harder - communication is remote, documentation is essential, trusting your people is critical. We'll get through this! Links: * PagerDuty * J Paul Reed

SQL Server Tooling with Vicky Harp

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 Server Management Studio * Azure Data Studio * Jupyter Notebooks * Microsoft Azure Notebooks * MS SQL CLI * SQL CMD * SQL PowerShell * Azure Data Studio on Twitter

Snarking About the Cloud with Corey Quinn

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 services can help, but understanding how you are using cloud technology is critical. Lift and shift is not enough!

Becoming Ansible with Josh Duffney

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 deployment of applications and resources easy, reliable, and powerful. If you're coming from the Windows world and trying to learn Ansible, this is the book for you!

Remote Support with Jessica Deen

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 you're supporting is incredibly valuable! Ultimately effective remote support comes down to understanding the person battling the issue and working with them - like working locally, only harder!

Bringing Your Teams Together using Teams with Tracy van der Schyff

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 and Windows Update with Dave Backman

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 Update Server, into InTune and Windows Update for Business.

How Black Hats Profit with Paula Januszkiewicz

How do criminal hackers make money hacking? Richard chats with Paula Januszkiewicz about the methods used by criminals to steal money through various exploits. Whether its ransomware or taking control of your Facebook account long enough to ask for money in your name, there are a lot of possibilities. As long as there is money to be made, the hacks will continue. Increasing your security doesn't make you immune, it just makes things more expensive for the black hats. Perhaps expensive enough that they stop?

Protecting Hard Drives using BitLocker and MBAM with Julie Andreacola

You sent machines home during the pandemic - are the drives encrypted? Richard talks to Microsoft Premier Field Engineer Julie Andreacola about BitLocker and the various management tools needed to make BitLocker work for you and your organization. Julie talks about the need for PCs that have modern TPM chips - BitLocker will work without them, but life is much better with, especially in recovery. The conversation then turns to management, including Azure AD, InTune, and MBAM. Any combination of those tools can help you provide keys when BitLocker goes into Recovery mode. Keep your drives safe, even when they are remote!

ARM Templates at Scale with Pierre Roman

ARM Templates are awesome - but what happens when they get big? Richard chats with Pierre Roman on the Cloud Advocates team at Microsoft about how ARM Templates are evolving to help you manage them when they get more sophisticated. Pierre talks about all the challenging bits of scaling ARM Templates, including modularizing, testing, and using source control. Your infrastructure-as-code is code, and it needs care and feeding to be as good as it can be, especially as things get more complex!

Pandemic Productivity with Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick

How is your productivity during the pandemic? And the folks you work with? Richard talks to Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick, authors of Agile Conversations, about how to improve productivity during the pandemic. The conversation turns to how we measure productivity in the first place, and why we were happy with our productivity before the pandemic. Squirrel and Jeffrey talk about being comfortable with how things were - and now that no one is all that comfortable, how do we rethink work, trust, confidence and productivity!

Enterprise Class WiFi Security with Avril Salter

How secure is your office Wi-Fi? Richard chats with Dr. Avril Salter about using enterprise security features in Wi-Fi. The conversation starts out focused on WPA2-Enterprise, using RADIUS servers and protocols like CHAP and PEAP. It may be more complicated to set up, but once running, you have far more control over who can be on your Wi-Fi. Avril talks about creating separate SSIDs for secure corporate devices, BYOD devices, a guest network, and a legacy network. Yeah, four SSIDs! Next up - WPA3, with even better default security features!

Genomic-Scale Cloud Data Analysis Pipelines with Lynn Langit

There is big data, and then there is genomic-scale. Richard talks to Lynn Langit about her work in large scale data analytics around the pandemic. Lynn talks about the terabytes of data involved in doing genetic analysis and the pipeline needed to move and organize that data. It takes a cloud - you need a huge amount of compute in relatively small bursts, as well as massive amounts of storage. And in the end, you get probabilistic results - nothing is ever absolutely certain! But the experiences happening today in genomic-scale research point to amazing data analytics capabilities for everyone in the future.

Understanding Cloud Performance Issues with Lori Mac Vittie

There are performance issues in the cloud? Lori Mac Vittie says yes! Richard chats with Lori about how just buying more cloud might increase capacity - but not performance. This leads to a conversation about performance even is - and what it means to the users of your apps. Ultimately, the same diagnostic challenges we had before the cloud come into play - bottlenecks exist within software and need to be improved. Might be code, might be data architecture - it takes a group effort to understand and improve!

Securing Your New Cloud with Dana Epp

You've moved to the cloud - you're secure, right? Richard chats with Dana Epp about what you should be doing to secure your cloud services in Azure. Dana talks about how the default settings for Azure services tend toward making them easy to use and inexpensive. But it also leaves you potentially vulnerable - logging is turned off, for example. The conversation turns to tools like Azure Advisor helping you lock down your services better and having a clear view of who is using your services, as well as who is attacking you. Microsoft secures the cloud, you secure your cloud services!

Automating Workflows using Power Automate with Sandy Ussia

Ready to automate? Richard chats with Sandy Ussia about Power Automate, formerly known as Flow (although the term flow is never far away). But Power Automate is exactly what you think it is - a no-code/low-code solution to providing automation in Azure between Office 365 and a whole host of other platforms including Google, Salesforce, and so on. Sandy talks about the array of templates that already exist for Automate, so that rarely do you need to start from scratch - there's always a template for your idea that can at least get you started. And the Starter Kit helps you get started right, with good governance!

Coronavirus Threats to Office 365 with Susan Bradley

The Black Hats are targeting your users' fears - are you prepared? Richard talks with Susan Bradley about the focus of attackers on COVID-19 topics. Susan talks about how many security exploits depend on convincing users to click on something they shouldn't. You can train to resist those clicks, but nothing is ever perfect. The question is, what happens next? The conversation digs into multifactor authentication, resisting lateral security breaks, and more. You can keep your remote workers secure!

Managing Your Hybrid Cloud using Azure Arc with Thomas Maurer

We all have a hybrid cloud solution - how do you manage it? Richard chats with Thomas Maurer about Azure Arc, a tool in the Azure suite for managing virtual machines, Kubernetes clusters, and data services in Azure, your on-premises servers, even other cloud providers! Thomas talks about how IT folks end up with an array of tools for managing servers depending on the location and how Azure Arc ends that. Arc provides location-independent access to all your resources, and it's in preview now, so free to use (although you may have to pay for additional Log Analytics data)... check it out!

Tuning Home WiFi with Ryan Woodings

You've got everyone working from home - how is their WiFi holding up? After the initial rush to get folks working from home, there's the need to work effectively from home. Having bandwidth and connectivity problems seriously impacts productivity. Richard talks to Ryan Woodings, the CEO of MetaGeek about getting WiFi working well. MetaGeek has made products for tuning enterprise WiFi for years, but the need for getting better performance out of home WiFi has had them refocusing on different tools - including the free inSSIDer WiFi analysis tool!

Unifying Structured and Unstructured Data using Azure Synapse with Jen Stirrup

What can Azure Synapse do for you? Richard chats with Jen Stirrup about Microsoft's Azure Synapse Analytics. Jen talks about how most companies have structured and unstructured data, typically stored in different locations. If you're all in on Azure, you have an Azure Data Warehouse for structured data ready for analytics as well as an Azure Data Lake that holds your unstructured data. Azure Synapse brings those two data sources together, along with other SQL data sources, to help you do comprehensive analytics. The conversation turns to the idea of answering business questions as opposed to exploring business mysteries - both are valuable, but need different tools and techniques!

Preparing Your Office for Return-to-Work with Cynthia Milota

Are you ready to have employees back in the office? As part of the Pandemic Series, Richard talks to Cynthia Milota about what preparations need to be made for using office space during the pandemic. In some places in the world, the initial wave of the pandemic has passed and the number of cases stabilized. Where authorized, folks can go back to the office - but with certain restrictions. What makes sense for your office? Can you maintain physical distance? How much cleaning is required? How do you give the staff the confidence that working from the office is safe?

The Windows Cycle with Paul Thurrott

Two old guys bicker about Windows! Richard chats with Paul Thurrott about the current state of Windows Desktop, and the cycles that keep recurring - put more things into Windows, then take them out. Update more frequently, then less frequently. Client software deployment problems - use the web instead. Web doesn't have enough features, build more client apps. There are lots of cycles around Windows, which ones affect you?

Business Email Compromise with Niall Merrigan

How do you stop the company email from being compromised? Richard talks to Niall Merrigan about the sophisticated level of hacks going on in business email. Niall describes how business email systems get compromised, typically through a weak password, then monitored to understand the business well enough to inject email in to steal money or compromise the business. In these challenging times, no one can afford this - and multifactor authentication and strong confirmation policies can help!

Windows Terminal 1.0 with Kayla Cinnamon

Windows Terminal 1.0 is shipped! Richard talks to Kayla Cinnamon about the open-source project that is Windows Terminal. The conversation starts with a bit of a history lesson on updating the Windows Command Prompt - and why it turned out to be a bad idea. Folks depended on the exact behavior of the command prompt so heavily that any changes broke things and spread sadness. But what if you could start over? Windows Terminal brings together all the things you never knew you wanted in a terminal client, as well as a bunch of features you definitely knew you wanted. Check it out!

Virtual Desktop for Work at Home with Grant Becker

Could Windows Virtual Desktop be your organization's Work-From-Home solution? Another episode in the Pandemic Series, Richard talks to Grant Becker about the latest version of Microsoft's virtual desktop tools. Grant talks about Windows Virtual Desktop as Remote Desktop Services in Azure - you have a minimal installation on the workstation, all of the security policies live in the Azure-hosted virtual machines that run your templates. And it works on mobile devices as well! While certainly a useful solution during the pandemic, WVD could be a common way to work going forward!

Data Governance in 2020 with Susan Hanley

How robust is the data governance in your organization? Richard talks to Susan Hanley about the various elements that go into data governance, starting with having a plan! Depending on what your organization does, there can be a huge array of rules on how to collect, retain, and delete data. Then comes the challenge step of actually following those rules! Susan talks about the latest generation of tools available to make sure you're consolidating and deleting data when you should. Good data governance keeps a company safe and relevant!

It's Show 700! Richard brings his friend Jeremy Moskowitz on to celebrate making 700 episodes of RunAs. The conversation spans the history of the show, the evolution of Windows, the challenges of the pandemic and how Group Policy can fix everything - check out the webinar that Richard and Jeremy did together at https://www.policypak.com/runas - and thanks for listening!

Getting Value from Unstructured Data with Seth Juarez

How do you get value from the unstructured data in your organization? Richard chats with Seth Juarez about the array of AI-related services that Microsoft makes today to help understand all kinds of data in your organization. Seth talks about machine learning in general, and how Microsoft has built various cognitive services that can be applied to Azure Cognitive Search to help dig deeper into any kind of document, images, PDFs, and more - and understand them! The conversation digs into what can be extracted, how you can utilize the data, and even how to plug that revealed information into standard analytics tools like PowerBI!

Database Administration During a Crisis with Brent Ozar

Databases are important during a crisis - how are yours? Richard talks to Brent Ozar about how the pandemic has effected workloads for databases and DBAs. While some businesses have wound-down during the crisis, many are busier than ever. How do you scale on short notice? What if bigger hardware isn't readily available? Even large cloud database instances are somewhat limited today, so clever techniques have to be found to keep things running. Brent also digs into the maintenance side of things - it's a great time to do the preventative work you always meant to do!

WireShark in 2020 with Laura Chappell

WireShark has evolved - are you using the latest? Richard talks to Laura Chappell about her on-going efforts to teach IT folks more about what is happening in their network and how you can understand and improve it! Since the last time Laura was on the show (ten years ago!) the role of WireShark has changed. Today there are great capture tools for understanding the vast amount of network traffic produced in your organization, and WireShark helps to dissect the interesting bits, both from a security perspective and performance!

Cybersecurity During the Pandemic with Ann Johnson

Even during a pandemic, the bad actors are out there. Richard talks to Ann Johnson, Corporate VP for Cybersecurity at Microsoft about the security activity going on during this unusual time. Ann points out that there isn't necessarily an increase in attacks, but that the attacks are targeting the pandemic, using phishing strategies around COVID-19 and preying on people's fears. The conversation turns to all the things we meant to push out for security, like multi-factor authentication and password manager, as even more important today.

WiFi using Ubiquiti with Daniel Piessens

What's your WiFi network solution? Richard chats with Daniel Piessens about the Ubiquiti UniFi WiFi devices available today. What started as a straight WiFi provider has evolved into a more sophisticated networking set up with switches, gateways, security devices, and more. But its the software around the UniFi products that really makes things interesting. Daniel talks about the frustrating parts of UniFi as well as the fun stuff. Looking for a WiFi set up for home or small business, have a listen!

Business Continuity with Sonia Cuff

How's your business continuity? As part of the Pandemic Series, Richard talks to Sonia Cuff about the role of IT in business continuity. As Sonia says, the first word there is BUSINESS. And we're all part of making a business work, so you need to engage with business leadership around what continuity looks like for your organization. Backups are not enough! The conversation also dives into the fact that business continuity is not just about outages - productivity plays a part as well. Helping staff that are new to working from home get more productivity, providing mechanisms for making work and progress visible; all these things are about business continuity. And any improvements here benefit the business today and in the world beyond the pandemic!

Windows Autopilot with Michael Niehaus

Are your PC deployments on Autopilot? Richard talks to Michael Niehaus about Windows Autopilot, which offers a centralized way to deploy to PCs, both remotely and on-premises. Michael talks about getting away from the double-shipping approach of provisioning new PCs, where you as an IT person have to receive a machine, load it up, then ship it out to the employee that is using it. With Autopilot you identify new PCs to your hardware provider using your Azure Tenant ID. Then you specify your configuration information so that when the machine powers up and connects to the Internet, it knows how to provision itself. There are also services for resetting machines and de-provisioning them at end-of-life!

VPNs in the Pandemic with Richard Hicks

Next up in the Pandemic Series - how is your VPN? Richard talks to Richard Hicks about the vast increase in demand for VPN services as employees work from home en masse. For many businesses, VPNs were an exception case, with relatively few users. When everyone needs to use it, can the infrastructure hold up? Richard talks about configuration issues that can limit the scalability of your VPN, what workloads can be offloaded from the VPN entirely, and how sometimes its easier to build out a new infrastructure for connectivity than to revise the existing one.

Cloud Adoption Framework with Evelyn Padrino

Are you ready to move to the cloud? Richard talks to Evelyn Padrino about the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework. Evelyn describes how Microsoft has been collecting knowledge from all the past cloud migrations to build out a framework to make it easier to do the right thing moving workloads to the cloud. The conversation digs into all the preparations that need to be made before anything gets moved, and how to move the right things the right way. And it's not just about Lift-and-Shift, but also how you modernization, monitor, and make your infrastructure better!

Office 365 Governance for Work From Home with Martina Grom

How are you managing everyone working from home? Second in the Pandemic Series, Richard talks to Martina Grom about the challenges around maintaining security and productivity with entire workforces doing their jobs from home. Office 365 does offer some powerful options for security, including the Azure Information Protection services that can restrict the copying of files and limit lifetimes on access. Modernizing security using password managers and authentication helps also - this is not the time for information breaches!

Microsoft 365 Desired State Configuration with Nik Charlebois

How do you keep the configuration of your Microsoft 365 resources consistent? Richard talks to Microsoft Premier Field Engineer Nik Charlebois about the evolution of Desired State Configuration. Nik talks about how his old open source project called ReverseDSC has become a part of the new Microsoft365DSC - giving you the ability to extract all the configuration and policy details from the various elements of your Microsoft 365 tenant. And once you have that file, you can compare it against other templates of Microsoft 365 tenants and apply it if you need to. Nik talks about the power of knowing exactly when your configuration gets changed for any reason, and the options available to react to that change!

Bandwidth in the Pandemic with Cameron Fuller

The first of the Pandemic series - how's your bandwidth? Richard talks to Cameron Fuller about some of the issues IT folks are dealing with during the pandemic. With most employees working from home, the bandwidth available to those employees is essential. And most likely, there's more than one person at home that needs that bandwidth - do they have enough? Does it make sense for IT to get involved in configuring networks in employee homes to provide bandwidth shaping with QoS? What about other bandwidth options like MiFi access points? Cameron explores several options and ideas you can add to your list of things to do to keep employees productive in this challenging time!

Terraform with Jennelle Crothers

What is Terraform, and why should you use it? Richard chats with Jennelle Crothers about HashiCorp's open source project called Terraform, providing configuration-as-code solutions for building out Azure infrastructure. As Jennelle describes it, this is code for racking-and-stacking Azure resources: Defining your virtual machines (or containers), wiring them up with networking, and so on. You could do it with Azure ARM, but do you want that much JSON in your life? Jennelle talks about the Azure Provider for Terraform and how it transforms the easy-to-read code of Terraform into Azure objects. But that code is still unique to Azure, don't expect to use your same Terraform scripts with other cloud providers.

Azure DevOps for Ops with Michael Levan

DevOps involves a whole organization - but what can Ops do to facilitate DevOps? Richard chats with Michael Levan about the role of Ops in the DevOps evolution of an organization. Michael talks about the need for culture change to make your DevOps practices successful, but at the same time, tools have gotten dramatically better. The conversation turns to Azure DevOps as an overarching tool for dealing with the continuous integration and continuous deployment of software for your organization. There are lots more tools needed and Michael gives time to many of them - but Azure DevOps is a great place to start!

Migrating from Server 2008 to Server 2019 with Sonia Cuff

Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 went out of support as of January 14, 2020. Now what? Richard talks to Sonia Cuff about what your options are to deal with your Windows 2008 Servers. The conversation dives into all the great things that have been added to Server in the past twelve years, and the various options to have to upgrade. Starting with - should you upgrade? Sonia talks about building new VMs for roles like DHCP, DNS and Active Directory - and shifting workloads gradually. There are lots of great examples online! Sonia also digs into the power of Windows Admin Center to painlessly migrate file storage roles - and improve server management as a whole!

Exchange in 2020 with Gareth Gudger

If you care about mail, there are important things coming in 2020! Richard chats with Gareth Gudger about recent announcements from Microsoft that will have an impact on email both on-premises and in the cloud. First up is the end of Basic Authentication to Exchange Online this fall - old mail clients are going to break, time to upgrade! Next is the end of TLS 1.0 and 1.1 support - more client challenges! Gareth talks about upgrading, contracting out and other solutions for the on-going efforts to increase security to mail.

From DBA to Data Analyst to Data Scientist with Ginger Grant

What does it take to become a data scientist? Richard chats with Ginger Grant about her experience talking to DBAs about getting into data analysis and data science. The conversation starts out describing the difference between analysis and science - Ginger describes analysts as using querying to generate dynamic reports in tools like PowerBI. Data science is all about algorithms. But either way, your knowledge of data and domain are key skills. You have an advantage as a working DBA, add some additional knowledge to your existing knowledge and experience to expand your career!

Information Technology in the Time of Pandemic

How does IT Pros do their jobs during a pandemic? It may sound like an April Fools Day joke, but it's not. The Covid-19 pandemic is having a significant impact on how we work and play. Richard flies solo again to talk through various aspects of IT during the pandemic, including various efforts needed to help employees work from home, communicate effectively and maintain important operations. This is a time all about business continuity - how can you keep people productive and safe? We can get through this together!

Teams as an Intranet with Stephanie Donahue

Teams in Office 365 is a hit - but should it be your intranet? Richard talks with Stephanie Donahue about the role that Teams can play in your organization. More than chat, teams is an effective collaboration tool, and a way to store and share institutional knowledge - how decisions are made, what roles people have in those decisions. Is it the first place you should look when you come into work in the morning? Probably. Is it the perfect place for everything in your organization? Stephanie says no - but it can be part of the solution!

Protecting Your Organization using Azure Sentinel with Paul Keely

What is Azure Sentinel, and how can it help protect your organization? Richard chats with Paul Keely about Azure Sentinel, a set of tools that provide Security Information Event Management (SIEM) and Security Orchestration Automated Response (SOAR). Paul talks about going beyond the firewall, into the analysis of behavior within your systems, including Office 365, Azure and more - and using machine learning, being able to detect what unusual behavior looks like and automatically respond to it.

Data Governance and Power BI with Melissa Coates

Power BI is a hit! Now what? Richard chats with Melissa Coates about the challenges of applying data governance to analytics tools like Power BI. Melissa describes various aspects of data governance, including security, organization/classification, documentation of data and education - you need training to understand the rules and responsibilities of data in an organization. If every company is a software company, then we're all data stewards as well!

Office 365 Intelligent Substrate with Jeffrey Snover

What's an intelligent substrate? Richard chats with Microsoft Technical Fellow Jeffrey Snover about his new role in Office 365. About a year ago Jeff changed jobs and jumped into one of the biggest, oldest (and most profitable) teams at Microsoft: Office. Today Office is totally cloud-focused, and Jeff talks about the intelligent substrate, a NoSQL data store that contains everything related to Office 365, including documents, spreadsheets, SharePoint lists, email... everything. This allows artificial intelligence technology to find relationships within that data to provide more value to companies using Office 365 - lots of value!

Managing CosmosDB with Deborah Chen

How do you manage CosmosDB? Richard chats with Deborah Chen from the CosmosDB team about what it takes to care and feed the cloud-based NoSQL data storage solution. Deborah talks about the advantages of not having to manage the infrastructure of storage, with replication and fail-over solutions integrated into CosmosDB from the start - as well as at-rest and in-transmission encryption always on! The management tools are pretty straightforward too, with thorough logging and diagnostics tools integrated into Azure. CosmosDB can make your life simpler!

Operations Runbooks in Octopus Deploy with Michael Richardson

How can a deployment tool make your disaster recovery process easier? Richard chats with Michael Richardson of Octopus Deploy about Operations Runbooks. Octopus Deploy handles deployments very effectively, and with Runbooks, you can expand that functionality to include all sorts of other related processes, like backing up and restoring data, running failover scripts and more. Through deployment, Octopus already knows where all your resources live and the rights they need, making it easy to expand your automation over all sorts of disaster recovery needs!

Passwordless Authentication with Libby Brown

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 available before you can consider turning off passwords - but it is possible!

Inspiring Your Team to Learn with Don Jones

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!

Writing Good T-SQL in 2020 with Pam Lahoud and Pedro Lopes

Links: * SQL Server 2019 * Query Tuning Assistant * Learn T-SQL Querying * Azure SQL Database * SQL Workshops

Azure Sphere in 2020 with James Scott

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!

From SharePoint to PowerApps with Christina Wheeler

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 - all that can be integrated together with the Power Platform. SharePoint still plays a role, but evolved!

SQL Questions and Answers at SQL Intersection Fall 2019

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!

The Next Decade in IT

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 in new ways we may not have considered. Your fundamental skills are still useful and important - keep improving them!

Azure Data Share with Joanna Podgoetsky

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.

MLOps with Damian Brady

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!

Python and SQL Server with Julie Smith

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 analytics and visualization!

The Unicorn Project with Gene Kim

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!

Infrastructure as Code using Ansible with Josh Duffney

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.

The Evolution of Collaboration with Heather Newman

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!

Microsoft 365 with Stephen Rose

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 workstation - check it out!

DevOps for DBAs with Kendra Little

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!

Managing Groups and Teams in Office 365 with Tony Redmond

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 used, but when do you need governance to make sure it isn't over-used?

Azure Governance with Phoummala Schmitt

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 to get things right!

Secure Deployment with Mikael Nyström

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!

Office 365 Security and Compliance with Erica Toelle

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!

SysInternals with Sami Laiho

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 it some of his best work!

Securing Your Cloud with Paula Januszkiewicz

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 your organization!

Mobile Device Management in 2019 with Jeremy Moskowitz

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!

DORA 2019 with Nicole Forsgren and Dustin Smith

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, take a look!