RunAs Radio

Does it matter what virtualization technology you use? Richard chats with Greg Shields, one of the few folks out there with certifications in Microsoft's Hyper-V, VMWare's vSphere and Citrix Xen about the relatively merits of the stacks. Turns out, they're pretty close together, at least when it comes to virtualization. But the conversation goes deeper into the instrumentation - how do you know that you have the right loads on the right hardware? Can you make your own cloud effectively - it's got more to do with architecture than operating systems, as it turns out. Greg focuses in on the way you understand your systems as the true differentiator today!

What does your security plan look like? Richard chats with Dana Epp about the ever increasing attack surface of our organizations and the ongoing battle to provide better tools and techniques to keep the lights on. Hackers are getting more clever, even hacking cars - how do you keep up? Dana talks through a series of policy approaches to deal with the reality that you are going to be breached, but how to you detect the breach and limit the damage caused? Check out Dana's article on credential theft for even more ideas!

There are lots of reasons to instrument your apps in production - but one of the most powerful is to understand how your users actually use your apps. Richard talks to Andreas Grabner of DynaTrace about the variety of instrumentation approaches possible for applications - some driven by operations, and some by development. But everyone in the organization can benefit from a deeper understanding of how applications are used. Andreas talks about the diversity of metrics that can be taken, from your typical ecommerce financial metrics, to performance metrics, to reliability and scalability. There's a lot to measure!

Well, that's it - ARIN is out of IPv4 addresses. Richard chats with Ed Horley who has been warning of this day for a number of years now. So what does it really mean? No, the internet isn't going to stop working. Ed talks about how much IPv6 is already going on - some ISPs have double-digit adoption already! And certain marketplaces need it the most, such as smartphones. There are billions of smartphones, and the Internet of Things looks to bring many more billions of devices online as well... we need IPv6! The time is now!

Windows 10 has shipped - but has it really, really shipped? Richard chats with Paul Thurrott about his take on Microsoft's on-going efforts to get the operating system just right. After some history discussion about how Windows 10 came to be, from Vista on up, Paul digs into the truth of the matter - Windows 10 isn't quite done yet, it's fine for consumers, but IT Pros need to look carefully. It's a powerful operating system that alongside the upcoming Server 2016 should be able to take infrastructure to the next level, which Paul says is hybrid cloud. But there's still more to come, so watch close!

Docker is coming to Windows and it's going to be huge! Richard chats with Taylor Brown of the Windows Core Virtualization team about the new Windows Server containers coming in Server 2016. With the TP3 release of Server 2016, you can start experimenting with Windows Containers! The discussion also focuses on the upcoming Hyper-V Containers, and the differences and reasoning behind having two different types of containers. Taylor digs into the focus on configuration-as-code for containers, so that automation becomes the default approach to any container based deployment. This looks to be the future of virtualization!

So where is remote access going these days? Richard talks to Richard Hicks about Microsoft DirectAccess and more. Recognizing that VPNs don't make people happy, Richard Hicks talks about how DirectAccess did a good job of making remote connectivity seamless and invisible - at the price of being a challenge to set up in the first place. Having your remote access roles as isolated VMs in your network has distinct advantages! However, the domain join requirement is a significant limitation, and one that Microsoft is working to overcome with Microsoft inTune and the cloud. Remote access continues to evolve!

Have you looked at everything available in an Office 365 subscription? It's easy to stop at Exchange or SharePoint online, but what about the services side of Office 365 including OneDrive for Business and Azure Active Directory Applications. Office 365 is more than just the Office suite in the cloud, there are APIs available to allow developer to build mash-up style applications that integrate with Exchange, SharePoint (both on-prem and cloud) as well as a huge number of third party applications. Jeremy Thake walks through the opportunities for doing overall application installation management from Office 365 - not just Microsoft apps!

So how interesting can power management be? More than you might believe! Richard chats with Microsoft PM Joao Botto about how Surface has taken power management to a new level. While it's easy to just think about power management as a tool to reduce company power consumption over night, when you get into the tablet space, it's also about conserving battery life. Joao talks about Connected Standby mode, which utilizes hardware, drivers, operating system and software together to minimize power consumption while still being able to receive notifications about updates, messages and more! This is some next generation power management!

Ready to manage Azure from the command line? While at That Conference in Wisconsin Dells, Richard chatted with Brian Lewis about the PowerShell support available for Azure. Every command and more available in the Azure GUI Dashboard works from PowerShell. Brian talks about the advantages of using scripting to control Azure, creating repeatable, consistent execution plans through scripts for all sorts of configuration changes, including creating new VMs, configuring networking and activating services. Don't use a Word doc to set up your Azure apps - use PowerShell!