RunAs Radio

Richard chats with Dana Epp about multi-factor authentication. The conversation starts out with some definition around multi-factor authentication - something you know and something you have. Most of the time, the thing you know is your user name and password. Dana digs into authenticating using the most common thing you have, the smartphone. Tools like Twilio can help you bring text messaging to your system. Beyond the phone, there are dedicated devices like YubiKey that provide a different thing you have. The battle of better identity has been going on for some time, Dana mentions Dick Hart's amazing identity keynote from Oscon 2005.

While at Tech Ed US in Houston, Richard chatted with Paula Januszkiewicz about the current state of system security. Paula talks about a new wave of exploits aimed at administrators, taking advantage of their elevated privileges to spread malware into systems. The conversation also digs into more subtle exploits, and the ability of black hats to cover their tracks by modifying logs to hide their actions. Listen also for a quick discussion on passwords and multi-factor authentication. Things are getting better!

While at Tech Ed 2014, Richard chat with John Craddock about the latest incarnation of Active Directory Federation Services - don't call it version three, it's the Windows Server 2012 R2 version! John discusses some of the new features of ADFS, including it's integration with oAuth2 to allow a more lightweight approach to authentication, authorization and federation. Lots of great thinking from one of the best minds in identity!

While at Tech Ed 2014 in Houston, Richard chats with Jeremy Moskowitz about group policy in Windows 8. Jeremy talks about his session at Tech Ed called Group Policy Notes from the Field which focuses on how group policy is often unfairly blamed for performance problems. Check out the video and watch for a link at the end of it to get access to the performance tools that Jeremy uses! The conversation also digs into PolicyPak, the tools Jeremy and his team have built to allow group policy to apply to third party products like FireFox. And the latest incarnation works in the cloud against non-domain-joined machines!

It's the Questions and Answers from SQL Intersection in Orlando! Richard moderates a panel of the usual suspects: Kim Tripp, Paul Randal, Brent Ozar and occasional contributions from some of the SQL Team, Kendra Little, Jeremiah Pesha and more! Lots of discussion around virtualization, different recovery and fail over strategies, the infamous heap-vs-clustering debate, using SSDs with SQL Server... the list goes on. It's a long show, but a good one!

Richard talks to Damian Flynn about Windows Azure Pack for Windows Server and Service Management Automation. Big confusing names for a really simple concept - how do we bring self-service to the users of our infrastructure? The discussion starts out around the idea of service management automation, using tools to make your IT systems more service-centric, allowing people to provision and utilize infrastructure on demand. This leads to a conversation on Windows Azure Pack for Windows Server (WAP) - terrible name, but accurate. WAP is all about making Microsoft Azure tooling available in your own infrastructure. While it can stand on it's own, WAP also works well with various components of System Center including Configuration Manager, Operations Manager, Virtual Machine Manager and Orchestrator. This looks to be the best way to bring self-service to your company!

Richard chats with Microsoft PFE Mike O'Neill about his work with customers using large scale Exchange sites. Mike is one of the contributors to You had Me at EHLO, the Exchange team blog site. The conversation digs into how Exchange 2013 is the most Powershell-centric version of Exchange yet... you really need to know it! Mike talks about the efficiency and scriptability of Exchange and Powershell, as well as the migration path from Exchange on-premise to Exchange in the Cloud.

Recorded in front of a live audience at SQL Intersection in Orlando, Florida, this panel discussion focuses on the new features in SQL 2014. The panelists are all Microsoft engineering folks, deeply involved in creating SQL 2014. The discussion does NOT focus on Hekaton, but rather all the other cool performance and reliability enhancements coming in SQL 2014. Okay, there's a little Hekaton.

Hot off of last week's news about Heartbleed, Richard talks to Troy Hunt about the size and scope of the problem. Heartbleed is the cool name (and logo) given to a weakness in the OpenSSL library. The news has been hyped, but the exploit is real and there's really no way to know what data has been compromised. And if you don't run OpenSSL on your servers, do you know what your networking gear runs? After you're done listening to the show, check out Troy's awesome blog post on Heartbleed and do some checks on your systems. You'll be glad you did!

Richard chats with Aidan Finn about the Scale-Out File Server features of Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 R2. Aidan digs into a bunch of the improvements that have come with Windows Server 2012 R2, including SMB 3.0., which opens the door to dramatic network speed advantages for such things as live VM migration. But it also impacts how we do file sharing, and Aidan digs deep into the new features in Storage Spaces and Scale-Out File Servers. Looks like you'll want the latest version!