RunAs Radio

Richard chats with Michael Nygard about the concept of resilience in the IT world. Michael starts out the conversation talking about what resilience really is - do your systems keep working even when things aren't working perfectly? Or are they brittle, where one problem takes the whole system down. The conversation broadens to more of a DevOps conversation, since ultimately resiliency involves everyone that builds, tests, operates and uses software. And then Michael goes a step further - is your team, processes and organization resilient?

Steve Evans makes a return visit to the show to talk a little DevOps. The conversation starts out with the work he's currently doing with a bio-tech company, and how the little changes their making to their processes are affected overall productivity to the better. You don't have to call it DevOps, you can just call it 'doing your work more effectively.' The conversation digs into the automation side of things as well as how you to gradually move your culture and processes into a faster, more reliable and higher quality lifestyle. DevOps doesn't happen over night!

Richard chats with fellow Canadian Aaron Bertrand about his work with SQL Server. Aaron starts out the conversation with a mention around SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 coming out of primary tech support and the push to get one last service pack out for both versions. You can contribute to that discussion at the Microsoft Connect site. Aaron also discusses some of the nasty bad practices he's found in supposedly 'good' databases - like dates in strings! We all know better, but are we actually doing better? Time to poke around your database for the truth!

Richard catches up with Tony Redmond on all things Exchange. The conversation starts out talking about the fact that Exchange 2013 has a service pack, even though there have been quarterly cumulative updates - in reality, Exchange 2013 SP1 is really cumulative update 4 (CU4). Tony digs into what it takes to install these updates, the fact that testing continues to be not optional - it's your mail system, just because it's tested in Exchange Online doesn't mean it won't have problems in your configuration. The discussion also digs into some of the key features in CU4, including MAPI over HTTP and the simplified DAGs. Exchange continues to evolve!

Richard chats with Microsoft PFE Kurt Falde about the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET). It might be a weak name, but it's an amazing set of tools - a whole different way of defending a workstation from malware exploits. Kurt dives into how EMET can lock down PCs in a standardized way, including controlling specific SSL certificates for key web sites. But the bulk of the focus of EMET is on protecting software from changes by malware. Rather than using fingerprint matching the way typical anti-virus software works, EMET tracks known-good states of common software and stops changes to them from happening - an effective strategy for zero-day exploits!

Richard talks to Jeremy Thake about the move of Sharepoint into the Cloud. The conversation starts off with a bit of a history lesson and how Sharepoint has taken a few twists and turns along the way offering different programming models, and really struggling with what it is actually good at. Jeremy discusses how moving Sharepoint to the Cloud is really about shaking off some of the baggage of the past to focus on the core goodness in Sharepoint. It's not just about paying by the user, it's also about reinforcing good governance in Sharepoint. Whether you're moving to the cloud or not, Jeremy has some great thoughts about creating sustainable Sharepoint environments.

Richard talks to Gene Kim about his experiences in DevOps - the research he's done on high performing IT teams, and how that knowledge has evolved into what we now know as DevOps. Gene mention's John Willis' blog post on The Convergence of DevOps as a great explanation of why DevOps is happening now. Beyond The Phoenix Project, Gene and a team of luminaries are working on the DevOps CookBook, to catalog and codify the practices of a high performing DevOps team.

Back with Minasi! Richard chats with Mark Minasi about the end of XP... coming in April of 2014! The discussion rapidly turns to a history lesson about the evolution of Windows, the bumps that led to Vista, the fix that was Windows 7, and the concern around Windows 8... and what about Windows 9? As with any conversation with Mark, the discussion ranges all over the topic space!

Richard chats with Matt Wrock about the power of boxstarter.org for building and configuring PCs quickly. The conversation starts out talking about what Boxstarter can do for you - automate the installation of software and patches. Boxstarter depends on Chocolatey and PowerShell 2. Everything is public, if you'd like a private version, you should check out MyGet for a private configuration. Check it out!

So how do you learn? Richard talks to Kim Tripp about technology learning. The conversation starts out with responsibility for learning - what is the role of the learner (typically an employee), and the company? Who pays for what? What is the commitment to provide value for everyone involved? And how do you learn? How does instructor-led training compare to a video course, or a conference? Kim and Richard share their experiences teaching, leading and learning.