RunAs Radio

Richard chats with David Jones about identity security. The conversation starts out talking about the wonders of Single Sign On, followed by the horrors - the security exploits that can and do occur. David sites the Mandiant Security Report for more info on the exploits taking place. From there, David talks about using multi-factor authentication and the potential risks, as per the xckd on security. As we get more serious about managing identity, the idea of outsourcing to companies like PingIdentity is discussed. What's the best way to get identity right?

Richard chats with Mickey Gousset about System Center Orchestrator 2012. Mickey talks about the role orchestrator plays interacting between other System Center products (like Operations Manager and Service Manager), and/or third party apps, creating a place for all your scripts to live. Yes, it's true, scripts live on with Orchestrator, although you can use other tools to build runbooks using drag-and-drop tools as well. The conversation also digs into the thriving third-party community for Orchestrator, including Orchestrator on CodePlex. Check it out!

Richard talks to Brian Desmond about some of the new features coming to Active Directory in Server 2012 R2. The conversation starts off talking about the focus on Federation Services in Server 2012 R2, including support for non-Windows devices connecting to a domain via Workspace Join. Brian also digs into features that were added in Server 2012 like multi-factor authetication and refers to the Active Directory Team Blog post on Multi-Factor Security. Is Active Directory getting old? Perhaps, but it's getting regular work done to keep it relevant in the modern IT space.

Richard talks to Mitch Garvis about his experiences comparing vSphere and Hyper-V. Which one is better? Mitch gets right to the point - they're both incredibly capable virtualization solutions. It's all about the tools around the hypervisor - whether that's vSphere on the VMWare side and System Center on the Microsoft side. So they both have their merits, but Mitch is all about Hyper-V. The conversation dives deep on the evolution of IT using virtualization, not just in the data center, but all the way out to the desktop.

Richard chats with Robert Bogue about the current state of SharePoint 2013. As Robert states, there still isn't a shrink-wrap version of SharePoint 2013, but if you have a Volume License Agreement or similar, you can download SharePoint 2013 today. But should you? The conversation digs into the cloud focus of SharePoint 2013, and how installation and configuration has gotten substantially more complex - it's all about the certificates! Or you can run in the cloud. If you can, take a SharePoint 2013 VM out for a spin and decide for yourself!

Richard talks to Jeffrey Snover about Desired State Configuration (DSC). DSC is part of the Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview, although it is also available as the Windows Management Framework 4.0 Preview that can run on Windows 7 SP1 and Server 2008 R2 SP1. Jeffrey explains that DSC is all about building configuration information that can be applied to a server to install and configure services exactly to specification and resist 'drifting' of the configuration over time. DSC takes Powershell to the next level!

Richard chats with Scott Forsyth about IIS 8 and 8.5. IIS 8 shipped with Server 2012, and IIS 8.5 with Server 2012 R2 (which at publication was still in preview). Scott talks about the new features of IIS 8, many of which are focused on large scale web hosting, where hundreds of web sites are hosted together. The conversation also digs into the back porting of features, including dynamic IP restriction and FTP Login restrictions, while being released with IIS 8, are also now available for IIS 7. Scott also talks about specific features new to IIS 8.5, including dynamic web site activation and next generation logging. Lots of cool new features in the latest IIS!

Richard chats with Steven Murawski about building a DevOps culture at your organization. The conversation talks about the fundamentals of DevOps, digging into bringing operations and developers closer together to be able to iterate on features more rapidly - as Steve says, it's about deploying small changes more frequently. Steven refers to a .NET Rocks episode with Jez Humble about Continuous Delivery as well as a RunAs Radio episode with Jeffrey Snover on DevOps. Want to get going on DevOps? Check out the Server Fault blog and Steven's blog.

Richard brings Richard Hicks back to talk about Software Defined Networks (SDN). Windows Server 2012 brings many new capabilities to the role, but Hyper-V's advancements in virtual networking are especially important. Richard talks about how Windows Server 2012 R2 takes virtual networking to another level, making SDNs more a reality than ever before. The conversation digs into the challenges around bridging between the virtual network and the rest of the world, as well as new generation tools for monitoring your network. SDNs are in their early days on the Microsoft stack, but they are here to stay!

Back in the studio at last, Richard talks to Konstantinos Theos about disaster recovery strategies for Active Directory. Backup and restore, test environments, policy management and practice - all the essentials of keeping Active Directory alive through a disaster. AD isn't much different from any other system, it takes all of these things (and did we mention practice?) to be effective in a disaster.