RunAs Radio

Richard talks to Todd Lamothe about how to use Windows Server 2008 to secure WiFi. No, this doesn't replace encryption, it just adds to it - with WPA2-RADIUS to have your access point communicate with the Network Policy Service in Windows 2008. Now every user on your WiFi connection is specifically associated with an active directory account. Todd talks through the challenges of certificates, configuration and how to integrate the service with a firewall to get a complete end-to-end view of what your users are doing on the wireless network.

Richard talks to Mitch Garvis about System Center Essentials (SCE). SCE brings the power of System Center Configuration Manager, Operations Manager and Virtual Machine Manager to the small-to-medium business. It limits to 50 servers (physical and virtual) and 500 workstations - plenty for lots of businesses! Mitch digs into a few tricks of the trade for being successful with SCE - check out his blog post on installing System Center Essentials. SCE is the tool you wish you knew about, now have a listen and you will!

Richard talks to Tony Redmond, formerly of Hewlett-Packard, about the state of affairs for Office 365. At the time of the interview Office 365 had been shipping for only five months. Tony talks about the outages suffered by Microsoft and Google for their cloud offerings, noting that Microsoft is still in the early days of learning how to run a massive multi-tenancy infrastructure. He also compares Gmail and Outlook/Exchange, as well as recognizing that Outlook and Exchange are not the same product from the same team - that they have different goals and don't always get along. The discussion wraps up with where we can expect Exchange to go in the future, and how important hybrid cloud implementations are and will be.

Richard talks to Steve Syfuhs at TechDays Toronto about IT Pros providing security services for developers using Active Directory Federated Services. IT and development talking to each other willingly? Perish the thought! But in truth, Steve makes it clear that ADFS provides a great wrapper for developers to access active directory or any other service that has security claims that an application might require. Azure depends on it, even Office 365 can take advantage of ADFS. Steve discusses how IT can work with developers to make the jobs of both groups easier.

While at TechDays in Toronto, Richard talks to Rodney Buike about virtualizing desktops. Rodney digs into how Citrix's XenDesktop can let you use Windows 7 applications on your iPad! The conversation also explores the use of application virtualization to minimize storage use and simplify software updates, as well as an approach to using desktop virtualization to keep older workstations up and running for longer. VDI is coming of age, and Rodney digs into how to get things done.

Richard talks to Rick Claus just before lunch on the second day of TechDays Toronto about diagnosing problems with DNS. Rick admits that much of his session was derived from Mark Minasi's session on DNS - but Rick adds his own twist. The conversation dives into the tools you can use to understand what's happening with DNS on your machine and the common problems that crop up with DNS. It's a tour back to the fundamentals of networking!

Richard flies solo at TechDays Toronto talking to Tom Moreau about some of the new T-SQL features in the next version of SQL Server, code named Denali. Tom waxed poetic about sequences and their advantages (and disadvantages) compared to identity columns. Other features Tom digs into include Lead and Lag and the new Throw feature that further extends the Try Catch capabilities in T-SQL.

While at TechDays Toronto, Richard talks to Jeff Woolsey about virtualization in the SMB space. Jeff walks through a scenario where a branch office with three servers in different roles sets up Hyper-V, uses P2V migration to virtualize the existing roles into the hardware and then repurposes the hardware to create failover and redundancy. The conversation continues into the role of Cloud and even a sneak peek of how Server 8 will make Hyper-V even more important to the equation!

Richard and Greg talk to Geoff Citron about the choices IT pros can make today around running applications on-premise, with a hosting provider or in the Cloud. Geoff discusses how small hosting providers are thriving in a Cloud world by providing great customer service and customizing services for their customers.

Richard flies solo to talk to Mike Laverick about VMWare. Mike starts out talking about the history of virtualization, from the early days of virtualization for testing into the later generation production virtualization. The conversation moves into the upcoming release of VMWare vSphere 5, including a discussion about the rather controversial new licensing model. Mike also talks about the relationship between virtualization and the Cloud, and the role of virtualization in disaster recovery.