RunAs Radio

Richard and Greg talk to Cameron Fuller about System Center Operations Manager. Operations Manager is the instrumentation part of System Center - centralizing the status of all your servers into one console. The conversation moves into the concept of server and application health... looking beyond ping times and into knowing how healthy your application is. Cameron also helps us understand how Operations Manager interacts with other System Center products including Configuration Manager, Service Manager and Orchestrator. Check out http://systemcentercentral.com/ for more info on System Center.

Richard flies solo to talk to James Bannan about System Center Configuration Manager. Configuration Manager pulls together the administration of operating system, driver and application installs working alongside tools like Microsoft Deployment Toolkit. Check out James' blog at http://www.jamesbannanit.com/.

Early one morning at Kim and Paul's place, Richard sat down for a conversation about how they go about helping their customers make SQL Server go faster. The conversation wanders over index tuning, hardware issues and learning issues. Also listen for a special guest visit from Paul's nine year old daughter who knows that auto shrink is evil.

Richard and Greg talk to Stephen Foskett about storage technologies. Stephen gives a history of storage technologies from RAID arrays to SANs, including Microsoft's Storage Server. The conversation ranges over a huge number of storage technologies, including the new generation of low cost iSCSI targets, lamenting the death of Microsoft Home Server and even diving into obscure concepts like (get this) Fibre Channel over Token Ring! The show ends exploring the prospects of storage in the cloud and the possibilities going forward for data storage.

Richard and Greg talk to Steve Wright of SQL Sentry about the performance challenges with Analysis Services. Steve talks about how putting SSAS on the same box as SQL Server is not a good idea, how both products are greedy for memory and comparing query tuning techniques. Steve also gets into the performance counters that matter in SSAS.

Richard and Greg talk to Chris Ross from Catapult Systems. Chris talks to the boys about System Center Service Manager, an IT Service Desk application recently added to System Center. Service Manager is the front line application for doing problem support, routine maintenance, routine workflow processes, and so on. Chris discusses how Service Manager becomes a hub for the other System Center components, making it easier to have a clear picture of what's going on with your system and what to work on next. Check out Chris's Service Manager blog at http://blog.myscsm.com/.

Richard chats with Mark Minasi about his Tech Ed Atlanta experience. The conversation moves onto recent announcements around Windows 8. Richard and Mark argue over the viability of tablets like the iPad versus the latest generation of laptops. Mark also mentions a few web sites, including the Software Conspiracy. It's one of those rambling conversations we know and love!

While at DevTeach, Richard talked to Colin Melia about the challenges of securing applications using the phone and cloud. The discussion digs hard into Active Directory Federated Services, Azure Access Control Services and more.

While at Tech Ed Atlanta, Richard talked to Jeremy Thake from AvePoint about scaling Sharepoint. Jeremy talks about how Sharepoint decomposes into multiple servers to provide effective scale. The conversation also moves to the cloud, talking about the Sharepoint offering in Office 365.

Richard catches up with Kevin Kline at Tech Ed Atlanta to talk about the next version of SQL Server, code name Denali. Kevin discusses the new 'Always On' features, new column store and the updates to reporting services. The conversation also wanders over to SQLAzure, SQL Saturdays and how the major database products in the world can work together.