RunAs Radio

Doing More using Teams with Christina Wheeler

info@runasradio.com (Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes) — Wed, 20 Jan 2021 00:00:00 EDT

What else can Teams do? Richard chats with Christina Wheeler about going beyond the default features of Teams, turning it into the hub of work that it can be. Christina talks about the various plugins available for Teams available from third-party companies, as well as the kinds of add-ins you can build yourself. The conversation focuses on app templates as useful tools unto themselves, like the request-a-team template that lets you control the creation of Teams. But since it is an open-source project, you can customize it, or use it as a starting point for something more extensive. With excellent security and governance features, you can extend Teams to help your users have one place to look for all their work!

Disaster Recovery Strategies to Fight Ransomware with Dave Kawula

info@runasradio.com (Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes) — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 00:00:00 EDT

Ransomware attacks are a disaster! Can your disaster recovery strategy cope? Richard talks to Dave Kawula about his experiences battling ransomware attacks - and how failed backup strategies facilitate the bad guys getting paid. Dave talks about securing your backups with separate credentials - the ransomware folks count on getting all-powerful administrator accounts! When you granularize your security (call it Just Enough Admin) you make it harder for ransomware to succeed. Get smarter about protecting your backups!

Productivity in 2021 with Ulrika Hedlund

info@runasradio.com (Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes) — Wed, 06 Jan 2021 00:00:00 EDT

What's your Productivity Score? Richard talks to Ulrika Hedlund about productivity in 2021 - the impact of the pandemic on work, and how IT can help. Ulrika discusses the rush to work remotely and the move into the cloud, including Microsoft 365. But the move is not enough - you have to train and learn how to use the new tools available. The conversation focuses on the etiquette of chat, email, video, and audio meetings - and the difference in formality between work and home uses! Ulrika also talks about the Productivity Score that M365 can provide to help IT understand how folks are using the technology so that they can provide support where needed.

IT in 2021

info@runasradio.com (Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes) — Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 EDT

Happy New Year! A year ago Richard flew solo to talk about what IT looked like in the new decade. And then the pandemic hit and changed everything. With vaccines beginning to roll out, it's a good time to look at what 2021 is going to look like. What changes have been made in your organization, and how many of them will stay as the pandemic ends? Richard also dives into the predictions he made at the beginning of 2020, and how they look a year later. This is also the end of the Pandemic Series - thanks so much for listening!

GitHub and DevOps in 2020 with Nicole Forsgren

info@runasradio.com (Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes) — Wed, 30 Dec 2020 00:00:00 EDT

What can GitHub tell us about DevOps? Richard talks to Nicole Forsgren about her new role at GitHub, studying the behavior of developers (and many others) using the massive set of aggregate data that exists within GitHub. Nicole talks about expanding the annual State of the Octoverse report to dig deeply into development productivity, security, and the community of source code contributors. This opens the door to some great ideas on how operations and development can work together - and isn't that what DevOps is all about?

COVID Christmas with Mary Jo Foley

info@runasradio.com (Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes) — Fri, 25 Dec 2020 00:00:00 EDT

Christmas time with COVID! Richard invites Mary Jo Foley on the show to celebrate a bit of Christmas and reflect on what a crazy year 2020 has been. Mary Jo talks about the early days of the pandemic when the tech companies sent everyone home and the challenge of keeping the internet and cloud providers working while the loads went up... it may have been a near thing! The conversation ultimately turns to gratitude for friends, family, and a great career in this industry. All the best to you and yours!

PowerShell for DevOps with Rick Taylor

info@runasradio.com (Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes) — Wed, 23 Dec 2020 00:00:00 EDT

What role does PowerShell play in DevOps? Richard talks to Rick Taylor about his experiences building deployment pipelines for development and operations using a variety of tools, including PowerShell. Rick talks about how each tool, including PowerShell, can be the easiest solution to a given task. The conversation also turns to cross-platform deployments, where the implementations of tooling vary from platform-to-platform. PowerShell can help there too, but you do have to learn the platform you're working from! In the end, even PowerShell is just a tool, and DevOps is more about culture and process - and the conversation goes there too!

The Impact of the Pandemic on IT with Stephen Rose

info@runasradio.com (Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes) — Fri, 18 Dec 2020 00:00:00 EDT

A year into the pandemic - how have things changed for IT? Richard talks with Stephen Rose about his experiences working with organizations during the pandemic, from the rapid move to the cloud, facilitating work-from-home, sending all work online, and more. Stephen talks about the social changes happening at work that aren't likely to go away when the virus does. The relationship with IT has evolved also - how are we going to be different in the years to come?

DBA DevOps using Query Store with Erin Stellato

info@runasradio.com (Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes) — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 00:00:00 EDT

How can Query Store help you participate in the DevOps cycle? Richard chats with Erin Stellato about the power of SQL Query Store - born out of Azure SQL, Query Store keeps a record of every unique query that is run, along with its query plan and stats. How does this help with DevOps? By providing data for DBAs to talk to developers about how to make improvements to applications that will have a real impact on customer value in the long run!

Modern Work using Teams with Karoliina Kettukari

info@runasradio.com (Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes) — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 00:00:00 EDT

How has the pandemic affected work? Richard chats with Karoliina Kettukari about the concept of Modern Work and the tools that make it possible. Karoliina points out that only a year ago, the discussion was about the modern workplace - but with the pandemic, the workplace can be anywhere, and the focus is on work. The conversation digs into the role that Office 365 Teams plays in helping teams to collaborate, keep track of cooperative work, and to maintain the connection between team members!

Rick Claus and Joey Snow with Gadgets for the Pandemic

info@runasradio.com (Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes) — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 00:00:00 EDT

What do you get an IT person for Christmas? Richard chats with Rick Claus and Joey Snow about what's on their list for Christmas - some gadgets expensive, some not so much... but all cool stuff that you could get for yourself, or put on your list for a loved one! Heck, play the show for them - we'll share the ideas directly. The best gadgets are things you'll use, but perhaps not buy for yourself because they are a bit indulgent... or maybe you just haven't thought about it. Here's to a great holiday season!

Self-Service Passwords with Jan Bakker

info@runasradio.com (Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes) — Fri, 04 Dec 2020 00:00:00 EDT

How can you empower your users to change their own passwords? Richard chats with Jan Bakker about the self-service password options in Azure and Microsoft 365. With more people working from home, the usual ways of changing passwords using the help desk have gotten harder - you can't do in-person authentication! Jan talks about utilizing Azure AD and M365 features to get additional authentication methods available for users with Microsoft Authenticator, text messaging and more. Once that's set up, you have more choices to make, including allowing Microsoft's Identity Protection to recognize when a password should be changed!

From Documents to Lists with Lise Rasmussen

info@runasradio.com (Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes) — Wed, 02 Dec 2020 00:00:00 EDT

How do you keep documents alive and maintained? Make them lists! Richard chats with Lise Rasmussen about Microsoft 365 Lists, the latest versions of lists from SharePoint with lots of extensibility and templates to build up sophisticated workflows. Lise talks about not making documents since they tend to be endpoints for discussions and work - rather, make lists with views and automation so that the work continues to evolve!

Culture during the Pandemic with Tracy Brower

info@runasradio.com (Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes) — Fri, 27 Nov 2020 00:00:00 EDT

Every organization has a culture, and every culture has been affected by the pandemic. How is yours? Richard talks to Dr. Tracy Brower about how the COVID-19 Pandemic has impacted company culture. Tracy starts out talking about how most folks planned for a short pandemic and have attempted to sprint through these challenging times. But the reality is that the pandemic is a marathon, and thinking through your culture and how to strengthen the important parts of it can make for better work experiences and more successful business!

Exchange vNext with Gareth Gudger

info@runasradio.com (Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes) — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 00:00:00 EDT

What's coming for Exchange? Richard talks to Gareth Gudger about all the news coming out of Ignite and beyond around Exchange server. Gareth talks about Exchange 2019 not being the last version of Exchange - there will be another on-premises version, although likely it will be an in-place upgrade, and without a year designation - call it the last version of Exchange. This leads to a conversation about folks still on-premises, staying hybrid with the cloud, and making it easier to make mail work no matter what, in the cloud or otherwise!

Deployment and Work from Home with Johan Arwidmark

info@runasradio.com (Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes) — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 00:00:00 EDT

Now that folks are working from home, how do you re-image their machines? Richard chats with Johan Arwidmark about the changes coming in Configuration Manager and a library for MDT. Johan talks about how the ConfigMgr responded to the pandemic by adding work-from-home features now in technical preview. You can deploy images onto a VM in your Azure tenant that remote workstations can deploy from, no VPN needed. Also, Johan and Michael have built a PowerShell Extension for MDT that works over the cloud as well - check the links for more info!

Microsoft Office 365 FastTrack with Erica Toelle

info@runasradio.com (Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes) — Wed, 18 Nov 2020 00:00:00 EDT

If you're using Office 365, do you know about FastTrack? Richard talks to Erica Toelle about how FastTrack can help you get more value from your Office 365 subscriptions. One of the big services available in Office 365 is compliance around the retention and protection of information. If you have enough seats and the right levels of licensing, Microsoft will help you to take advantage of the advanced compliance features in Office 365!

Getting Active Directory Ready for Azure with Jess Dodson

info@runasradio.com (Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes) — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 00:00:00 EDT

The pandemic rushed some work into the cloud - but getting up to the cloud in an organized way takes some preparation, starting with Active Directory. Richard talks to Jess Dodson about the various clean-up processes we always meant to do for AD, but never got around to it. And now with a move to Azure Active Directory, those cleanups are important - not doing them can be expensive! Jess talks about getting your admin accounts in order, cleaning up services accounts, modernizing onboarding and offboarding, and taking advantage of multifactor authentication. There is lots to do!

Azure SQL Revealed with Bob Ward

info@runasradio.com (Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes) — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 00:00:00 EDT

Where did Azure SQL come from and where is it going? Richard chats with Bob Ward about his new book, Azure SQL Revealed. The conversation starts out at the beginning of SQL Server in the 90s, all the way to SQL 2005, when the first discussions of a database in the cloud happened at Microsoft. Bob talks about the early days of SQL Server for Windows Azure that eventually became Azure SQL. Today Azure SQL works from the simplest of SQL Server workloads to some of the biggest hundred terabyte hyperscale servers - have a read!

Terraform vs Bicep/ARM with Steve Buchanan

info@runasradio.com (Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes) — Fri, 06 Nov 2020 00:00:00 EDT

The Pandemic has moved a lot of applications into the cloud. Are you automating the deployment? Richard chats with Steve Buchanan about the ever-advancing tooling for Infrastructure-as-Code. ARM Templates are the standard approach to IaC for Azure, but they can get complex. Terraform is HashiCorp's tool for IaC that utilizes ARM Templates under the hood. But as Steve says, it takes time for new features of Azure to surface in Terraform. And Microsoft is developing Bicep as a new domain-specific language for IaC over ARM as well. What do you choose?