Richard Campbell Blogs Too

Greg and I talked to Jeremy Moskowitz about Group Policy in Active Directory. Jeremy has the definitive books on the topic, and, as he points out, if you have Active Directory set up, you're already using Group Policy, just not very intentionally.

Let us know what you think at info@runasradio.com.

Started this morning early, packing up and checking out - Kent and I would fly out together this afternoon. I need to get back tonight because I leave on Saturday for Barcelona and Tech Ed Europe IT Forum.

First thing this morning was my second session with Kent, called Load Testing ASP.NET Applications for Performance and Scaling. Had some technical problems with the network, but I solved them on the fly while Kent did a soft-shoe number.

I use my big tank of a laptop, the Dell M90, to do this demo. I'm running two virtual machines at once: one has the load test environment on it, the other is the web server, databases, etc.

We dig into all the goodies around load testing - using perfmon, using WAST (old, but free) and Visual Studio for Testers (new, not free).

The 75 minutes tears by... there's so much to talk about in this space. But we get to run a few real tests along the way and talk about what their results mean.

As soon as the session was done I was running across the conference center again, this time to a RunAs Radio Live session with Chris Avis. Since RunAs Radio is only a half hour show, we actually recorded two separate topics, one on deployment, the other on spam management in Exchange.

When we were done there, I had a few minutes to rest before running off with Carl to do the DotNetNuke Futures Panel. All the senior folks from DotNetNukeCorp were on the panel talking about taking DotNetNuke to the next level. The reality is that DotNetNuke has gotten successful enough that it needs full time people just to manage the volunteers, much less dig into the less-cool stuff that needs to be built to make DotNetNuke fully viable in the enterprise space.

Carl and I sat at either end of the table, managed questions from the audience and generally kept things moving along. I'm sure it'll be a great .NET Rocks show when its published.

The moment the panel was done, I shook hands with everyone and ran - back to the speakers lounge to pick up Kent and head for the airport.

We had a little excitement at the airport with Kent's ticket (we flew Philippine Airlines home, it was the only thing that fit the schedule), but otherwise, the day went well.

And now I'm home. For like, 48 hours. Then its off to Barcelona!

And just like that, the tradeshow is over. Well, by the afternoon, anyway. I worked in the booth for the morning shift, but had to ditch after lunch to work with Kent on our first session of the conference: ASP.NET Scaling Strategies and Tactics. All these sessions are residuals of all the consulting and research we've done creating Strangeloop.

The session starts on the strategies of scaling first, and really there are only two: Specialization and Distribution. Most folks think only about distribution when they're scaling a web site, that is, adding more servers. But specialization not only plays a critical role, but should play it first. Specialization is all about breaking down your web application into smaller bits, whether it be separate SSL servers, image servers, etc.

Once you've done some specialization, distribution gets easier and more flexible.

That's the strategic part of the session, then we dig into the tactics, more of the details around what it takes to put those strategies into practice. For example, you can set up your own image servers to take the load off your ASP.NET servers, or can switch to a Content Delivery Network (like Akamai) to handle images. Most of the time, these tactics are specific to the application, ie, it depends.

When the session was over, I hustled across the conference center to do a .NET Rocks Live with Carl. Our guest - Kent Alstad. Since Kent was on the ASP.NET Scalability Panel back at Tech Ed in June, we've received a number of emails from folks asking for more... so we delivered. Since Kent was with us already, it was pretty easy.

We had a great crowd for the .NET Rocks Live, they really whooped it up. I'm sure you'll hear it when the show is published.

After that session I dropped into the Speaker Party for a couple of hours, up in the penthouse suites of The Hotel at Mandalay Bay. Waaay too many people in too small a space, incredibly loud and lots and lots of fun.

I didn't stay long though, I headed out to dinner at Sensi at the Bellagio with the Strangeloop folks and a few key influencers.

Tomorrow is another crazy busy day!

Greg and I talked to Randy Smith about locking down Vista. We couldn't help laughing a bit about UAC, but that's to be expected. We did get into more of the cool things that Vista adds, like controlling USB keys, using BitLocker, and so on.

Send your feedback to info@runasradio.com.

Greg and I talked to Brien Posey about securing Exchange Server. We ranged all over the map - there's so much to talk about in this space, depending on your Exchange configuration. The sheer variety of connection methods for Exchange, from VPNs to RPC over HTTP, using SSL, OWA and Outlook Mobile Access... how many holes in the firewall can one product poke?

Happy Halloween! Send us an email at info@runasradio.com with your comments and suggestions.

Greg and I talked to Doug Toombs about some of the tools an IT Pro ought to know about.

Tried on another new format for this show - spending just a couple of minutes on each tool before moving on to the next.

It was lots of fun for us, I hope it worked for you. Let us know at info@runasradio.com.

Greg and I talked to Tony Howlett and Glenn Kramer about Information Security. We get beyond protecting credit card numbers, talking about the depth of protecting an enterprise's information from the public and its own employees as well from intentional and unintentional breaches.

Tony and Glenn work together, and you can tell they've done this duet before - always fun to chat with another duo.

Let us know how this show works for you at info@runasradio.com.

Our discussion with Joel Oleson on Sharepoint Management was largely a fallout of Sleepless in New York. Hanging out with Sharepoint guys invariably means talking Sharepoint. We tend to focus on the development of Sharepoint rather than the management of it, talking to Joel we got the IT viewpoint.

As always, email us at info@runasradio.com with your comments and questions.

Greg and I talked to Mitch Garvis about Microsoft BDD. We really dug into all the different options for automating the deployment of software in the enterprise, including SMS and the like. We also talk about the difference between no-touch and light-touch deployment. It's interesting to think about how the culture of a business affects what tools are appropriate for managing the workstations.

Let us know how we're doing with RunAs at info@runasradio.com.

Carl and I grabbed an interview with Dino Esposito in a quiet room during the conference, his viewpoint on Silverlight and ASP.NET technologies is always interesting.

Dino's session on "What Partial Rendering is not AJAX" rang true for me as well - his point is that the essence of AJAX is pushing page rendering to the browser, rather than computing it on the server. But partial rendering still computes the HTML on the server and sends it to the browser to display. This undermines the goal of AJAX.

I had last session of the day (and conference) and a huge crowd for my load testing talk today, as usual there were relatively few folks in the audience that had done load testing before, so a lot of my talk focused on the fundamentals of why and where for load testing. The data we've gathered around Strangeloop is great stuff for getting people started.

Sold out! Yep, the show is packed. Its not the biggest show in the world, but the attendees are focused and excited to be here. The keynote speech today included the local Microsoft folks and Telerik and, of course, Tim Huckaby! Tim's stories around building great applications that change the world are hard to touch. The audience was spellbound.

My work came in the afternoon, I took the Scaling Habits of ASP.NET Applications out for a spin again, with lots of interesting questions and discussion afterward.

In the evening Carl and I ran a panel discussion on WPF with Tim Huckaby, Brian Noyes and Todd Anglin.

Tomorrow is the last day, then we're touring Sofia!

We've spent some time walking around SQL Server and its business intelligence services. For this show, Greg and I talked to Trey Johnson about the overall infrastructure that Microsoft provides for Business Intelligence. Not just SQL Server's features, but also Sharepoint and ProClarity, which was recently acquired by Microsoft.

As always, we love your comments, questions and suggestions at info@runasradio.com.

Greg and I discussed a lot of potential topics around SQL Server with Brad, but eventually settled on this one because it was so unique. What does it take to be a better DBA? I agree with Brad for the most part, the challenge of being a great DBA is that you have to do it yourself, there's rarely, if ever, any infrastructure in a company around the development of the DBA career.

This show represents another distinctive style of show we're trying on for RunAs Radio... focused on career development. Like it? Let us know at info@runasradio.com.

Okay, I'll admit it - I love iSCSI. I was totally stoked when Greg and I got a chance to talk to Tom Clark about iSCSI. What iSCSI does more than anything else is bring the price of SAN infrastructure down into the realm of the medium-sized business.

iSCSI drops neatly between regular SCSI and Fiber Channel, offering a less expensive solution that is fast and flexible.

This topic work for you? Drop us a line at info@runasradio.com and let us know!

Greg and I spent a good long time with Charles Betz getting our head around where ITIL is going. The Information Technology Infrastructure Library is a set of docs focused around the infrastructure, development and management of IT systems.

Version 3 has been developed and is being adopted.

Its fun for me to put together a show that's more about methodology than product, if that works for you (or doesn't), let us know at info@runasradio.com.

Greg and I had a great time talking to David Lowe about the Windows Server 2008 Core installation. David works for Microsoft on the Windows Server Team which is totally focused on getting Windows Server 2008 out the door.

What's really cool about the core installation is that it reminds me of the old version of NT3, where we didn't need a GUI or any of that stuff, it was a server product. In some ways, the core is just like that - stripped down to the fundamentals of what servers really need to be. It'll be interesting to see what people do with it in the future.

As always, questions and comments about the show are welcome at info@runasradio.com.

Donald Farmer talks to us about data mining on the IT side of the world, away from the traditional concepts of "people who liked this book also liked..." and into the idea that we could be data mining application and event logs to help us anticipate the needs of our information systems.

Data mining is a specific set of features of Analysis Services in SQL Server 2005 - and its included in the box! If you own a license of SQL Server 2005, you own Analysis Services and its data mining capabilities.

Like this type of show? Let us know at info@runasradio.com.

Well, our family trip to the east coast is finally wrapping up, I put the girls on the train back to Newark today for their flight home. Always a kind of melancholy event, sending your family away.

I'm staying at PWOP Studios for a few days to do some more work, I go home on the weekend. Actually, I shouldn't say staying there, actually I'm staying at Carl's home and working at the studio.

It's been fun to actually hang around New London and Mystic, rather than tearing through on a pure-work mission. I'm beginning to understand why Carl lives here.

After having a couple of laughs around whether we were talking about Virtualization for Disaster Recovery or Disaster Recovery for Virtualization (it was the latter), Greg and I went deep with Bob Roudebush into the issues of doing backups of guest VMs and host environments using Microsoft Virtual Server and VMWare.

We keep coming back to virtualization as a key topic for today's IT personnel. Let us know if this is what you'd like to hear at info@runasradio.com.

Our longest-distance interview yet, we talked to Sarbjit Singh Gill all the way in Singapore about his work with Sharepoint 2007. Sarbjit did a great job of helping us understand the role that Sharepoint plays in the enterprise, from a project management point for Office documents into full-blown portals for the business.

More Sharepoint shows? Send us an email at info@runasradio.com.

We got a chance to really dig into where server virtualization is at with Stephen Rose. Stephen digs into both Microsoft's Virtual Server product and VMWare's goodies. We also dive into migration strategies.

There's still plenty more to talk about in the server virtualization arena, send us an email at info@runasradio.com and give us your suggestions!

You can thank Greg Hughes for this one - after our original show we got a ton of questions about backing up to disk. Steve Witner from Quantum came to our rescue with a great discussion about using disk-based backup alone and in conjunction with tape backup. We also dug into issues around data de-duplication to be more space-efficient.

This was our most asked for show, I hope you liked it. Send us an email at info@runasradio.com and let us know!

When we recorded show #3 with Dana Epp on Cardspace, we knew we had to bring him back for more. So now, three months later, Dana returns and we talk all server side. The server side story of CardSpace isn't as simple as the client side, but its important, and its only going to get better.

A couple of weeks ago I was in Calgary to do my SQL Querying presentation for the Calgary .NET Users Group. While there, John Bristowe interviewed me. That interview is now posted.

Actually, its really three separate interviews. The first starts off as a short history of my career in computers (30 years this August), how I got into .NET Rocks and RunAs Radio, speaking about SQL Server and my Querying Talk. After that we jumped into Strangeloop, what its about and where it came from. Finally, we ended up talking career advice... John asked me my thoughts on how developers can grow in their jobs.

I'd go on, but its probably best just to listen to the interview, its about a half hour long.

We had a great time talking to Charlie Russel, mostly because we dove into a real technical problem around Service Pack 2 for Windows 2003 R2. Love real time diagnostics. But somewhere along the way we remembered to dig into RemoteApp, the new feature in Windows Server 2008 for Terminal Services that allows applications to be accessed remotely as if they were running on the local machine.

As always, send us your thoughts at info@runasradio.com.

The last of our shows recorded at Tech Ed US 2007 in Orlando, Greg and I talked to Jeff Sigman about Network Access Protection. This is a cool new technology designed to limit exposure of your network to computers being plugged into the network - typically laptops.

Check it out, and then let us know what you think at info@runasradio.com.

Shortly after Richard Turner participated in the Identity Panel for .NET Rocks at Tech Ed US 2007 in Orlando, Greg and I grabbed him for a one-on-one interview to focus on how CardSpace affects the IT Pro. Richard changed gears smoothly and we dove right in.

Next week will be the last of the Tech Ed shows. Greg and I are back into the routine of recording new shows, lots more to come! Feel free to fire us an email at info@runasradio.com if there's something specific you'd like to hear!

Greg and I talk to Bill Varga about Quova's technology around figuring out where in the world an IP address is from. We also dig into some of the ideas around why locating your customers from the Internet is important - including regulatory compliance and fraud detection.

This is not one of the Tech Ed shows... there are two more of those coming in the next couple of weeks.

Show #10 is the first of three shows Greg and I recorded at Tech Ed US 2007 in Orlando, Florida. In this show we talked to Isaac Roybal about the new management features of IIS7. We got a chance to look at IIS7 from the point of view of the one-man show, the enterprise IT guy and the ISP... each one has different requirements, and Microsoft has done an admirable job of making sure they all get some help. Isaac also told us about the new IIS.Net community web site. Currently you can get IIS7 either in Vista, or as part of Windows Server 2008 Beta 3.

On this week's show Greg and I talked to Eric Marvets, one of the fellows that works with Mark Dunn. Eric took us on a tour of TrueCrypt, a free open-source disk encryption solution. We focused primarily on utilizing TrueCrypt with portable disk storage, like laptops and USB drives. Another security-centric show, Greg was all over it.

Look out! Two security guys on the show! Brian Komar and Greg really dug into the details of the Public Key Infrastructure in this show. I was mostly along for the ride, but really enjoyed discussing the challenges around Extended Validation Certificates. And then there was the whole problem of the green vs. red address bar background in Internet Explorer 7...

Our seventh show, Greg and I dug into the thinking around the latest edition of Microsoft Operations Manager with Rory McCaw. Of course, now its called System Center Operations Manager, but I think I'll always love the MOM acronym.

Let us know what you think of this show and the others, send us an email to info@runasradio.com.

Greg and I dive into a discussion on 64 bit technologies on the desktop and server in the 6th show of RunAs Radio with Wes Miller.

As always, you can send email to info@runasradio.com or comment here for feedback on shows you'd like to see, questions, criticisms, etc.

Seems the last few interviews Greg and I have had just flew by, and our conversation with John Savill on Application Virtualization is no exception.

There's so much to talk about there, if you'd like to hear more, send us an email at info@runasradio.com.

Greg and I had a great time talking to Simon Goldstein about Compliance - HIPAA, SOX and ISO. Simon is a co-worker of Greg's and one of the only people I've ever met who can make a compliance discussion fun and interesting.

I get the sense we're not done with this topic, please let us know!

Greg and I had a blast interviewing Dana Epp on CardSpace. We only had time to explore the client side, but what an explore it was.

I've asked Dana to come back soon and do the server side of CardSpace as well.

I don't normally write much about .NET Rocks here. Heck, I haven't been writing about much of anything here lately, but I just had a really good .NET Rocks day and thought y'all might like to hear about it.

For awhile now I've been doing most of the editorial planning - finding guests, scheduling, etc for .NET Rocks. I won't say I do it all because Carl does contribute plenty. And to be honest, most of the shows I schedule come from the listeners anyway: ask (email dotnetrocks@franklins.net), and you will receive. Really!

And since we've switched to two shows a week (and thanks very much for that, Telerik!), I've felt we could take more chances on shows... explore a little further afield so to speak. At one show a week, I always worried that I was not serving our core audience of developers effectively enough - doing some ethereal, abstract show on design concepts followed by a SQL show followed by a live show at a conference and next thing you know, its been a month since we've done a real "in the code" kinda show.

With two shows a week, that's not as much a concern, I can get a codey show every week and still have a chance to try some wackier things out.

Carl and I have also taken to recording shows back-to-back, usually on a Tuesday. We both find that as the day goes on, we get more and more excited about shows, to the point where at the fourth show of the day, we can be a little giddy (proof - have a listen to show 219 with Shaun Walker, it was a fourth). I've taken it as a cautionary note and stick with three shows normally. We need to keep a few shows ahead all the time so we can go to conferences and such while maintaining our twice a week publication schedule.

So at the end of recording today Carl was laughing at me because the three shows we recorded today could not have been more different. The first show we recorded was with Brad Abrams, the Group Program Manager of the .NET Framework, where we talked about some special announcements he'll make at MIX on May 1 (the same day the show will be published). We talked Silverlight (aka WPF/e) primarily. This was a cool show for me because of the publication synchronization with MIX - I'd like to do more stuff like this in the future.

The second show recorded today was with Eric Evans, where we focused on Domain Driven Design and his book Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software. We got a lot of email around Jimmy Nilsson's show on DDD, mostly to the effect of "more more more!" We talked more at the level of the white board phase of an application, with a very broad viewpoint - although I enjoyed drilling into the ideas around how DDD really does work in an agile environment. We'll publish this show May 10.

Finally, we recorded a show with Rustan Leino, talking about Spec#, an extension to C# that focuses on static checking, pre- and post-condition contracts around methods and more. You'll hear this show on May 15.

When we were all done, Carl said "Wow Richard, we went from talking to a blue badge about the latest and greatest technology coming out of Microsoft to a broad discussion on design methodology to a deep drilldown into how languages ought to work in the future. What are you trying to do, kill me?!? My brain hurts!"

I saw it as a complement, really. I feel like I've achieved a goal of stretching the boundaries around what we can dig into with .NET Rocks. I hope you like the shows coming up as well, please let us know!

Woohoo! Show #2 of RunAs Radio is online!

The discussion that Greg and I had with David Sengupta around Exchange focused primarily on more of the compliance related issues.

Its amazing to me how challenging it is to work through issues around email deleting policies. It sounds harmless, but really is something that you need to get legal advice around and is ultimately a business related decision.

Looks like we finally have info@runasradio.com working properly. Send us email with your thoughts about the show!

Well, you've heard us talking about it on .NET Rocks, and now its finally here... RunAs Radio!

I've always had one foot in the IT camp and one foot in the development camp. That's one of the many things that makes me so weird. I see RunAs as an opportunity to exercise the IT side of my brain.

Greg Hughes is my co-host, he's an associate of Scott Hanselman,  and works for Corillian as the Chief Security Executive and VP of IT. And he's got just the right wacky background for this all to work: started as a journalist, became a cop, then moved to the security side of IT. As he says, he's still hunting bad guys, just for more money (and less risk of being shot).

RunAs is a PWOP Production, just like .NET Rocks, dnrTV, Hanselminutes, etc. Dax built the web site, its Carl's software that drives the thing, I just find guests, book them, interview them and send the files to PWOP for processing.

I did get a fancy new recording rig to make all this work. My broadcast mike plugs into a MOTU Traveller that uses Firewire into Terrance, my 4960x1600 x64 XP beast. Also plugged into the MOTU is a Telos ONE+ONE for capture two telephone lines: one for Greg, and one for the guest. So I record my channel, Greg's phone track and the guest. Greg also does a local recording of himself (maximum quality, of course) and then all that is combined to make a show.

We're going to keep the show shorter than .NET Rocks, at least for now. I want to make sure the show stays focused on one topic for the duration. Of course, this will change based on what the listener wants... so tell me what you want! I'm all ears for show ideas, format changes, you name it. The email address for RunAs is info@runasradio.com.

It's also Greg's 40th birthday today. So Happy Birthday Greg!

Being in the podcasting business means taking BitTorrent seriously.

To make our podcasts more available, Carl and I, along with a bunch of other folks, seed for .NET Rocks, Mondays, Hanselminutes and dnrTV.

All along I've been using Azureus, which has the plug-ins for RSS so that the pwop shows are automagically downloaded.

Azureus is one of the original BitTorrent clients, written in Java, and is a classic example of what happens when really smart people write software. It has every feature imaginable, barely documented and generally unintelligible. Its so bad that Azureus has its own wiki so that people can help each other try to understand it.

Then along comes uTorrent. Its a regular Windows app, and while it doesn't have as many features as Azureus, it has all the ones that matter. And it makes sense, and it works.

So, I've switched. And I'm not alone.