What does it take to make Azure networking actually work? Richard chats with Microsoft VP Albert Greenberg about the whole of Azure networking. The conversation starts out talking about the complexity of building massive virtual networks for Azure so that every customer has their own private space to work in, while not impacting or being impacting by any of the other customers. Albert talks about the need for no central point of focus when scaling to public cloud sizes when it comes to network - there's no hardware available at this size!

How does your Active Directory data look? Richard chats with Chris Johnson of Hyperfish about how important AD personnel data is, and the terrible condition that most organizations leave it in. Chris talks about how the point of Active Directory was to be the authoritative source of personnel information in an organization - but most companies just use it for login credentials! It was Microsoft Exchange that first took on AD for all its user information, and more systems are doing so. The challenge is finding efficient ways to allow users to keep their data up to date and accurate.

Ready for Nano Server? Richard chats with Andrew Mason, one of the folks at Microsoft responsible for creating Nano Server. The conversation dives into the distinctions between Nano Server and Server Core - Core is still around, but Nano is substantially smaller. How much smaller? Less than half a gig! Andrew digs into what Nano Server can and can't do in this version, but don't worry, more is coming and user voice is being used (check the links) if you want to make suggestions to the team. If you're looking for the lightest footprint for Windows Server, you want Nano!