RunAs Radio

How Machine Learning Fails with Megan Robertson Jun 10, 2026 00:36:54 What can go wrong with machine learning? While at NDC in Toronto, Richard chatted with Megan Robertson about her experience with machine learning projects, often using retail datasets, and where they can go wrong. Megan talks about getting clear expectations and metrics for projects, so you know when you succeed, but then digs into the specifics of problems in machine learning, such as overfitting

Data API Builder and SQL MCP with Jerry Nixon Jun 3, 2026 00:36:30 How do you intelligently surface access to your database? While at NDC Toronto, Richard spoke with Jerry Nixon about Data API Builder, Microsoft's tool that enables data professionals using Microsoft databases, including SQL Server, Postgres, CosmosDB, and MySQL, to provide an API layer with security, schema extraction, and governance policies. You can expose the API as a REST interface, a GraphQL

Team Productivity using Loop with Karinne Bessette May 27, 2026 00:35:44 How can Microsoft Loop make your team more productive? Richard chats with Karinne Bessette about the role that Loop components can play in making meetings where the agenda is live, generating work items in Microsoft Planner, and keeping key information up to date. Karinne talks about how Loop components can be connected to any M365 document, including Outlook, Word, Excel, and OneNote, but only fo

UEFI Secure Boot with Richard Hicks May 20, 2026 00:37:34 The original Secure Boot certificate expires in June 2026! Richard talks to Richard Hicks about how Secure Boot works and how the expiration of the master certificate can leave PCs vulnerable to boot-related malware, such as rootkits. Richard discusses recent Microsoft communications on SecureBoot and how to check which certificate your machines have. Workstations using managed updates are likely

Production LLMs with Vaishnavi Gudur May 13, 2026 00:35:28 What does a production-grade large language model look like? While at NDC Sydney, Richard talked with Vaishnavi Gudur from Microsoft about her work scaling LLMs for Teams transcriptions, summaries, and more! Vaishnavi discusses the underlying complexities of operating the Teams LLM infrastructure for a large array of customers across different countries and regulatory regimes. Data sovereignty als

Securing Active Directory with Spencer Alessi May 6, 2026 00:36:34 How secure is your Active Directory infrastructure? While at Zero Trust World in Orlando, Richard chatted with Spencer Alessi about his work helping companies secure Active Directory, making it more difficult for black hats to exploit it for lateral moves during a breach attempt. Spencer talks about the increasing speed of these exploits, making it much harder to block them after the fact, so it's

M365 Copilot vs Claude Cowork with Sharon Weaver Apr 29, 2026 00:38:45 There's competition in the Office productivity space! Richard chats with Sharon Weaver about her experiences with M365 Copilot and Anthropic's Claude Cowork to improve information worker productivity. Sharon talks about the confusion around all the different copilots in the Microsoft space - including the chat tools, research agents, and more. But when it comes to helping with an Excel spreadsheet

The Life and Death of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit with Michael Niehaus Apr 22, 2026 00:39:16 What does the world look like after Microsoft Deployment Toolkit? Richard talks to MDT creator Michael Niehaus about the life and death of MDT. Michael talks about his early days at Microsoft, when he created a better way to manage operating system images so you can build and rebuild Windows PCs for your organization. But MDT had been in maintenance since 2013, without specific support for Windows

Internal Corporate Communications in 2026 with Emily Mancini Apr 15, 2026 00:34:42 How does your company communicate with its employees today? Richard chats with Emily Mancini about her work with companies that manage internal communications. Emily talks about the power of email, collaborative messaging like Teams, and the Microsoft Viva products Engage and Amplify. The conversation digs into knowing where your people look for info, how they communicate, and what they want to co

Securing AI Agents with Niall Merrigan Apr 8, 2026 00:37:44 AI Agents can be powerful tools for an organization - but are they a security risk? Richard talks to Niall Merrigan about his experiences dealing with the various ways that LLMs can be attacked, starting with prompt injection. While some attacks are humorous, others can be very serious, especially in the context of agents, where the right prompt can cause an agent to use its capabilities to access

My Home Lab Apr 1, 2026 00:09:36 Are you ready to take a look at Richard's home lab? Richard goes solo to share insights about the new infrastructure, hardware, and automation in his seaside home. He discusses the challenges posed by its remote location, including unreliable power and connectivity. You'll find plenty of details about networking, computing infrastructure, automation, telemetry, and experiments with AI technologies

Unified Tenant Management with Nik Charlebois-Laprade Mar 25, 2026 00:33:33 Configuration drift is real - how do you control it in your Azure tenant? Richard talks to Nik Charlebois-Laprade about his ongoing work on desired state configuration DSC for Microsoft 365 tenants. Microsoft365DSC has been an open-source tool for managing configuration for some time, but today it has become a preview product called Unified Tenant Configuration in Microsoft Graph. Nik talks about

Sustainable AI with Darshna Shah Mar 18, 2026 00:43:29 How does artificial intelligence become more sustainable? Richard chats with Darshna Shah about her experiences as Chief AI Officer at Elastic. Darshna discusses the resources required to run large language model experiments, the pressure this has put on the electrical grid, and more. The conversation turns to efficiency - and the idea that there is little incentive in the current land grab around

SQL Server in 2026 with Bob Ward Mar 11, 2026 00:40:17 SQL Server 2025 is released - what's in it, and what happens next? Richard chats with Bob Ward about the huge array of announcements coming out of Ignite around SQL Server 2025, including AI-related features, new reliability and performance options, engine improvements, and more! The tooling for SQL Server also continues to evolve, including making Copilot available through SSMS and as part of the

Hiring in 2026 with Suzi Edwards-Alexander Mar 4, 2026 00:48:48 How can you hire and get hired in 2026? While at NDC London, Richard chatted with Suzi Edwards-Alexander about her experiences recruiting technology folks into companies. Suzi talks about developing interview practices that actually reflect the job, rather than examining esoteric knowledge or certifications - it's possible to have an interviewing experience that is actually enjoyable! The conversa

SaaS on Multiple Clouds with Steve Buchanan Feb 25, 2026 00:39:13 What does it take to get your SaaS offering on multiple cloud providers? Richard chats with Steve Buchanan about his new role at JAMF, which focuses on a mobile device management product for Apple devices. Originally built as a SaaS product on AWS, Steve is helping to build out the JAMF stack on Azure to support a broader range of customers. Steve talks about Kubernetes as the common ground among

Hacking using AI with Erica Burgess Feb 18, 2026 00:47:50 How have large language models impacted hacking? Richard talks to Erica Burgess about her experiences using LLMs for red team hacking, collecting bug bounties, and identifying vulnerabilities in systems. Erica discusses the power of LLMs to generate a variety of viewpoints on a potential exploit and help the hacker think "out of the box." Coordinating multiple agents to attempt a variety of exploi

Securing Active Directory Certificate Services with Ron Arestia Feb 11, 2026 00:44:27 You're using Active Directory Certificate Services - but is it configured securely? Richard talks to Ron Arestia about his work with organizations implementing their own Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) with ADCS. Ron explains how poorly configured ADCS enables lateral attacks within an organization once an initial breach occurs, allowing black hats to move throughout your network. A well-designed

Getting Started using Purview with Erica Toelle Feb 4, 2026 00:31:15 Ready to get started with Purview? Richard chats with Erica Toelle about the first steps you can take to harness the power of Purview in your organization. Erica explains that Purview is an umbrella product that covers several infosec technologies, including information rights management, data loss prevention, structured data governance, and more. When preparing for M365 Copilot, you want to start

Business Process Automation in 2026 with Ian Cooper Jan 28, 2026 00:37:31 Business Process Automation has been around a long time - what are the latest approaches? Richard talks to Ian Cooper about his work building BPA workflows in organizations - starting on paper or a whiteboard to make sense of the process before bringing tools into the equation. Ian talks about building repeatable workflows that are well-documented and source-controlled, typically through GitHub. A

Ideation to Implementation with Amber Vandenburg Jan 21, 2026 00:35:30 How do you get an idea to implementation in your organization? Richard chats with Amber Vanderburg about the work she's done helping teams understand the process of getting projects started and finished. Amber talks about defining a clear starting line, ending line, and dead line. While many projects are important, prioritization is the challenge. This means often other priorities have to be resol

Azure in 2026 with Jeremy Winter Jan 14, 2026 00:37:24 What's coming in 2026 for Azure? Richard chats with CVP and Chief Product Officer for Azure, Jeremy Winter, about the announcements at Ignite and what we can expect in Azure over the next year. Jeremy talks about new features for migrating workloads to Azure, creating more reliable application implementations, the vast array of AI-related technologies being released, and more! The conversation als

What AI can do for SysAdmins in 2026 with Cecilia Wirén Jan 7, 2026 00:40:53 AI tools continue to evolve - what can we do with them today? Richard chats with Cecilia Wirén about her experiences using the latest AI tools to support DevOps workflows, diagnostics, and the crafting of new scripts. Cecilia focuses on tools that can help admins who occasionally work on scripts, including getting into a GitHub workflow to track prompts and results generated by LLMs, so you can al

The SysAdmin in 2026 Dec 31, 2025 00:29:33 A new year - and so much to do! To start 2026, Richard flies solo again to discuss the issues he's seen on sysadmins' minds as we head into the new year. Obviously, AI is eating up a lot of the conversation from many different angles: tools that can help us be more productive, security issues in our organizations due to misuse, and now, AI-driven hacking. Security still looms large, and not just f

What Windows Wants for Christmas with Paul Thurrott Dec 24, 2025 00:42:48 So what does Windows want for Christmas? Paul Thurrott is back to talk about everything that happened to Windows in 2025, and what that might hold for 2026. Paul talks about Pavan Davuluri being promoted to President of Windows & Devices - and reunifying the Windows Client and Windows Core teams. That sets up an opportunity to make some significant moves from Windows, which, of course, will involv

Zero Trust in 2026 with Michele Bustamante Dec 17, 2025 00:41:09 How is zero-trust security evolving? Michele Leroux Bustamante discusses the challenges CISOs face today in controlling access to infrastructure, authenticating and authorizing users, and managing the ongoing evolution of an organization's dependencies. The conversation digs into the variety of stacks available to address various elements of an organization's security requirements. Michele also ta

Incident Management and the Crowdstrike Event with Liam Westley Dec 10, 2025 00:41:02 On July 19, 2024, a misconfigured file sent as part of an update to the Falcon Sensor suite by CrowdStrike caused service outages worldwide. Liam Westley talks about his experiences executing the incident management plan at his company that day—even though his company did not use the software! Liam talks about dealing with the regulatory requirements of a finance company as part of incident planni

The M365 Copilot Data Readiness Checklist with Nikki Chapple Dec 3, 2025 00:40:31 What does it take to be ready to deploy M365 Copilot in your organization? Richard talks to Nikki Chapple about her latest incarnation of the M365 Copilot Readiness Checklist, working step-by-step to bring M365 Copilot into the organization without causing data leak issues. Nikki discusses utilizing existing tools to accurately identify sensitive data, archiving outdated information, and monitorin

Christmas Gifts for SysAdmins with Joey Snow and Rick Claus Nov 26, 2025 00:36:57 The seasonal gift show is back - Joey Snow and Rick Claus bring their lists of great gifts for sysadmins. You know they're impossible to buy for, so we are making it easier for you with a range of prices and seriousness for your favorite sysadmin. Useful gadgets, upgrades to older devices, and some fun stuff that reminds the sysadmins in your life that you get their struggles. Share this show and

Azure SRE Agents with Deepthi Chelupati Nov 19, 2025 00:34:18 How can Azure Site Reliability Engineering Agents help your Azure infrastructure? While at Techorama in Utrecht, Richard chatted with Deepthi Chelupati about the LLM service that helps you build and maintain more reliable applications and infrastructure in Azure. Deepthi talks about monitoring deployment problems, handling errors in production, and application telemetry in operation as areas where

Azure Resiliency with Chris Ayers Nov 12, 2025 00:38:45 How resilient are your Azure deployments? Richard chats with Chris Ayers about his work on Azure reliability - not only for customers using Azure, but for Azure itself! Chris focuses on the Well-Architected Framework as a guideline for thinking through all the elements of resiliency in Azure. As with all things, there are trade-offs of cost and reliability - you'll want to build a spreadsheet to b

Managing Updates using Autopatch with Aria Hanson Nov 5, 2025 00:31:54 The future of updating Windows is here! Richard talks to Aria Hanson about Windows Autopatch, the consolidation of Microsoft's various update mechanisms to keep your managed Windows devices current. Aria discusses the deprecation of Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) and the move to always-on cloud updates. The conversation turns to the various techniques for quickly rolling out updates to mach

AI for DBAs with Grant Fritchey Oct 29, 2025 00:38:30 How can the new AI tools help DBAs? Richard chats with Grant Fritchey about his experiences using various types of LLMs to help with his work as a DBA. Grant discusses having an LLM open as a side window to pass questions by, such as ideas for tuning, query optimization, scripts, and so on. Not all LLMs are the same - it's worth experimenting with different tools! The conversation delves into the

Becoming a Cybersecurity Expert with Paula Januszkiewicz Oct 22, 2025 00:38:22 How do you become a cybersecurity expert? While at Cybersecurity Intersection in Orlando, Richard chatted with Paula Januszkiewicz about her career in cybersecurity. Paula talks about insatiable curiosity to understand how things work the way they do - why an exploit happens and following the twists and turns that lead to root cause and permanent solutions. The conversation delves into the balance

The End of NTLM with Steve Syfuhs Oct 15, 2025 00:53:50 It's time to retire NTLM - but how? Richard chats with Steve Syfuhs about the need and challenge of retiring an ubiquitous authentication protocol first used in the 1990s. While guidance to move away from NTLM has been available since 2010, it has only become feasible in the past couple of years, and Microsoft is now providing tooling to make the transition easier. Steve discusses enabling auditin

Managing for Failure with Amy Norris Oct 8, 2025 00:30:46 How do you manage for failure? While at KCDC, Richard chatted with Amy Norris about building a culture that supports dealing with failure in a healthy way. Amy focuses on clear communication - about expectations, positive feedback, negative feedback, and more! The challenge is creating a safe place for people to ask questions and talk clearly about what they see happening in the environment. We ca

HaveIBeenPwned with Troy Hunt Oct 1, 2025 00:41:01 How do you know if one of your accounts has been part of a security breach? Richard chats with Troy Hunt about HaveIBeenPwned, a free service that allows individuals to receive notifications when their accounts appear in a security breach. Troy discusses other services available alongside HaveIBeenPwned for sysadmins, including password checking, identifying accounts associated with a specific dom

Managing Vendor Incidents with Mandi Walls Sep 24, 2025 00:31:45 You're down - is it your servers, or someone else's? While at the Kansas City Developers Conference, Richard sits down with Mandi Walls from Pager Duty about her experiences dealing with incidents involving vendor services. It might be your cloud provider, or some other SaaS element of a pipeline, or even an open-source library dependency in an important internal application that can cause a probl

Certificate Automation with Todd Gardner Sep 17, 2025 00:35:02 The days of the one-year SSL certificate are coming to an end - are you ready? Richard chats with Todd Gardner about the upcoming requirement from the Certification Authority Browser Forum to limit SSL certs to 200 days starting March 2026 - and they keep getting shorter until by 2029, certificates will last no longer than 47 days! If you haven't already automated certificate renewal, it's time to

Training for AI with Stephanie Donahue Sep 10, 2025 00:40:34 How do you get your organization trained up to use AI tools? Richard talks to Stephanie Donahue about her work implementing AI tools at Avanade and with Avanade's customers. Stephanie discusses how many workers are bringing their own AI tools, such as ChatGPT, to work and the risks that represent to the organization. Having an approved set of tools helps people work in the right direction, but the

Episode 1000! Sep 3, 2025 01:14:01 Episode 1000! Richard Campbell invites Paul Thurrott to join him to celebrate the milestone episode and answer questions from listeners. From the creation of the podcast to the role of Windows in the modern world, the impact of ARM, Cloud, and many other technologies - all addressed in this super-sized episode. And yes, artificial intelligence is part of the conversation—and will be part of the wo

Common Azure Mistakes with Scott Sauber Aug 27, 2025 00:34:06 What are common mistakes folks are making with their Azure tenant(s)? While at the Kansas City Developers Conference, Richard chatted with Scott Sauber to run down his top ten list of issues he checks on for all his customers using Azure. From tenant ownership to naming conventions, policies, identities, and cost controls - there are a lot of things you can do to make your Azure experience more re

Data Governance for AI with Martina Grom Aug 20, 2025 00:38:43 How do you secure your organization's data to let AI technologies work safely? Richard chats with Martina Grom about her experiences helping sysadmins responsibly bring the power of Microsoft M365 Copilot into their organizations. Martina discusses setting up security and monitoring with tools like Microsoft Purview, enabling visibility into where copilots are working and who is using them. Once t

The Power of the Graph with Tony Redmond Aug 13, 2025 00:40:47 Are you tapping the power of Microsoft Graph? Richard chats with Tony Redmond about his work teaching people to leverage Microsoft Graph and all the insights it can provide about their organization. Tony views Graph as one of the key skills a sysadmin needs to manage an M365 tenant, alongside Exchange Online, SharePoint, and Teams. Throw in some Entra ID skills with Graph and you're ready to take

Copilot Adoption in Financial Services with Christina Wheeler Aug 6, 2025 00:35:34 What can the financial services sector teach us about adopting Copilot in our organizations? Richard chats with Christina Wheeler about her work at Microsoft, where she helps companies leverage large language model technologies. Christina discusses data security, which is crucial in the financial services industry due to its numerous regulations. The data security mindset of using tools like Purvi

From ClickOps to DevOps with Steven Bucher Jul 30, 2025 00:32:35 How do you get from ClickOps to DevOps? While at Build, Richard chatted with Steven Bucher about using Copilot in Azure to help build PowerShell scripts with Azure CLI to get you moving down the path of repeatable deployment. Steven talks about interacting with Copilot in Azure through the Portal, Azure CLI, and PowerShell. Using tools like GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio Code can help you start m

Copilot Studio with April Dunnam Jul 23, 2025 00:35:43 How do you bring AI agents to your organization? Richard chats with April Dunnam about her experiences with Copilot Studio, Microsoft's tool for building various agents for your organization. April discusses the multiple approaches available today for utilizing generative AI and the benefits of leveraging template-driven and low-code solutions to capitalize on the latest features in agentic AI. Th

Fabric in 2025 with Arun Ulag Jul 16, 2025 00:34:13 What's happening with Fabric in 2025? While at Build, Richard chatted with Arun Ulag about the fantastic progress Fabric has made in the past year. Arun discusses expanding the product line beyond analytics to include real-time intelligence and hosting primary data workloads. The goal is to make it incredibly easy to get your organization's "data estate in order"... not just for security and analy

Building Real Software using PowerApps with Luise Freese Jul 9, 2025 00:38:35 How does a PowerApp become a fully-fledged software application? Richard chats with Luise Freese about her experience of taking a PowerApp built by an individual through the "onboarding process" of becoming a complete software application, including requirements, tests, deployment pipeline, security, user training, and more. It's easy to create a prototype of an application with PowerApps, but onc

More Azure Innovations with Mark Russinovich Jul 2, 2025 00:30:18 How has Azure been innovating lately? While at Build Richard chatted with Azure CTO Mark Russinovich about some of the latest innovations in Azure, including some of the new hardware available. Mark talks about working with hardware manufacturers to build servers optimized to the workloads the largest Azure customers need. The conversation also explores the new innovations in AI and how Azure is b

Getting More from GitHub with April Yoho Jun 25, 2025 00:33:10 How do you get more from GitHub in your work routine? Richard chats with April Yoho about how sysadmins can take advantage of more GitHub features to make better quality scripts and more! April discusses the capabilities of GitHub Copilot to assist administrators in comprehending the intricacies of source management, including branching and merging. The conversation also delves into extracting mor

SQL Server 2025 with Bob Ward Jun 18, 2025 00:25:35 Here comes SQL Server 2025! While at Build, Richard chatted with Bob Ward about releasing a preview version of SQL Server 2025. Bob discusses SQL Server 2025 as an AI-ready enterprise database with numerous capabilities specifically tailored to your organization's AI needs, including a new vector data type. This includes making REST API calls to Azure OpenAI, Ollama, or OpenAI. This is also the v

The Case for Telemetry with Liz Fong-Jones Jun 11, 2025 00:32:17 How can modern telemetry solutions help you? While at NDC in Melbourne, Richard chatted with Liz Fong-Jones of Honeycomb about her approach to educating leadership on creating great telemetry solutions for organizations. Liz discusses the importance of being able to answer questions about reliability issues without causing problems, as opposed to relying on a dashboard for every measurement taken

Fixing a Security Vulnerability in Active Directory with Steve Syfuhs Jun 4, 2025 00:49:33 Why would a security vulnerability take more than two years to fix? Richard chats with Steve Syfuhs about the evolution of the response to KB5015754. Originally published in 2022, the issue involved vulnerabilities in the on-premises certificate authority for Active Directory. Pushing a fix to force the immediate replacement of the certificates could have left users unable to log into Active Direc

How to Talk to Security with Sarah Young May 28, 2025 00:35:48 How do you talk to security? While at NDC Melbourne, Richard chatted with Sarah Young about her approaches to helping folks work with the security team. Often seen as an impediment to business, Sarah talks about what motivates security teams, how to use language to help them understand that you are taking security seriously, and how to get more things done! Ultimately, the DevOps mantra of providi

PowerShell 7.5 and DSC 3.0.0 with Jason Helmick May 21, 2025 00:36:47 What's new in PowerShell 7.5? Richard talks to Jason Helmick about the latest version of PowerShell. Jason talks about 7.5 being a version with plenty of community contributions and what that means for everyone. He also discusses 7.6, which will be released as a long-term support version of PowerShell synchronized with .NET 10. Then, on to Desired State Configuration 3.0.0, which makes DSC work ef

Active Directory in 2025 with Liz Tesch May 14, 2025 00:34:38 Active Directory is 25 years old - are you still managing it like it's 1999? Richard talks to Liz Tesch about her excellent blog post on the subject and the challenge many sysadmins have with Active Directory today. Liz talks about how WAN bandwidth was a concern in the early 2000s, so we organized Active Directory into Organizational Units to minimize the amount of AD traffic over the WAN - today

Building a Career in Cybersecurity with Yuri Diogenes May 7, 2025 00:36:29 How do you make a career in cybersecurity? Richard talks to Yuri Diogenes about his work in cybersecurity, including his book on building a career in cybersecurity. Yuri talks about the inquisitive mindset that works well in cybersecurity - wanting to understand why things happen and get to the root cause. The conversation also explores the value of experimentation and practical experience as well

Modern Work in 2025 with Karoliina Kettukari Apr 30, 2025 00:34:55 So what does modern work look like today? Richard talks to Karoliina Kettukari about her new role as the Head of Modern Work for a financial services company in Finland, and what modern work has evolved. Karoliina talks about how the pandemic accelerated modern work, such as being able to work anywhere and collaborating with whomever you need to. Post-pandemic, there is a push for more work from t

Agentic AI for IT Pros with Tim Warner Apr 23, 2025 00:34:44 What can agentic AI do for you? Richard talks to Tim Warner about his work utilizing next generation agentic AI technologies to help with sysadmin tasks. Tim talks about the early lead that Cursor AI took with AI agents capable of writing and executing scripts on your behalf - as opposed to just creating code you can cut-and-paste. Today, GitHub Copilot has caught up with Agent Mode in Copilot Edi

How to Not Hate PowerShell with Barbara Forbes Apr 16, 2025 00:36:54 Are some of your team members starting to hate PowerShell? Richard talks to Barbara Forbes about her experiences with teams frustrated by PowerShell. Barbara talks about overcomplicating PowerShell scripts—the kind the most senior folks can create but no one else can maintain. Eventually, nobody will want to touch those scripts. Then there is the question of business value—does everything need to

Application Risk in Security Copilot with Ari Schorr Apr 9, 2025 00:34:02 How can Security Copilot help you secure your applications? Richard talks to Ari Schorr about assessing application risk with Microsoft Security Copilot - a new feature in preview in Security Copilot that focuses on application roles and entities. Ari talks about the sheer array of resources that applications depend on, and the many security risks that exist in that space - how do you even get sta

GitHub Copilot for SysAdmins with Jessica Deen Apr 2, 2025 00:38:32 What can GitHub Copilot do for SysAdmins in 2025? Richard talks to Jessica Deen from GitHub about her experiences using Copilot for her work. Jessica talks about Copilot being the first stop for most tasks - describing the task to Copilot helps you think through the problem, and often the tool can generate code or information to get that task done fast. Today's GitHub Copilot can handle everything

Writing Better PowerShell with Jeff Hicks Mar 26, 2025 00:36:37 How do you write better PowerShell? Richard talks to Jeff Hicks about his latest book, Behind the PowerShell Pipeline, and his efforts to promote writing PowerShell scripts that are easy to understand, use, and maintain! Jeff talks about how making a script work is not enough anymore - you can use GitHub Copilot. The goal is to make the output as usable as possible, whether that is consistent outp

Managing AI Costs with Sonia Cuff Mar 19, 2025 00:37:28 How are you managing your AI costs? Richard chats with Sonia Cuff about how she's been helping sysadmins understand how AI technology is billed out and how to measure them within a given application and across the organization. Sonia starts with some definitions since the term AI is so broad. It's not just about large language models! The conversation also dives into carbon footprints, and using t

Strong Certificate Mapping in Active Directory with Richard Hicks Mar 12, 2025 00:39:33 Are you using strong certificate mapping in Active Directory? Richard Hicks returns to the show to talk about the impacts of KB5015754, issued way back in 2022, and how it turned into an enforcement event on February 11, 2025 that might have caused some serious problems for folks trying to authenticate to Active Directory. For most sites, the upgrade to strong certificates was pretty much automati

Secure by Design with Karinne Bessette Mar 5, 2025 00:40:04 What does it mean to be secure by design? Richard chats with Karinne Bessette about the scope of the problem around making more secure software. Karinne talks about the US government's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) push to promote more secure software products. The conversation digs into some of the more famous exploits in recent years and some of the challenges of dealin

Exchange Server in 2025 with Michel de Rooij Feb 26, 2025 00:31:42 What is it like to take care of an Exchange Server in 2025? Richard chats with Michel de Rooij about his work with Exchange, including the many scripts he has written and published over the years to help sysadmins solve problems. Michel discusses how staying on-premises with Exchange is getting harder - the new version will be subscription-based! The conversation also digs into the new version of

Managed DevOps Pools with Eliza Tarasila Feb 19, 2025 00:32:19 How do you manage your CI/CD pipeline resources? Richard chats with Eliza Tarasila about Managed DevOps Pools in Azure DevOps. Eliza tells the story of discovering that teams were using Azure DevOps internally at Microsoft but would need to build their tooling to stand up the resources for testing and deployment. Managed DevOps Pools became the standard way to specify resources like virtual machin

Upgrading to Windows Server 2025 with Robert Smit Feb 12, 2025 00:37:51 Ready to upgrade to Windows Server 2025? Richard talks to Robert Smit about his experiences doing an upgrade—with a few important dos and don'ts! Robert talks about dusting off your Active Directory setup and ensuring you're at the Server 2016 functional level. The conversation also dives into the new-build-versus-upgrade options, taking advantage of SMB over QUIC and SMB Compression, and much mor

Microsoft Entra ID Protection with Corissa Koopmans Feb 5, 2025 00:38:20 How can Entra ID Protection help keep your organization resist security breaches? Richard talks to Corissa Koopmans about thinking beyond authentication and authorization and into conditional access - knowing what is normal and abnormal behavior for your users. Corissa recommends looking at the Entra ID Protection Dashboard - whether you have configured anything or not - to see what potential risk

Querying for Breaches with Mark Morowcyznski Jan 29, 2025 00:34:07 Do you Kusto? Richard talks to Mark Morowczynski about his new book, The Definitive Guide to KQL, and the power of Kusto to look across your Azure tenant and understand operational and security issues. Mark talks about being able to query across all log sets, telemetry, the M365 graph, and more - to help understand issues. The book provides example queries you could run today, including knowing th

SQL 2025 and Fabric SQL with Anna Hoffman Jan 22, 2025 00:34:11 What about SQL Server in Microsoft Fabric? Richard chats with Anna Hoffman about the preview release of SQL 2025 in Microsoft Fabric and the power of having your data store where you are doing your analytics and machine learning! Anna talks about new applications being developed using AI technologies like large language models and that often those applications need a data store - so why not keep i

DevOpsDocs with Mattias Karlsson Jan 15, 2025 00:36:15 Are your docs part of your DevOps cycle? Richard chats with Mattias Karlsson about automating documentation for APIs, cloud resources, and more! Mattias talks about using tools to build text files that contain every Azure resource being utilized, hopefully per application, along with API info, NuGet packages, and more. He also digs into the different audiences for that documentation - business wan

Least Privilege in 2025 with Bailey Bercik Jan 8, 2025 00:39:05 How is least privilege different in 2025? Richard talks to Bailey Bercik about the ongoing efforts to minimize users, administrators, and applications' privileges in 2025. Bailey talks about the power of Entra Permissions Management to help you see what permissions are going unused on various accounts so that you can tailor rights to individual accounts without things becoming unmanageable. Artifi

Being a SysAdmin in 2025 Jan 1, 2025 00:32:47 For the first show of 2025, let's talk about being a sysadmin in the coming year. This is the sixth year of Richard going solo on the show to talk about the things he's seen in the past year and speculate a bit on the next year, at least for sysadmins. Economic uncertainty is still a thing, as is employment. The security situation continues to be tough - and getting worse. But remarkable new tools

A Very Windows Christmas with Paul Thurrott Dec 25, 2024 00:38:02 What does Windows want for Christmas? Richard chats with Paul Thurrott about the crazy year that Windows has had and what 2025 holds. Paul starts with the Ignite keynote that focused on Windows being an open platform - which sounds funny on the surface, but has some logic to it! Security is a key part of that story, which brings up the issues around Crowdstrike and the Secure Future Initiative. An

Real-Time Intelligence in Microsoft Fabric with Yitzhak Kesselman Dec 18, 2024 00:36:57 Ready for some real-time intelligence? Richard chats with Yitzhak Kesselman about Real-Time Intelligence in Microsoft Fabric. Yitzhak talks about what it means to be real-time - that your company has a data analytics need with an ROI affected by a short amount of time. Perhaps it's a factory making products incorrectly or even issues with response times in a call center. The process involves bring

M365 Copilot in Government with Angela Dugan Dec 11, 2024 00:35:22 Can government agencies use M365 Copilot? Soon! Richard chats with Angela Dugan about how government entities: federal, state, counties, and cities, are exploring the power of M365 Copilot. Angela talks about the US Government GCC process for making M365 Copilot available in the next few months. The conversation turns to the usual challenges of data governance and security - all the same problems

A SysAdmin Christmas with Rick Claus and Joey Snow Dec 4, 2024 00:38:23 Need some gift ideas for your favorite sysadmin? We're here for you! Richard brings back Rick Claus and Joey Snow for another round of great gadgets that sysadmins love. There are some inexpensive options, some expensive options, some silly things, and some awesome toys! Share this show with your loved ones to help them get something great for you!LinksLinkTreeThe Help Desk Girl Stickers50th anniv

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