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SysAdmin Weekly

SysAdmin Weekly

Andy Syrewicze and Eric Siron 52 Episodes Oct 11, 2026

SysAdmin Weekly is a podcast for busy system administrators, hosted by longtime sysadmins and Microsoft MVPs Andy Syrewicze and Eric Siron. The show covers IT-related topics, technical know-how, and real-world insights to help sysadmins navigate their daily challenges. Each episode dives into relevant issues and solutions, offering expert advice and engaging discussions tailored to professionals in the trenches.

Episodes

062 - What Free IT Training Actually Gets You Hired in 2026 and 2027?
062 - What Free IT Training Actually Gets You Hired in 2026 and 2027? Oct 11, 2026 01:19:47 Free IT training is real and it is actually free. The exam that gets you past a resume screen is the part that still costs money.Andy Syrewicze and Eric Siron go through the free IT training worth your evenings: Microsoft Learn, AWS Skill Builder, Cisco Networking Academy, the Linux Foundation, and the second tier nobody mentions. Why every big vendor gives this away, what a Credly badge proves to
061 - Why Does IT Burn People Out? SysAdmin Mental Health with Paul Croker
061 - Why Does IT Burn People Out? SysAdmin Mental Health with Paul Croker Sep 27, 2026 01:05:08 We throw an alert when a disk hits 85 percent. Nobody has ever built the monitoring system for the person who gets the alert.Andy Syrewicze is joined by Paul Croker, a UK IT pro who founded 404 Stress Not Found, a nonprofit built because tech and cyber people had nowhere safe to talk about burnout. Paul walks through the perfect storm that put him on a Berlin stage telling his own story, and Andy
060 - Microsoft 365 Licensing in 2026: What Changed and What It Costs You
060 - Microsoft 365 Licensing in 2026: What Changed and What It Costs You Sep 20, 2026 01:16:13 Microsoft has no intention of making 365 licensing simpler, because the complexity is what gives them room to negotiate.Andy Syrewicze gets Paul Schnackenburg back on the show to map Microsoft 365 licensing as it actually stands in 2026. The July price increases and the one SKU that did not move, the Defender and Purview add-ons that let a 300 seat shop buy E5 capability without buying E5, the fea
059 - How Should SysAdmins Handle Remote Access in 2026?
059 - How Should SysAdmins Handle Remote Access in 2026? Sep 11, 2026 01:14:30 Which protocol you use to reach the box is the least interesting decision you will make about remote access.Andy Syrewicze and Eric Siron go after the piece they cut from the tools episode. Eric lands the sharpest version half an hour in: what you are actually doing is moving from one-sided authentication to mutual authentication. Around that sit overlay networks against the VPN concentrator, the
058 - What Tools Do SysAdmins Actually Use Every Day?
058 - What Tools Do SysAdmins Actually Use Every Day? Sep 4, 2026 01:05:30 The tools that stay in the kit for a decade are the ones that still work when the network, the domain, or the boot volume is the thing that broke.Andy Syrewicze and Eric Siron open their real toolboxes and argue about what earns permanent residency. nmap and Wireshark for what is actually on the wire, Sysinternals for what a box is really doing, GParted and SystemRescue for the volume that will no
057 - Is Your Air Gap Actually an Air Gap? Port 22 Says No
057 - Is Your Air Gap Actually an Air Gap? Port 22 Says No Aug 28, 2026 01:06:19 Somewhere inside that isolated network, port 22 is open, and it has been open since the outage six months ago that nobody wrote up.Andy Syrewicze and Eric Siron take apart a term the industry uses constantly and almost never earns. They walk the management plane hole by hole: SSH and RDP so somebody can patch the thing, SMB for the files that have to move, DNS and NTP because nothing works without
056 - How People Actually Get Into SysAdmin Work
056 - How People Actually Get Into SysAdmin Work Aug 22, 2026 01:29:30 Two careers, two completely different entry points, and the exact same first catastrophe: data gone, no idea if it was coming back.Andy Syrewicze and Eric Siron trade full origin stories, from the 486 and the VIC-20 through the first paid tech jobs neither of them was qualified for. They get specific about the failures that rewired how they work, the mentor advice that still holds up decades later
055 - How Do You Run IT With No Budget?
055 - How Do You Run IT With No Budget? Aug 14, 2026 01:05:05 "No budget" is almost never no budget. It is no budget yet, and the thing that closes the gap is your ability to put a real dollar figure on the risk you are carrying.Andy Syrewicze and Eric Siron have both run IT for organizations where getting the credit card out meant you had done something wrong. They walk through what that actually looks like: a PC DOS 4 machine still passing parts
054 - Windows Admin Center in 2026: Good Tool, Broken On-Ramp?
054 - Windows Admin Center in 2026: Good Tool, Broken On-Ramp? Jul 24, 2026 01:16:44 Windows Admin Center is a genuinely useful tool wrapped in an on-ramp so rough it took Andy four hours, a from-scratch certificate authority, and a pile of misleading error messages just to reach the login screen.Andy rebuilt his lab on an all-Core Windows Server 2025 fleet, set out to manage it from a browser the way Microsoft keeps telling us to, and hit a certificate wall that most SysAdmins wo
053 - How to Survive as a Solo SysAdmin: Where to Start When You're the Only One
053 - How to Survive as a Solo SysAdmin: Where to Start When You're the Only One Jul 17, 2026 01:13:15 When you are the only person standing between a working business and total collapse, the job stops being about doing everything and starts being about deciding what not to do this week.Andy and Eric Siron tackle a listener-requested topic: you just became the solo SysAdmin, whether by hire, downsizing, or promotion, and now you own the firewall, the servers, the backups, and the printer nobody wan
052 - Why is Homelab Hardware So Expensive in 2026 (and When Will It Get Cheaper)?
052 - Why is Homelab Hardware So Expensive in 2026 (and When Will It Get Cheaper)? Jul 10, 2026 01:12:03 Somewhere between a $305 Raspberry Pi board and a used NVMe listing on eBay, the homelab hobby quietly stopped making financial sense.Andy and co-host Eric Siron dig into why memory, NAND, and storage prices went vertical in 2026, who is actually eating the supply, and what practitioners should do about it. They cover the AI buildout swallowing the manufacturing capacity, why prices probably never
051 - What's Actually in Our Homelabs (and Why)
051 - What's Actually in Our Homelabs (and Why) Jul 3, 2026 01:27:46 The hardest part of running a home lab in 2026 is not building it up; it is being honest about what earns its place.Andy is joined by returning guest and member of the SysAdmin Weekly community, Clay Tamam, a working SysAdmin over in the Netherlands, for a real tour of what is actually sitting in their labs: the hardware, the hypervisors, the services they use every day, and the reasoning behind e

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