Explore every episode of the podcast RunAs Radio
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Real-Time Intelligence in Microsoft Fabric with Yitzhak Kesselman | 18 Dec 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 bringing streaming data sources into the real-time hub and then attaching dashboards to them to see data as it changes. Fabric simplifies this tooling so domain experts can do much of the exploration. Once you have valuable and actionable information coming in, you have the activator options, including messaging via email or Teams, all the way to Power Automate to affect almost anything! Links
Recorded October 29, 2024 | |||
| M365 Copilot in Government with Angela Dugan | 11 Dec 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 any other organization would have with tools that explore every element of data. Getting your data estate in order isn't easy - but the potential benefits in government are tremendous - providing more services to constituents for less cost! Links Recorded October 29, 2024 | |||
| OpenAI for PowerShell with Doug Finke | 09 Oct 2024 | 00:40:17 | |
How can OpenAI help you with PowerShell? Richard talks to Doug Finke about his experiences with ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot to help him write PowerShell and how he incorporated the OpenAI API into a PowerShell library to create a conversational interface in his PowerShell scripts! Doug talks about his productivity gains using OpenAI to write better quality PowerShell faster - helping him understand the code, automate test writing, and explore aspects of PowerShell he had never dug into. But beyond writing code for him, adding the conversational interface to a PowerShell script opens a whole new interactive opportunity to make it easier for folks to use scripts and do more with them! Links Recorded August 7, 2024 | |||
| DevOps in 2023 with April Edwards | 18 Jan 2023 | 00:39:08 | |
How is the DevOps movement evolving, and why should sysadmins care? Richard talks with April Edwards about how DevOps continues to grow with better tools and results! April talks about how often developers lead DevOps initiatives but that so much value comes from operations. The conversation digs into the tools that can facilitate deploying more frequently, measuring more accurately, and understanding how customers work. Everyone writes code these days, even if they aren't developers - and the DevOps cycle also applies there! Links:
Recorded December 14, 2022 | |||
| Local Administrator Password Solution with Jeremy Moskowitz | 11 Jan 2023 | 00:36:56 | |
Have you used LAPS? Richard chats with Jeremy Moskowitz about the Windows Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS). Jeremy talks about how the Premier Field Engineers originally developed LAPS at Microsoft to deal with having different local administrator passwords on every workstation in an organization. The passwords change automatically regularly, and sysadmins can retrieve the password for a given machine using PowerShell and other tools. Today there is an updated version of LAPS that works with Azure Active Directory and provides more control over password changes and restrictions - you need this tool! Links: Recording December 13, 2022 | |||
| M365 Governance in 2023 with Martina Grom | 04 Jan 2023 | 00:33:08 | |
What are the new governance challenges in M365? Richard chats with Martina Grom about her ongoing work helping organizations provide governance over the growing surface area of Microsoft 365. Martina talks about the challenges around identity and multi-factor authentication and the improvements that Microsoft is making to MFA to make it easier for users to do the right thing. The conversation also turns to data loss prevention and the approaches to minimizing a company's legal exposure to data loss - starting with not storing data if you can avoid it! Martina also talks about the new challenges in governance with Power Apps, including the tools available to help sysadmins see what apps exist, how they touch data, and what privacy and security controls are in place. Governance is an ongoing effort! Links:
Recorded December 13, 2022 | |||
| Being a SysAdmin in 2023 | 28 Dec 2022 | 00:30:43 | |
It's the end of 2022, and time to reflect on the work coming up in the next year – what will it be like for SysAdmins in 2023? Richard flies solo for his annual year-in-review show, looking back on last year's predictions (including what he got wrong!) and projecting forward into 2023. Security continues to be a top priority, but the situation has evolved. Current economic conditions likely will impact your business – how does it affect your work? How will the cloud continue to evolve, and how can you take advantage of it? 2022 was another unusual year, and 2023 looks even more so – thanks for sticking with us! Links: | |||
| Reflecting on Microsoft with Mary Jo Foley | 21 Dec 2022 | 00:38:55 | |
Mary Jo Foley moves on! No, not entirely from Microsoft - away from writing several times a week about the latest enterprise topics. MJ is going to Directions on Microsoft, where she will spend more time on analysis but still communicate it to the world. The conversation digs into current subjects like the state of the cloud and Microsoft's focus on building industry-specific cloud implementations, and precisely what is happening with Windows these days? Lots of great thinking from MJ, as usual, and a hint of what's to come! Links:
Recorded November 11, 2022 | |||
| Securing Apps in the Cloud with Carroll Moon | 14 Dec 2022 | 00:36:56 | |
You're moving to the cloud; how does your application security look? Richard talks with Carroll Moon of CloudFit about moving applications into the cloud with better security and governance using the Azure Landing Zone approach. Carroll talks about the various patterns that allow existing applications to work in the zero-trust environment, with containerization, platform-as-a-service changes, and even desktop virtualization! The blackhats are improving, and the cloud is less vulnerable than existing on-premises solutions, but only if you embrace the cloud security models. New standards for cybersecurity are emerging - are you up to speed? Links:
Recorded October 31, 2022 | |||
| Getting Rid of Excel with Jennifer Stirrup | 07 Dec 2022 | 00:40:42 | |
Is Excel damaging your company? Richard talks with Jen Stirrup about how Excel gets used far too much in businesses and for too many things. Jen talks about the lack of data integrity in Excel and how it's easy to make small mistakes that can damage data - and give you little to no methods to detect the damage! While Excel can often be a starting point for a new business opportunity, as soon as it becomes essential, it's time to pivot to tools that can protect data quality more effectively! Don't let your company be the next news story about a flawed spreadsheet! Links: Recorded October 28, 2022 | |||
| What SysAdmins Want for Christmas with Rick Claus and Joey Snow | 30 Nov 2022 | 00:40:37 | |
What do SysAdmins want for Christmas? Richard chats with Rick Claus and Joey Snow about their favorite gadgets for SysAdmins. From the gadgets that help us at work to the toys that make us happy at home, it's a shopping spree of goodies! Share this episode with your loved ones to give them ideas on what to get you for Christmas, you impossible-to-shop-for SysAdmin! Links: | |||
| Post-Pandemic Team Building with Stephanie Donahue | 23 Nov 2022 | 00:45:02 | |
The pandemic has put a lot of stress on teams - how do we make them stronger? Richard talks to Stephanie Donahue about strengthening teams and communities as we emerge from the pandemic. Steph talks about the water cooler and happy hour conversations lost the past couple of years and the value they once provided and should again. Does that mean going back to the office? What are the alternatives? Maybe the new tools can help, or we should just have lunch? Links: Recorded October 25, 2022 | |||
| Azure Vs AWS Billing with Corey Quinn | 16 Nov 2022 | 00:36:39 | |
How are Azure and AWS Billing different? Richard chats with Corey Quinn of Screaming in the Cloud about his experiences experimenting with all the other clouds. Corey talks about his concerns around the security issues with Azure this past year - not the problems themselves, but how Microsoft handled them. The conversation also digs into using Cognitive Services and being unsure what things will cost until the end of the month. What about GCP and Oracle as well? Corey has tried them all and has thoughts! Links: Recorded October 26, 2022 | |||
| Data Security and Governance in M365 with Nikki Chapple | 02 Oct 2024 | 00:44:04 | |
Microsoft 365 Data Governance has always been critical - but it's only getting more important! Richard talks to Nikki Chapple about her experiences working with companies trying to get their "data estate in order." That phrase is what Microsoft recommends before turning on tools like Copilot for M365. Nikki talks about how hard the goal of data security is - that it is just as tricky as any other security goal. Data security is an endless process that needs refining and work on routinely as new data and classes of data arrive in the organization. In the meantime, users are taking advantage of LLMs like ChatGPT for their work whether we want them to or not - so there is a need to act quickly to provide secure capabilities! Links
Recorded August 16, 2024 | |||
| Azure Stack HCI with Sarah Lean | 09 Nov 2022 | 00:34:21 | |
Why do you need Azure Stack? Richard chats with Sarah Lean about the capabilities Azure Stack HCI brings to your organization. Sarah describes the three flavors of Azure Stack, including Hub, Edge, and HCI - short for Hyper-Converged Infrastructure. While all the options act like a part of Azure, they are optimized for different needs, but primarily focus on putting Azure-style compute closer to where you need it, perhaps as part of a machine learning solution, IoT, and so on. Azure Arc plays a role in giving you a broad view of your cloud assets, Stack assets, and regular on-premises resources also! Links: Recorded October 24, 2022 | |||
| SQL Server 2022 Hybrid Data Platform with Bob Ward | 02 Nov 2022 | 00:34:45 | |
What can SQL 2022 do for you? Richard chats with Bob Ward about the upcoming release of SQL Server 2022 and its evolution toward data anywhere. Bob talks about running SQL on edge devices, on-premises, in containers, virtual machines, and, of course, in the cloud. The management tools like Azure Arc make it easy to take care of all the places your SQL data can now live - and let you be the data administrator you can be! Check out Bob's latest book on SQL Server 2022 and all its hybrid data capabilities! Links:
Recorded October 26, 2022 | |||
| Modernizing your Scripting using RPA with Christina Wheeler | 26 Oct 2022 | 00:30:58 | |
What is the state of scripting in your organization? Richard talks to Christina Wheeler about Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and its role in the array of tooling in M365 to take existing scripting and wrap it into modern automated workflows. Christina talks about how Power Automate for Desktop can work with an Excel macro to further automation to make an entire process hands-off or reduce the number of touches you need to make. It can be a bit messy at times, but there are lots of tools, and there is always Teams to put a collaborative UI over top of it. Automation has never been easier! Links:
Recorded September 10, 2022 | |||
| Windows 11 One Year Later with Paul Thurrott | 19 Oct 2022 | 00:43:25 | |
The return of Two Grumpy Old Men Complain about Windows! Richard chats with Paul Thurrott about a year of Windows 11 - the good, the bad, and the meh. Paul talks about the bits of Windows 10X that became Windows 11 and how simplifications in Win11 may annoy power users but are beneficial to regular folks. But nobody benefits from the ads on the desktop - except Microsoft. The conversation turns to the hardware side of the world and the soon-to-be-announced ARM-based Windows laptop. After all, there are already ARM servers in Azure, so when do we get a new generation of great workstations? Links: Recorded September 8, 2022 | |||
| Viva Learning and Productivity with Ulrika Hedlund | 12 Oct 2022 | 00:34:55 | |
How can Viva Learning improve your team's productivity? Richard chats with Ulrika Hedlund about how the latest generation of tools from Microsoft helps measure productivity and focus on learning opportunities. The M365 platform can show where employees struggle with tools that lead to learning opportunities - and then measure the results! Ulrika talks about the various kinds of learning needed within an organization, including compulsory learnings for regulated industries, standard corporate training, and then moving more into productivity and industry-focused knowledge. Viva Learning and the related tools make it easier than ever to build custom learning materials that can make learning more specific to your company and fun as well! Links: Recorded August 9, 2022 | |||
| Manageable Infrastructure as Code using Pulumi with Joe Duffy | 05 Oct 2022 | 00:36:27 | |
How do you make manageable Infrastructure-as-Code? Richard talks to Joe Duffy about his open-source project called Pulumi, helping you build Infrastructure-as-Code solutions in almost any language for virtually any cloud platform or service. Joe talks about how infrastructure folks are headed down a similar path to developers from a few years ago, needing better source control, testing, and tooling for their infrastructure. And these are solved problems in the development space. By taking advantage of developer tooling, you can make Infrastructure-as-Code that is reusable and modular so that you can solve complicated problems like security implementations once. Then, when changes need to happen, they're made in one place and easy to propagate to all your projects. Links: Recorded September 6, 2022 | |||
| PowerShell and GitHub with Barbara Forbes | 28 Sep 2022 | 00:35:41 | |
What can GitHub do for your PowerShell scripts? Richard talks to Barbara Forbes about using GitHub and PowerShell together. Barbara first discusses the fundamentals - using GitHub as your source code repository for PowerShell. It takes some time to learn, but you can start just using it for yourself. Things get more complex when multiple people start to work on the scripts, but they also get better. Then the conversation turns to the fun stuff - using Github Copilot to help you write your scripts, incorporating GitHub Actions to automate testing and deployment. PowerShell code is code and should have all the protections and power tools that GitHub provides! Links:
Recorded August 3, 2022 | |||
| Developer Practices that Help SysAdmins with Rick Taylor | 21 Sep 2022 | 00:42:19 | |
What can a sysadmin learn from a developer? Richard chats with Rick Taylor about his experiences learning from developers to write better code - sysadmin code, of course, like PowerShell, Python, and even YAML. Rick talks about how PowerShell code works across all the clouds and how organizations need well-managed PowerShell the same way developers create well-managed compiled code. The conversation explores the various developer techniques that can help sysadmins be more productive - call it DevOps if you like, but it mostly looks like getting work done! Links: Recorded August 9, 2022 | |||
| Artificial Intelligence in PowerBI with Priscilla Camp | 14 Sep 2022 | 00:36:49 | |
Can you use artificial intelligence technologies in data analytics? Richard chats with Priscilla Camp about using cognitive services in PowerBI for image recognition, natural language processing, and even sentiment analysis. Priscilla describes her experience doing analysis on data from the Universal Studio theme parks in Orlando, going beyond simple happy/neutral/sad ranking into analyzing the thousands of comments made by folks in the park. Through sentiment analysis and key phrase extraction, those comments can be turned into actions the park can take to improve people's experiences - and potentially increase revenues! Links:
Recorded August 5, 2022 | |||
| Learning PowerShell with Jeff Hicks | 07 Sep 2022 | 00:37:43 | |
How do you learn PowerShell effectively? Richard chats with Jeff Hicks about his experiences teaching PowerShell from the beginning. Jeff talks about strategies to learn more about PowerShell as you code, not just searching for cut-and-paste examples. The danger of cut-and-paste is that you don't get a chance to understand what you're working on - you need to write some code to get better. This line of reasoning turns the conversation to routine learning, ensuring you're writing a little PowerShell daily to grow your skills - whether that's code you need in your work or more practice-related code. PowerShell is a superpower. You just need to learn it! Links:
Recorded July 26, 2022 | |||
| Windows Server 2025 and Active Directory with Orin Thomas | 25 Sep 2024 | 00:43:26 | |
What does Windows Server 2025 bring to Active Directory? Richard chats with Orin Thomas about the new version of Windows Server coming and what to expect around Active Directory. Orin talks about how mature the Windows Server space is, so only incremental improvements are warranted, but they are important ones - like retiring NTLM once and for all. And when it comes to Active Directory, there are new secure features you're going to want, but you do need to up your functional level to get them, and that means getting to at least Server 2016 functional level first... then moving everything else. When was the last time you transferred a FSMO role? Orin also digs into the new certification practice options available, where instead of answering questions, you do the work and get evaluated - cool! Links
Recorded August 6, 2024 | |||
| Managed Environments for PowerApps with April Dunnam | 31 Aug 2022 | 00:35:29 | |
PowerApps are proliferating - how do you keep them under control? Richard talks to April Dunnam about managed environments for PowerApps, providing oversight and governance. April talks about the Microsoft Power Platform Center of Excellence Starter Kit as a way to get started in the governance model with tooling for insights, auditing, compliance, and even helping connect the folks building PowerApps in your organization. It's early days for the tooling, but worth the effort to help get PowerApps to be part of the same application lifecycle management processes that already exist in your organization! Links:
Recorded July 15, 2022 | |||
| The Rogers Outage and Resiliency with Dana Epp | 24 Aug 2022 | 00:41:46 | |
On July 8, the Rogers company in Canada had a total network outage for 15 hours - what happened? Richard talks to Dana Epp about what we can learn from an outage like this. Dana talks about having an open root cause analysis to provide detailed discussion without accusation or blame. You understand the potential when you look at how the airline industry has become incredibly safe through open root cause analysis. Outages are bad - but learning from them is what makes up better! Links:
Recorded July 15, 2022 | |||
| New Viva Modules with Sandy Ussia | 17 Aug 2022 | 00:43:18 | |
Viva continues to evolve - what's the latest? Richard talks to Sandy Ussia about her work with the various Viva modules and approaches to customizing Teams. Sandy talks about how it's possible to shape a Teams experience to fit your organization, including using third-party components - there are many choices! When your Teams is in good shape, there are plenty of new Viva modules to explore, including Topics, a knowledge management system using machine learning to extract critical aspects of your organization. And related to that machine learning module are upcoming Sales and Goals! The Viva family keeps growing! Links:
Recorded July 15, 2022 | |||
| Getting Hybrid Certified with Orin Thomas | 10 Aug 2022 | 00:41:30 | |
What's the best Windows Server and Azure hybrid configuration? Richard talks to Orin Thomas about the new Windows Server Hybrid Administrator Associate certification. Orin digs into how the hybrid certifications pick up where regular Windows Server certifications leave off, adding Azure's role as backup, extended storage, telemetry, and security solutions. The conversation explores how different organizations implement services like file storage and how Azure can add to those solutions without needing significant user retraining but still add essential capabilities. Hybrid is a logical destination for some organization workloads, and certification can get you up to speed on all the options! Links:
Recorded July 5, 2022 | |||
| Migrating Group Policy Objects into Intune with Katy Nicholson | 03 Aug 2022 | 00:35:27 | |
Can you migrate group policy objects to Intune? Richard chats with Katy Nicholson about her work modernizing Windows client machines through Microsoft Endpoint Manager, making on-premises Active Directory optional. Katy discusses using the Group Policy Analyzer to understand what policies will work through Endpoint Manager and Configuration Service Providers. The next question is, what policies are irrelevant or obsolete? This leads to a conversation around refreshing security for an organization - why does this policy exist. How is it applied to non-Windows devices? Does it still make sense? Ultimately, all policies are about security, which means getting to zero trust. How does policy work in a zero trust environment, and where do you have to make exceptions? Links:
Recorded July 5, 2022 | |||
| Microsoft Loop with Stephen Rose | 27 Jul 2022 | 00:42:09 | |
How does Microsoft Loop help you collaborate? Richard talks to Stephen Rose about the recent addition of Loop to Teams. Loop uses the Fluid Framework to provide collaborative spaces to create to-dos and other lists with multiple people working simultaneously, marking up and responding to information. Documents and other assets brought into a workspace can be added to emails and other documents while remaining live. Every time you open them, they grab the latest info from the documents in the Loop workspace. Appropriate security privileges still apply, but Loop makes it easier for folks to work the way they want to and take advantage of up-to-date info from the M365 accounts in your organization! Links: Recorded June 3, 2022 | |||
| SharePoint News with Emily Mancini | 20 Jul 2022 | 00:32:57 | |
Your Intranet needs news, and SharePoint can help! Richard chats with Emily Mancini about the power of the News part in SharePoint to keep your Intranet more dynamic with a steady stream of new content. Emily talks about creating an ecosystem of evolving content on your Intranet so that it is more than just a set of links to HR information. The conversation dives into targeting news effectively within your organization to keep it relevant and how a good Intranet is ultimately a reflection of its culture - so take it seriously! Links:
Recorded Monday, June 6, 2022 | |||
| Windows Admin Center in Azure with Prasidh Arora | 13 Jul 2022 | 00:34:02 | |
Windows Admin Center in Azure? Richard talks to Prasidh Arora about the preview of WAC in Azure - giving admins that familiar Windows Admin Center view of Azure Virtual Machines running Windows Server 2016 or later. Prasidh talks about creating a unified view and admin access to your servers, whether they are running on-premises, in Azure, or even on other cloud infrastructures. Installing Azure Arc on a server makes it available from WAC in Azure. The conversation also digs into the privileges challenges - making sure you have rights on the server for WAC's different capabilities. But with WAC for Azure, we're one step closer to a unified view and control of infrastructure. Links: Recorded June 3, 2022 | |||
| Updating Windows with Aria Carley | 06 Jul 2022 | 00:38:25 | |
How do you keep Windows devices updated? Richard talks to Aria Carley about Microsoft's array of update services, including Windows Update for Business, Windows Server Update Services, Intune, Configuration Manager, and more! The host of products can be intimidating, but Aria lays out their role in your organization in a triangle of cost, time, and risk. The options range from allowing consumer-style automatic updates to controlling every install and the order they take place. Where is your comfort level on the triangle? Links:
Recorded Wednesday, June 8, 2022 | |||
| Creating a Data Culture with Rohan Kumar and Santosh Jamadagni | 29 Jun 2022 | 00:35:00 | |
Does your organization have a data culture? Richard talks with Microsoft CVP Rohan Kumar, and Mars VP Santosh Jamadagni about building organizations focused on data rather than opinion to drive the company forward. Rohan talks about getting data out of silos and into the hands of folks that can act on the information to make better business decisions. Santosh discusses how Mars has empowered workers throughout the Mars organization with real-time information. The conversation digs into the need to apply security rules to data as it enters the organization so that it is immediately available to the right people at the right time. Data availability is the key to a data culture! Links: Recorded May 4, 2022 | |||
| Asymmetric Encryption with Eli Holderness | 18 Sep 2024 | 00:38:35 | |
Do you know how asymmetric encryption works? While at the Kansas City Developers Conference, Richard sat down with Eli Holderness to discuss many of the encryption technologies being used today—and the new options coming in the future! Eli talks about how symmetrical encryption and public key encryption have been the focus of modern encryption, especially on the web. But the ongoing security arms race means we have to keep tweaking encryption—what if we made a bigger leap? Asymmetric encryption offers huge potential - but there's still a long way to go! Links
Recorded June 27, 2024 | |||
| Viva Insights with Karoliina Kettukari | 22 Jun 2022 | 00:36:42 | |
How can Viva Insights improve personal productivity and the productivity of the team? Richard talks to Karoliina Kettukari about the role of Viva Insights - starting with that daily email you likely already get. Karoliina talks about folks using M365 leaving traces of their work and how Insights puts that information to work. Insights help you be more productive by helping you block out time for meaningful work, make sure you follow through on commitments you make, and even identify when you may be working too much. The conversation also explores the management tooling for Insights to help leaders see their team's productivity in the aggregate! Links: Recorded May 4, 2022 | |||
| Turning off Your Last Exchange Server with Tony Redmond | 15 Jun 2022 | 00:36:03 | |
Are you ready to turn off your last exchange server? Richard talks with Tony Redmond about the recent announcement by Microsoft around management tools for Exchange Hybrid. Tony discusses how organizations that migrated Exchange to Office 365 are stuck with one last server: The server that hosts management tools. The management tools move to a workstation, but they are PowerShell only. And the process of shutting down your last Exchange Server is very much a one-way trip, at least for now. Should you do it? Tony says it's time to get started! Links:
Recorded May 2, 2022 | |||
| Cloud Infrastructure for Healthcare with Lynn Langit | 08 Jun 2022 | 00:32:58 | |
How does healthcare function in the cloud? Richard talks to Lynn Langit about her work helping healthcare-related workloads move into the cloud. Lynn talks about how lift-and-shift is a great starting point - it stops analysis-paralysis and gets a baseline on costs in the cloud, which helps plan high return-on-investment activities around workloads. The conversation digs into the visualization challenge: It is hard to see what is being moved into the cloud and how it is operating there. Lynn digs into the cloud-as-architecture side of things since most customers do not know how working in the cloud is supposed to look, and there are distinct differences from on-premises operations! Links: Recorded May 2, 2022 | |||
| IT in War with Sami Laiho | 01 Jun 2022 | 00:38:22 | |
What happens when your neighbor starts a war? Richard chats with Sami Laiho about how his work has changed since the conflict between Russia and Ukraine began. Sami talks about splitting the active directory infrastructure of companies that have offices in both Finland and Russia. The conversation dives into the complexities of making two AD solutions from one - splitting admins, FSMO roles, etc. Then there is the cyber warfare problem - countries bordering Russia have dealt with many cyber attacks over the years and have some excellent practices. Do you? Links: Recorded May 2, 2022 | |||
| Top Technical Skills for Modern IT Pros with Sonia Cuff | 25 May 2022 | 00:44:02 | |
What are the technical skills that the modern IT Pro needs? Richard chats with Sonia Cuff about a recent blog post that digs into the array of technical skills she sees today. Many are old standbys, like networking and server configuration. And the cloud is undoubtedly an essential part of the current skill set. But there are newer aspects to explore, like source control for scripts and Infrastructure-as-Code. While you don't have to have every skill, it's worth thinking about how you're expanding your skill set and what new things you can add to be more effective! Links: Recorded April 21, 2022 | |||
| SQL Q&A from SQL Server & Azure SQL Conference Spring 2022 | 18 May 2022 | 00:48:32 | |
In Las Vegas, once again, this is the Q&A session from the SQL Server & Azure SQL Conference in April 2022. Richard moderated questions and answers from SQL luminaries, including Bob Ward, Buck Woody, Pam Lahoud, Bradley Ball, Des Fitzgerald, Davide Mauri, Rie Merritt, and Kevin Farlee. The conversation ranges over Azure SQL migration, new features in SQL Server 2022, challenges in scaling, reliability, disaster recovery, and more! Links: Recorded April 7, 2022 | |||
| Backup and Ransomware with Karinne Bessette | 11 May 2022 | 00:38:54 | |
How can backups protect you from ransomware? Richard chats with Karinne Bessette about how backup technology has responded to the need for ransomware protection. Whether it's intelligent backup tape systems that automatically pop out tapes so they won't overwrite or other air-gap strategies for backups, you need to have a backup you can rely on to recover from a ransomware attack without paying the ransom. Backups can also be a part of the requirements for ransomware insurance - and if your backups aren't sufficient, they can void the insurance! It is also crucial to know what it takes to restore from backup, how long it takes, and the order of things when recovering, even from the ground up. Backups aren't going away any time soon! Links:
Recorded March 25, 2022 | |||
| Moving Away from Active Directory with Travis Roberts | 04 May 2022 | 00:33:18 | |
Can we move away from Active Directory? Richard talks to Travis Roberts about the prospect of moving organizations off of Windows Active Directory and solely onto Azure Active Directory with Microsoft Intune. Travis talks about the critical aspects of Windows Active Directory - NTLM and Kerberos. Can your organization live without them? That means file shares and printing for most places. Microsoft has recommended that hybrid AD is the long-term solution, and for most sites, that's probably right. But how can you depend on Windows AD less? Can new machines coming into the organization avoid being AD-joined? Lots of great thinking about moving forward with Active Directory! Links:
Recorded March 3, 2022 | |||
| Managing Teams Sprawl with Erica Toelle and John Gruszczyk | 27 Apr 2022 | 00:36:23 | |
How do you manage the sprawl of Teams? Richard chats with Erica Toelle and John Gruszczyk about the governance of Teams, starting with allowing a bit of sprawl in the first place - people give up on tools that are too locked down. You have to leave room to explore! But once folks engage with Teams and the sprawl gets a bit out of control, there are tools to help you protect people and information shared there. John talks about controlling access to different parts of Teams, depending on your role in the organization and external guests. Erica dives into labeling data as sensitive and how the Data Loss Prevention tooling can help protect data and indicate where it might be exposed inappropriately. There are many approaches to controlling sprawl. You can choose what is best for your organization! Links:
Recorded March 3, 2022 | |||
| Fixing Problem WiFi Devices using Tonic with Ryan Woodings | 20 Apr 2022 | 00:34:23 | |
We all have those problem WiFi devices - how do you fix them? Richard chats with Ryan Woodings about Tonic, the latest product from MetaGeek that helps you analyze WiFi traffic by the device to understand its problems. Ryan talks about tracking WiFi-specific information, including what AP a client is connecting to and all the intimate details of WiFi connection negotiating. Tools like Tonic can identify a broken antenna in a device based on that traffic or just poor decision-making by the WiFi chipset - and what you can do about it! Links: Recording March 3, 2022 | |||
| Microsoft 365 and PowerShell with Tony Redmond | 11 Sep 2024 | 00:38:01 | |
What can you do to Microsoft 365 with PowerShell? Turns out - almost anything! Richard talks to Tony Redmond about his ongoing efforts to educate sysadmins about the vast array of capabilities in M365, including all the PowerShell cmdlets that can let you retrieve and control everything in M365. There's now so much information that Tony and his team have created a separate book explicitly focused on automating M365 with PowerShell. The conversation also turns to the role of Copilot - GitHub Copilot- in helping you write better PowerShell and the challenges around M365 Copilot. The goal is to take advantage of the Microsoft Graph - all that information about your M365 Tenant and what is happening inside it. Links
Recorded August 8, 2024 | |||
| Query Performance Tuning Strategies with Monica Rathbun | 13 Apr 2022 | 00:36:03 | |
How do you keep your SQL queries fast? Richard chats with Monica Rathbun about her approaches to SQL Server query tuning. Monica starts with defining the problem - how do we know that the database is the performance bottleneck? The conversation dives into measuring query performance and the power of Query Store, but only on SQL Server 2016 and above, so get upgrading! Entity Framework is a standard tool for developers to automate access to SQL. Still, it can generate some pretty ugly queries, and Monica talks about different ways to improve them, including the old standby of writing a stored procedure. Lots of ideas for folks struggling to make their databases go fast! Links:
Recorded February 22, 2022 | |||
| Learning Bicep with John Downs | 06 Apr 2022 | 00:36:54 | |
Ready to flex your Bicep? Richard talks to John Downs from Azure Fast Track about configuring Azure resources using Bicep. John talks about Azure Resource Manager (ARM) being the under-the-hood way to create Azure Infrastructure-as-a-Service, but folks don't enjoy working directly in the JSON that makes up an ARM template. Enter Bicep, a domain-specific language that generates the JSON for you. Today Bicep is Microsoft's recommended way to build Azure resources, offering access to source control, testing, and automation that makes your Azure site more reliable and easier to maintain! Links:
Recorded March 3, 2022 | |||
| PowerShellGet 3 with Sydney Smith | 30 Mar 2022 | 00:33:39 | |
What's coming in the next version of PowerShellGet? Richard chats with Sydney Smith about PowerShellGet in general and version 3 specifically. Sydney talks about how PowerShellGet appears like a command in PowerShell but is a separate module installed by default with PowerShell and is getting more features and some breaking changes. But version 3 also includes some compatibility features so that you can use your scripts dependent on PowerShellGet 2 within PowerShellGet 3. While there are some breaking changes, they make it easier to find and install the packages you need from the PowerShell Gallery or any other PowerShell repository you want to access. Links:
Recorded February 17, 2022 | |||