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 balance the cost of an outage against the expenses of resiliency services in Azure - and your own labor to maintain it! Chris provides his own talks and an extensive list of links for you to build up a comprehensive analysis of resiliency options - check it out!

Links

• FastTrack
• Azure Status
• Azure Well Architected Framework
• Virtual Machine Scale Set
• Deployment Stamps Pattern
• Automatic Scaling in Azure App Service
• Azure Monitor
• Azure Command-Line Interface
• Copilot in Azure
• Azure Advisor
• Azure Proactive Resiliency Library v2
• Azure Front Door
• Chris' Azure Resiliency Talk

Recorded October 3, 2025

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 machines while still allowing the process to stop if there are problems, whether you first update IT workstations, then beta testers, and so on. There's also the Windows Roadmap to give you a heads-up on new features and updates coming, so you can decide in advance whether they will be available on your machines, without changing your overall update policies!

Links

• Windows Autopatch
• WSUS Deprecation
• Windows Update Client Policies
• Microsoft Intune
• Entra Groups
• Intune App Management
• Autopatch Group Policies
• Windows Roadmap

Recorded October 27, 2025

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 long-term picture of AI supporting the DBA role, enabling more work to be accomplished in less time. Some of the work that used to be complex or tedious has become easier, but the need for people to assess outcomes remains essential.

Links

• PostgreSQL
• Perplexity
• Copilot for SQL Server Management Studio
• dbverse
• GitHub Copilot in VS Code

Recorded September 29, 2025