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

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 between education and experience, the types of work available in cybersecurity, and pursuing your passion!

Links

• Cybersecurity Architect Expert
• Microsoft Entra
• Microsoft Sentinel
• Microsoft Defender for Cloud
• Kusto Query Language

Recorded October 5, 2025

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 auditing of NTLM usage - recent improvements will allow you to view which services rely on NTLM. Sometimes, a configuration change can resolve the problem, and now there is Microsoft Negotiate to help as an intermediary in determining which protocol to use. Retiring NTLM won't happen overnight, but it will happen, and you can start preparing for it today. And if you need help or advice, email ntlm@microsoft.com!

Links

• NTLM Blocking and You
• Deprecating NTLM is Easy and Other Lies
• Microsoft Negotiate
• Remote Desktop Gateway Role
• Kerberos on Windows Server
• The Evolution of Windows Authentication

Recorded September 25, 2025

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 can only get better when we can see the problems folks are having - it takes time, patience, and lots of communication to make that happen!

Links

• Atlas 9

Recorded August 14, 2025

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 domain, and more. When considering the cost of managing a customer with an exploited account, being able to prevent or mitigate potential risk is highly valuable.

Links

• HaveIBeenPwned
• Park Mobile Settlement
• Snowflake Data Breach

Recorded September 25, 2025

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 problem. What are the next steps? Mandi talks about having a software and services bill of materials so that you know what dependencies you have, where to check their status, and how to get help when you need it. Our systems are more complicated than ever - you need a plan to deal with the incidents!

Links

• Azure Status
• SBOM Tool
• Vendor Incidents with Jeff Martins

Recorded August 14, 2025