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 planning, and how the software and services supply chain can lead to outages because those companies are affected. A great story about the day of the incident and the improvements in planning and resiliency that followed!

Links

• CrowdStrike Incident Timeline
• Azure Front Door

Recorded October 29, 2025

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 Nikki discusses utilizing existing tools to accurately identify sensitive data, archiving outdated information, and monitoring data usage by both users and agents - allowing you to detect issues before they escalate. The conversation also delves into the process of identifying issues, discussing policy changes, and how to communicate those changes so that people can take advantage of the power of these new tools without feeling threatened. It's a journey!

Links

• Microsoft Purview
• SharePoint Advanced Management
• Defender for Cloud Apps
• Restricted SharePoint Search
• Microsoft 365 Archive
• SharePoint Restricted Content Discovery
• Data Security Posture Management for AI
• Nikki's Readiness Checklist
• M365 Copilot Oversharing Blueprint
• Microsoft Purview Secure by Default Blueprint
• Prevent Data Leaks to Shadow AI Blueprint

Recorded November 7, 2025

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 toy list with everyone you know who struggles to find the right thing!

Links

• USB Tester
• Battery Daddy
• USB Air Duster
• Smart Soldering Iron
• Pro Tech Go Toolkit
• Effing Candle Co
• Dumpster Fire Pencil Holder
• NES Cartridge Hard Drive Enclosure
• PicoKVM
• CO2 Meter
• Wireless Headphones
• Digital Photo Frame
• Super-Knips with Lead Catcher
• Inkplate 6COLOR
• Insta360 Link 2
• Home Assistant Voice
• Throw Throw Burrito
• Bose Ultra Open Earbuds
• Ubiquiti Cloud Gateway Fiber

Recorded October 30, 2025

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 SRE Agents can help catch issues earlier and let you respond faster. The conversation dives into the array of capabilities and where you can provide information to administrators so they can decide how to proceed—perhaps pushing information to development or starting a recovery process of some kind. How you use Azure SRE Agents is up to you!

Links

• Azure SRE Agent
• PagerDuty
• Azure Monitor
• Azure DevOps

Recorded October 28, 2025

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