RunAs Radio

For the first show of 2025, let's talk about being a sysadmin in the coming year. This is the sixth year of Richard going solo on the show to talk about the things he's seen in the past year and speculate a bit on the next year, at least for sysadmins. Economic uncertainty is still a thing, as is employment. The security situation continues to be tough - and getting worse. But remarkable new tools, including large language models, are on the horizon to make things a bit easier. The adoption rates for LLMs aren't as quick as some people would like, but things are happening, and they can provide value. However, you have to do your homework. Oh, and then there's Windows!

What does Windows want for Christmas? Richard chats with Paul Thurrott about the crazy year that Windows has had and what 2025 holds. Paul starts with the Ignite keynote that focused on Windows being an open platform - which sounds funny on the surface, but has some logic to it! Security is a key part of that story, which brings up the issues around Crowdstrike and the Secure Future Initiative. And then there's Windows 10 going out of support in 2025 - what choices do you have going forward? Two grumpy old men ring out the year – have a great holiday season!

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!

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!

Need some gift ideas for your favorite sysadmin? We're here for you! Richard brings back Rick Claus and Joey Snow for another round of great gadgets that sysadmins love. There are some inexpensive options, some expensive options, some silly things, and some awesome toys! Share this show with your loved ones to help them get something great for you!

How does your organization respond to incidents? While at NDC Porto, Richard chatted with Mandi Walls about her experiences with different incidents, from corrupted files to data center failures. Mandi talks about detecting and determining the scope of an incident, whether it is specific to a customer (or group of customers), or possibly system wide. The conversation ranges over external attacks, bad software updates, unique configuration problems, and more. Keeping good records during the incident helps clean up after the event and provides for an effective retrospective.

How do you test your database? While at NDC Porto, Richard chatted with Dan Mallott about building unit tests for transactional databases like SQL Server. Dan talks about using testing frameworks constructed for the purpose, like TSQL-T, to make it easier to test individual database elements, from stored procedures to column constraints. The conversation digs into the challenges around testing, tolerating the changes to the database, and tweaking how you write your T-SQL code to be more testable. But the power of getting database tests into your CI/CD pipeline is enormous - catch more problems in testing before they become problems in production!

What's happening with SQL Server Management Studio? Richard chats with Erin Stellato, now at Microsoft, about the big jump coming for SSMS. Erin talks about how folks felt SSMS was a bit neglected when the reality is that there was a push to catch up with its parent codebase in Visual Studio. However, the next version of SSMS makes that jump, which opens the door to some excellent extension models. The conversation dives into the role of the Copilots in SQL Server through SSMS - helping you understand databases, write queries, and diagnose problems - eventually!

How does Software-Defined Networking in Azure work? Richard chats with Aidan Finn about his experiences working with the suite of Azure networking products, including Firewall and Route Server. Aidan talks about the training available on Microsoft Learn to get up to speed with the power of Azure Firewall, including building policy rule sets. The conversation also explores the power of defining how traffic can move within your network to clarify when potentially malicious software is active.

ARM for Windows is here in the form of the Snapdragon Copilot+ PCs - how do you update them? Richard talks with Aria Hanson about how Windows Updates treat ARM like just another Windows device - all the updates! Aria talks about the transition time with Windows 24H2 update, which has some specific Copilot+ PC features. But when looking at ARM-based Windows devices, don't just focus on the Copilot part; check out the great battery life and the simpler architecture that should lead to long-life machines. The conversation also digs into the Windows Insider program, which now has four channels for updates, in order of likelihood to blue screen: Canary, Dev, Beta, and Release Preview.