RunAs Radio

What's happening with Fabric in 2025? While at Build, Richard chatted with Arun Ulag about the fantastic progress Fabric has made in the past year. Arun discusses expanding the product line beyond analytics to include real-time intelligence and hosting primary data workloads. The goal is to make it incredibly easy to get your organization's "data estate in order"... not just for security and analytics, but also for your upcoming AI-related workloads. Arun also discusses the power of conversational interfaces to access data, helping leaders get answers quickly and allowing analysts in your organization to build resources that can answer those questions quickly. Links Microsoft FabricRecorded May 20, 2025

How does a PowerApp become a fully-fledged software application? Richard chats with Luise Freese about her experience of taking a PowerApp built by an individual through the "onboarding process" of becoming a complete software application, including requirements, tests, deployment pipeline, security, user training, and more. It's easy to create a prototype of an application with PowerApps, but once you move beyond the basics, there's a significant amount of work that's essential to the long-term health of the app. Luise discusses how often PowerApps utilizes "free" data sources, such as SharePoint lists, rather than the underlying datasets that require a license. This hinders performance and reliability; it's better to work with the right APIs and data sources. It's also an accomplishment, as what started as an individual's automation is now a part of the suite of applications that a company depends on! Links Power Apps and Power AutomateLuise's Blog PostMicrosoft Power Platform Center of Excellence Starter KitEntra ID for Power AppsRecorded June 27, 2025

How has Azure been innovating lately? While at Build Richard chatted with Azure CTO Mark Russinovich about some of the latest innovations in Azure, including some of the new hardware available. Mark talks about working with hardware manufacturers to build servers optimized to the workloads the largest Azure customers need. The conversation also explores the new innovations in AI and how Azure is being optimized to serve those workloads - and be shaped by them! Mark also talks about how material science is evolving with generative AI technologies leading to a discussion about the coming role of quantum computing - and how that will live in the cloud as well! Links Scott and Mark Learn to...Azure F-Family VMsHollow Core FiberMajorana 1 Quantum ProcessorRecorded May 20, 2025

How do you get more from GitHub in your work routine? Richard chats with April Yoho about how sysadmins can take advantage of more GitHub features to make better quality scripts and more! April discusses the capabilities of GitHub Copilot to assist administrators in comprehending the intricacies of source management, including branching and merging. The conversation also delves into extracting more from Copilot itself, including custom instructions and the new agentic mode. Now you can use Copilot to describe a new script and turn it into a series of GitHub issues - and those issues can be assigned to an agentic AI to get the code written! Links SPACE FrameworkCustom Instructions for GitHub CopilotResolving Merge ConflictsAgent Mode in VS CodeRecorded May 20, 2025

Here comes SQL Server 2025! While at Build, Richard chatted with Bob Ward about releasing a preview version of SQL Server 2025. Bob discusses SQL Server 2025 as an AI-ready enterprise database with numerous capabilities specifically tailored to your organization's AI needs, including a new vector data type. This includes making REST API calls to Azure OpenAI, Ollama, or OpenAI. This is also the version of SQL Server designed to integrate with Microsoft Fabric through mirroring. There are many more features, even a new icon! Links SQL Server 2025 AnnouncementJSON Data TypeOllamaRecorded May 20, 2025

How can modern telemetry solutions help you? While at NDC in Melbourne, Richard chatted with Liz Fong-Jones of Honeycomb about her approach to educating leadership on creating great telemetry solutions for organizations. Liz discusses the importance of being able to answer questions about reliability issues without causing problems, as opposed to relying on a dashboard for every measurement taken of the system. The conversation also delves into the culture of building reliability, where people are encouraged to fail and learn, rather than being punished when things go wrong. Links HoneycombRecorded April 30, 2025

Why would a security vulnerability take more than two years to fix? Richard chats with Steve Syfuhs about the evolution of the response to KB5015754. Originally published in 2022, the issue involved vulnerabilities in the on-premises certificate authority for Active Directory. Pushing a fix to force the immediate replacement of the certificates could have left users unable to log into Active Directory entirely. Steve explains how the gradual rollout of the fix allowed folks concerned (and paying attention!) to fix it immediately. At the same time, for everyone else, the fix happened as the existing certificates expired. But not every scenario is automatic - some require sysadmin intervention. So, how do you get their attention? The story leads to the February 11, 2025 update that could knock some users off Active Directory, but had an easy and quick fix. The final phase should be September 2025; hopefully, the last stragglers will be ready! Links KB5014754Microsoft Security Response CenterCreate and Assign SCEP Certificate Profiles in IntuneRecorded April 10, 2025

How do you talk to security? While at NDC Melbourne, Richard chatted with Sarah Young about her approaches to helping folks work with the security team. Often seen as an impediment to business, Sarah talks about what motivates security teams, how to use language to help them understand that you are taking security seriously, and how to get more things done! Ultimately, the DevOps mantra of providing value to the customer still works - working with people to improve the processes that lead to secure systems helps everyone! Links Daniel Pink's DriveManaged Identities for AzureTenerife Airport DisasterRecorded April 30, 2025

What's new in PowerShell 7.5? Richard talks to Jason Helmick about the latest version of PowerShell. Jason talks about 7.5 being a version with plenty of community contributions and what that means for everyone. He also discusses 7.6, which will be released as a long-term support version of PowerShell synchronized with .NET 10. Then, on to Desired State Configuration 3.0.0, which makes DSC work effectively across platforms, with or without PowerShell itself! 7.5 is a great version - are you up to date? Links PowerShell 7.5PowerShell on GitHubDesired State Configuration 3.0.0WinGet ConfigurationSystem Configuration Tools in WindowsRecorded April 4, 2025

Active Directory is 25 years old - are you still managing it like it's 1999? Richard talks to Liz Tesch about her excellent blog post on the subject and the challenge many sysadmins have with Active Directory today. Liz talks about how WAN bandwidth was a concern in the early 2000s, so we organized Active Directory into Organizational Units to minimize the amount of AD traffic over the WAN - today, that is irrelevant. The challenge today is ensuring AD is not a vector for blackhats to attack the organization. Raising your functional level and utilizing some great free tools (check the links in the show notes) are all you need to use Active Directory like it's 2025! Links Active Directory is 25 Years Old. Do you still manage it like it's 1999?mimikatzWindows Local Administrator Password SolutionMicrosoft Entra Privileged Identity ManagementKara Lawson - Handle Hard BetterEndpoint Detection and ResponseRecorded April 4, 2025

How do you make a career in cybersecurity? Richard talks to Yuri Diogenes about his work in cybersecurity, including his book on building a career in cybersecurity. Yuri talks about the inquisitive mindset that works well in cybersecurity - wanting to understand why things happen and get to the root cause. The conversation also explores the value of experimentation and practical experience as well as certifications and training - they all have value. However, it is also recognized that cybersecurity encompasses a vast area of work - it's not one kind of job, so you have a lot of choices to make! Links Building a Career in CybersecurityRecorded March 14, 2025

So what does modern work look like today? Richard talks to Karoliina Kettukari about her new role as the Head of Modern Work for a financial services company in Finland, and what modern work has evolved. Karoliina talks about how the pandemic accelerated modern work, such as being able to work anywhere and collaborating with whomever you need to. Post-pandemic, there is a push for more work from the office, but remote work is still essential - and now artificial intelligence is changing the landscape again. The rapid evolution of AI technologies is a challenge for admins, but the productivity benefits are becoming obvious - you need some good governance! Links Microsoft 365 Copilot OverviewThe EU Artificial Intelligence ActEuropean Collaboration SummitRecorded March 6, 2025

What can agentic AI do for you? Richard talks to Tim Warner about his work utilizing next generation agentic AI technologies to help with sysadmin tasks. Tim talks about the early lead that Cursor AI took with AI agents capable of writing and executing scripts on your behalf - as opposed to just creating code you can cut-and-paste. Today, GitHub Copilot has caught up with Agent Mode in Copilot Edits, although still in preview, it speaks to a future where sysadmins use these tools to write better scripts for work - and get more done in less time! Links Cursor AIOpenAI OperatorGitHub CopilotCopilot EditsRecorded February 17, 2025

Are some of your team members starting to hate PowerShell? Richard talks to Barbara Forbes about her experiences with teams frustrated by PowerShell. Barbara talks about overcomplicating PowerShell scripts—the kind the most senior folks can create but no one else can maintain. Eventually, nobody will want to touch those scripts. Then there is the question of business value—does everything need to be automated? And by how much? Often, the appropriate solution solves 80% of the cases; the other 20% are best done by hand because the cost and complexity of the last 20% are too high. Focus on the return on investment for the business, and you'll keep the love of PowerShell alive! Links PowerShellPester TestingGitHub CopilotBicepRecorded February 24, 2025

How can Security Copilot help you secure your applications? Richard talks to Ari Schorr about assessing application risk with Microsoft Security Copilot - a new feature in preview in Security Copilot that focuses on application roles and entities. Ari talks about the sheer array of resources that applications depend on, and the many security risks that exist in that space - how do you even get started on the problem? Security Copilot helps to sort through potential risks and help a sysadmin focus in on the most significant risks, especially the low-hanging fruit weak authentication and unused resources. The conversation also explores some of the future potential of a tool like this to detect supply chain attacks, find ways to strengthen and simplify applications so their attack surface is smaller. It's a great time to get familiar with these tools! Links Microsoft Security CopilotMidnight Blizzard Attack on MicrosoftSecure Future InitiativeAssess Application Risk with Microsoft Security CopilotMicrosoft SentinelRecorded February 18, 2025

What can GitHub Copilot do for SysAdmins in 2025? Richard talks to Jessica Deen from GitHub about her experiences using Copilot for her work. Jessica talks about Copilot being the first stop for most tasks - describing the task to Copilot helps you think through the problem, and often the tool can generate code or information to get that task done fast. Today's GitHub Copilot can handle everything from explaining existing code to writing something new, debugging a problem, or even writing documentation! Links GitHub CopilotChanging the AI Model for Copilot ChatVisual Studio Code InsidersAzure ExtensionsGitHub SparkLaunch DarklyRecorded March 13, 2025

How do you write better PowerShell? Richard talks to Jeff Hicks about his latest book, Behind the PowerShell Pipeline, and his efforts to promote writing PowerShell scripts that are easy to understand, use, and maintain! Jeff talks about how making a script work is not enough anymore - you can use GitHub Copilot. The goal is to make the output as usable as possible, whether that is consistent output that is pipe-able or using color coding and column controls to make the results as actionable as possible. This is especially true as your team grows and more than one person works on scripts. Now, you'll want testing and source control, too! Links PowerShell 7.5Behind the PowerShell PipelineGitHub CopilotPesterPowerShell SummitRecorded February 20, 2025

How are you managing your AI costs? Richard chats with Sonia Cuff about how she's been helping sysadmins understand how AI technology is billed out and how to measure them within a given application and across the organization. Sonia starts with some definitions since the term AI is so broad. It's not just about large language models! The conversation also dives into carbon footprints, and using the FinOps models to help with costing for your cloud infrastructure, whether you're using AI or not! Links OpenAI TokenizerManage Cost for Azure OpenAI ServiceSustainable Software Engineering with AKSAzure Carbon OptimizationFinOps FoundationFinOps FOCUSPhoenix ProjectRecorded February 19, 2025

Are you using strong certificate mapping in Active Directory? Richard Hicks returns to the show to talk about the impacts of KB5015754, issued way back in 2022, and how it turned into an enforcement event on February 11, 2025 that might have caused some serious problems for folks trying to authenticate to Active Directory. For most sites, the upgrade to strong certificates was pretty much automatic. But if you're using Intune SCEP, you needed to do some configuration - and if that was missed, there is trouble. There are workarounds for now, but come September 2025, enforcement will be mandatory and everything gets harder, so it's worth looking into it now! Links KB5015754: Certificate-based Authentication Changes on Windows Domain ControllersRichard's Blog Post on Strong Certificate Mapping EnforcementActive Directory Certificate ServicesCreate and Assign SCEP Certificate Profiles in IntuneHeartbleedRecorded February 17, 2025

What does it mean to be secure by design? Richard chats with Karinne Bessette about the scope of the problem around making more secure software. Karinne talks about the US government's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) push to promote more secure software products. The conversation digs into some of the more famous exploits in recent years and some of the challenges of dealing with development tools that require super-user privileges, getting security testing done promptly and responding to exploits effectively when they happen. Links Women in TeamsCISA Secure by DesignAzure Kubernetes ServiceMicrosoft Security Response CenterRecorded February 21, 2025