RunAs Radio

How does your company communicate with its employees today? Richard chats with Emily Mancini about her work with companies that manage internal communications. Emily talks about the power of email, collaborative messaging like Teams, and the Microsoft Viva products Engage and Amplify. The conversation digs into knowing where your people look for info, how they communicate, and what they want to co...

AI Agents can be powerful tools for an organization - but are they a security risk? Richard talks to Niall Merrigan about his experiences dealing with the various ways that LLMs can be attacked, starting with prompt injection. While some attacks are humorous, others can be very serious, especially in the context of agents, where the right prompt can cause an agent to use its capabilities to access...

Are you ready to take a look at Richard's home lab? Richard goes solo to share insights about the new infrastructure, hardware, and automation in his seaside home. He discusses the challenges posed by its remote location, including unreliable power and connectivity. You'll find plenty of details about networking, computing infrastructure, automation, telemetry, and experiments with AI technologies...

Configuration drift is real - how do you control it in your Azure tenant? Richard talks to Nik Charlebois-Laprade about his ongoing work on desired state configuration DSC for Microsoft 365 tenants. Microsoft365DSC has been an open-source tool for managing configuration for some time, but today it has become a preview product called Unified Tenant Configuration in Microsoft Graph. Nik talks about...

How does artificial intelligence become more sustainable? Richard chats with Darshna Shah about her experiences as Chief AI Officer at Elastic. Darshna discusses the resources required to run large language model experiments, the pressure this has put on the electrical grid, and more. The conversation turns to efficiency - and the idea that there is little incentive in the current land grab around...

SQL Server 2025 is released - what's in it, and what happens next? Richard chats with Bob Ward about the huge array of announcements coming out of Ignite around SQL Server 2025, including AI-related features, new reliability and performance options, engine improvements, and more! The tooling for SQL Server also continues to evolve, including making Copilot available through SSMS and as part of the...

How can you hire and get hired in 2026? While at NDC London, Richard chatted with Suzi Edwards-Alexander about her experiences recruiting technology folks into companies. Suzi talks about developing interview practices that actually reflect the job, rather than examining esoteric knowledge or certifications - it's possible to have an interviewing experience that is actually enjoyable! The conversa...

What does it take to get your SaaS offering on multiple cloud providers? Richard chats with Steve Buchanan about his new role at JAMF, which focuses on a mobile device management product for Apple devices. Originally built as a SaaS product on AWS, Steve is helping to build out the JAMF stack on Azure to support a broader range of customers. Steve talks about Kubernetes as the common ground among...

How have large language models impacted hacking? Richard talks to Erica Burgess about her experiences using LLMs for red team hacking, collecting bug bounties, and identifying vulnerabilities in systems. Erica discusses the power of LLMs to generate a variety of viewpoints on a potential exploit and help the hacker think "out of the box." Coordinating multiple agents to attempt a variety of exploi...

You're using Active Directory Certificate Services - but is it configured securely? Richard talks to Ron Arestia about his work with organizations implementing their own Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) with ADCS. Ron explains how poorly configured ADCS enables lateral attacks within an organization once an initial breach occurs, allowing black hats to move throughout your network. A well-designed...

Ready to get started with Purview? Richard chats with Erica Toelle about the first steps you can take to harness the power of Purview in your organization. Erica explains that Purview is an umbrella product that covers several infosec technologies, including information rights management, data loss prevention, structured data governance, and more. When preparing for M365 Copilot, you want to start...

Business Process Automation has been around a long time - what are the latest approaches? Richard talks to Ian Cooper about his work building BPA workflows in organizations - starting on paper or a whiteboard to make sense of the process before bringing tools into the equation. Ian talks about building repeatable workflows that are well-documented and source-controlled, typically through GitHub. A...

How do you get an idea to implementation in your organization? Richard chats with Amber Vanderburg about the work she's done helping teams understand the process of getting projects started and finished. Amber talks about defining a clear starting line, ending line, and dead line. While many projects are important, prioritization is the challenge. This means often other priorities have to be resol...

What's coming in 2026 for Azure? Richard chats with CVP and Chief Product Officer for Azure, Jeremy Winter, about the announcements at Ignite and what we can expect in Azure over the next year. Jeremy talks about new features for migrating workloads to Azure, creating more reliable application implementations, the vast array of AI-related technologies being released, and more! The conversation als...

AI tools continue to evolve - what can we do with them today? Richard chats with Cecilia Wirén about her experiences using the latest AI tools to support DevOps workflows, diagnostics, and the crafting of new scripts. Cecilia focuses on tools that can help admins who occasionally work on scripts, including getting into a GitHub workflow to track prompts and results generated by LLMs, so you can al...

A new year - and so much to do! To start 2026, Richard flies solo again to discuss the issues he's seen on sysadmins' minds as we head into the new year. Obviously, AI is eating up a lot of the conversation from many different angles: tools that can help us be more productive, security issues in our organizations due to misuse, and now, AI-driven hacking. Security still looms large, and not just f...

So what does Windows want for Christmas? Paul Thurrott is back to talk about everything that happened to Windows in 2025, and what that might hold for 2026. Paul talks about Pavan Davuluri being promoted to President of Windows & Devices - and reunifying the Windows Client and Windows Core teams. That sets up an opportunity to make some significant moves from Windows, which, of course, will involv...

How is zero-trust security evolving? Michele Leroux Bustamante discusses the challenges CISOs face today in controlling access to infrastructure, authenticating and authorizing users, and managing the ongoing evolution of an organization's dependencies. The conversation digs into the variety of stacks available to address various elements of an organization's security requirements. Michele also ta...

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 planni...

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 monitorin...

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...

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...

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 b...

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 mach...

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...