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!LinksAzure SRE AgentPagerDutyAzure MonitorAzure DevOpsRecorded October 28, 2025
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Azure Resiliency with Chris Ayers
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!LinksFastTrackAzure StatusAzure Well Architected FrameworkVirtual Machine Scale SetDeployment Stamps PatternAutomatic Scaling in Azure App ServiceAzure MonitorAzure Command-Line InterfaceCopilot in AzureAzure AdvisorAzure Proactive Resiliency Library v2Azure Front DoorChris' Azure Resiliency TalkRecorded October 3, 2025
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Managing Updates using Autopatch with Aria Hanson
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!LinksWindows AutopatchWSUS DeprecationWindows Update Client PoliciesMicrosoft IntuneEntra GroupsIntune App ManagementAutopatch Group PoliciesWindows RoadmapRecorded October 27, 2025
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AI for DBAs with Grant Fritchey
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.LinksPostgreSQLPerplexityCopilot for SQL Server Management StudiodbverseGitHub Copilot in VS CodeRecorded September 29, 2025
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Becoming a Cybersecurity Expert with Paula Januszkiewicz
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!LinksCybersecurity Architect ExpertMicrosoft EntraMicrosoft SentinelMicrosoft Defender for CloudKusto Query LanguageRecorded October 5, 2025
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