310 - Stepping away from the cloud to reflect on Microsoft PowerToys in 2025

Today, we go through the three recommended and must-have alerts you should configure in all of your Azure tenants. We touch upon FinOps, security, a bit of WAF and CAF, and find out if we're using these recommendations ourselves.(00:00) - Intro and catching up.(03:20) - Show content starts.Show links- Azure Quota Alerts (Preview): Still overlooked, but incredibly useful | Microsoft Community HubFeedback - Give us feedback!

In this week's episode, we take a tour of Microsoft PowerToys in 2025. What's in there? What's new? Do we actually use these tools, or are they just gimmicks?(00:00) - Intro and catching up.(06:44) - Show content starts.Show links- Microsoft PowerToysFeedback - Give us feedback!

In this week's episode, we talk about our experiences with SharePoint and Project. Now that Project Online is going away, as well as SharePoint 2013-style Workflows, we discuss the options for moving to more modern capabilities, and why these are still very valid tools. (00:00) - Intro and catching up.(03:58) - Show content starts.Show links- Project Online is retiring- SharePoint 2013 Workflow retirement- SharePoint 2013 Workflow Assessment Tool- SharePoint Workflow ManagerFeedback- Give us feedback!

In this week's episode, we share ideas, experiences and lessons learned running AI workloads at home. On a laptop, in a custom-built AI rig, and everything in between!(00:00) - Intro and catching up.(03:37) - Show content starts.Show links- HuggingFace- Ollama & Open WebUI- LMStudio- Azure AI Foundry LocalFeedback - Give us feedback!

This week, we dive deep into security-focused updates from Microsoft. As we've done with more generic tech updates, this time we'll focus on the interesting security updates from Microsoft.(00:00) - Intro and catching up.(04:29) - Show content starts.Show links- RETIREMENT: Migration from Azure China CDN to Azure Front Door- PREVIEW: Custom block response codes and body for Application Gateway WAF- PREVIEW: Azure Bastion now supports connectivity to private AKS clusters via tunneling- PREVIEW: Workspace-level Private Link for Microsoft Fabric workspaces- GA: AKS Security Dashboard- WAF: CAPTCHA, and JS challengeFeedback - Give us feedback!

Today, we take a look at Azure Storage Discovery. It's a new preview feature that gives you insights and actionable items across all your Storage Accounts. We discuss our experience using it and how to properly test its capabilities.(00:00) - Intro and catching up.(03:25) - Show content starts.Show links- Azure Storage Demo Populator tool (GitHub) - Azure Storage Discovery- PricingFeedback- Give us feedback!

Today, we'll take a look at something that is of the essence for anyone working with identities and the shift to the cloud. What is Group SOA, and why should you care? We reflect on the dependencies of Active Directory, the five stages of transformation, and what this capability will help you achieve. (00:00) - Intro and catching up.(05:20) - Show content starts.Show links- Group SOAProvide feedback- Give us feedback!

In this week's episode, we look at recent Microsoft Tech updates. By popular request, we're expanding the scope beyond just Azure to include Microsoft 365, Power Platform, and similar Microsoft platforms and capabilities. What's new? What's interesting? What's retiring?(00:00) - Intro and catching up.(04:15) - Show content starts.Show links- Create Tenant Level Service Health Alerts (preview) - Azure Monitor | Microsoft Learn- AKS Updates- What is Azure App Testing?- Azure 128 & 192 vCPU sizes- Azure Cloud HSM- GA: Network Security Perimeter- Two-way forest trusts for Entra DSFeedback - Give us feedback!

Back in 2020 we did our first episode on Microsoft Sentinel. We feel it's time to revisit Sentinel after five years, and take a look at where it stands today. What's relevant, what's new, and what's happening with Sentinel?(00:00) - Intro and catching up.(04:29) - Show content starts.Show links- Microsoft Sentinel Quickstart- Sentinel Data Lake- Give us feedback!

In this week's episode, we break down Model Context Protocol, or MCP. What is it, why should you care, and how does it change your solutions? We discuss the concept, the architecture, and share our experiences working with MCP solutions.(00:00) - Intro and catching up.(03:02) - Show content starts.Show links- MCP home: modelcontextprotocol.io- Use MCP: Connect to Remote MCP Servers- Build a server: Build an MCP Server- Build a client: Build an MCP Client- modelcontextprotocol/csharp-sdk: The official C# SDK for Model Context Protocol servers and clients.- MCP Dev Days session- Give us feedback!