SysAdmin Weekly

Modern IT feels stuck in a vicious cycle: software ships faster than ever, quality keeps slipping, and SysAdmins are left cleaning up the mess.

In this episode of SysAdmin Weekly, Andy Syrewicze and Eric Siron dig into the growing disconnect between developers and operations teams and why “good enough” software has become dangerously normalized across the industry.

We talk about brittle releases, missing error handling, forced beta ...

IT job postings have gotten… weird.

In this episode of SysAdmin Weekly, Andy flies solo to take a realistic look at modern IT job listings amongst historic industry layoffs and why so many of them feel disconnected from the actual work SysAdmins do every day.

We scroll through real-world postings, talk about unrealistic expectations, role creep, and “unicorn” requirements, and break down how vague or overloaded job descriptions contr...

Microsoft Ignite just wrapped and shockingly, it wasn’t only about AI.
(Okay, it was mostly about AI.)

In this episode of SysAdmin Weekly, Andy and Paul cut through the marketing noise and walk through what actually matters to SysAdmins from Microsoft Ignite’s Book of News. From AI agents showing up everywhere, to Azure resiliency, security posture management, and why massive cloud outages are still very much a thing. This is...

This week, Andy and Eric dive into one of the most underrated superpowers in IT: community. Not the cringe corporate “community,” but the real stuff. Think mentors, friends, people who help you level up, and the shared hive-mind that keeps SysAdmins alive during outages, zero-days, and career pivots.

From basements full of beige boxes to global open-source conferences, the IT world has evolved into something way more connected and w...

Ready to leave password chaos behind? In this episode of SysAdmin Weekly, Andy and Eric break down the latest National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) password and identity-guideline updates and what they mean for you as a SysAdmin.

We cover:

- What changed and why (goodbye “special characters just because”)

- How to align your org with SP 800-63’s new structure and expectations

- Real-world tactics: from passkeys and toke...

In this episode, Andy and Eric dive deep into one of tech’s ugliest trends, the ULTRA-Corporatization of once-great vendors all for the sake of excessive profit at the expense of the company and customers. From Intel’s fall from grace to Dell’s support horror stories and VMware’s Broadcom-induced meltdown, the guys unpack how innovation-driven companies lose their soul chasing shareholder dollars.

They trace the full "life-cycl...

Welcome to the Halloween special of SysAdmin Weekly, where Andy, Eric, Paul, and Mike gather ‘round the flickering glow of their monitors to share true tales from the trenches, the ones that still haunt their uptime dreams.

From flooded data centers and cursed SAN swaps to Novell nightmares, rogue backup tapes, and the eternal terror of “it’s always DNS,” this episode dives into the real-life horror stories that only SysAdmins coul...

In this episode of SysAdmin Weekly, the crew tackles one of the most debated questions in IT: Is university still worth it for aspiring SysAdmins in 2025?

Joining Andy is a friend of the show, Clay, a newly graduated IT professional from the Netherlands who shares his journey from tinkering with PCs as a kid to landing his first SysAdmin role. Together, they unpack how well higher education prepares students for real-world IT and wh...

Burnout in IT is not just “being tired”, it’s a silent crisis affecting countless tech professionals, SysAdmins, engineers, and ops folks who are running on empty. In this episode of SysAdmin Weekly, we dig into the mental health stressors built into the tech industry: constant change, imposter syndrome, “always-on” culture, notification overload, and more.

Co-host Eric Siron and Andy share real stories, data, and actionable tactics...

In this episode, Andy teams up with Microsoft expert and Aussie tech legend Paul Schnackenburg to break down the buzzword that’s haunting every IT strategy deck: Cloud-Native. Together, they unpack what it really means in a Microsoft ecosystem from ditching on-prem Active Directory and ConfigMgr to embracing Entra ID, Intune, and Autopilot.

Along the way, they hit on real-world migrations, the trade-offs of control vs. convenience, ...

This week on SysAdmin Weekly, Andy is joined once again by Mike Nelson for a deep dive into the world of local AI. Together, they unpack Ollama and Open WebUI, exploring how SysAdmins can run large language models on-prem to unlock powerful workflows while keeping sensitive data in-house.

From hardware setups (yes, even that dusty old GPU in your basement), to why privacy-conscious SysAdmins are moving workloads local, Andy and Mike...

In this episode of SysAdmin Weekly, Andy and Eric dig deep into how to build a fully functional home lab without selling a kidney. We cover picking hardware on the cheap, virtualization (Proxmox, Hyper-V, etc.), managing storage, navigating Microsoft licensing, layering in free cloud tiers, network tricks, and the kind of “what if I push this button?” experiments that keep us awake at 2 a.m.

Whether you’re starting from a pile of ol...

Hey folks! Andy here, and in this episode of SysAdmin Weekly Eric and I answer the hard questions regarding the documentation we all put off, but secretly depend on.... whether we like it or not.

In this episode we cover:

- Why poor (or missing) documentation is the root of so many SysAdmin nightmares

- War stories where “future you” had to clean up past you’s mess

- Tools, templates, and mindset shifts to make living documentation act...

This week on SysAdmin Weekly, Andy is joined by regular co-host Paul Schnackenburg for a deep dive into Conditional Access, the cloud-era identity firewall you could say? and a cornerstone of Zero Trust security in Microsoft 365 and the Microsoft Cloud.

We cover everything from the basics of conditional access policies to the nuances of break-glass accounts, layered policies, and how to avoid locking yourself (and your entire org) o...

Andy and Eric break down the actual Microsoft skills that move the needle with no fluff, and no buzzword salad. We hit the core Windows/AD fundamentals, the PowerShell magic you’ll use every day, and the cloud/M365 bits that keep modern shops sane.

If you’re trying to level up without wasting cycles, this is your roadmap.

What we cover (at a glance):

- Identity & Directory - AD/Entra basics, Group Policy that won’t bite you later...

"Compromised." We throw the word around like everyone agrees what it means, but do we?

This week, Andy and Eric dig into the many faces of compromise in a security context and why it’s not a simple definition

In this episode:

- What actually counts as a security compromise (and why the answer is “it depends”)

- Full breach vs. partial breach: Does it even matter?

- Why lateral movement should keep you up at night

- Session token hijacki...

Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware has left the sysadmin community reeling. From gutting VMware’s workforce to skyrocketing license costs (1000+ percent increases in some cases), cease-and-desist letters for perpetual licenses (really?), and a collapse in customer support, the VMware we once knew is gone.

In this episode of SysAdmin Weekly, Andy Syrewicze and Eric Siron dig into:

- How Broadcom’s handling of VMware triggered massive cu...

In this episode of SysAdmin Weekly, Andy and Eric wade through the sometimes mess that is managing Hyper-V. From MMC snap-ins to Azure Arc and everything in between, we’re talking about the confusing pile of tools Microsoft throws at you when you just want to manage some virtual machines.

Topics include:

- The evolution (and stagnation) of Hyper‑V Manager

- Why Failover Cluster Manager feels like an insider secret

- SCVMM: A tool that ...

In this episode of SysAdmin Weekly, Andy sits down with Mike Nelson to talk about how SysAdmins can harness the power of Generative AI to make their day-to-day lives easier. From writing PowerShell scripts to reducing cognitive load during incidents, Andy and Mike break down real-world use cases that go beyond hype.

They dive into what AI agents really are, how large language models (LLMs) fit in, and introduce the concept of Model ...