020 - Top Microsoft Skills that Every SysAdmin Needs

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, hybrid gotchas

- Automation - PowerShell patterns you’ll use forever (loops, pipeline, remoting, “please don’t run that in prod”)

- Networking for Windows admins: DNS/DHCP sanity checks, practical troubleshooting, knowing when it’s actually the firewall

- Microsoft 365 - mail flow triage, Teams/SharePoint survival skills

- Security stack - Defender realities, Conditional Access guardrails, least privilege that people will actually follow, Just in time administration.

- Azure orientation - VMs, storage, networking, Arc and what’s worth learning first

- Career path - what to learn now vs. what to park for later, and which certs are signal vs. noise

Bring coffee. Leave with a plan. And yes, a little snark, because ticket queues were meant to be mocked.

Episode Resources

- SysAdmin Weekly Companion Newsletter

- AndyOnTech

- Project Runspace

- SysAdmin Weekly - 018 - What did Broadcom do to VMware?

- SysAdmin Weekly - 014 - How SysAdmins can Showcase Value

- SysAdmin Weekly - 008 - Getting Started with GitHub Copilot