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Russell Smith

Editorial Director

Editorial Director at Petri IT Knowledgebase. Russell has more than 20 years' experience working in IT. From small business to large government IT infrastructure projects.

Russell started his writing career for Windows IT Pro magazine in the early 2000s. Since then, Russell has contributed to a variety of publications, including Petri, CDW's list of publications, and various industry blogs including Netwrix, BeyondTrust, and others.

In addition to more than 1000 articles Russell has authored, he has also written a book on Windows security and co-authored another for Microsoft's MOAC series. Russell has also authored several courses for Pluralsight.

LATEST

hero approved survey

Petri.com’s New Active Directory Outage and Disaster Recovery Survey

Last Update: Mar 01, 2024

Petri.com was recently asked by Cayosoft to conduct a survey amongst our audience regarding Active Directory (AD) downtime and disaster recovery strategies. Petri.com’s extensive experience in the marketplace, coupled with our standing as a representative voice for IT Professionals, allows us to bring distinct insights into prevailing trends and their evolution over time. The survey,…

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Intune Enterprise App Management

Streamline Application Deployment with Microsoft Intune Enterprise App Management

Packaging and rolling out third-party applications to Windows endpoints has traditionally been a daunting task. It often involves a significant amount of testing and trial and error, and it can become a major time sink for IT Professionals. Recognizing this challenge, Microsoft announced a solution at its Ignite conference – a service set to make…

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Microsoft 365 Copilot semantic index

Microsoft and AI: What Is the Copilot Semantic Index and How Does It Work?

Microsoft recently announced that it is taking a significant step forward by enhancing its search indexing capabilities with AI technology in the form of Copilot Semantic Index. A semantic index uses vectorized indices to build a conceptual map of data by linking it together in meaningful ways, much like the human brain does. It uses…

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Hero approved Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 Copilot Early Access Program Now Available

Last Update: Feb 06, 2024

Microsoft announced today the launch of its Microsoft 365 Copilot Early Access Program, which is an invitation-only paid preview of the ChatGPT-based AI features it announced for Microsoft 365 apps and services in March this year. The program will be available to 600 customers worldwide. Microsoft 365 Copilot Early Access Program expands on initial trial…

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Cloud Computing

How to Audit LDAP Signing in an Active Directory Domain

Last Update: Jan 30, 2024

Microsoft is planning to make changes to LDAP security settings in Windows Server. In today’s Ask the Admin, I show you how to audit for unsigned LDAP traffic hitting Windows Server Active Directory.

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Security

How to Set Up Azure AD Domain Services

Last Update: Jan 24, 2024

How to set up Azure Active Directory Domain Services

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Datacenter networking servers

Strategic IT Planning in Complex Organizations

In the ever-changing world of IT, aligning strategic objectives with evolving user needs and business goals is a formidable challenge, especially in large, multifaceted organizations. In a recent interview on Petri’s UnplugIT podcast, Tim Aberle, a principal IT architect at a Fortune 500 entertainment company, shed light on this intricate process. The insights he provided…

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Microsoft Teams AMA

GET-IT: Submit Your Questions for Microsoft Teams Product Manager Anupam Pattnaik

As usual, we are looking forward to our annual Microsoft Teams free 1-day virtual conference, this year coming up November 30. In addition to the customary sessions presented by industry professionals and Microsoft MVPs on everything from managing users in the Admin Center to driving collaboration with proper governance, Petri’s Chief Technology Officer, Stephen Rose,…

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Windows Server Docker images

Sponsored: Introduction to Docker Images on Windows Server

Last Update: Nov 14, 2023

Docker Images are the transportable component of containers and provide a template that describes what each container looks like. There are two base Docker images provided by Microsoft, Windows Server 2016 Core and Nano, which can be used as a starting point for your containers.

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Datacenter networking servers

Azure VMware Solution – Maximizing Security and Control with Customer-Managed Keys

Last Update: Oct 10, 2023

In this article, I look at Azure VMware Solution, a Microsoft virtual machine (VM) service, verified by VMware, that runs on Microsoft Azure infrastructure. And specifically, how you can add a second layer of encryption to your datastore and ensure Microsoft cannot read or write any data within your private cloud. Data security is a…

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