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Russell Smith

Editorial Director

Russell Smith, the Editorial Director at Petri IT Knowledgebase, has over two decades of hands-on experience in IT, in both small business settings and government IT infrastructure projects.

Russell started writing for Windows IT Pro Magazine in the early 2000s. Since then, he has contributed insights to various IT publications, including Petri and CDW. His authoritative voice has resonated across industry blogs, where he dissects complex topics into an ‘easy read’.

Russell has authored over a thousand articles, each a testament to his depth of knowledge. His expertise doesn’t stop there: he wrote a book on Privilege Management and co-authored another for Microsoft’s MOAC series. Moreover, Russell’s commitment to education shines through in the courses he crafted for Pluralsight.

He is also presenter on his own YouTube channel, This Week in IT, and the current presenter of Petri Dish.

LATEST

Everything You Need to Know About Windows –- February 2018 Edition

Last Update: Jun 27, 2025

This month is all about Redstone 4, always-connected PCs, and changes to the SKU lineup and licensing.

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Windows Server 1 Hero Approved

Managing Windows Server with Puppet

Last Update: Jul 29, 2025

In today’s Ask the Admin, Russell Smith shows you how to set up Puppet Enterprise Master in Azure and provision Windows Server so that it bootstraps with the Puppet agent installed.

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Patch Tuesday February 2018

Last Update: Sep 04, 2024

This month’s cumulative update for the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update sees the OS build bumped to version 16299.248.

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PowerShell DSC and Puppet — Why It Is Not Either/Or

Last Update: Sep 04, 2024

In this Ask the Admin, Russell Smith discusses why Puppet and DSC together is often the best configuration management solution in mixed Windows/Linux environments.

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Microsoft DSC Environment Analyzer Creates Compliance Reports for Power BI

Last Update: Sep 04, 2024

Compliance is always a hot topic, so in this Ask the Admin, I’ll look at how Microsoft’s DSCEA can be used to create compliance reports for servers configured using PowerShell DSC.

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How Does the Windows 10 Subsystem for Linux Work and What Is It For?

Last Update: Sep 04, 2024

In this Ask the Admin, I’ll look at what you can do with Bash and the Windows Subsystem for Linux in Windows 10 and Windows Server 1709.

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Set Up Active Directory to Support Tiered Administration and Privileged Access Workstations

Last Update: Sep 16, 2025

In this Ask the Admin, Russell Smith discusses setting up Active Directory to support a secure tiered administrative model and Privileged Access Workstations.

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Secure Microsoft Azure VMs Using Just-In-Time Access

Last Update: Sep 04, 2024

In this Ask the Admin, Russell Smith looks at how the solution works and why you should use it when it reaches general availability.

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Everything You Need to Know About Windows – January 2018 Edition

Last Update: Sep 04, 2024

It’s been a busy month for Windows, and in case you didn’t get a chance to catch all the news, here’s everything you need to know from January 2018.

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OpenSSH Doesn’t Replace PowerShell Remoting in Fall Creators Update

Last Update: Sep 04, 2024

The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update and Windows Server 1709 include a beta OpenSSH server and client. In this Ask the Admin, I will discuss how OpenSSH differs from PowerShell Remoting.

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Populate Active Directory with Test User Accounts

Last Update: Sep 04, 2024

In this Ask the Admin, Russell Smith uses a PowerShell script to populate Active Directory with test user accounts.

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PowerShell Core 6.0 and Why Windows PowerShell Is No Longer Being Developed

Last Update: Sep 04, 2024

Microsoft announced the general availability of PowerShell Core 6.0 on January 10th. In this Ask the Admin, we will look at the roadmap for PowerShell and some of the dramatic changes since Microsoft announced that PowerShell will be open source.

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