Russell Smith

Russell Smith shows you how to use the localGPO command line tool in Security Compliance Manager (SCM) to apply security templates to computers that are not part of an Active Directory domain.

In today’s edition of Ask the Admin, Russell Smith will show you how to export security templates as Group Policy Objects (GPOs).

In today’s Ask the Admin, I’ll explain how to use linked Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates to facilitate complex deployment options.

In today’s Ask the Admin, I’ll show you how to create an ARM template in Visual Studio for deploying Azure virtual machines (VMs). Having used VS to deploy resources in Azure, this is the way I now recommend you work with Azure templates.

In today’s Ask the Admin, following on from a previous article on how to change the interface language for a user account, I’ll show you how to change the default interface language in Windows 10 for new users, the welcome screen and system accounts.

Russell explains what Thunderbolt 3 is and where USB Type-C connectors fit into the picture. As the Thunderbolt 3 cables start to roll out, remember to check to verify that they can handle transfer speeds of up to 40 Gb/s if you want maximum benefit.

In today’s Ask the Admin, I’ll show you how to sign up for Microsoft Flow and create a simple workflow that posts a tweet with a hashtag from your Twitter account to your Slack channel.

In this post I’ll provide a brief overview of IFTTT and Zapier and Microsoft’s contribution to the user-friendly, user-powered workflow services tool, Microsoft Flow.

Apart from the amusing name, POSH-GIT is a PowerShell module for GitHub supplied as part of Git for Windows. In this Ask the Admin, I’ll show you how to use Git source control via this PowerShell module.

In today’s Ask the Admin, I’ll compare Azure Operational Insights (OpInsights) with System Center Operations Manager (SCOM), and discover whether OpInsights replaces SCOM.

Russell walks through the steps to add a language pack to a Windows 10 machine. As part of the process, a user should temporarily become a member of the local Administrators group.

Always Encrypted is a feature of SQL Server 2016 that Microsoft released in Azure SQL Database in June 2016. Russell describes what Always Encrypted technology is and how it works with Azure SQL Database.