SysAdmin Weekly #10: DNS Storms and Survival Gear
This week's gear check: coding skills, Pomodoro timers, and a side Mac LAPS
⏩ TL;DR - This Week in SysAdmin Land
SysAdmins, this week’s mix has everything: proving your value (before HR proves you’re “redundant”), DNS gremlins, Paul Graham’s take on why meetings ruin your flow, and a new toy that makes VSCode even cooler. Plus, PoisonSeed phishing is trying to break FIDO2, and Microsoft quietly dropped Mac LAPS support. It’s like Patch Tuesday, but for your brain!
🧠 This Week’s Insight(s) from Andy
This week feels like “SysAdmin Survival Kits: Adapting to the Modern Wild.”
You’ve got PoisonSeed phishing trying to break MFA.
MacOS finally joins the LAPS party (better late than never).
DNS configs morph into a perfect storm of pain.
And to stay relevant, sysadmins need coding chops, automation tricks, and sometimes… a Pomodoro timer in the terminal.
It’s less about making unseen work visible this time and more about evolving the SysAdmin toolkit, from mindset (maker’s schedule) to hardening (MFA, LAPS) to smarter workflows (VSCode MCP, pomocli).
If last week was “be seen,” this week is “be ready.”
When I think about that term “be ready” in a SysAdmin context, my brain immediately time-travels back to my Boy Scout days. One of the mottos was “Be Prepared.”
As a kid, I remember thinking it was overkill. We’d spend hours prepping for scenarios that might happen… or might not. Fast-forward 20+ years in IT, and, well…let’s just say I’ve seen enough “learning experiences” over the years to fully appreciate the power of being prepared.
My grandmother had a saying when my dad and grandfather were working on projects around the house:
“You better be careful, or Murphy might show up!”
She was, of course, talking about Murphy’s Law: if something can go wrong, it will. Spend enough time in the SysAdmin trenches and you learn real quick that ol’ Murphy has a reserved parking spot in your server room, and he takes advantage of said parking spot…. frequently.
Preparation is what lets you stare down the inevitable storms: DNS meltdowns, Sev 1 tickets, rogue outages. It’s not paranoia, it’s the quiet confidence that when chaos hits, you’re ready to fix it, patch it, and keep the lights on.
And now…. back to our regularly scheduled programming.
🎹 Latest on the SysAdmin Weekly Podcast
🎧 How SysAdmins Can Showcase Their Value (Before the Next Layoff)
Andy and Eric tackle the reality of proving your worth in IT before your job becomes a budget line item. Expect candid advice on reporting, storytelling, and avoiding invisibility.
🎧 In Case You Missed It
🎧 The Demise of WSUS
We eulogize WSUS and talk about what replaces it. Spoiler: it's not the beloved old patch server.
🎧 Sneak Peek of the Next Episode
In our next episode, Paul Schnackenburg joins to discuss The Art of Troubleshooting, from gut-instinct fixes to methodical debugging. We’ll cover why real troubleshooting is more Sherlock Holmes than Stack Overflow copy-paste.
🔍 From AndyOnTech and Project Runspace
📄 Introducing pomocli
Andy’s shiny new CLI-based Pomodoro timer for SysAdmins who don’t want bloated apps. Tiny, fast, and perfect for terminal nerds.
📄 Should Server Admins Learn to Code?
Eric argues yes, at least enough to script away your pain. From PowerShell one-liners to Python tools, coding makes SysAdmins dangerous (in a good way).
🧱 Core Fundamentals
📘 OSI Model Explained
Cloudflare gives a clean, no-BS walkthrough of the OSI model. Still the bedrock for troubleshooting network mysteries.
🩵 Helpful Community Content
📄 Serverless vs. Just-in-Time Compute
Richard Hooper clears up the buzzword fog around Serverless and Just-in-Time compute. Spoiler Alert: they’re not the same thing.
📄 Designing AI Workloads with Azure Well-Architected Framework
Thomas Maurer lays out how to keep your AI deployments scalable and sane in Azure.
📄 Azure DNS Resolver: The Perfect Storm
Didier Van Hoye documents a cautionary tale of custom resolvers, ambiguous configs, and cloud DNS pain.
📄 Maker’s vs. Manager’s Schedule
Paul Graham’s classic on why meetings wreck deep work. This is a MUST-read for anyone who codes or fixes servers or does any work that takes longer than 20-minutes really…..
🎟 Other SysAdmin Content from Vendors and Official Publications
macOS LAPS Support – Finally, Mac gets proper LAPS (Local Admin Password Solution) management via Intune.
Workgroup Clusters – Official Microsoft doc for those non-domain Hyper-V clusters we’ve been talking about on occasion, for those interested.
Vibe Coding Explained – A look at “Vibe Coding” from Barry Briggs al a Directions on Microsoft and what it means for SysAdmins wrangling modern dev environments.
🔊 Security Headlines for SysAdmins
🛡 PoisonSeed Phishing Downgrades FIDO2 MFA
Threat actors have figured out how to trick users into bypassing FIDO2 hardware security keys by downgrading authentication to weaker methods. If you’re running phishing-resistant MFA, monitor for downgrade attempts in your identity logs.
🛠 Tool of the Week
🔧 VSCode MCP Install Button Generator
Merill Fernando’s utility lets you drop “install” buttons for VSCode Model Context Protocol packages. Makes onboarding AI agents/extensions dead simple.
🧠 Quick Win of the Week
Using Mac LAPS? Rotate those admin creds immediately after enrollment and use short expiry. It’s finally possible! Don’t leave the Macs in your fleet as the forgotten local admin backdoor.
🧠 Fun Retro SysAdmin Fact
Before PXE boot and fancy hypervisors, SysAdmins carried around boot floppies for every OS flavor. Need to boot NT4? Grab Disk 1 (and 2, 3, and 4…). Pray none had bad sectors….. seriously…. pray
☕ Wrap-Up
Another week of unsung heroes and shadow fixes that nobody sees, until something breaks. Forward this to your fellow SysAdmin who deserves credit for keeping the lights on and the DNS resolvers…… uh… resolving.
Stay caffeinated and keep relentlessly showing your value,
--Andy