The Deployment Guy - New YouTube Channel

[craigcamacho]

Hi All,

 

I have created a new YouTube channel called The Deployment Guy. Its only a few weeks old and up to now I have 209 subscribers most of which came from posting in Reddit subs but I completely forgot to post it on here. The first few videos I did are silent but I have voiced the last few. The nature of the videos up to now are quick nugget sized videos for people just starting out in Intune but I will be branching out into other things like Autopilot, ConfigMgr, Windows 365 etc.

 

It would be great if you could take a look and give me any feedback on the quality of the videos and even suggestions of topics I could cover.

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC2E2HikYlO1WBujjyRZ4CQ

[XiJ]

Nice. Another subscriber here. I’ve been stepping into the intune world a bit more recently and really like it.

One task I am looking at doing is to deploy a URL to a pac file - which I need to do do via the registry.

 

I’ll watch through the videos and try to give feedback when I can.

[PotNoodleTech]

Cool this is what I need for me and my techie! Thanks for putting the time in!!

[supportman]

Subbed.

 

Any other good YouTube channels to follow?

[craigcamacho]

I have just dropped another video on how to package and deploy Office 365 as a Win32 app. The reason I do it this way is so I can install Office as part of my ESP but having a mix of app formats (msi, win32 etc) can cause a lot of conflicts and issues.

 

[dmj]

Subbed.

 

Any other good YouTube channels to follow?

 

2.5 admins. It's a podcast, on youtube as well as other places. Really high quality information:

https://www.youtube.com/@25Admins

[dmj]

It would be great if you could take a look and give me any feedback on the quality of the videos and even suggestions of topics I could cover.

 

Great effort, but I'm sorry to say I disagree with the approach you take. Nowadays deployment best practice is focusing much more on IaC and less on point and click deployments. 10 years ago it would have been spot on, and it's still a great approach for hobbiests. The problem with point and click deployments is that you don't get: Any documentation as to what you did (other than watching a 20min video!) an audit history, an authorisation process, reproducibility/consistency, any kind of peer review of the work, built in DR process, any possibilities for automation and no policy enforcement/security scanning of mis-configurations.

 

I appreciate school IT people don't get training on best practices, and much of it we have to make up as we go along, so it's good to see someone helping improve this. I just want to point out that there are other ways to do things, practices that most of the IT industry has adopted and I worry that schools are getting left further behind. So it would be great if you could focus on some Infrastructure as Code techniques. Sound is a bit low too.

[craigcamacho]

Great effort, but I'm sorry to say I disagree with the approach you take. Nowadays deployment best practice is focusing much more on IaC and less on point and click deployments. 10 years ago it would have been spot on, and it's still a great approach for hobbiests. The problem with point and click deployments is that you don't get: Any documentation as to what you did (other than watching a 20min video!) an audit history, an authorisation process, reproducibility/consistency, any kind of peer review of the work, built in DR process, any possibilities for automation and no policy enforcement/security scanning of mis-configurations.

 

I appreciate school IT people don't get training on best practices, and much of it we have to make up as we go along, so it's good to see someone helping improve this. I just want to point out that there are other ways to do things, practices that most of the IT industry has adopted and I worry that schools are getting left further behind. So it would be great if you could focus on some Infrastructure as Code techniques. Sound is a bit low too.

 

Ok thank you for your input. So with applications, configuration and compliance policies for example what is best practice to deploy these other than point and click from the Intune portal?

[Mark182]

Great effort, but I'm sorry to say I disagree with the approach you take. Nowadays deployment best practice is focusing much more on IaC and less on point and click deployments. 10 years ago it would have been spot on, and it's still a great approach for hobbiests. The problem with point and click deployments is that you don't get: Any documentation as to what you did (other than watching a 20min video!) an audit history, an authorisation process, reproducibility/consistency, any kind of peer review of the work, built in DR process, any possibilities for automation and no policy enforcement/security scanning of mis-configurations.

 

I appreciate school IT people don't get training on best practices, and much of it we have to make up as we go along, so it's good to see someone helping improve this. I just want to point out that there are other ways to do things, practices that most of the IT industry has adopted and I worry that schools are getting left further behind. So it would be great if you could focus on some Infrastructure as Code techniques. Sound is a bit low too.

 

I'm all for constructive criticism but I think calling OP a hobbyist is unfair. OP's videos state that these are for people just starting out. How would you advise doing this

as infrastructure as code? I've had a quick look here

[dmj]

I'm all for constructive criticism but I think calling OP a hobbyist is unfair. OP's videos state that these are for people just starting out. How would you advise doing this

as infrastructure as code? I've had a quick look here

 

Fair point. I wasn't trying to be confrontational. I'll try and rephrase it. Our job is to maintain mission critical infrastructure on an enterprise scale rather than small business scale. We should be using enterprise methodology and not small business methodology.

 

This would be a good start for managing intune with code:

but to be honest PS is probably a bit awkward for this and there are many tools that manage server and desktop configurations which are designed for IasC: ansible, terraform, chef, pulumi, puppet etc, etc.

 

Ok thank you for your input. So with applications, configuration and compliance policies for example what is best practice to deploy these other than point and click from the Intune portal?

 

So the way I do this is to create a github repository, and set it up such that techs all use their own branches. A commit to a branch then triggers a CI pipeline in the same way CI works in software development. The CI pipeline will check the configuration against policies you have put in place, 'lint' the code to make sure it meets certain specifications and check whether it looks like it's going to work (no obvious errors). To merge a branch into 'master' (ie promote the changes to production) the techs need approval from a senior. This provides an instant mechanism for others to review what you have done, thus sharing knowledge, and importantly it provides a log of every change on all systems. If all these checks pass you merge your changes to the master branch. This merge then kicks off a deployment pipeline which deploys all the changes (eg builds a server, 100 servers, or just deploys registry keys to a workstation). Any problems in the wild and you just revert the merge and the deployment pipeline reverses the changes. You know exactly how all of you switches, servers, workstations are configured because you have an exact output of the state of them. Someone deletes your intune, or burns down the building - just re-provision it all because you have the exact state stored in git (and on all the techs machines)

 

I appreciate it's not beginner stuff, but there are a lot of businesses with FAR fewer users/machines that are doing this. So I would urge any tech, beginner or otherwise to spend some time with IasC. This methodology is known as devops: using developer practices and applying them to operations. Again sorry if I sounded confrontational, I'm not trying to disrespect what you have done.

[Steve21]

I'd totally disagree with you there dmj. You're talking about a completely different purpose to what 99.9% of schools need. That isn't being behind or small business, it's working to what you need. (The same reason MS created the InTune for Edu option, as not all schools would even have IT teams)

 

Even as an example deploying a HyperV VM via powershell compared to manual. Yes it makes sense for 1000 web-server VMs being rolled out that are identical for different customers etc, but doing 5/10 VMs with different specs/roles, it's just complicating things for the sake of it and will always take longer to write and setup the "right way" compared to doing a one-off task every few years.

 

(In jest I refer everyone back to https://xkcd.com/1205/ ! )

 

Steve

Edited March 9, 2023 by Steve21

[dmj]

I'd totally disagree with you there dmj. You're talking about a completely different purpose to what 99.9% of schools need. That isn't being behind or small business, it's working to what you need. (The same reason MS created the InTune for Edu option, as not all schools would even have IT teams)

 

Even as an example deploying a HyperV VM via powershell compared to manual. Yes it makes sense for 1000 web-server VMs being rolled out that are identical for different customers etc, but doing 5/10 VMs with different specs/roles, it's just complicating things for the sake of it and will always take longer to write and setup the "right way" compared to doing a one-off task every few years.

 

(In jest I refer everyone back to https://xkcd.com/1205/ ! )

 

Steve

 

It will definitely take longer to do as IasC compared to point and click provisioning. Perhaps I'm talking to those running large secondaries, MAT's with several schools or Universities rather than a small primary with 50 machines - and if you don't care about infrastructure being down for a few hours why you manually re-provision everything in a disaster scenario, then by all means do it all manually. If you want to save one bills by shutting down half the infrastructure at night/evenings/holidays good luck with a manual approach.

 

My experience with secondaries we had around 50 switches, 20+ servers, 2000 devices and a team of four. For the time I spent there I only managed a small portion with IaC but even then I could see this was the way forward and as soon as I started working at a University 90% was managed by IasC. I suspect the only reason people are not doing IaC (in larger organisations) is, as you pointed out, they don't have the time or know how to go about it.

 

FWIW I wouldn't advocate managing hyper_v with PS, use terraform/ansible to abstract that.

 

edit: Having advocated IaC, I'll come up with a few reasons NOT to do this:

 

 

1. It's harder, much harder
   
2. It takes time, which most of us don't have
   
3. You won't find entry level staff with an understanding of software development practices
   
4. Staff retention is harder as devops pay is generally higher than sysadmin pay
   
5. Training (and time for it)
   

 

Anyways, if 1% of the 1000+ people/bots who've read this take on board some of the suggestions and working practice it will have been worth my time posting.

Edited March 10, 2023 by dmj

[PotNoodleTech]

Fair point. I wasn't trying to be confrontational. I'll try and rephrase it. Our job is to maintain mission critical infrastructure on an enterprise scale rather than small business scale. We should be using enterprise methodology and not small business methodology.

 

How about you give me an enterprise level budget then so that I can implement all of this enterprise technology?

 

*checks budget again*

 

Ah yes it's a small business budget.

[andy_b]

Totally understand that this is a "better" way to do it, with built in documentation and scale.

 

But I have to balance this with also showing staff how to turn a switch on at the wall when their laptop isn't charging.

[3s-gtech]

*reads thread*

*looks at current setup*

*has no idea what half of these things are*

*maintains blissful ignorance*

 

I’ve always happily stated that I don’t like to lead when it comes to new tech and approaches - I try to follow trends when they settle. That has served me well, but it does mean that as I get older I get less enthused.

 

I just want to do what works, with the best tools available on a budget, and usually following some legend’s detailed blog post.

 

Big problem with some of these approaches for me is that I have no - zero - intent on learning about them outside of work. IT is not my hobby. That makes it hard to even understand what you’re on about though I get the gist.

 

It’s in those circumstances where GUI tools and simplicity come through. I have quite a few VMs to manage (45?), and I have never needed to automate to much of an extent.

 

Our M365 is very much built on automation - mostly using Salamander!

[PotNoodleTech]

I agree with above - still using MDT/WDS here to deploy hundreds of PCs and it works 100% of the time every time, entire it suites built in 20 mins with apps installed etc.

 

Why move to something 10x more complicated that doesnt give you a 10x improvement in outcomes?

 

We should only be using hideously complicated enteprise software if it actually imroves something.

 

I know a school down the road who've gone down the full automation thing using SCCM and all sorts of other jazz - they've literally got between 0.5 and 0.75 of a member of staff constantly on automation and SCCM all the time - it's going on towards a full time job! And do their PCs really build any better than mine in the grand scheme of things? Not really.

 

personally I think DMJs posts were very rude when you consider the OP is basically trying to help us and give us some free training.

[dmj]

personally I think DMJs posts were very rude when you consider the OP is basically trying to help us and give us some free training.

 

Really? That absolutely wasn't my intention. I was simply asking him to focus another way to deploying things, given my job is literally to deploy things I have a lot of insight into the different methods and why big business does it in a certain way and why small sites do it in another. I honestly thought it would be helpful to see another side of deployment.

 

Anyway, judging by the feedback, you all made it clear I should keep my nose out and you all seem happy enough keeping doing things as you always have.

[PotNoodleTech]

Really? That absolutely wasn't my intention. I was simply asking him to focus another way to deploying things, given my job is literally to deploy things I have a lot of insight into the different methods and why big business does it in a certain way and why small sites do it in another. I honestly thought it would be helpful to see another side of deployment.

 

Anyway, judging by the feedback, you all made it clear I should keep my nose out and you all seem happy enough keeping doing things as you always have.

 

I'd be more than happy to learn more about enterprise automation and if it would make my department better! Get the camera out mate and log into youtube!!

[3s-gtech]

Really? That absolutely wasn't my intention. I was simply asking him to focus another way to deploying things, given my job is literally to deploy things I have a lot of insight into the different methods and why big business does it in a certain way and why small sites do it in another. I honestly thought it would be helpful to see another side of deployment.

 

Anyway, judging by the feedback, you all made it clear I should keep my nose out and you all seem happy enough keeping doing things as you always have.

 

I don’t think you were rude, and we need to have these discussions as it drives innovation and shares good practice. Your knowledge, obvious drive on the subject and ability are all things that we can benefit from.

 

It may be that we read what you’re doing and decide to KIS though, forgive us jacks! [emoji6]

[craigcamacho]

Thanks for the links and information which you obviously took time to compose. I am always receptive and appreciative of additional training, advice and new ways of working so thank you. I think what has perhaps gotten peoples backs up is that you have suggested there are other ways of doing particular tasks then gone full steam ahead with how you do it and completely dismissed the other ways that differ from yours such as point and click as "hobbiest". Whether this was meant or not it did sound patronising and undermining of the working methods that a lot of people on this forum probably use and you came across as a bit of a smart arse if I am honest.

 

Everything in IT is implemented on a use case scenario as you well know. If you have a massive budget and have a need to facilitate thousands and thousands of endpoints and users across numerous locations then I agree your way might well be more appropriate and provide more consistent results for the task at hand. If you have a medium budget which only covers certain licensing, a reduced number of virtual servers because you've managed to migrate a lot of the roles to SaS and then you have between 1000-2000 endpoints on a single site I bet a lot of people on this forum would still use point and click.

 

I went to a cyber security event yesterday hosted by a very reputable and cyber accredited company who are a Microsoft Gold Partner and every single demo they did were either in the Entra portal, Admin Center or one of the various Security portals. These demonstrations were ALL point and click. Were they wrong? No they were not. Again just different to how you do it.

 

You were very quick to say you didnt agree with the approach I take. Does that mean I am wrong? No it doesn't it just means I do it differently to you based on a certain use case scenario. Are you doing it wrong? No your not infact probably far from it if I am honest but again this is based on your own use case scenario.

 

Each of my videos does state at the beginning that they are for people just starting out with Intune and lets be honest cover pretty simple tasks. I would say 99% of the people searching and watching these videos are going to want to know how to do these tasks using point and click so I am catering for these people. A lot of what I have learnt over the years has come from various sources such as books, online training platforms such as Pluralsight, CBT Nuggets etc and following a number of MVPs (big up Arwidmark, Niehaus and all the other guys) on Twitter so I am demonstrating what I have learnt from the various platforms.

 

Basically what I am trying to suggest is that neither of our methods are the right or wrong way of doing it. I have never in my life done anything on YouTube and I am more than happy with the number of subscriber's I have gotten in literally a handful of weeks. I have also gotten a spot on a weekly newsletter written by a Microsoft MVP in Enterprise Mobility for the 3 out of 4 weeks my channel has been going so I would like to think Im doing something of value.

[craigcamacho]

Also if you ever start a YouTube channel called "The DevOps Guy" let me know and I will subscribe.

[dmj]

Also if you ever start a YouTube channel called "The DevOps Guy" let me know and I will subscribe.

I'm afraid my presentation and teaching skills are not up to it

[dmj]

Thanks for the links and information which you obviously took time to compose. I am always receptive and appreciative of additional training, advice and new ways of working so thank you. I think what has perhaps gotten peoples backs up is that you have suggested there are other ways of doing particular tasks then gone full steam ahead with how you do it and completely dismissed the other ways that differ from yours such as point and click as "hobbiest". Whether this was meant or not it did sound patronising and undermining of the working methods that a lot of people on this forum probably use and you came across as a bit of a smart arse if I am honest.

 

yeah sorry, that wasn't the intention.

[Davit2005]

Awesome, want to get into InTune, defo need to have a look.

 

Present company excluded but I don't think a lot the majority of YouTube watchers appreciate the work that sometimes goes in to making some of these videos. Keep up the good work.

[cheekycharly]

Subbed! I will have a watch as I have just bought an A3 license to test deploying the office 365 suite via intune so shared pupils can log on/off and access it on laptops.