Ed Wilson: Windows PowerShell for the busy admin

Summary: Microsoft Scripting Guy Ed Wilson begins a series of five live meetings on March 12, 2012

Ed here! Well it is official: next week, beginning on Monday, March 12, 2012, I will commence a new series of Learn Windows PowerShell live meetings. This series, titled Windows PowerShell for the busy admin, is going to be fun, educational, and a worthwhile use of your time. You need to sign up now to ensure there will be a slot for you to attend these free meetings. Of course, they will be recorded and will be made available via the TechNet Script Center Learn PowerShell page, but it is more fun to attend the live meeting and to be able to ask questions. Here is the vital information about the five meetings:

Session 1: PowerShell SmowerShell: or Why Bother to Learn Windows PowerShell

In this session, Microsoft Scripting Guy Ed Wilson discusses the fact that in addition to being the management future for Microsoft products Windows PowerShell offers a number of compelling reasons for learning it. These reasons include the following: it is powerful and provides the ability to collect and to consolidate information from multiple remote systems into a centralized view of the data. It is safer than many other tools, and offers the ability to prototype a command prior to the command execution. There is also a confirmation mode that will allow a network administrator, or other IT Pro the ability to selectively step through a group of commands to cherry pick commands to execute or ignore. Windows PowerShell also has built in logging that provides documentation of not only what commands are executed, but the resultant output from those commands. In addition, Windows PowerShell contains numerous features to promote a high level of discoverability and intuitive usability. This session is heavy with practical tips and demonstration.

Session 2: Heard it through the PipeLine: or How to compound PowerShell commands for fun and profit

One of the most basic, as well as one of the most powerful features of Windows PowerShell is the Pipeline. By using the Windows PowerShell pipeline one can take a basic set of cmdlets and build a nearly infinite assortment of useful commands. And yet, all of this boils down to using the pipeline to perform essentially four different types of activities. The first is to use the pipeline to retrieve items and to work on them. The second is to use the pipeline to filter out data. The third basic use of the pipeline is to persist information, and lastly the use of the pipeline to format output. In this session all four basic uses of the pipeline are covered with a heavy dose of demos.

Session 3: Sole Provider? Not hardly: or A look at Windows PowerShell Providers

One of the revolutionary concepts in Windows PowerShell is the idea of PowerShell providers. Windows PowerShell providers provide a singular way to access different types of data that are stored in different locations. Default providers include a filesystem, registry, alias, variable, function and environmental variable. This means that one can use Get-Item to access content stored in any of these different locations. Not only that, but these providers are extensible which means that different Microsoft teams (and third party developers) can create additional providers.

Session 4: The main event: or PowerShell does event logs

Regards of ones’ position, it seems that at some point or another everyone will be involved in looking at event logs. And why not; especially since Windows has such great logging support. Whether it is for security reasons, or troubleshooting reasons, or general Windows health monitoring, the logs contain nearly all of the required information one seeks. In this session Microsoft Scripting Guy Ed Wilson discusses the classic and the newer ETW style of logs and I look at the tools that are used with each type of log.

Session 5: More than remotely possible: or Using PowerShell to manage the remote desktop

Let’s face it, even though there are lots of commercial products out there that assist in managing desktops, or servers, most are very complex, and require a dedicated support team to manage them. Even in organizations where such tools exist, the teams agenda, and the front line admin’s agenda often clash. For adhoc situations, using Windows PowerShell to manage remote machines fills in the gray area. In this session, Microsoft Scripting Guy Ed Wilson discusses using Windows PowerShell to manage remote machines.