get-scripting PowerShell Podcast

I recently recorded an episode of the get-scripting podcast which is produced by fellow PowerShell MVP Jonathan Medd.  The podcast is available from

http://get-scripting.blogspot.com/2011/01/get-scripting-podcast-episode-21.html

During the session we discuss:

• the UK PowerShell user group
• PowerShell in general
• PowerShell in Practice – http://www.manning.com/siddaway/
• PowerShell and WMI – http://www.manning.com/siddaway2/
• WMI in general
• extending to use of PowerShell to migration scenarios

I enjoyed recording the podcast and hope you will support Jonathan’s efforts by continuing to listen to future episodes

UK User Group–February Live Meeting

When: Tuesday, Feb 8, 2011 7:30 PM (GMT)

Where: Live Meeting
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

An introductory session showing how to get the most out of PowerShell’s utility cmdlets. These are
Compare-Object
ForEach-Object
Group-Object
Measure-Object
New-Object
Select-Object
Sort-Object
Tee-Object
Where-Object
Suitable for beginners and the odd possible surprise for experts

Notes

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UK PowerShell User Group Meetings

Please note the following dates for your diaries:

8 February – PowerShell utility cmdlets

An introductory session showing how to get the most out of PowerShell’s utility cmdlets.  These are

Compare-Object
ForEach-Object
Group-Object
Measure-Object
New-Object
Select-Object
Sort-Object
Tee-Object
Where-Object

22 March – Regular Expressions

PowerShell MVP Tome Tanasovski will present on Regular Expressions.  This is an opportunity to learn more about an under used part of PowerShell.

Tome is a Windows engineer for a market-leading global financial services firm in New York City. He is a recipient of the PowerShell MVP award, the founder and leader of the New York City PowerShell User group, a blogger, and a regular contributor to Microsoft’s Windows PowerShell forum. He has been featured four times on Hey Scripting Guy, and he is currently working on the PowerShell Bible, which is due out in 2011 from Wiley. 

http://powertoe.wordpress.com

http://twitter.com/toenuff

12 April – PowerShell and COM

PowerShell has great support for WMI and .NET but don’t forget that many applications still only have a COM interface. This session will also cover accessing the Windows Scripting Host functionality. 

All sessions start at 7.30pm UK time unless stated otherwise.  (Note that UK goes to daylight saving time on 20 March)

Registry data types

One point I didn’t cover in my series on working with the registry was how to get the type of a registry value.

The easiest way is to use the EnumValues() method.  This returns integer values for the type.

Define a hash table that contains the integer and its meaning. Define the hive and the key. Create an instance of StdRegProv and invoke the EnumValues method. Loop through the returned values and use a formatted string to display the results

PowerShell and WMI – Chapter 4

Chapter 4 has been released for PowerShell and WMI. It is available through the Manning Early Access Program (MEAP) at http://www.manning.com/siddaway2/

The first 4 chapters cover:

1. Solving Administrative Challenges
2. Using PowerShell
3. WMI in Depth
4. Best Practices

Chapters 5 and 6 covering System Configuration Information and Disk Systems respectively are in the pipeline.  I’m currently working on chapter 7 on the registry. Chapters 5 onwards include lots of lovely scripts.

PowerShell Best practices

Ed Wilson – Microsoft Scripting Guy – gave a superb presentation to the UK PowerShell group tonight.  If you missed it the recording will be available for the next 365 days

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I would recommend this to everyone interested in using PowerShell.  You need to listen to the end if you want to find out Ed’s number one, must do, best practice

PowerShell Books

There are a lot of PowerShell books on the market. Whether you are just starting  with PowerShell, want to dig further into the subject or need some help with using PowerShell with a particular product it is often helpful to find a book on the subject instead of learning from scratch.

NOTE: This is my own personal view of the books. There are other books available. Some I have looked at and won’t recommend others I have not yet looked at. I am also restricting my list to English language books

These are the books I would recommend. I use many of these on a regular basis.

Comments:

Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches by Don Jones. This is still being written at the time of posting. It is a beginners guide to PowerShell. If you haven’t used PowerShell before this is the place to start.

Windows PowerShell Scripting Guide by Ed Wilson.  This takes over where Don’s book stops. It supplies a good introduction to automating basic windows admin tasks with PowerShell

Windows PowerShell Cookbook by Lee Holmes. Now in its second edition it supplies a lot of scripts for using PowerShell. This book is PowerShell orientated and doesn’t cover using Exchange, AD etc. The techniques are useful for using with some of the more advanced or technology specific books.

Windows PowerShell 2.0 Best Practices by Ed Wilson. Builds on his Scripting Guide and contains good information on designing and testing scripts. Even if you don’t agree with all of the ideas they are worth reading to make you think about how you want to perform these tasks in your organisation.

PowerShell in Practice I wrote as a “PowerShell for Administrators” book. Contains lots of examples for working with AD, WMI, DNS, IIS, Exchange, SQL Server and Hyper-V. I wrote it but I still refer to it for syntax & ideas.

PowerShell and WMI is still being written. WMI is a really powerful technology but the lack of documentation and the difficulty of using it in the past has meant admins have been reluctant to use it. This book is designed to shine a light on to WMI, make it accessible and provide many ready to use scripts

Managing AD with Windows PowerShell by Jeffery Hicks. A second edition is in preparation. This overlaps with PowerShell in Practice to some extent but if you just want to automate AD then start here.

Managing VMware Infrastructure with Windows PowerShell by Hal Rottenberg. If you are using VMware you need this. Admin becomes a lot easier.

PowerShell in Action by Bruce Payette. This is the book for the in depth details on the PowerShell language. If you want to know how and why PowerShell works the way it does this is the book for you. Be aware that it is an advanced text and is NOT recommended for PowerShell newcomers.

This is my view of the PowerShell book world. No doubt other people will have different views. If you think I’ve missed a book that should be one this list please let me know but I will only recommend books I have read.

Seven Habits of Highly Effective PowerShellers

Some thoughts on highly effective PowerShell users. They:

1. Get the job done. This isn’t as obvious as it seems. PowerShell is an automation tool. Use it.  Don’t agonise over the last bit of polishing for your script. Get it into use and gain the benefits. It can always be modified another day. Remember the 80:20 rule.  You’ll get 80% of the benefits with 20% of the effort. 
2. Don’t forget interactive use of cmdlets. An awful lot of useful work can be performed by using cmdlets. This is especially true if working with Exchange or remote systems (don’t forget WMI)
3. Use the pipeline. PowerShell is about the pipeline. Use the inbuilt power as much as you can but don’t forget habit 1
4. Use scripts, functions and modules. This is all about reuse.  Don’t re-write every time.  Modules are great for organising your scripts and loading as required.
5. Use comments You will see this one in every scripting guide.  You need to be able to understand what you meant to do with the script. This is especially important if you are sharing your scripts
6. Write PowerShell not VBScript A lot of PowerShell examples are VBScript that has been translated directly into PowerShell. Don’t bring the VBScript habits into PowerShell – but don’t forget habit 1
7. Are part of the PowerShell community.  By this I mean that they use the PowerShell community to find out how to do things and where possible they contribute back to the community.

Truncating numbers

This is something I fell foul of recently. I had a calculation that produced a non integer answer e.g.  2.1

I needed to get the integer part of the number.  Without really thinking about it I did this

PS> [int]2.1
2

I was then a bit surprised when I didn’t always get the right answer.  Still not thinking I was scratching my head until I realised that using [int] rounds to the nearest integer.

PS> for ($i=2.1; $i -le 3.0; $i+=0.1){"$i  $([int]$i)"}
2.1  2
2.2  2
2.3  2
2.4  2
2.5  3
2.6  3
2.7  3
2.8  3
2.9  3

This is no good because I need to round down.

The .NET Math class has a Truncate method that works however.

PS> for ($i=2.1; $i -le 3.0; $i+=0.1){"$i  $([math]::Truncate($i))"}
2.1  2
2.2  2
2.3  2
2.4  2
2.5  2
2.6  2
2.7  2
2.8  2
2.9  2

And the moral of the story is that you need to think about what you are doing and not assume that things work the way you think they do

PowerShell New Year’s Resolutions

Happy New Year to everyone

At the start of a New Year it is time to take stock and decide what you want to achieve in the next 12 months.  My PowerShell list is fairly straight forward:

• complete PowerShell and WMI
• produce a good programme for the user group
  • good guest speakers
  • start a series of sessions for people new to PowerShell
• add more modules to the PowerShell Admin Modules (PSAM) on codeplex
• blog more than last year

We’ll see how well I’ve kept them this time next year