Lead, Follow, or Move » PowerShell

PowerShell 2.0

Adam Bell — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:22:43 +0000

Hidden amongst all the hype of the Windows 7 release two weeks ago is the fact that in Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 we now have PowerShell installed by default, and version 2.0 at that. From an administration point of view this is going to make my life a heck of a lot easier in time.

For a good view of what’s new in 2 check out Joel “jaykul” Bennett’s excellent slide deck here

To add to the mammoth PowerShell support included in Windows 7, the Windows 7 Resource Kit also includes a PowerShell Pack which adds 10 modules to help supercharge your Windows PowerShell scripting:

WPK - Create rich user interfaces quick and easily from Windows PowerShell. Think HTA, but easy. Over 600 scripts to help you build quick user interfaces
TaskScheduler - List scheduled tasks, create or delete tasks
FileSystem - Monitor files and folders, check for duplicate files, and check disk space
IsePack – Supercharge your scripting in the Integrated Scripting Environment with over 35 shortcuts
DotNet – Explore loaded types, find commands that can work with a type, and explore how you can use PowerShell, DotNet and COM together
PSImageTools - Convert, rotate, scale, and crop images and get image metadata
PSRSS – Harness the FeedStore from PowerShell
PSSystemTools – Get Operating System or Hardware Information
PSUserTools – Get the users on a system, check for elevation, and start-processaadministrator
PSCodeGen -Generates PowerShell scripts, C# code, and P/Invoke

This is all well and good, but what about the other Microsoft Operating Systems? Well, now Microsoft have released the Windows Management Framework, which includes PowerShell 2.0, WinRM 2.0 and BITS 4.0 providing the same rich experience of PowerShell 2.0 for Vista, Server 2003 & 2008 and Windows XP.

Looks to me like Microsoft just super-sized my PowerShell options :-)

Tech Talk: PowerShell Team Blog – Links

Adam Bell — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:43:07 +0000

I’m not a fan of just linking to other conversations without adding any value, but in this case the links are worth it.

If you’re interested in PowerShell then you have probably already seen the news over at the Microsoft PowerShell Team Blog, but just in case I’ve linked to the three recent posts that I think are pretty much just awesome. Go take a look, you can bet I will be ;-)

Jonathan and Hal (from the PowerScripting Podcast) will be hosting Jeffrey Snover for a Virtual PowerShell V2 Launch Party on Thursday, which is of course GA* day for Windows 7!!

Lee Holmes from the PowerShell Team has also announced that one of their internal tools has been released as a Codeplex Project.

The Cmdlet Designer makes it much easier for teams to concentrate on the design, naming, and consistency of their cmdlets, while also guaranteeing name registration and collision avoidance across Microsoft.

To sweeten the deal, it offers:

* Integrated help authoring
* Efficient bulk operations (parameter and cmdlet cloning)
* Generation of cmdlet code
* Full scripting support
* Automatic code-spec comparison and testing
* Role-based security, history logging, and more.

But wait, there’s more! It’s now available under MS-PL from http://www.codeplex.com/CmdletDesigner

And last, but in no means least, with the recent announcement of the Windows 7 Resource Kit book comes the availablity of the Windows 7 Resource Kit PowerShell Pack. There’s a detailed breakdown of the features in the PowerShell Team’s blog post, but in a brief look it contains: 10 modules with 600+ scripts. Great work James!

* General Availablity.

PowerShell User Group Australia

Adam Bell — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 04:24:40 +0000

I recently returned from living/working in the UK for a few years. While I was over there I was a regular member of the Get-PSUGUK User group.

Since returning home I’ve really missed the community and interest around PowerShell. After talking to some of the Microsoft cool cats on the east coast, I’ve organised to commence the PSUGAU.

The idea is to give the group a national focus rather than just solely Perth IT geeks. We hope to achieve this by utilising Live Meeting to give anyone interested the opportunity to join us online. This will also allow me to invite PowerShell guest presenters to help mix things up and bring in some great experience from the wider community.

I’m still in the process of working out where we can host the user group, and I’m trying to get the website operational (watch this space), but the intention is to have the inaugural meeting around the end of September.

If you’re interested in coming along and getting involved then ping me an email so I know how much pizza to order! There’s also a poll on the front page to get an indication on your meeting preferences.

PowerShell Toolbox Revival

Adam Bell — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 03:52:07 +0000

A while ago, when the world was young and PowerShell was new, I put together a web page that listed the majority of the PowerShell tools around at the time.

A couple of years later, and PowerShell has become way more pervasive and is going to continue to get more and more penetration into our daily IT infrastructure – Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 are excellent examples of how this is going to accelerate PowerShell’s visibility and wider use.

I’m thinking that the PowerShell Toolbox page is in desperate need of an update. So, over the next week or so I’ll go through and give it a spring clean and add new popular tools to it.

If you’re intersted, feel free to drop a comment here listing your favourites, and I’ll make sure they get added to the page.

PowerShell Import-CSV and Sort-Object

Adam Bell — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 07:27:32 +0000

Recently I noticed that when I was sorting data imported from a CSV file, the behaviour wasn’t quite as expected.

$scores = Import-Csv .\scores.csv
$scores | Sort-Object -Property Score -Descending

sort-object

I’m pretty sure Julie’s score of 300 should be higher then Homer’s!

$scores | Get-Member

sort-object example 2

A quick look shows that even though the score is a number it’s being treated as a system.string. To resovle this we need to change it back to a number. This is done by wrapping it into a code block and recasting as an integar:

$scores | Sort-Object -Property {[int] $_.Score} -Descending

sort-object example 3

Fixed! More information can be found in this Hey,Scripting Guy Article.

First look at MDT 2010 Beta 2

Adam Bell — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:56:15 +0000

Michael has been firing out a lot posts about the new features of MDT 2010 recently, and as this is a tool I do quite a lot with I figured it was time to start playing :)

I have a test server with the Beta 1 MDT 2010 already installed. I wanted to see if any issues are encountered if I just installed over the top.

The installation process didn’t notify me of any previous version, but it selected the installation directory of the existing MDT. I let it install to the same location, and it completed without any errors.

The new and improved workbench.

I like the new shiny icons, but more importantly I like how I can organise things in folders :)

My existing MDT items were all still available, with the exception of the deployment share. Selecting to open an existing share and selecting the upgrade check box appears to have brought everything up to date.

Property page has been updated

One of my minor annoyances for a long time has been resolved. You can now tab through the fields, though you have to tab through both sides *grrr*.

From a PowerShell perspective a quick look reveals that we have one snapin to play with: microsoft.bdd.PSsnapin.

The PowerShell Snapin for MDT 2010

16 cmdlets are provided by the MDT snapin

I haven’t played with these yet, but they look to be promising.

News and Events

Adam Bell — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:22:24 +0000

The Summer Scripting Games finished last Friday. There’s always lots of PowerShell goodness to get you thinking! Richard has been detailing his solutions, and the complete list is available on the Scripting Guy blog.

Microsoft also held a Virtual Conference last week and the video’s are available here.

MDT 2010 Beta 2 has just been released and promises to hold a lot of great improvements. Michael, has shot out a whole bunch of posts in short time detailing some of the new features here.

Lots of great stuff to watch and play with! :-)

Weekly Poll #5

Adam Bell — Mon, 26 May 2008 10:12:37 +0000

This weeks poll is about 3rd party applications for PowerShell.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

If you feel I’ve omitted someone please drop me a comment. For details check the PowerShell Toolbox

Weekly Poll #4

Adam Bell — Tue, 20 May 2008 09:45:43 +0000

So due to an unfortunate hardware situation we missed last weeks Poll, but It’s been resolved now, and so here’s Poll #4:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Here’s the detailed breakdown of the features in the 2.0 CTP

Weekly Poll #3

Adam Bell — Tue, 06 May 2008 12:43:19 +0000

A little late this week, but here it is.
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

If you feel I’ve missed any significant options please leave a comment. There’s becoming quite a tower of power, but I tried to keep the list reasonably short.