PowerScripting Podcast

A Podcast about Windows PowerShell.

Listen:

In This Episode

Today we’ll bring you the second half of our interview with Jeffrey Snover. We think this part is even better than the first half. We’ve also got some news, resources, and a bunch of PowerShell tips for you.

News

The News today is sponsored by SDM Software:

“SDM Software provides innovative solutions that combine PowerShell and Group Policy to help reduce the complexity of managing your Windows systems. Their unique GPExpert Scripting Toolkit for PowerShell, provides the means to automate the management of your Group Policy Objects. To get more information about these products and download trial copies, visit sdmsoftware.com/powerscripting.php.”

• NEW: NetCmdlets V2.0 – BETA. NetCmdlets V2 is packed full of exciting new features including PowerShell Server (formerly PowerShell Remoting), Parameter Sets, Object Pipelining, and new Cmdlets for SSH Enabled Remoting and Amazon Web Services (S3) Integration. (Thanks to Jeffrey and Marco.)
• /\/\o\/\/ has updated his PowerShell WMI Explorer for the CTP so you can use alternate credentials

Interview with Jeffrey Snover

Our interview today is brought to you by Quest Software.

Quest LOVES PowerShell. Go to www.quest.com / PowerShell and download their free graphical user interface, script editor and Active Directory commands. While you’re there, join their online community where you can share ideas and get free useful commands. Visit www.quest.com / powershell today!

Be sure to listen to the show for the interview. You can read a list of the questions here.

Resources

• Check out Bart De Smet’s B#.NET blog, he’s written some good stuff about PowerShell v2 CTP.
• PowerShell Basics Episode 2 is up “Discoverability”
• The Power of LDAP Filters from Brandon Shell
• A collection of LDAP Filter Info from Brandon Shell
• New Technet Webcast: Using Virtual Machine Manager and Windows PowerShell to Deploy HP Windows Server 2008 Academy Labs (Level 300 “This fast-paced webcast summarizes the IT professional experience of using a Windows PowerShell script and Virtual Machine Manager to automate the deployment of virtual machines (VMs).”

Tips

The Tips are brought to you today by ShellTools.

Did you know that PowerShell Plus is a great XML editor? In addition to .PS1 files, you can also work with .PS1XML help files and .PSC PowerShell Console files. Other new features include a really cool console preview pane in the editor which makes edit/test/correct workflow very easy. You can download it today at shelltools.com.

• Brandon Shell from the BSonPosh blog wrote a cool scriptwhich times the replication of objects in an Active Directory. Here are the features:
  • Finds all Domain Controllers in the Domain (using .NET)
  • Creates a contact object in a specified OU (Default is users container for the Domain)
  • Gets the start Time
  • Loops and Checks each DC for the object.
  • Once all DCs have the object it gets End Time
• Newsgroup posts:
  • Hal explains how to explore WMI in the command-line:
  • • “Win32_NetworkAdapter” -namespace “root\CIMV2” -Filter AdapterTypeId=0
  • Shay elaborates on adding ScriptMethods to custom objects:
    • PowerShell Custom Objects
• Bart De Smet wrote a cool introduction to Script Cmdlets in PowerShell v2 CTP. It will be incredibly easy to write more robust scripts that have features such as mandatory parameters and “it just works” pipeline support. He also talks about -confirm and -whatif support. Very neat stuff.

A Podcast about Windows PowerShell.

Listen:

In This Episode

This week, our Intrepid Heroes talk about News in the PowerShell world, bring you fresh Resources from the wild Internet, and share their experiences in the Tips section, with you, the Listener. Oh–and we also interview JEFFREY SNOVER! In case you don’t know who he is, he’s basically like the Thomas Edison of scripting.

Interview with Jeffrey Snover

And now a word from our sponsor:

Our interview today is brought to you by Quest Software. Quest LOVES PowerShell. Go to www.quest.com / PowerShell and download their free graphical user interface, script editor and Active Directory commands. While you’re there, join their online community where you can share ideas and get free useful commands.  Visit www.quest.com / powershell today!

 

Be sure to listen to the show for the interview. You can read a list of the questions here. The interview ran really long (which is awesome), but at an hour and a half, it was too long for our format. So, we decided to split it into two main chunks.

There is stuff in this interview you have not heard anywhere else before, so check it out. Maybe some people don’t like it when Jeffrey talks so long, but we sure did.

News

• VMware has JUST released their VI Toolkit for PowerShell to the public. If you use ESX Server, you need to check it out.
• Great News! PowerShell Plus 1.0 has been released!
• Coming later this year: Managing VMWare with Windows PowerShell: TFM®! to be published by Sapien Press.
• The Windows SDK team is seeking feedback on how important it would be to you (or not) to have a PowerShell-based build environment. Click on the link above to leave your comments.

Resources

Stay tuned, kids! We’ll be back after a brief message from our sponsors.

The resource section today is sponsored by SDM Software:
“SDM Software provides innovative solutions that combine PowerShell
and Group Policy to help reduce the complexity of managing your
Windows systems. Their unique GPExpert Scripting Toolkit for
PowerShell, provides the means to automate the management of your
Group Policy Objects. To get more information about these products and download trial copies, visit sdmsoftware.com/powerscripting.php.”

• We’ve been reading Andy’s Get-PowerShell(get-powershell.com) blog lately, cool stuff, you should check it out.
  • Andy’s post about Start a process
• VMware released a lab manual for their VI Toolkit with lots of examples.
• PowerShell Answers blog post – Custom object, custom formatting
• Dmitry from Quest covers a new feature in PowerGUI that converts VBScript to PowerShell.

Tips

The Tips are brought to you today by our friends at ShellTools.

Did you know that PowerShell Plus is a great XML editor? In addition to .PS1 files, you can also work with .PS1XML help files and .PSC PowerShell Console files. Other new features include a really cool console preview pane in the editor which makes edit/test/correct workflow very easy. You can download it today at shelltools.com.

• Some notable built-in aliases you might not have noticed:
  • diff -> compare-object
  • group -> group-object
  • iex -> invoke-expression
  • ii -> invoke-item
  • sleep -> start-sleep
  • sort -> sort-object
  • kill -> stop-process
• We discuss a forum post which asks, “How can I verify a URL redirection?” We answer the question using the System.Net.HttpWebRequest .NET object.(from powershellcommunity.org)
• Assign multiple variables in one expression (Get-PowerShell blog). Andy gets all the air time today.

One-liner

This one-liner lets you quickly make a GUID (globally unique identifier):

write ([string][guid]::NewGuid())

Also don’t forget to check our blog from time-to-time, we like to post little tidbits in-between shows like one-liners so don’t miss out! Hal just posted a PowerShell kitchen timer one-liner today.

Thanks for listening! You can send feedback to powerscripting@gmail.com.

A Podcast about Windows PowerShell.

Listen:

Please visit our sponsors!

• ShellTools Software – makers of PowerShell Plus and PowerShell Analyzer
• SDM Software – “Windows Group Policy Management Simplified.” Featuring the GPExpert Scripting toolkit for PowerShell

News

• Don Jones gives us a peek at his PowerShell column in the March Technet Magazine:
  • “March is Progress Reporting – a definitive look at when, why, and how to use Write-Progress to produce
    scripts that run for a long time, but don’t look hung.”
• Sapien will be announcing their PowerShell training plans very soon.  Watch their blog.  They are also seeking input on a possible PowerShell developer class, you can fill out the survey here.
• Jeffery Snover will be joining us on a future podcast so send in your questions

Resources

• RunAs Radio recently featured our very own PowerShell MVP Marco Shaw on their podcast show #46 to talk about WMI and IIS7 and several other things.
• SDM Software has updated their freeware SDM GPMC snapinto version 1.1.
  • Now includes 16 cmdlets for managing group policy objects
  • New cmdlet Update-SDMGP which can be used to trigger remote GP refreshes using PoSh.
  • Their commercial product, GPExpert Scripting Toolkit for PowerShell, has also undergone revisions lately, check it out.
• Special Operations Software has just posted a video on their website made by Darren Mar-Elia (the GPO Guy) where he talks about Specops Command: http://www.specopssoft.com/powershell/specopscommand-sdm.wmv
• The guys over at the Swiss IT Pro & Technet blog have published a second free PowerShell e-book.  Written by Frank Koch, this 78-page book covers a wide variety of topics.  It is available in both German and English, and the zip archive contains parts one and two in PDF format. Thanks to listener Rob Johnston for the tip.

Tips

• Object Types and Custom Formatting – below links were compiled by Shay in #Powershell

• How does Powershell formatting really work?
• Finding out what determines which properties are displayed
• Extending Object Types and Formatting (msdn)
• Use of wildcards in Powershell formatting
• Customizing Windows PowerShell

• Using the -disabled, -enabled and -LdapFilter parameters of the Get-Qaduser command to speed up searches

• Newsgroup Posts:
  • using AutoItX COM interface
  • PS and WinRM on 1000+ machines

Cmdlet of the Week

• measure-command

One-liner

• This simple one-liner is an easy to use stopwatch!

measure-command { read-host “press any key to stop timer” }

Thanks for listening!

A Podcast about Windows PowerShell.

Listen:

News

• Scripting Games now open by the time you hear us!
• Citrix Workflow Studio“Workflow Studio, a member of the Citrix Delivery Center product family, is an IT process automation solution that enables you to compose, integrate and orchestrate rule-based workflows across your application delivery infrastructure. Workflow Studio acts as the glue across the IT infrastructure allowing administrators to easily tie technology components together via workflows that enable the system to truly operate as a dynamic delivery platform.”
• Jeff’s Scripting Blog and More: Practical PowerShell Jeff Hicks is writing a new monthly column for a new eJournal from RealTime Publishers. “The column, Practical PowerShell, will be a regular feature in Windows Administration in Realtime. The eJournal is a free PDF although I think you have to give up an email address.”
• Windows PowerShell : The Semantic Gap There are 2 worlds: 1. The world as we think about it. 2. The world as we can manipulate it. The difference between these two is what is called the semantic gap.

Resources

• New Video Podcast: PowerShell-Basics.com This is created by Steve from the A Couple of Admins Podcast.  He wanted to create a screencast-only video podcast.  His first show should be out by the time you hear this.

Cmdlets

• Export-Clixml
• Import-Clixml

Tips

• Newsgroup post from Hal:
  • gscanga writes about his frustration that PowerShell cannot do anything remotely
• Managing Terminal Services attributes with PowerShell « Dmitry’s PowerBlog: PowerShell and beyond Terminal Services properties is definitely a set of properties you would want to bulk-manage, and as we all know PowerShell is the best tool for any bulk operations.
• 10 Cool Things You Can Do with PowerShell – I got this from ‘Entwickler’ on Twitter.  Some examples:

1. Report all of the USB devices installed
2. Background a time-consuming task

• From Lee Holmes (who is on the PowerShell team) on his Precision Computing blog: Realtime Syntax Highlighting in your PowerShell Console. Thanks Mark aka ‘meson’ for the tip.

Thanks for listening!