PowerShell for Admins
New Blog Posting on Desired State Configuration
Just an FYI that I posted a walkthrough on my blog, of DSC, including my experiences as it relates to Group Policy: http://bit.ly/1868BYS
Articles
PowerShell articles, tutorials, and guides from community experts.
PowerShell for Admins
How Cloud-First Design Affects You
Today, Brad Anderson (Corporate VP in the Windows Server/System Center unit) posted the first in what should be a series of “What’s New in 2012 R2” articles. In it, Anderson focuses on how Microsoft squeezed so many features into the 2012R2 release in such a short period of time. …
Announcements
It's Safe to Run Update-Help – and you should!
I’m informed that sometime today Microsoft will be posting fixed core cmdlet help files for your downloading pleasure - so it’s safe to run Update-Help again, and you should definitely do so. There are likely a lot of fixes and improvements to the help text, and you won’t be …
PowerShell Great Debate: Formatting Constructs
Here’s an easy, low-stakes debate: How do you like to format your scripting constructs? And, more importantly, why do you like your method? For example, I tend to do this: `If ($this -eq $that) { do this } else { do this } `I do so out of long habit with C-like syntax, and because when …
Announcements
Come to PowerShell Summer School!
Through my company Concentrated Tech, I’ve decided to run a set of three PowerShell Summer School classes (click that link for descriptions). These will be a combo of self-study and weekly online sessions, designed to teach Toolmaking, Practical applications of PowerShell, or how to teach …
Announcements
Seeking Editor for PowerShell.org TechLetter
The PowerShell.org TechLetter goes out once a month, and we’re looking for an editor to take over the task of building each monthly issue. You’ll need some basic HTML knowledge, and ideally will have a decent HTML editor. Not FrontPage. You’ll be given articles in both HTML and …
Announcements
[UPDATE: It's Safe] CAUTION: Don't Run Update-Help Right Now
UPDATE 2 JULY 2013: Microsoft is informing MVPs that the fix is in, and new help files should be downloadable by (at latest) the morning of 3 July 2013. So get your Update-Help ready to run. More info. If you haven’t recently run Update-Help… don’t. There’s a problem with …
PowerShell Great Debate: To Accelerate, or Not?
At his Birds of a feather session at TechEd 2013, Glenn Sizemore and I briefly debated something that I’d like to make the topic of today’s Great Debate. It has to do with how you create new, custom objects. For example, one approach - which I used to favor, but now think is too …
PowerShell for Admins
Pipeline or Script? That is the Question
When I teach PowerShell classes, I often start by assuring students that, with the shell, you can _accomplish a great deal without ever writing a script. _And it’s true - you can. Unlike predecessor technologies like VBScript, PowerShell lets you pack a lot of goodness into a one-liner - or …
PowerShell Great Debate: Capturing Errors
Hot on the heels of our last Great Debate, let’s take the discussion to the next logical step and talk about how you like to capture errors when they occur. The first technique is to use -ErrorVariable: `Try { Get-WmiObject Win32_BIOS -comp nothing -ea stop -ev mine } Catch { use $mine for …