PowerShell for Admins
Regular Expressions are a -replace's best friend
Are you familiar with PowerShell’s -replace operator? "John Jones" -replace "Jones","Smith" Most folks are aware of it, and rely on it for straightforward string replacements like this one. But not very many people know that -replace also does some amazing stuff …
So your company doesn't want to enable PowerShell Remoting?
But I bet they’re okay with Remote Desktop Protocol, right? And all those Remote Procedure Calls? And I bet they never even thought about why every *nix _system, ever, _has SSH enabled by default? But practically nothing else (by default)? Hmm.
My PowerShell Workflow Series on TechNet Magazine
As most folks are aware, I’ve been writing the Windows PowerShell column for Microsoft’s _TechNet Magazine _for… wow, going on 7 years now. For 2013, I was doing a serialized column on PowerShell Workflow, introducing a bit of the technology at a time in each month’s …
Working with the WSUS API and the SUSDB Database using PowerShell
Tthe WSUS API can be used to perform a multitude of WSUS tasks from approving patches, removing clients to creating automatic approval rules to many other things. By diving deeper into the API reveals that we can also find out the name of the SQL server (if using a remote SQL database server) that …
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
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. …
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 …
[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 …
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 …