Windows Powershell!

[James Bologna]

I had the good fortune to audit a beta course from Learning Tree International a few weeks ago called "Windows Administration using Windows Powershell."

I would highly recommend this class or one of the new Powershell books out on the market to anyone who administers Windows servers, or those who supervise them. This scripting tool is phenomenally powerful and well worth the time it takes to dig into the scripting language. It even standardizes much of the syntax used by the diverse tools SA's currently tap.
Did I mention you can script for all of your servers from one central location on campus?


Go to it! :>

Update - ComputerWorld PS article: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9066180&source=NLT_AM&nlid=1

[Demetri Orlando]

Thanks for the tip James, I'm going to look into taking this! What are some of your favorite scripts doing (in other words, what are some of the best things you would recommend doing with scripts)?

[James Bologna]

Hi Demitri - here is a great resource for some useful scripts:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/scripts/msh

But as an overview, I plan to use PowerShell to:
- add user accounts to AD next summer (easy to do from a CSV file!), query AD for all its info (via ADMI)
- pull all critical Event log errors from all my servers regularly and report them to me in HTML format
- pull information from desktops about network and software configurations (like performance counters, drive sizes, or amount of installed memory!) (via WMI)
- monitor critical network components on my campus
- heck, I might start keeping my ToDo list with it (www.bdewey.com/2007/07/26/technology-todotxt-powershell-and-onenote/) :>

PowerShell can access anything that has a .Net object library! (Anyone running Exchange should check out /www.exchangeninjas.com/PSSCategories)

You can also get a nice overview here:
http://www.codeplex.com/PsObject/Wiki/View.aspx?title=PSH%20Community%20Guide&referringTitle=Home

And a script repository here:
http://www.myitforum.com/myITWiki/Default.aspx?Page=WPScripts