Windows PowerShell 2.0 Best Practices (Best Practices (Microsoft)) [Paperback]

Ed Wilson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 14, 2010 | ISBN-10: 0735626464 | ISBN-13: 978-0735626461 | Edition: 1 Pap/Cdr

Apply best practices for automating system administration with Windows PowerShell 2.0 and optimize your operational efficiency and results. This guide captures the field-tested tips, real-world lessons, and candid advice of practitioners across the range of business and technical scenarios and across the scripting life cycle. Discover how to:

• Take advantage of new features and cmdlets in Windows PowerShell 2.0
• Plan scripting usage scenarios and define standards Deploy Windows PowerShell 2.0 to desktops and servers
• Configure scripting environments
• Optimize remote scripting capabilities
• Work with Active Directory(r) and WMI
• Design functions and modules
• Optimize input and output
• Handle errors
• Document scripts
• Test and troubleshoot scripts
• Avoid scripting pitfalls

The companion CD includes a fully searchable eBook and sample scripts.

A Note Regarding the CD or DVD:

The print version of this book ships with a CD or DVD. For those customers purchasing one of the digital formats in which this book is available, we are pleased to offer the CD/DVD content as a free download via O'Reilly Media's Digital Distribution services. To download this content, please visit O'Reilly's web site, search for the title of this book to find its catalog page, and click on the link below the cover image (Examples, Companion Content, or Practice Files). Note that while we provide as much of the media content as we are able via free download, we are sometimes limited by licensing restrictions. Please direct any questions or concerns to [e-mail].

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ed Wilson is a well-known scripting expert who delivers popular scripting workshops to Microsoft customers and employees worldwide. He's written several books on Windows scripting, including Microsoft Windows PowerShell Step by Step and Microsoft VBScript Step by Step. Ed is a senior consultant at Microsoft Corporation.

Product Details

• Paperback: 752 pages
• Publisher: Microsoft Press; 1 Pap/Cdr edition (December 14, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735626464
• ISBN-13: 978-0735626461
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 1.1 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #148,970 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ed Wilson, MCSE, MSCBA, MCT is the Microsoft Scripting Guy. As such, he writes the popular Hey Scripting Guy blog for Microsoft, speaks at conferences such as TechEd and TechReady. He is very active in the community and has spoken to numerous user groups around the world via Live Meeting and in person. Ed has written numerous books about VBScript, WMI, and Windows PowerShell scripting and his latest release is Windows PowerShell 2.0 Best Practices. In addition he wrote all the scripts for the Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 Resource kits. Ed lives in York, South Carolina and Ed has been with Microsoft since 2001. Prior to becoming the writer of the Hey Scripting Guy blog Ed taught scripting workshops worldwide to Microsoft Premier customers.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely packed with useful information. Not just for sysadmins March 4, 2010

By Colin Brown VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Windows Powershell is still a relatively new language although more and more system administrators are now looking into it. Previously administrators either had the choice of VBScript or straight command line batch files/scripts which were either fairly limiting in what they could do or were fairly complex in how to actually do things. Powershell now gives administrators the power and flexibility of the .net framework as well as being quite easy to write extremely powerful scripts. With the power and flexibility that Powershell gives administrators comes a responsibility however.

Windows PowerShell 2.0 Best Practices assumes that you already have an understanding of Powershell, it's not a book on learning Powershell. The introductory chapters however do give you a brief overview of what you need to run Powershell in your environment and goes through the installation and configuration process before delving into some of the powerful capabilities that Powershell allows administrators including how to access and use various native Win32 COM objects like the Win32_Process classes.

Any administrator will sooner or later need to work with ADSI, the active directory service Interfaces and therefore a chapter has been dedicated to dealing with ADSI through Powershell, from creating users and groups to creating computer accounts and exporting statistics on your active directory environment to spreadsheets for reporting.

The book is divided into 5 main sections. The main sections are an introduction to Powershell, Planning, Designing, Testing and Deploying and finally Optimizing your cmdlets and scripts. Each section is split into chapters detailing specific parts of the overall section theme, for example under Planning there are chapters on identifying scripting opportunities, configuring your scripting environment, avoiding scripting pitfalls etc. Although this is a best practices book, there are numerous examples within each chapter showing how to best take advantage of Powershell 2 and numerous sidebars giving additional information, anecdotes or highlighting particularly important areas.

The appendixes in the book are crammed full of information from listing out all the included cmdlets that ship with Powershell 2 and a brief description of each to listing important and useful classes that you may need to work with from the .Net Framework, COM objects and WMI objects.

Weighing in at a tad over 700 pages, this is a hefty tomb chock full of useful advice, tips and tricks and information to let you take full advantage of Powershell 2. Although aimed mainly at system administrators, developers will find a lot of useful information contained within these pages and can start writing scripts to help automate some of their daily activities. Sometimes the writing can feel a little disjointed however this does not detract from an overall excellent book.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Learning Powershell is made easier September 2, 2010

By Willie E Campbell Jr

Format:Paperback

I purchased this book to learn more about Powershell 2.0 and was very impressed. This book covers some of the basics and really offers a great model for creating Powershell scripts. I'm new to Powershell and I found this book to be very easy to grasp and had many examples to learn from. Excellent Book for anyone wanting to get serious and learn Powershell.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A great PowerShell V2 book February 20, 2013

By Thomas F. Lee

Format:Paperback

Ed Wilson, aka Microsoft's The Scripting Guy, has written a number of PowerShell books (for MS Press). This book, Windows PowerShell 2.0 Best Practices, is one I've been slowly reading through. Although this book is a couple of years old, the advice and guidance it contains is still excellent.

The book is divided up into 5 sections: Introduction, Planning, Designing, Testing and Deploying, Optimizing. In effect, the book is divided around the scripting lifecycle. The Planning section looks at identifying the opportunities for scripting within your organisation. The Designing section shows you how to design scripts that meet your business needs based on the features of PowerShell V2. As I said the book is based on V2 - but there area number of features that, at least in my experience, a lot of users simply do not know. The fourth section of this book covers both testing (something every script needs!) and deployment (how your users get your scripts). The final section looks at optimising your scripts.

The book, like many MS Press books, contain side bars from folks in the industry. These sidebars provide the voice of experience and give weight to the ideas Ed is promoting. I like these as they provide counterpoint to the book itself.

This is not an easy book to just skim through. Ed writes for adults, and the examples are rich - it took me literally months to finish reading this as I read a little of the book each night. I found that I had to read some pages several times to enable me to distill the key points the book is making.

If you are new to PowerShell, then this would be a good book to read as it provides great background to PowerShell V2 as well a wealth of scripts you could use in your environment. If you have PowerShell skills, then this book can give you new perspectives on PowerShell in the enterprise as well as show you a number of tricks you can leverage in your own code.

I give this book 5 stars!