Since its introduction in 2007, Windows PowerShell has become the de facto scripting solution for Windows system administrators and other IT professionals. With its extensive functionality and powerful language, PowerShell can be used to automate almost any area of the Windows ecosystem. If you haven't learned PowerShell yet, there's no time like the present. This book will guide you through the most important topics to begin your learning journey. If you have used PowerShell before but wish to have a refresher, this book should serve as a guide to the topics that you need to understand in order to be successful in using PowerShell for your scripting and automation needs.
Chapter 1, First Steps, covers the installation of Powershell and the validation of the installed version, as well as how to issue the first few commands.
Chapter 2, Building Blocks, introduces the "Big 3" cmdlets that reveal the workings of the PowerShell cmdlets.
Chapter 3, Objects and PowerShell, explains how the output in PowerShell is always an object, and how we can deal with these objects.
Chapter 4, Life on the Assembly Line, presents the PowerShell pipeline and the *-object cmdlets that provide a tremendous ability for data manipulation.
Chapter 5, Formatting Output, explains the PowerShell formatting system, including how the output is formatted by default, as well as how to control formatting.
Chapter 6, Scripts, shows how sequences of commands can be packaged into a reusable unit.
Chapter 7, Functions, explains how to use functions as a second way of building reusable blocks of code.
Chapter 8, Modules, demonstrates PowerShell's method of organizing code libraries.
Chapter 9, File I/O, shows several ways to work with files in PowerShell for input and output.
Chapter 10, WMI and CIM, explains how to access WMI repositories with the WMI and CIM cmdlets.
Chapter 11, Web Server Administration, demonstrates a few techniques to use PowerShell to administer the IIS web server.
Appendix, Next Steps, suggests some "next steps" that you will find useful as skills to add to your PowerShell repertoire.
Most of the examples in the book will work with PowerShell Version 2.0 and above. In the sections where a higher version of the engine is required, it will be indicated in the text. You should have no problems running the provided code on either a client installation (Windows 7 or greater) or a server installation (Windows Server 2008 R2 or higher).
This book is intended for the Windows administrators or DevOps users who need to use PowerShell to automate tasks. Whether you know nothing about PowerShell or know just enough to be dangerous, this guide will give you what you need to take your scripting ability to the next level.
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Here we can see that the Get-ChildItem cmdlet has three aliases."
A block of code is set as follows:
ForEach ($placeholder in $collection){
#Code goes here
}Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
%WINDIR%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "On the shortcut tab of the properties window, press the Advanced button."
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