PowerShell Team
Automating the world one-liner at a time…
Latest posts
Monitoring with PowerShell and Appropriate Technology
Otto Helweg has a cool blog entry about how he uses PowerShell to monitor Web Sites HERE. This isn't a professional product but there are a couple of websites that he cares about and this quick and easy script tells him what he needs to know. It monitors a set of websites, looks for content to validate the page and then logs results and send email alerts when things go pear-shaped. We have an internal website for PowerShell and it is really embarrassing for the distribution list to be the first time you know about the problem. This is a perfect tool to run to get some situation awareness of critical resources. ...
Show-WmiClass
Here is a script that I use to show WMI classes. I think you'll find it useful. There is an example after the script: ############################################################################# Show-WmiClass - Show WMI classes# Author: Microsoft# Version: 1.0# NOTE: Notice that this is uses the verb SHOW vs GET. That is because it# combines a Getter with a format. SHOW was added as a new "official# verb to deal with just this case.############################################################################param($Name = ".",$NameSpace = "root\cimv2",[Switch]$Refresh=$false)# Getting a list of classes can be exp...
Out-*/Format-*
Don Jones has graciously offered to share a slide he uses as part of his Windows PowerShell Fundamentals course (http://www.scriptingtraining.com/ ) which shows the interaction between the pipeline, the out-* and format-* cmdlets. The attached slide illustrates how (sometimes) a picture is worth a thousand words. Don has a great way of explaining complex concepts. Thanks Don! BTW - The slide is a build so run it in presentation mode. Jeffrey Snover [MSFT]Windows Management Partner ArchitectVisit the Windows PowerShell Team blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/PowerShellVisit the Windows PowerShell ScriptCenter at...
Making Applications Scriptable via PowerShell
OpenXtra has a blog entry PowerShell + Network Monitor = Powerfull Netman Tool which observes that if took a network manager tool and coupled it with PowerShell, you would have an awesome combination. A long time ago I was the architect for NetView so I feel qualified to offer this observation: YOU TOTALLY GET IT! Most management products and certainly all monitoring products should be embedding and/or leveraging Windows PowerShell. If you are working on a product like this, you owe it to yourself (and your customers) to get PowerShell in focus and include in your next version. If you are a customer of one o...
Emitting Objects verses Outputting Text to the Screen
Let's face it, PowerShell does a bunch of magic for you. If we've done our job right, this magic is exactly what you want 99 out of a 100 times. That said, if you are a power user, then at some point you'll encounter that 100th case and you'll need to understand the magic so you can get PowerShell to do exactly what you want. The good news is that our "magic" is pretty thoughtful and you can always get exactly what you want (usually with very little effort). The biggest source of magic is the formatting and outputting. You write a function which just emits an object and wham – you get a reasonable view of tha...
Another PowerShell UserGroup
Richard Siddaway founded the first PowerShell UserGroup in the UK Get-PSUGUK. Now a second UserGroup has been formed. This one covers Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Their web site is available at: www.powershell-ag.de www.powershell-ag.ch www.powershell-ag.at They are holding a kickoff meeting Sept 19th at the MS Campus in Unterschleissheim Germany. Cheers! Jeffrey Snover [MSFT]Windows Management Partner ArchitectVisit the Windows PowerShell Team blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/PowerShellVisit the Windows PowerShell ScriptCenter at: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/hubs/msh.mspx
Shared Source PowerShell Projects
Someone has compiled a list of the 25 Most Active Projects in CodePlex. PowerShell has 2 entries in that list. Congratulations to: PowerShell Community Extensions - provides a widely useful set of additional cmdlets, providers, aliases, filters, functions and scripts for Windows PowerShell that members of the community have expressed interest in but didn't make it into PowerShell v1.0. Examples of these cmdlets are Get-Clipboard, Out-Clipboard, Get-Hash, Get-ShortPath, Set-FileTime, New-SymLink, Format-Hex, Format-Xml, Test-Xml, Test-Assembly, Ping-Host, etc. And PoshConsole - a more modern PowerShell Console...
Preview of PowerShell Plus
The fine folks at Shell Tools just released a preview of their upcoming PowerShell Plus interactive shell – a 4 minute trailer to hint at things to come. http://www.powershell.com/plus In PowerShell V1, working within a decades-old console host is what users find the most frustrating. That frustration doesn’t go unnoticed, and was even expected. As Jeffrey likes to say, “To ship is to choose.” We made a conscious decision to build upon the current console subsystem. We placed priority on engine features, the scripting language, cmdlet and provider framework, and everything else you know and love about Power...
Tower Of Power
PowerShell has a lot of books to choose from and more are coming. See attached. :-) Jeffrey Snover [MSFT]Windows Management Partner ArchitectVisit the Windows PowerShell Team blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/PowerShellVisit the Windows PowerShell ScriptCenter at: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/hubs/msh.mspx Tower-Of-Power.jpg