PowerShell Team
Automating the world one-liner at a time…
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Automatically resuming Windows PowerShell Workflow jobs at logon
PowerShell Workflow helps IT Pros automate the long running tasks, or workflows, that can affect multiple managed computers or devices at the same time. Windows PowerShell Workflow is designed to be robust and recoverable. The features that are built into Windows PowerShell allow you to restart the target computers and, if the workflow is not yet complete, to reconnect to the target computers automatically and continue with the workflow commands. You can even restart the computer that is running a workflow, which allows you to run the workflow on the local computer, or include the local computer in the list of ...
Windows PowerShell Script Workflow Debugging
Script workflow debugging support is one of two major script debugging enhancements added in Windows PowerShell 4.0. The other new feature is script debugging in remote sessions, which is described in “Windows PowerShell Remote Debugging”. We introduced script workflow in Windows PowerShell 3.0. These are workflows written in the Windows PowerShell language that are compiled into XAML and then run in Windows Workflow Foundation. There is a subset of Windows PowerShell cmdlets that can be called inside a workflow and are executed as special Windows PowerShell workflow activities when the workflow runs. For a ni...
Windows PowerShell Remote Debugging
Windows PowerShell 4.0 includes two major enhancements to the script debugger. First, script debugging now works in remote sessions. Second, we’ve added debugging support for workflow scripts. This blog article describes the new remote debugging support and a following article will describe the new workflow script debugging. Remote Script Debugging in Windows PowerShell Previously, script debugging in Windows PowerShell was limited to scripts running on the local machine. If you tried to set script breakpoints in a remote session it caused an error. Now, in Windows PowerShell 4.0, you can set breakpoints in rem...
PowerShell Security Best Practices
We get a lot of questions about PowerShell Security Best Practices, and we got the chance to present an overview of them at this year’s (Microsoft internal) BlueHat conference. This was a 20-minute presentation, and focused on two parts: The video was recorded, and is available here: https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Blue-Hat-Security-Briefings/BlueHat-Security-Briefings-Fall-2013-Sessions/PowerShell-Best-Practices. Below is a link to the presentation deck, with very detailed speaker notes: PowerShell Security Best Practices.pptx Lee Holmes [MSFT] Windows PowerShell Development
Understanding Meta Configuration in Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration
UPDATE 2/6/2018 - The latest information regarding LCM configuration is available in the documentation at the following link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/dsc/metaconfig .......... LCM and Meta Configuration To understand the concept of Meta Configuration, first we need to know what Local Configuration Manager (LCM) is, and what its responsibilities are. In short, LCM is the engine of Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC), and it runs on every target node. Whenever we send the DSC configuration document to a node, it’s LCM’s job to parse it and call appropriate resources which ...
How to Deploy and Discover Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration Resources
A Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) resource contains a module file (*.psm1), an optional data file (*.psd1),and a *.schema.mof file. Details about what each of those files should look like, and how you can create those files using a DSC Resource Designer Tool, are discussed in an earlier blog post. In this blog post, we will explore the following. Deploying DSC resources to the local computer All DSC resources should be deployed in the following folder hierarchy:- $env: psmodulepath (folder) &...
Push and Pull Configuration Modes
// bw + bsl && x + aw - ah / 2 - cw >= bsl ) { c.style.left = x + aw - ah / 2 - cw; } else { c.style.left = x + ah / 2; } if (y + ch + ah / 2 > bh + bst && y + ah / 2 - ch >= bst ) { c.style.top = y + ah / 2 - ch; } else { c.style.top = y + ah / 2; } c.style.visibility = "visible"; } } } function msoCommentHide(com_id) { if(msoBrowserCheck()) { c = document.all(com_id); if (null != c && null == c.length) { c.style.visibility = "hidden"; c.style.left = -1000; c.style.top = -1000; } } } function msoBrowserCheck() { ms = navigator.appVersion.indexOf("MSIE"); ...
PowerShell DSC Resource for configuring Pull Server environment
UPDATE 2/6/2018 - The latest information regarding DSC Pull Service can be found in the DSC documentation using the link - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/dsc/pullserver .......... DSC is a PowerShell extension that is part of Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1. DSC enables deploying and managing configuration data for software services and managing the environment in which these services run. A DSC Pull Server is a web-based endpoint, with an OData interface. This server allows nodes to “Pull” Configuration such as providers on a periodic basis. This functionality is useful in environ...
Resource Designer Tool – A walkthrough writing a DSC resource
At the heart of Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration are the resources. It is the resources which act behind the scenes for DSC to achieve its “make it so” philosophy. DSC ships with a number of resources in-box and you can take a look here for the complete list. However, once you get started with DSC, you may want to write your own resources (which are PowerShell modules) for your particular use case. This post will walk you through creating a custom DSC resource. You can take a look here to get an understanding of the schema/packaging of DSC resources. Attached with this post is the Resource Designer ...