Windows PowerShell(TM) 2.0 Best Practices (Best Practices (Microsoft)) at Dominant Systems Book Store

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 Medias Digital Distribution services. To download this content, please visit O'Reillys 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 booktech@oreilly.com.

Customer Reviews & Comments
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.

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