Powershell in Depth: An Administrator's Guide

Summary

PowerShell in Depth is the kind of book you'll want open on your desk most of the time. With 40 short chapters, each focused on a specific area of PowerShell, you'll be able to find the answers you need quickly. Each chapter is concise and to-the-point, so you can spend less time reading and more time getting down to the business at hand. It was written by three seasoned PowerShell experts, and every technique has been thoroughly tested. With this book in hand, you'll be able to consistently and quickly produce production quality, maintainable scripts that will save you countless hours of time and effort.

About this Book

Organized into 40 concise chapters, PowerShell in Depth is the go-to reference for administrators working with Windows PowerShell. Every major shell technique, technology, and tactic is explained and demonstrated, providing a comprehensive reference to almost everything an admin would do in the shell. Written by three experienced authors and PowerShell MVPs, this is the PowerShell book you'll keep next to your monitor&;not on your bookshelf!

This book requires basic familiarity with PowerShell.

What's Inside

• Covers PowerShell 3.0
• Automating time-consuming tasks
• Managing HTML and XML data
• Background jobs and scheduling
• PowerShell security
• Packaging and deploying scripts
• Standard scripting conventions
• Using the .NET Framework in PowerShell scripts
• Much more

Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications.

About the Authors

Don Jones, Jeffery Hicks, and Richard Siddaway are Microsoft MVPs who have collectively authored nearly three dozen books on PowerShell and Windows administration.

Table of Contents

PART 1: POWERSHELL FUNDAMENTALS

1. Introduction
2. PowerShell hosts
3. Using the PowerShell help system
4. The basics of PowerShell syntax
5. Working with PSSnapins and modules
6. Operators
7. Working with objects
8. The PowerShell pipeline
9. Formatting

PART 2: POWERSHELL MANAGEMENT

10. PowerShell Remoting
11. Background jobs and scheduling
12. Working with credentials
13. Regular expressions
14. Working with HTML and XML data
15. PSDrives and PSProviders
16. Variables, arrays, hash tables, and scriptblocks
17. PowerShell security
18. Advanced PowerShell syntax

PART 3: POWERSHELL SCRIPTING AND AUTOMATION

19. PowerShell's scripting language
20. Basic scripts and functions
21. Creating objects for output
22. Scope
23. PowerShell workflows
24. Advanced syntax for scripts and functions
25. Script modules and manifest modules
26. Custom formatting views
27. Custom type extensions
28. Data language and internationalization
29. Writing help
30. Error handling techniques
31. Debugging tools and techniques
32. Functions that work like cmdlets
33. Tips and tricks for creating reports

PART 4: ADVANCED POWERSHELL

34. Working with the Component Object Model (COM)
35. Working with .NET Framework objects
36. Accessing databases
37. Proxy functions
38. Building a GUI
39. WMI and CIM
40. Best practices

Don Jones is a PowerShell MVP, speaker, and trainer. He developed the Microsoft PowerShell courseware and has taught PowerShell to more than 20,000 IT pros. Don writes the PowerShell column for TechNet Magazine and blogs about PowerShell at PowerShell.com. Ask Don your PowerShell questions at http://bit.ly/AskDon.

Richard Siddaway has 22 years of experience working with Microsoft technologies as an analyst-programmer, server administration, support, DBA and architect.

Jeffery Hicks is a PowerShell MVP with 20 years of IT experience. Jeff works today as an independent consultant, trainer, and author. He has taught PowerShell to IT Pros all over the world. He writes the popular Prof. PowerShell column for MCPMag.com and is a weekly contributor to the Petri IT Knowledgebase. Jeff blogs frequently on PowerShell related topics at http://jdhitsolutions.com/blog.