Windows PowerShell Unleashed

by Kopczynski, Tyson; Handley, Pete; Shaw, Marco

• ISBN13: 9780672329883
• ISBN10: 0672329883
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-12-04
• Publisher: Sams Publishing

Summary

PowerShell gives Windows administrators immense power to automate and customize virtually any administrative tasksaving time, increasing productivity, and giving you unprecedented flexibility. PowerShell 2.0 adds important new features that offer even greater control over Windows environments.Windows PowerShell Unleashedwill not only give you deep mastery over PowerShell but also a greater understanding of the features being introduced in PowerShell 2.0and show you how to use it to solve your challenges in your production environment. The authors begin by systematically illuminating PowerShellrs"s core concepts and techniques, helping you leverage whatever Windows scripting experience you may already have. Next, using complete, easy-to-adapt examples, they show how to use PowerShell to manage file systems, permissions, the Registry, WMI objects, Active Directory, Exchange Server, and many other elements of the Windows environment. More than half of this editionrs"s material and examples have been completely rewritten for PowerShell 2.0, and the authors have added seven entirely new chapterscovering security, PowerShell application development, Systems Center Operations Manager 2007, and much more. Whatever Windows systems you manage,Windows PowerShell Unleashedcontains the scripts and techniques you need to manage them far more effectively. Install, configure, and customize PowerShell 2.0 and master its command line interface Discover proven best practices for PowerShell scripting Make the most of PowerShell cmdletsespecially the new cmdlets included in PowerShell 2.0 Leverage PowerShellrs"s deep .NET Framework integration Secure your scripts using code signing, execution policies, and PowerShellrs"s built-in security Use custom script functions to manage permissions more efficiently Control the registry locally and remotely and use PowerShellrs"s powerful new registry transactions Use PowerShell as a management interface Automate Exchange Server 2007 administrative tasks Automate the management of Microsoftrs"s new System Center Operations Manager 2007 Preview the forthcoming Graphical PowerShell scripting environment Understand how to manage Active Directory using PowerShell Master using PowerShell with WMI Learn PowerShell 2.0 remoting Download all examples and source code presented in this book from informit.com/title/9780672329883.

Author Biography

With more than nine years of experience in the information technology sector, Tyson Kopczynski has become a specialist in Active Directory, Group Policy, Windows scripting, Windows Rights Management Services, PKI, and information technology security practices. Tyson has been a contributing author for such books as Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2004 Unleashed and Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Unleashed (R2 Edition). In addition, he has written detailed technical papers and guides covering various in-the-field technologies he works with extensively. As a consultant at Convergent Computing (CCO), Tyson has been able to work with the next generation of Microsoft technologies since their inception and played a key role in expanding scripting and development practices at CCO. Tyson also holds the SANS Security Essentials Certification (GSEC), Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) Security certification, CompTIA Security+ certification, and SANS Certified Incident Handler (GCIH) certification.

 

Pete Handley has more than 15 years of experience in IT, including extensive knowledge of Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange, Novell GroupWise messaging, and Novell Directory Services. He has been a contributing author for Microsoft Exchange 2003 Unleashed, and Windows PowerShell Unleashed. Pete specializes in Visual Basic and PowerShell scripting and is a subject matter expert on the integration and migration of Novell technologies to Microsoft technologies. Pete holds the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer 2003 (MCSE) certification, the Microsoft Certified Information Technology Professional (MCITP) certification, the Novell Certified Directory Engineer (CDE) certification, and the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) certification.

 

Marco Shaw is an IT system analyst for a Canadian telecommunications company. He has been working in the IT industry for more than ten years, and he recently received a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award for his involvement in the Windows PowerShell community. He is the assistant community director of the new PowerShell Community Web site at http://www.powershellcommunity.org. His primary blog site is http://marcoshaw.blogspot.com. Marco holds a RedHat Certified Engineer (RHCE) certification, Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) certification, and a bachelor of science degree from the Université de Moncton in New Brunswick, Canada.

 

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Introduction to PowerShell
Introduction to Shells	p. 7
What Is a Shell?	p. 7
Basic Shell Use	p. 8
Basic Shell Scripts	p. 11
A Shell History	p. 15
Enter PowerShell	p. 16
New Capabilities in PowerShell 2.0 CTP2	p. 18
Summary	p. 19
Basic PowerShell Concepts	p. 21
Getting Started	p. 21
PowerShell 1.0.RTW	p. 22
PowerShell 2.0.CTP2	p. 23
Before Installing PowerShell 2.0 CTP2	p. 23
Downloading and Installing PowerShell 2.0	p. 25
Understanding the Command-Line Interface (CLI)	p. 28
Navigating the CLI	p. 30
Tab Key Auto-Completion in PowerShell	p. 30
Understanding Cmdlets	p. 32
Common Parameters	p. 33
Getting Help	p. 34
Get-Help	p. 34
Cmdlet Help Topics	p. 36
Get-Command	p. 36
Understanding Variables	p. 39
Built-In Variables	p. 40
Understanding Aliases	p. 42
Discovering Alias Cmdlets	p. 43
Creating Persistent Aliases	p. 44
Creating Your First Script	p. 45
Summary	p. 47
Advanced PowerShell Concepts	p. 49
Working with the .NET Framework	p. 51
Using the New-Object Cmdlet	p. 53
Understanding Assemblies	p. 54
Understanding Reflection	p. 56
Understanding the Pipeline	p. 59
Powerful One-Liners	p. 63
The Extended Type System (ETS)	p. 65
Understanding the Add-Member Cmdlet	p. 67
Understanding the types.ps1xml File	p. 68
Working with Types	p. 68
Type Accelerators	p. 71
Summary	p. 72
Other Key PowerShell Concepts	p. 73
Formatting Output	p. 73
The Formatting Cmdlets
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Introduction IntroductionWell, we are back for yet another PowerShell Unleashed book. However, unlike just a simple revision of the existing book, which most likely would have resulted in only just a few updated chapters, I decided to instead treat this release in the series as almost a completely new book. Granted, the Community Technology Release (CTP) of PowerShell 2.0 did help drive the need to update all aspects of this edition. Nonetheless, there was also a lot of feedback (some positive and some negative) about how the first book could be improved.So, based on this feedback and the looming PowerShell 2.0 feature list, I set about making a major revision to the book. To start off right, I decided to address how the PowerShell language was covered in the series. After all, the first book in the series was script heavy, but lacking when it came to explaining some of the basics about the PowerShell language. Additionally, we wanted to go into greater detail about how PowerShell could be used to manage Windows resources while further addressing some of the finer technical details of PowerShell's architecture. Needless to say, all of these changes required a reorganization to not only the layout of the book, but also its size.The bottom line, in this new edition, there are six completely new chapters with the rest of the existing chapters either being extensively rewritten or updated. With all this extra content, the book needed additional authors to jump on board and help pound out the book's technical prose. Thus, joining me on this book as coauthors were Marco Shaw (PowerShell MVP) and Peter Handley (contributing author from the first book). Together, Marco and Peter made great additions to this book and infused fantastic ideas together with even better contentall while writing their chapters.Finally, the primary goal of this book was to start down the path of explaining the features found in the future 2.0 release of PowerShell. After all, with the 2.0 CTP release late last year, the PowerShell product team ignited our imaginations with the possibilities for what might come down the road (remoting). So, we simply had to do our best to explain the new features. However, given that the 2.0 version is still just a CTP and not a beta, we also walked down a slippery slope, considering that some of these features may not exist in the PowerShell 2.0 RTM. Naturally, like a good reporter might do, we did our best. In the end, we tried to include 2.0 content where applicable while also dedicating an entire chapter to only 2.0 features deemed too important to ignore or voted most likely to survive the beta.We hope our efforts result in a more comprehensive PowerShell book that can act as both a reference for the current PowerShell 1.0 release while also providing insight into where PowerShell might go with the 2.0 release. Who Is This Book's Intended Audience?This Unleashed book is intended for an intermediate level of systems administrators who have invested time and energy learning Windows scripting and want to translate those skills into PowerShell skills while learning how it can meet their real-world needs. This book has been written so that anyone with a scripting background can understand what PowerShell is and how to use it, but by no means is it meant to be a complete PowerShell reference. Instead, think of it as a resource for learning ho