Hi everyone. My name is Andy Dring, and I’m a Premier Field Engineer at Microsoft. I want to share some of my experiences learning and using PowerShell, and let you in on some of the techniques I’ve used to become proficient in using it. I want to go through the following:
As I suspect is the case for most of you reading this, I started off using PowerShell as an IT Admin before I was employed by MS. I was driven by a need to accomplish a task, but once I’d started learning the language, the possibilities showed themselves all over the place. So the first piece of advice I’d give is to find a problem to solve, and solve it. This may be as simple as translating an existing script from another language into PowerShell, or it may involve writing something that will manage your entire estate for you while you put your feet up – note, if it’s the latter, I will require a copy sending through…
The first key point is to understand what PowerShell is, and what it’s not:
With the above said, the next step is to begin to understand PowerShell and its basic concepts:
Something a little more hands on:
And a structured course including demos and labs:
Once you’ve achieved a level of comfort with PowerShell itself, you’ll want to start putting it in to practice. Each major Server Technology ships with its own PowerShell module or snap-in, so there is one for AD, Exchange, Sharepoint etc. These are outside of the scope of this article, but there will be some links at the bottom to help you to find resources to learn about these.
In order to start using PowerShell usefully, here are some server management specific resources:
You’ve probably also got scripts written in VB that you would like to convert to PowerShell. Well, we can help with that too:
Finally, there’s a follow-up course to the one above that builds and introduces more advanced concepts:
Once the fundamentals of PowerShell are understood, applying them to any given technology is simply a case of learning the cmdlets for that technology and then implementing the techniques. Here are a few links to cmdlets for some common technologies:
Alternatively, using get-command –module <modulename> will list all the commands contained in that module, e.g. get-command –module ActiveDirectory will show all the commands loaded by the ActiveDirectory PS module
Just as I was finishing up writing this post, CTP1 was released for the Management Framework 3. There’s a post on the PowerShell blog, which also links to the download, and I’d be very surprised if there weren’t some really cool features coming. Bear in mind that this is the version that will ship in Win8, so get comfortable with it now to give yourself a headstart when Win8’s released. But do yourself a favour, don’t put it on your primary machine, because it’s only pre-release code at the moment!
The MS Events site
The MS Events site is a one-stop shop for all sorts of webcasts, podcasts and virtual labs. The link is to a search for PowerShell specific posts, but there are a lot of other resources for other technologies too.
Blogs
Code Repositories
Hope this helps
Andy Dring
Premier Field Engineer
Microsoft Premier Support UK
Nice write-up! I've been waiting for you guys to come out with this since discovering your Ramp Up Guides.
Nice compilation of material. This will help me do a presentation by serving as a rough outline.
Following an onsite discussion I had with one of my customers this morning, this could be just what he needs. Glad I remembered about this Ramp Up Guide !
Thanks Andy, very useful.