I am reading a great book for IT Pros who want to learn PowerShell: Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches. Why do I have PowerShell on the brain right now?

Don puts it this way: “…your choice is, Learn PowerShell,  or would you like fries with that?”

The book is excellent for IT Pros. Best of all, you can use the CTP version of PowerShell 3.0 on Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7 to practice and get ahead of the competition.

Download the PowerShell 3.0 CTP for free-as-in-beer here: Windows Management Framework 3.0 - Community Technology Preview (CTP) #1

“Some of the new features in Windows PowerShell 3.0 include:

  • Workflows that run long-running activities (in sequence or in parallel) to perform complex, larger management tasks, such as multi-machine application provisioning. Using the Windows Workflow Foundation at the command line, Windows PowerShell workflows are repeatable, parallelizable, interruptible, and recoverable.
  • Robust Sessions sessions that automatically recover from network failures and interruptions and allow you to disconnect from the session, shut down the computer, and reconnect from a different computer without interrupting the task.
  • Scheduled Jobs that run regularly or in response to an event.
  • Delegated Administration, commands that can be executed with a delegated set of credentials so users with limited permissions can run critical jobs
  • Simplified Language Syntax that make commands and scripts look a lot less like code and a lot more like natural language.
  • Improved Cmdlet Discovery and automatic module loading that make it easier to find and run any of the cmdlets installed on your computer.
  • Show-Command, a cmdlet and ISE Add-On that helps users find the right cmdlet, view its parameters in a dialog box, and run it.”