PowerShell Saturday 005 Atlanta: It's Time To Part With Blankie: Moving from command line tools to PowerShell for Active Directory
Atlanta-bound
I am drafting this post from the airplane as I make my way to Atlanta, Georgia USA for PowerShell Saturday 005. I am looking forward to spending the weekend with folks who share my passion for PowerShell. I’ll get to reconnect with some Microsoft PFE buddies, and I’ll finally get to meet Hal and Jonathan from the one and only PowerScripting Podcast. On top of all that my friends Ed and Theresa Wilson will be there. I am looking forward to Ed’s session on “Workflow for Mere Mortals”.
Blankie Time
Do you remember the days of Windows Server 2003 and the swirling pit of command line utilities? Was NETDIAG in the Resource Kit, ADMINPAK.MSI, or the SysInternals tools? Where did I put the bits for that install? What was the switch for servername, /s or -e? Those days are long behind us, and now we have the beauty of a consistent automation interface across all of our servers.
Demo Time
I am presenting a session titled It's Time To Part With Blankie: Moving from command line tools to PowerShell for Active Directory. This session is based on a post from January where I published a command line utility conversion guide for Active Directory. Attached at the bottom of today’s post you’ll find a ZIP file with my slides and demo scripts from the session. Feel free to study these examples and adapt them to your own needs.
In this session I demo PowerShell alternatives to old standby command tools like CSVDE, DSGET, DSACLS, REPADMIN, DCPROMO, and DNSCMD. Explore the free PDF cheat sheet for more.
Some of the scripts that I referenced in the presentation are described in greater detail in these posts:
- How To Use The 2012 Active Directory PowerShell Cmdlets From Windows 7
- Touch-Free PowerShell DCPROMO in Windows Server 2012
- Active Directory OU Permissions Report
- How to do PowerShell on your phone
- TIP: 2 Ways userAccountControl Is Easier In AD PowerShell
Video Time: Jumping the Shark
SPOILER ALERT: In this recording you can see the first ever demo of promoting a domain controller from your phone. That's what I call "jumping the shark".
You can watch the full session recording here:
Face Time
It was great meeting many of you that I’ve only seen on Twitter. If you couldn’t make it to this event, perhaps you can get to a future PowerShell event in a city near you:
- DogFoodCon – Columbus, Ohio – November 2013
- PowerShell Saturday 007 – Charlotte, North Carolina – February 2014
- PowerShell Saturday TBD – Detroit, Michigan or Toledo, Ohio – March 2014
- PowerShell Summit – Seattle (Bellevue), Washington – April 2014
I hope to see you there!