The Power Guide to PowerShell: Windows PowerShell Scripting Guide
If, like me, automation is a critical part of you job, then any scripting language that makes routine or mundane tasks easier and quicker is going to be worth looking at. So in PowerShell we have an environment that provides a powerful scripting language. So the first criteria was met and I've downloaded PowerShell and am ready to start automating my life.
But what's missing? A good reference guide, with samples and good explanations is what! So my new quest had begun.
During this quest I've been lucky enough - or unlucky depending on your point of view - to read a few books on the subject, even watch a few presentations. Most have left me kind of disappointed and looking for more details, even the Scripting Center on TechNet didn't give me that warm feeling, lots of samples with too much "write-host" statements.
Recently the Microsoft Press lead in the UK, who sits two desks away from me, was talking all about the new Windows Server 2008 range and how in the next months MS Press were going to release a whole slew of books for IT Pro's. He then gave me a copy of the new Scripting guide - in e-book format at the time as it was published, to read and comment on.
MS Press Pages:
US: https://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/9541.aspx
UK: https://www.microsoft-press.co.uk/scripts/product.asp?ref=859680
Sample Chapter: https://www.microsoft-press.co.uk/samples/index.asp?sid=124 (You'll have to fill in some details to get the chapter and it's only from the UK site)
I have to say, even without the companion CD avaialble to me at the time, I was very impressed. I'd read the Step-by-step guiide from MS Press before, but this guide was in a different class. I could give you a shopping list of topics covered, but the links above do that job for me, and the details and tips I liked etc etc, but I'd have pages of text. So I'll keep this entry short and come back to specific topics and examples in the next posts where I can do them justice.
Why is this book different? First it's written by someone who teaches PowerShell, their approach is to take you through the sample scripts statement block by statement block. The samples are all complete - even with help functions, yes actual help text in a script!!! The coverage of the guide is excellent; there wasn't a section of server management not covered, including accessing the certificate store and making it look easy. That told me a thing or two about the guide alone.
Being an MS employee and this being an MS product I was looking for things to balance out the good points with points I didn't like, really all I came up with were small things. For example, the help functions took up real estate in the book, there wasn't huge coverage of using the .NET framework for some scripts and I thought the final section on Windows Server 2008 core was slightly odd and a bit weak. The bottom line was, in the end these points were actually more ME than negatives on the book. I could simply delete the e-book of my machine and chalk it up with the other books, but I didn't and now have a hard copy version of the book that I can reference more easily.
So, if you are in the market for a PowerShell guide to help you automate management, I'd say take some time in the local book shop and look this one over, I think you can do a lot worse than this guide.
Let me know what you think too.