PowerShell Learning Grinds On

My slow effort to learn PowerShell grinds on.

At this stage it isn’t really that anything about learning PowerShell is particularly taxing, I’m just finding it horribly difficult to find the time to commit to the process.

I made it though the first two videos in the Getting Started with PowerShell 3.0 MS Channel 9 series. Took lots of notes in my hand-dandy notebook even, yes I did.

And then two weeks of knock-down cage-match project work hit.

Despite the challenge presented, all is not a total wash. I did find more practical reference material to note for future reference.

List of Free PowerShell eBooks - Jason Hofferle’s post (at his Force Multiplication though IT Automation blog) is several years old now, and I’m sure there may be even more newer free material. (Sounds like a self-challenge for another GSD post topic.) However, if you are just cutting your baby teeth on PowerShell, these seem like great foundational material to gnaw on. I ripped though the links and downloaded every file I could get my hands on and dumped them on both my Kindle and iPhone for lunchtime reading and reference. These coupled with the mobile versions of the Channel 9 PowerShell videos on my iPhone present a great library to get started with. 

Once I chew through these and feel a bit more accomplished, I will look to updated versions of current PowerShell guides. Speaking of…

List of PowerShell Books - Jason Hofferle followed up his previous post with some recommendations of “for purchase” PowerShell books as well. The list looks very good and covers lots of different application areas.

Since these and several other posts I looked up established that Jason has some serious street creds when it came to PowerShell, I dug some more and found these interesting posts that seem to show the practical magic that PowerShell can bring to the table.

• PowerShell for Desktop Support and Helpdesk Staff - Jason Hofferle
• Quest PowerShell Cmdlet Cheat Sheet - Jason Hofferle
• Generating Lists of Computer Names with PowerShell - Jason Hofferle
• Guest Blog on PowerShell Remoting for Hey, Scripting Guy! - Jason Hofferle

That last one led to this great series from Jason on the Hey, Scripting Guy! Blog

• An Introduction to PowerShell Remoting: Part One
• An Introduction to PowerShell Remoting Part Two: Configuring PowerShell
• An Introduction to PowerShell Remoting Part Three: Interactive and Fan-Out Remoting
• An Introduction to PowerShell Remoting Part Four: Sessions and Implicit Remoting
• An Introduction to PowerShell Remoting Part Five: Constrained PowerShell Endpoints

Poking around the Hey, Scripting Guy! blog led to these recent finds which are a great help in learning PowerShell as I can relate already to DiskPart so learning how to manipulate it in PowerShell is pretty cool.

• Automating DiskPart with Windows PowerShell: Part 1
• Automating DiskPart with Windows PowerShell: Part 2
• Automating DiskPart with Windows PowerShell: Part 3
• Automating DiskPart with Windows PowerShell: Part 4
• Automating DiskPart with Windows PowerShell: Part 5

Even More Recent Resources

How to Run PowerShell Commands on Remote Computers - How-To Geek blog

CIM Cmdlets – Some Tips & Tricks - Windows PowerShell Blog

Community Tools| Scripting VBScript and PowerShell in 32 / 64 bit Editors; WMI Explorer- Sapien Technologies has some great free community tools for PowerShell use and support.

Enumerate devices on a given subnet – powershell script - Blog of Kliment Andreev

Live Response Using PowerShell (PDF link) - SANS Reading Room whitepaper by Sajeev Nair - August 20, 2013.

PowerShell Reference Post: The Train Cometh Near… GSD blog post because sometimes I’m too lazy to look for the prior link…

--Claus Valca