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How to get started with Powershell.

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My big question to most people I met at MMS 2009 (Microsoft Management Summit 2009) was “What are you doing to ramp up on Powershell”?

The most common answer: Nothing.

Usually the reason given for this was “I don’t need Powershell because I can do so much with Visual Basic”…and that’s true.  But that’s not always going to be the case.  Many functions that can do in the console (whether it is OpsMgr, ConfigMgr, Exchange, etc) are actually Powershell underneath.

So, that begs the question “How do I get started with Powershell?”

Here are some great links:

PowerGui.org  - PowerGui gives you a graphical interface to create Powershell scripts for AD, Exchange, OpsMgr, and Windows.  Very useful, though not quite intuitive.

Powershell Articles at myItforum.org – excellent resource for all things Manageability.

Powershell Scripts at myItforum.org wiki

Powershell Downloads at SystemCenterForum.org – several very useful scripts, many around Maintenance Mode for OpsMgr 2007 (who knew that was so popular?).

Powershell Scripts from ScriptingAnswers.com 

What about books?  Well opinions differ on the quality of books out there on Powershell, if you have a favorite, please send me feedback and maybe someday I’ll rate them.

Microsoft Windows PowerShell Programming for the Absolute Beginner (Paperback) –Amazon

Windows PowerShell Unleashed -Amazon

Windows PowerShell Cookbook: for Windows, Exchange 2007, and MOM V3 (Paperback) - Amazon

Windows PowerShell in Action (Paperback) -Amazon

If you’ve got a favorite Powershell script that solves a problem in OpsMgr, ConfigMgr, or SCVMM…I’d love to see it.  I’m always on the look out for great Powershell scripts.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    [...] Many functions that can do in the console (whether it is OpsMgr, ConfigMgr, Exchange, etc) are actually Powershell underneath [...] This is actually only true for Exchange at this point in time: Exchange 2007 GUI is effectively BUILT ON TOP of powershell. this is so cool, that it even tells you which commands it is giving, under the hood, when you click on stuff. But other products did not (yet) take such a radical approach, but the more common way of using/calling the same underlying APIs (==the SDK Service in OpsMgr) from both the GUI and the CLI version of the console. But really, nothing in the OpsMgr GUI calls powershell directly. It calls the SDK. and so does the powershell version, more of less in teh same way. They both call the SDK and represent separate avenues to it...