The Lonely Administrator

A new whitepaper I wrote for Quest Software has finally made it’s public appearance: PowerShell in the Enterprise: Best Practices and Recommendations. The paper discusses some best practices for using PowerShell in an enterprise environment. Essentially, getting the most from your PowerShell “investment”, especially when you might have multiple PowerShell-based administrators. Although certainly the suggestions apply to small shops as well.

The other purpose behind the paper was to provide information to non-admin or non-PowerShell folk to help them understand PowerShell’s role and ease some common adoption “pains.”

You can download the whitepaper for free (although you will need to register) here.

I hope you’ll let me know what you think.

I’m busy polishing my presentations and demos for next week’s Techmentor conference in sunny Orlando, Fl. I’ve been presenting at Techmentor for a number of years now and it is a great show for administrators searching for answers to the problems and challenges they face today. You get intimate sessions with industry experts like Don Jones, Greg Shields, Mark Minasi, Rhonda Layfield, and Jeremy Moskowitz.

I’ll be presenting 3 sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Scripting, Error Handling and Debugging in Windows PowerShell
Start automating complex, multi-step administrative processes by building full-fledged Windows PowerShell scripts. In addition to teaching you PowerShell’s simple scripting languages (fewer than 25 keywords!), you’ll learn to make scripts that are more robust and less frustrating. Windows PowerShell guru Don Jones demonstrates how to build scripts that efficiently deal with errors like timeouts, insufficient permissions, and so on, and provides you with simple directions for quickly debugging a PowerShell script. This powerful session takes you from being a command-line jockey into the rarified company of expert scripters, and Don makes all of his sample code available via e-mail after the conference.

Take Back Your File Servers!
Do you hate the part of your job that involves managing files? Are you struggling to keep on top of what files you have, how old they are, or who they belong to? Are you constantly trying to remove unwanted file types from your network? If so, then the file resource management feature of Windows 2008 has the answer. In this demo-packed session you’ll learn how to build effective file management reports, set up screening rules to block unwanted files and much more. After this session you’ll be eager to get back to work and take your file management skills to the next level.

Top 10 (Non-PowerShell) Command Line Tools you MUST Know
Even though Windows PowerShell is getting all the publicity, there is still plenty of life left in the old C: prompt. Mr. Roboto, Jeffery Hicks will guide you through the top 10 command line tools every Windows administrator should know how to use. These are tools that ship with Windows or are freely downloadable from Microsoft. The emphasis is on tool mastery not scripting so that you can go back to the office and begin using them immediately.

Beyond from my sessions, I’m happy to chat with you about what you’re working on, challenges you face or whatever. I’m happy to sign books. In fact this is one of the few times a year that Don Jones and I are in the same place so if you have Windows PowerShell 2.0: TFM and want it autographed by both authors, this is an excellent opportunity. 

If nothing else, I hope you’ll come up and say hi.

You have probably heard the story (or legend) about Pablo Picasso and his napkin drawing. A guy goes up to Picasso in a cafe and asks for an autograph or something. Picasso sketches out something in a minute or so. He turns to the guy and says, “That will be $10,000".”  The guy is stunned and replies “It only took you a minute!”. To which Picasso replies, “Yes, but it took a lifetime of experience.”

By now you’re wondering what this has to do with Windows PowerShell. Well, the reason Picasso could create a masterpiece in minutes on a napkin was because he already knew all the rules and knew how to apply them in the most efficient manner possible. Because he already knew “the long way” to do something, he was able to take a “shortcut”. I’m simplifying a bit to make my PowerShell analogy so stick with me.

I think the transition to the new hosting is complete. Hopefully you’ll notice a little faster response. If you have problems drop me a DM on Twitter.

I’m still in the process of moving my blog and domain to a new hosting service. As much as I appreciate your comments and feedback, please hold off on posting anything new for the next day or so. I’ll post something when everything is back up and running.

I’ve recently started using the Server Core option for my test servers, especially for things like domain controllers. I can get by with smaller disk and memory requirements. Once you get the server configured, there’s very little you have to do that actually requires logging on to the server. Which is good because all you have is a C:\ prompt, which I know makes some people a little uncomfortable. But with Windows Server 2008 R2, there is another option: PowerShell.

I just finished reading a terrific essay (or short book) on the nature of operating systems and how we interact with them. The book is In the Beginning…was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson. The book was written about 10 years ago so some of the material might seem a little dated. But for those of us in the industry at the time it makes for a warm reminiscence for the good ol’ days. And if this was before your time, I think it makes for a helpful history lesson which explains a lot about where we are today. For a Neal Stephenson work, this book is exceptionally brief, but well written (you were expecting otherwise?) with more than a few illuminating metaphors.