I’ve been looking at the File Server Resource Manager (FSRM) feature in Windows Server 2008 R2 a lot lately. One very nice part of FSRM is the ability to schedule typical file management tasks. One of the examples from the Microsoft storage team is to create a custom task to move old files to another…
Category: PowerShell v2.0
TechMentor Orlando 2010 Decks and Demos
I had a great time in Orlando at the TechMentor conference. The crowd was enthusiastic and asked good questions. As promised, here are my slide decks and demos. My sessions tend to be heavy on demonstration so I can’t promise you’ll get a ton of value from the decks alone. You’ll simply have to attend…
PowerShell in the Enterprise
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…
TechMentor Orlando 2010
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…
PowerShell Picasso
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…
Power Up your R2 Server Core Shell
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…
Profiling a Script
Last summer, Ed Wilson was looking for help with a small part of the book he was finishing up, Windows PowerShell 2.0 Best Practices. The topic he was working on was, “How do I know this script is safe to run?” Which is a great question and one with greater significance as more administrators come…
A Smart PSDrive Provider
I’ve been doing a lot with the ActiveDirectory module that ships with Windows Server 2008 R2 and which you can also use with the Remote Server Administration Tools on WIndows 7. As I was trying things out with the PSDrive provider I discovered something very cool.
Potential Pipeline Pitfall
Last week I was helping someone out in the PowerShell forum at ScriptingAnswers.com. The specific problem is irrelevant;l however I learned something in the process that will affect how I write my own PowerShell functions from now on. Not being a developer I never picked up on this subtle (at least to me) distinction. Here’s…
Promoting PowerShell
This question comes up quite often: “How can I encourage adoption of Windows PowerShell in my organization?” I periodically poll people about their adoption plans and what sort of things are standing in the way. Most of the obstacles in my opinion can be cleared with experience, exposure and education. On Twitter today, @ChuckBoyceJr was…
Get Disk Quota
During a recent class I was teaching, a student asked about a way to get disk quota reports from Windows file servers. I knew there was a WMI class, Win32_DiskQuota, and had some old VBScript files. However, they were pretty basic and not as robust as I would have liked. So I worked up PowerShell…
All Hail Dir UseALot!
Some of you know my relationship with the a command prompt goes back a long, long way. Naturally I became very adept at using the DIR command, fully taking advantage of its switches to tease out hidden information or to quickly get just the information I wanted. When PowerShell first came out, I made the…
The PowerShell Balloon Festival
I trust by now you are realizing how valuable Windows PowerShell is as a management tool. With a one line command you can accomplish an extraordinary amount of work. Sometimes this work may be long running, which is where background jobs come in handy. Or you may simply kick off a long running script and…
Pre-Orders for Windows PowerShell 2.0: TFM
SAPIEN Press is now taking pre-orders for the latest edition of the popular Windows PowerShell: TFM. The new version, Windows PowerShell 2.0: TFM is really the 3rd edition of our original book. Don Jones and I have worked very hard to make this the most comprehensive PowerShell resource you can have on your book shelf….
Get Profiles
Keith Hill posted a bit of PowerShell code a few days ago that piqued my interest. I knew that in PowerShell, the $profile variable would list your current profile. PS C:\> $profile C:\Users\Jeff\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1 This is handy because it makes it easy to call up my script editor if I need to make a change. But…