Subscribe via RSSIf you are like me and live in PowerShell, then you spend a great deal of your day looking at your PowerShell prompt. That little indicator in the console and ISE that usually shows where you are. That little part of your PowerShell world is defined by a built-in function called Prompt. You can easily…
Friday Fun: A Random PowerShell Console
This week I thought we’d have a little fun with the PowerShell console and maybe pick up a few scripting techniques along the way. Today I have a function that changes the foreground and background colors of your PowerShell console to random values. But because you might want to go back to your original settings…
So you need to write a PowerShell script
So…you have decided to write a PowerShell script or have at least identified a need. What do you do first? If you say “Google or Bing”, I’d say you are wrong. In my opinion, when you are developing a PowerShell script, searching for an existing script is not the first step. Sure, you will likely…
SQL Database Reports with PowerShell
Last year I wrote an article for SQL Server Pro called PowerShell in SQL Server. In the article I provided an introduction to using PowerShell and the SQL Server module to do perform some typical management tasks. I think this type of information is especially important for those of you who have to manage a…
PowerShell MVP Again
I am happy to say that I have been renewed for my 8th year as a PowerShell MVP. I am honored to be in such great company with other MVPs. I am also extremely grateful to members of the PowerShell community and I suppose beyond that, who find my work useful or at least worth…
More PowerShell Laziness
A few days ago I posted an article on using Update-TypeData to provide shortcuts to object properties. These shortcuts might save a few keystrokes typing, especially if you use tab completion. They can also give you more meaningful output. But you can take this even further and save yourself even more typing. How many of…
PowerShell for the Lazy IT Pro
PowerShell is a great enabler for those of us who don’t like to work any harder than we have to. Well, maybe I should say, “for those of us who like to work more efficiently.” PowerShell already comes loaded with a number of shortcuts and tricks for getting more done with less effort. Something that…
Scraping Sysinternals
Recently I was conversing with someone about my PowerShell code that downloads tools from the live Sysinternals site. If you search the Internet, you’ll find plenty of ways to achieve the same goal. But we were running into a problem where PowerShell was failing to get information from the site. From my testing and research…
Friday Fun with Formatting
PowerShell is very adept at retrieving all sorts of information from computer systems in your network. Often the data is in a format that is hard to digest at a glance. For example, when you see a value like 1202716672 is that something in MB or GB? What if you need to view that value…
PowerShell Reminder Jobs
This is something that might be better suited to one of my Friday Fun columns, but I’m enjoying this so much I couldn’t wait to share it. I don’t know about you but I spend much of my day in PowerShell or at least with a PowerShell session running. I have an ongoing quest to…
New PowerShell Pluralsight Course
I am so happy to announce that my first course under the Pluralsight badge has been released. My latest course is titled PowerShell v4 New Features. This course is aimed at IT Pros with previous experience using PowerShell, especially PowerShell v3. The course runs just under 3 hours (although it felt much longer than that…
DSC Resource Snippets
A few days ago I posted a PowerShell script that would generate a DSC configuration template. The idea was to generate all the code you might need and let you whittle it down to just what you need. On my primary system, I don’t have any community or experimental DSC resources so my configuration template…
Creating a DSC Configuration Template
During the recent TechEd in Houston, there was a lot of talk and excitement about Desired State Configuration, or DSC. I’m not going to cover DSC itself here but rather address a minor issue for those of you just getting started. When you build a configuration, how can your figure out what resource settings to…
My Mobile Training and Presentation Setup
As many of you know, I typically travel with a mobile Hyper-V setup using a mini-server housed in a Gigabyte Brix unit. I also have a brand new Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro, which I’ve also written about. During the recent PowerShell Summit my intent was to use this gear during my presentations and demos. Sadly,…
PowerShell at TechMentor
If you weren’t able to make it to the PowerShell Summit last week, all is not lost. There will be plenty of PowerShell at TechMentor which will be held August 11-15 in Redmond, WA on the beautiful Microsoft campus. I will be presenting on how to use the CIM cmdlets to manage your datacenter, reporting…