PowerShell Desired State Configuration: LCM and Push Management Model

PowerShell's Desired State Configuration (DSC) framework depends on the Local Configuration Manager (LCM) which has a central role in a DSC architecture. It runs on...

17 March 2016 13 min read

Nicolas Prigent

PowerShell Desired State Configuration: The Basics

'Desired State Configuration (DSC) is an essential part of the configuration, management and maintenance of Windows-based servers. It allows a PowerShell script to specify the...

10 February 2016 13 min read

Nicolas Prigent

PowerShell Day-to-Day SysAdmin Tasks: Securing Scripts

Although PowerShell is popular, for malicious intruders it represents a very attractive attack vector into your system. The obvious way of preventing this type of...

01 December 2015 16 min read

Michael Sorens

Ins and Outs of the PowerShell Pipeline

For many developers, understanding pipelining in PowerShell is like understanding reductive physicalism: you think you've just about got it, and then the brain blue-screens. Michael...

22 October 2015 10 min read

Michael Sorens

The Complete Guide to PowerShell Punctuation

It is the punctuation, the strange dollar signs, brackets and parentheses that bewilder anyone learning PowerShell. Add to that the aliases and you can bewilder...

30 September 2015 10 min read

Michael Sorens

Build Your Own Resource Monitor in a Jiffy

It's great to be able to monitor a counter or any other changing metric while engaged in development work. You'd think that the two alternatives...

14 September 2015 18 min read

Michael Sorens

When to Quote in PowerShell

The one question about PowerShell that trips up almost everyone is about when and how to quote strings. Because PowerShell replaces the old command shell,...

12 August 2015 16 min read

Nicolas Prigent

PowerShell Day-to-Day Admin Tasks: Monitoring Performance

By reading performance counters from services such as SQL Server or Exchange, you can get a wealth of performance information. By automating the process of...

01 July 2015 13 min read

Michael Sorens

The Poster of the Plethora of PowerShell Pitfalls

One of the downsides of learning a new computer language is that transfer of training doesn't always work to your advantage. In fact, the habits...

25 June 2015 28 min read

Nicolas Prigent

PowerShell Day-to-Day Admin Tasks: WMI, CIM and PSWA

WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) is the basic way of querying and changing basic information about any windows server, including SQL Server or Exchange Server. It...

28 May 2015 12 min read

Michael Sorens

A Plethora of PowerShell Pitfalls: Part 2

There are some pitfalls in PowerShell for the unwary. Many people who are learning PowerShell come across quirks that can cause frustration. Michael Sorens continues...

12 May 2015 16 min read

Nicolas Prigent

Automating Day-to-Day PowerShell Admin Tasks – Jobs and Workflow

If you are aiming to optimise the use of your time by doing as much as possible via scripting, you will soon want to run...

13 April 2015 13 min read

Michael Sorens

A Plethora of PowerShell Pitfalls

PowerShell has some very valuable features, but it is a mistake to believe that all those skills that you've derived from more conventional programming languages...

02 April 2015 19 min read

Michael Sorens

Practical PowerShell Unit-Testing: Checking program flow

Pester offers a relatively small number of commands to Unit-test PowerShell scripts, but these commands have tremendous capabilities. Pester even gives you the means to...

05 November 2014 16 min read

Michael Sorens

Practical PowerShell Unit-Testing: Mock Objects

Pester allows you to automate the testing of PowerShell scripts. It can test the output of a function as you develop it by validating simple...

04 November 2014 17 min read

Michael Sorens

Practical PowerShell Unit-Testing: Getting Started

By the time you're using PowerShell to automate an increasing amount of the system administration, database maintenance, or application-lifecycle work, you'll probably need to automate...

03 November 2014 19 min read