(Part 2) Best products from r/PowerShell

I took an online course through a local college 3 years ago. I hadn't been in school for over a decade, but the structured learning of the environment, plus the desire to get a good grade in the class, absolutely attributed to my success.

The labs and online class environment ensured I actually learned the material and underlying reasons why things were they way they were. It was not just a "paper cert."

I was able to immediately put what I learned to work at my place of business. The return on my investment was immediate and has helped me make more money while doing a better job for my clients. To this day I credit the class as the best money I've ever spent.

We used this book and it was very helpful while being pretty fun, since you are making (simple) video games the whole time: https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-PowerShell-Programming-Absolute-Beginner/dp/1598633546

I will say, looking back now, the book really is what it says on the cover; for the absolute beginner. If you have any other scripting or programming knowledge, I would probably do "month of lunches" instead.

MrPowerScripts has a good point with the ExecutionPolicy. As a side note, this can be set through Active Directory Group Policy. Though there are security implications you may do so by going to

Computer Configuration | Administrative Templates | Windows Components
| Windows PowerShell and configure the Turn On Script Execution

If you're new to Windows and Scripting, you will find PowerShell as easy to learn as it is powerful. However, I cannot overstate the importance of a good understanding.

http://www.amazon.com/Windows-PowerShell-Administrators-Pocket-Consultant/dp/0735625956/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1335059483&sr=8-6

That is a good manual. They were giving them out at MS TechEd a couple of years ago and I loved it. I wish you luck!

-Chad

Nothing is every really outdated, as you never know what you are going to encounter in a target / assigned environment and even have to continue to deal with legacy OS, PS versions and now cross platform. That cross platfomr bit, as far as in depth stuff, no refrence really exists, yet.

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Why are not all the built-in help files and ps1/psm1, etc., not a good reference point and well as all the docs on the MS PowerShell GtiHub and docs site as well as these handy resources and one of the other top PS books that been around: for years now:

Windows PowerShell in Action, Second Edition Second Edition

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And coding in general -just becasue the more your script , eventually understand real coding practices is paramount. Look to this reference. It's not PowerShell specific, but for wrapping you head and goals around coding practices.

Code Complete (Developer Best Practices)

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PowerShell Documentation

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/?view=powershell-6

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Other free eBook references

https://leanpub.com/u/devopscollective

http://www.powertheshell.com/cookbooks

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Windows PowerShell Survival Guide

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/183.windows-powershell-survival-guide.aspx

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DevOps Collective Videos

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfeA8kIs7CocGXuezOoYtLRdnK9S_Mq3e

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Cheet Sheets

https://github.com/PrateekKumarSingh/CheatSheets/tree/master/Powershell

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PowerShell Best Practices

• https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/heyscriptingguy/tag/best-practices

• https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/heyscriptingguy/2014/05/28/powershell-best-practices-simple-scripting

• https://www.digitalshadows.com/blog-and-research/powershell-security-best-practices

• https://ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/images/9780735666498/samplepages/9780735666498.pdf

• https://www.digitalshadows.com/blog-and-research/powershell-security-best-practices

• https://github.com/PoshCode/PowerShellPracticeAndStyle

• https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/PowerShell-40-Best-d9e16039

• https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/store/windows-powershell-best-practices-9780735666498

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It stands for Continuous Integration Continuous Delivery. To plug /u/KevMar's own blog he did a good write up on setting up a CICD pipeline for PowerShell modules. I also threw in 3 other links to some of my favorite blog posts on it.

• https://kevinmarquette.github.io/2017-01-21-powershell-module-continious-delivery-pipeline/
  
• https://xainey.github.io/2017/powershell-module-pipeline/
  
• http://ramblingcookiemonster.github.io/PSDeploy-Inception/
  
• https://devblackops.io/building-a-simple-release-pipeline-in-powershell-using-psake-pester-and-psdeploy/
  
  You'll see a bit of variation from each post, which is nice because you can get an idea of the general theory behind CICD and see early on that the tools involved can change quite a bit.
  
  A book my team at work lives and dies by is "Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation". It's an amazing read, and my recommendation for anyone interested in the practices of CICD!
  
  https://www.amazon.com/Continuous-Delivery-Deployment-Automation-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321601912

Honestly, I'd go with Windows Powershell Best Practices instead. PSIAMOL is nice, but this one focuses more heavily on ensuring you not only get the syntax, but the proper script structure, code re-usability, high performance, and just a ton of other stuff.

PSIAMOL Teaches you how to use PowerShell. WPBP teaches you how to be good at PowerShell.

Once that's done, it wouldn't hurt to check out Code Complete which had such an impact I ended up re-writing several of my larger scripts after reading it...

within the package you can have it recognize previous versions and have their uninstaller start before proceeding with your installation.

It is actually very handy, but very specific and there aren't a lot of great free resources to give you real background knowledge that will let you modify things on your own with a good understanding. I found this book when i was searching around and was able to get a question answered about msi files from the preview.

I've just ordered this - Windows PowerShell Self-Study Training Kit - Windows PowerShell Self-Study Training Kit so i'll be cracking through this along with my 3rd Edition Step By Step Windows Powershell book.

Been learning PS for about a month or so and slowly starting to get to grips with it. It's certainly come in handy a couple of times already and i've barely scratched the surface of it all.

2016 is the year i'd like to put down on my CV that i am proficient at Powershell.

Just to add, if you want a good book to read after. This is very informative.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0735675112?aaxitk=.sjYWQ4iWEoQs178fs504w

Powershell in depth is really good after you get done with the month of lunches.

What do the PowerShell scripts you want to rewrite in Python do? I find the idea of a "commandlet like Python script" misguided and confused. PowerShell is still very much an administrative tool geared toward Microsoft systems. At this point in time I wouldn't consider it a general purpose scripting language like Python. No one is writing webapps with a MVC framework, e.g. Django, with PowerShell. And I doubt anyone ever will, despite all appearances from MS that they're trying to turn it into a general purpose language with PS Core. If your scripts are doing a lot of administrative things with AD, etc. then you're likely not going to have much success porting them to Python. I would question your sanity if you really wanted to do that.

You also need to spend some time groking Linux and Unix to get the most out of Python. Remember that it's a product of that environment and very much follows those conventions. So if you're looking to parse arguments then you should look at argparse. You should also think about what the syntactic sugar of a switch statement is doing, and realize you can do the same thing with a hashtable/dictionary.

If you're just interested in doing administrative things with Python then take a look at this book: Python for Unix and Linux System Administration. But realize the Python ecosystem is about a billion and one times larger than PowerShell's and covers everything from web development to machine learning.

Learn Powershell in a month of lunches
and DNS and BIND are two I always recommend to people looking to learn about the windows side of things.

this book may help: http://www.amazon.com/Working-Effectively-Legacy-Michael-Feathers/dp/0131177052.

also, put everything into functions and then unit test all of it (with mocks) using pester.

I'd suggest reading Powershell In Depth - http://www.amazon.com/PowerShell-Depth-An-administrators-guide/dp/1617290556

You can probably finish it in less than a week of train rides. A lot of that advice I had to learn the hard way.

Can I ask what you're trying to accomplish with a WSUS Offline deployment? Are these air gapped machines?

PowerShell Studio Book if you want to learn to build GUI applications with powershell backend.

Agreed...these 3 books, in my opinion, are the holy trinity of PowerCLI/vSphere information.

Managing VMware Infrastructure with Windows PowerShell TFM

VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration

Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5

US link

http://www.amazon.com/PowerShell-WMI-Richard-Siddaway/dp/1617290114/

PowerShell and WMI by Richard Siddaway http://www.amazon.co.uk/PowerShell-WMI-Richard-Siddaway/dp/1617290114 what a book.. What a book..

The MCSA Server 2016 actually goes over this as an exam objective. Heres what Ive been using for study. https://www.amazon.com/MCSA-Windows-Server-Study-Guide/dp/1119359341

Wrote a book on this stuff. AMA. http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982131402/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_yHpitb0SM20GJ

If you haven't read Pragmatic Programmer you need to.