My presentation at the first meetup of the French PowerShell User Group

Today I presented a session on Parsing Data using PowerShell at the first meeting of the French PowerShell User Group.

This User Group is organized by a couple of Francophone PowerShell MVPs, including me, from different parts of the world.

Below are the presentation, the scripts and the recording of the meeting. Even if you don't speak the language of Molière you should be able to follow along with the PowerShell language.

Presentation (PPTX) and Scripts : Github Repository of FRPSUG



Registration to our next events: Meetup.com

Slack: Feel free to drop by on our channel #french on powershell.slack.com (register first)

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions, leave a comment or send me an email at fxcat@lazywinadmin.com. I invite you to follow me on Twitter @lazywinadm / Google+ / LinkedIn. You can also follow the LazyWinAdmin Blog on Facebook Page and Google+ Page.

PowerShell Studio 2012 - WinForms - GUI ToolMaking

In my previous post I showed how to create a quick PowerShell GUI to append some colored text in a RichTextBox control using Sapien PowerShell Studio 2012.

Today I will go a bit further and show you how to create a tool to query some information from a remote computer. I will first send the Output to Out-GridView cmdlet and then show you how to send it to a DataGridView control inside the GUI.

The tool will query Services, Processes and Shares from a Remote Computer.
You will need to specify the ComputerName and the Credential required to perform those actions. The goal is to show how to create something very simple so I did not write any Error Handling or any conditional code in this version.

One cool thing to mention when using PowerShell Studio 2012 is, if you add some controls like a DataGridView, a Listview or a ListBox, PowerShell Studio 2012 will add some functions to help you Load/Add/Refresh those controls. I will show you below in the part "Replacing the Out-Gridview by a DataGridView Control"

PowerShell Studio 2012 - WinForms - Creating a basic GUI (Video)

The following post will demo how to create a basic Graphical User Interface with SAPIEN PowerShell Studio 2012.

Update: See also the second part of this post: PowerShell Studio 2012 - WinForms - GUI ToolMaking

Last year I released a PowerShell script called LazyWinAdmin 0.4 which is a script that generate a Graphical User Interface. I used SAPIEN PowerShell Studio 2012 to create this Interface and write my PowerShell code.

LazyWinAdmin script allows SysAdmins/IT Pros to Query Information on their Workstation / Servers and to Perform some actions like :

• List Shares (with local path), Processes, Services, ...
• Test the Connection, Permission, PowerShell Remoting, RDP availability ...
• Reboot/Shutdown
• Query and Kill any RDP Session opened
• Etc...

Since then, I got a lot of emails asking me questions about PowerShell and how to make GUIs using PowerShell Studio 2012. So here is a quick demo..

PowerShell Summit NA 2013 - Recorded Videos

Recently I was lucky enough to attend the PowerShell Summit in Redmond,WA, this was a great opportunity to meet a lot of PowerShell people, MVPs, Writers, Bloggers, Trainers, IT Pros, DevOps, ... and some members of the PowerShell Team who created this amazing tool.



One of the Summit attendee Aaron Hoover recorded some of the sessions he attended using his webcam.

Find bellow the list of session available on his Youtube Account:

• Device Management With PowerShell - Ricardo Mendes
• Creating a Complex and Reusable HTML Reporting Structure - Alan Renouf
• How Secure Can You Be – Jeff Hicks 
• Standards Based Hardware Management – Steve Lee 
• Workshop – Automating for DevOps – Kenneth Hansen and Hemant Mahawar 
• CIM Sessions – Richard Siddaway 
• PowerShell Web Access – Richard Siddaway 
• Sapien PowerShell Products – David Corrales 
• What I learned Judging 5000 Scripts – Ed Wilson 
• PowerShell Events – Richard Siddaway 
• Write Modules, Not Scripts – Ed Wilson 
• PoshMon – PowerShell Does Performance Counters – Ed Wilson 
• Configuring Your PowerShell Workflow Environment – Aleksandar Nikolic 
• Practical PowerShell Integration from Bare Metal to the Cloud – Alan Renouf 
• Source Control for IT Pros – Andy Schneider 
• Creating HTML Reports with Style – Jeff Hicks 
• Remoting Configuration Deep Dive – Don Jones 
• Advanced Network Scripting with PowerShell – Lee Holmes 
• Build Your Demo Environment with Windows PowerShell – Aleksandar Nikolic

You can also download the materials used by the presenters and the list of sessions on PowerShell.org.

Thanks for Reading! If you have any questions, leave a comment or send me an email at fxcat@lazywinadmin.com. I invite you to follow me on Twitter: @lazywinadm

PowerShell Resources - From Noob to Ninja

Videos
Windows PowerShell for Beginners
Technet ScriptCenter - Windows PowerShell: Learn It Now Before It's an Emergency

Build2011 - Windows networking with PowerShell: A foundation for data center management
TechEd 2011 - Advanced Automation Using Windows PowerShell 2.0
TechEd 2011 - Windows PowerShell Remoting: Definitely NOT Just for Servers
TechEd 2012 - Windows PowerShell Crash Course
TechEd 2012 - Advanced Automation Using Windows PowerShell 3.0
TechEd 2012 - The Dirty Dozen: Windows PowerShell Scripts for the Busy DBA
TechEd 2012 - Inside Windows Server 2012 Multi-Server Management Capabilities
TechEd 2012 - Group Policy Reporting and Analysis with Windows PowerShell
Technet Radio - The Scripting Guy’s Top 5 PowerShell 3.0 Tips and Tricks
More videos on http://channel9.msdn.com

Guides
Windows PowerShell Survival Guide (en-US) Extensive list of resources on PowerShell
Windows PowerShell 3.0 and Server Manager Quick Reference Guides
Ravikanth Chaganti - WMI Query Language via PowerShell
Don Jones - Secrets of PowerShell Remoting
Windows PowerShell Core About Topics



Code repository
PoshCode
Technet Gallery - Script Repository

Powershell sites
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/scriptcenter/powershell.aspx
http://www.powershell.org
http://powershell.com/cs/
http://www.powershellmagazine.com
http://www.powershellpro.com
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/scriptcenter/powershell.aspx

Video: Powershell V3 Guru Don Jones

Source : http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/PowerShell-V3-Guru-Don-Jones

Rick Claus interviews PowerShell guru Don Jones while at MMS 2012.  They chat about Powershell V3. cool things that are under represented and how everything is underpinned by PowerShell in Windows Server 2012.

Video: Tobial Weltner – Regular Expressions in 5 Minutes

Video: Tobial Weltner – Regular Expressions in 5 Minutes:
One of my favorite lightning talks at the PowerShell Deep Dive in Frankfurt was the one that Tobias did on regular expressions.
Lightning Talks are super quick sessions at the conference in which anyone gets a chance to show something cool in 5 minutes. We tried doing these in Frankfurt and they had just amazing level of energy and got everyone really excited. I think we will do them again in San Diego in May.
Anyway, here’s the recording of the Regular Expressions talk by Tobias which I made in Frankfurt. Enjoy!

See more PowerShell Deep Dive recordings here.
This is a live recording from European TEC 2011 PowerShell Deep Dive conference. TEC US is just around the corner – April 29 – May 2, 2012 in San Diego. Register now - this is the best PowerShell event you can find!

Video: Brandon Shell – Module Design for IT Pro

Video: Brandon Shell – Module Design for IT Pro:
Here’s another great recording from previous PowerShell Deep Dive – Brandon‘s session on module design. Brandon has experience designing PowerShell modules for Splunk and other companies – so there’s a lot to learn from him!
In this session we will deep dive into the thought process behind production module design. The presenter will explain the reason for choices made for the Splunk Module and his own BSonPosh module.

This is a live recording from European TEC 2011 PowerShell Deep Dive conference. See more PowerShell Deep Dive recordings here.
By the way, TEC US is just around the corner – April 29 – May 2, 2012 in San Diego. The agenda has already been published and is absolutely fantastic.
Register now - this is the best PowerShell event you can find!

Video: Aleksandar Nikolic – Delegation with Remoting

Video: Aleksandar Nikolic – Delegation with Remoting:
Here’s recording of @alexandair – PowerShell MVP, constrained runspaces guru and editor of PowerShell Magazine – talking about delegation in PowerShell remoting. I bet not that many of you tried this feature before – so check out this talk that Aleksandar did at the last PowerShell Deep Dive in Frankfurt!
In this session you will learn how to set up a fan-in PowerShell endpoint, and then use it to assign specific administrative tasks to the appropriate users and groups without changing the membership of local Administrators group. By using just the IIS configuration files and PowerShell scripts we will enable dynamic creation of customized automation environments.

This is a live recording from European TEC 2011 PowerShell Deep Dive conference. See more PowerShell Deep Dive recordings here.
By the way, TEC US is just around the corner – April 29 – May 2, 2012 in San Diego. The agenda has already been published and is absolutely fantastic.
Register now - this is the best PowerShell event you can find!

Video: Jeffery Hicks - Turn Command-Line Tools into PowerShell Tools

Video: Jeffery Hicks – Turn Command-Line Tools into PowerShell Tools:
Here’s recording of @jeffhicks – PowerShell MVP, book author and trainer – Jeffery Hicks – talking at the previous PowerShell Deep Dive about how you can turn existing command-line utilities into PowerShell functions so they can become first-class (object emitting ) PowerShell citizens.
You can find Jeff’s slides and demo scripts here.
The abstract and video recording are below:



PowerShell is everywhere but there are still many command line tools in the IT Pro’s toolbox, In this session we’ll look at how to turn just about any command line based tool into a PowerShell tool so that you can incorporate it into your PowerShell scripts and daily management tasks. The power of objects in the pipeline is amazing and there’s no reason not to include tools like NETSTAT.EXE or NBTSTAT.EXE. 

1. The Challenge of CLI Tools 

2. Console Text to PowerShell Objects Techniques 

3. Putting It All Together





This is a live recording from European TEC 2011 PowerShell Deep Dive conference. See more PowerShell Deep Dive recordings here.

Using PowerShell as a Starting Point for Comparing GPOs

source

Video Transcript

Comparing two Group Policy Objects can be pretty tricky with the native tools. Here in the Group Policy Management console or GPMC I have created two different GPO’s, test 1 and test 2. Now if we open one up each of these only setting a couple of settings. You will find it under Computer Configuration/Polices/Windows Settings/Security Settings/Event Log. What I have done is set the Retain security log in this one to 75 days and the other test GPO to 7 days. Then both of them set the retention method for security log to By days.

Right here in the GPMC there is nothing I can really do to compare these two things. What I have done is hop on Google, I punched in compare GPO and I found this script that was written by Ed Wilson, the scripting guy at Microsoft. He has helpfully posted this in the repository and what I have done is take the scripts default parameters to reflect my environment. I provided the domain name, the name of the controller, my two GPO’s, and then the folder where I want the comparison information to be written.

You do not have to set that information, it is possible to provide all of those perimeters when you run the script. For example, we will hop down here. There is the name of the script. Now because I have set all of those perimeters to what I want them to be by default I do not need to specify the GPO names, or the domain name, or the server names, or any of that. But I do need to specify either -computer or            -user, based on which side of the GPO, the computer settings or the user settings, I want to compare.

Running this, it is actually outputting both GPO’s test 2 and test 1 to an xml file and it is indicating that both of these GPO’s change the same settings. I see AuditLogRetentionPeriod and RetentionDays. Unfortunately because of the way this output is created I cannot really tell that it is the security audit log that was changed. I see both of them changed that setting, but I do not actually see what they changed it to just with that default output.

This is why some people will start looking at third party tools. If you hop into Google or your favorite search engine and type compare GPO tool, you will find plenty of different results. The key and one of the things I discuss in the article, Native Methods for Comparing Group Policy Objects, that accompanies this video is in deciding exactly what you are going to do with that comparison, because different tools provide you with that information in different ways. For example, if you just need a quick check of what settings two GPO’s do, well then this little script can do that for you. If you need to dive deeper and maybe get a color coded change management report that shows what values are different from GPO to GPO well, then you are going to have to either do more work with something like PowerShell or find some tools that implement that for you.

Video Awesomeness - VMware has released 3 hours of free online training

Video Awesomeness - VMware has released 3 hours of free online training:

You definitely have to check out this YouTube video channel I’ve compiled from recent video uploads of VMwareTV. VMware has released 3 hours of online VMware vSphere training material featuring Chris Skinner and Brian Watrous.

vSphere Storage Profiles

Migration Hot & Cold Migration - Storage DRS

Migration – vMotion

VM Management - Cloning/Templating

VM Management - Install OS

Migration Hot & Cold Migration – HA

Storage - Thick & Thin Provisioning

Installation - ESXi 5

Networking - Distributed Virtual Switch

Storage – VMFS

Installation - vCenter Server

Video: Bartosz Bielawski – Tracing in PowerShell

Video: Bartosz Bielawski – Tracing in PowerShell:
Here’s a recording of the session that @bielawb / Bartek Bielawski did at the previous PowerShell Deep Dive on PowerShell tracing. He explains why you would want to trace PowerShell, how to find trace sources, and how to enabling tracing for particular trace sources.
Enjoy:

See more PowerShell Deep Dive recordings here.
This is a live recording from European TEC 2011 PowerShell Deep Dive conference.

Video: Dmitry Sotnikov – PowerShell Jobs in v2 and v3

Video: Dmitry Sotnikov – PowerShell Jobs in v2 and v3:
Another day – another recording from PowerShell Deep Dive. For a change, this one is from a session delivered by yours truly. And it is on PowerShell jobs (also known as background jobs) and the functionality that they had in PowerShell 2.0 and are getting in PowerShell 3.0.
PowerShell jobs allow you to run your commands and scripts in the background without blocking your PowerShell. You can run multiple jobs, check their status, and collect results. We will also get a sneak peek of the new Jobs functionality coming in Windows 8! 

This is a live recording from European TEC 2011 PowerShell Deep Dive conference. See more PowerShell Deep Dive recordings here.

Leveraging Proxy Functions in PowerShell

@DSotnikov just released the video recording of the session from the PowerShell Deep Dive in Frankfurt (last year). In this video, MVP Kirk Munro (poshoholic) and I demoed a project we've been working on that let's you create proxy functions. Here's a reminder of the session abstract.

In this session as they take a deep dive into proxy functions in PowerShell. Shay and Kirk have been working together on PowerShell Proxy Extensions, a powerful module that leverages proxy functions and makes it easier than ever to create these powerful extensions to PowerShell. They will demonstrate what proxy functions are and why they are important, and then show how a little scripting savvy (and a really long script) can make your life easier by allowing you to create everything from very simple proxy functions that extend PowerShell to more complex proxy functions that override existing commands, fixing bugs and adding missing features at the same time, all while leveraging inline help as much as possible.

The module we demoed is available at http://pspx.codeplex.com/. Unfortunately I won't be able to make it this year to the Deep Dive in San Diego, but if you're attending you'll get the chance to see the module in action, plus a very cool project, written on top of the PowerShell Proxy Extensions (PSPX) module.

Video: Richard Siddaway – PowerShell Events

Video: Richard Siddaway – PowerShell Events:
See @rsiddaway / Richard Siddaway (PowerShell MVP and the founder of UK PowerShell usergroup) giving a great overview of PowerShell eventing in this recording from last year’s PowerShell Deep Dive.
Windows is an event driven system. PowerShell is the automation engine for the Microsoft platform. Version 2.0 introduced the ability to work with system events. Many system events do not require action on our part. There are some events that we really need to be aware of and act upon. Gaining access to these events has not been an easy task for the administrator — up until now. 


PowerShell can work with events generated by: 

• WMI 

• .NET 

• The PowerShell engine 


Between them they give a handle into the inner workings of your system. A customizable, generic approach to handling events will be presented that enables you to perform actions based on the events detected. Events don’t just provide an insight into what’s happening. We can use them to trigger system actions for us — a self-healing system anyone 


The key take aways from this session will be: 

• The PowerShell event engine enables you to interact at a closer level with your system 

• The consumption and processing of events can be as simple or complicated as you require 

• You can use events to teach your system to react a fix things on its own 

This is a live recording from European TEC 2011 PowerShell Deep Dive conference. See more PowerShell Deep Dive recordings here.
By the way, TEC US is just around the corner – April 29 – May 2, 2012 in San Diego. The agenda has already been published and is absolutely fantastic. 
Register now - this is the best PowerShell event you can find!



Source:

Code powershell

Video: James O’Neill and his PowerShell profile

Video: James O’Neill and his PowerShell profile:
Here’s another cool tips and tricks recording from last PowerShell Deep Dive – James O’Neill is sharing the cool functions that he has in his PowerShell profile:

See more PowerShell Deep Dive recordings here.
This is a live recording from European TEC 2011 PowerShell Deep Dive conference. TEC US is just around the corner – April 29 – May 2, 2012 in San Diego. Register now - this is the best PowerShell event you can find!

Powershell 3.0 - Workflows (video by Bruce Payette)

This is a live recording from European TEC 2011 PowerShell Deep Dive conference.
Bruce Payette gives a tour of PowerShell Workflows.

 


What is Workflow

Powershell Worflow Architecture

Powershell Workflow Editor

Bill Gates: How a Geek Changed the World [Video]

Bill Gates: How a Geek Changed the World [Video]


Just before he stepped down from Microsoft, BBC2’s “The Money Programme” put together a special on Bill Gates and how he made the company into a money making machine. Those of you who love geek history will definitely enjoy this hour long documentary video.

Automating Active Directory Administration with Windows PowerShell

Technet Video
Don Jones

VIDEO: Automating Active Directory Administration with Windows PowerShell

About This Video

Active Directory is one of the areas where administrators spend the most time: Adding users, changing users, managing computer accounts, removing users, managing organizational units, and more. Learn to automate many of these common tasks using Windows PowerShell, and both the new Active Directory cmdlets in Windows Server 2008 R2 as well as third-party Active Directory cmdlets. You’ll learn from one of the world’s most popular and respected PowerShell trainers, Don Jones, and you’ll have full access to Don’s sample scripts to use as starting points in your own environment. No scripting experience is necessary!

Session level: 300

Download slides

About the speaker

Don Jones

With more than fifteen years of IT experience, Don Jones is one of the world’s leading experts on the Microsoft business technology platform. He’s the author of more than 35 books, including Windows PowerShell: TFM, Windows Administrator’s Scripting Toolkit, VBScript WMI and ADSI Unleashed, PHP-Nuke Garage, Special Edition Using Commerce Server 2002, Definitive Guide to SQL Server Performance Optimization, and many more. Don is a top-rated and in-demand speaker at conferences such as Microsoft TechEd, Windows Connections, and TechMentor, and is an accomplished IT journalist with features and monthly columns in Microsoft TechNet Magazine, Redmond Magazine, and on Web sites such as TechTarget and MCPMag.com. Don is also a multiple-year recipient of Microsoft’s prestigious Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award.

Blog: http://www.windowsitpro.com/blogs/PowerShellwithaPurpose.aspx
Twitter: concentrateddon