Windows PowerShell & Windows Automation
Don’t be the administrator who has to click a lousy checkbox or button to do every little administrative task in Windows. You must automate! Whether you’re looking to avoid mindless repetition, improve consistency, reduce errors, increase your personal “bandwidth,” or just be able to go home sooner each day, administrative automation is your answer. Join gurus Don Jones and Jeffery Hicks, co-authors of Advanced VBScript for Windows Administrators and Windows PowerShell™: TFM™ for a knock-down, drag-out fight against manual administration.
The tools of the trade are Windows PowerShell, VBScript, command-line tools, batch files and more. That’s right, the “right tool for the right job,” whatever the job may be. Can’t make the entire track? No problem. Most of the sessions stand alone, so you can choose the tasks you need to complete.
Want to become the ultimate scripting guru in your organization, gain the respect of your boss and coworkers, and put something substantial on your resume? Then join us for the entire track, and you’ll be automating nearly everything in less than a week. Note that these sessions are not intended as hands-on unless specifically noted in the session description. There will not be power outlets available in the session room at any time. Please bring notepaper, or a spare battery if you intend to use your laptop to take notes. Flash photography is not permitted. Please keep hands, arms and legs inside the session room at all times.
Track Chair
Don Jones
Don Jones is the owner of ScriptingAnswers.com, a contributing editor to Redmond magazine, and a columnist on CertCities.com and MCPMag.com. Don has written more than a dozen information technology books, including "Managing Windows with VBScript and WMI" (Addison-Wesley). Don is also an independent technology consultant, with a focus on security and automation in Microsoft-centric environments.
Tuesday, May 13
TP1Microsoft Windows PowerShell: The Future of Server Administration
Lee Holmes
9:45 a.m.
Get the straight scoop on Windows PowerShell right from one of the folks who helped create it! Learn why Windows PowerShell is changing the way administrators think about administration, and how this is FAR more than a "replacement for VBScript." It's a shell inspired by Unix, with a dash of VMS and maybe just a little PHP. It's interactive and extremely usable, while also highly scriptable and perfect for automation. Get the inside take on why it works and how it came to be, and maybe just a hint of where it's going.
TP6Advanced String Parsing and Regular Expressions in Windows PowerShell
Don Jones
11:15 a.m.
Sure, PowerShell is object-based - does that mean it's no good for parsing log files and manipulating other text data? Heck, no! PowerShell expert Don Jones shows you the shell's incredible string-parsing capabilities, and gives you a succinct course in regular expressions, one of the ubiquitous technologies that helps PowerShell make short work of whatever text data you care to throw at it.
TP11Managing Remote Systems the Windows PowerShell V2 Way
Don Jones
2:00 p.m.
In this session, MVP Don Jones will discuss the new remoting features that will be available in the next version of Windows PowerShell currently being offered as a Community Technology Preview (CTP). This session will focus on the usage of: the new functionality that comes with the Invoke-Expression cmdlet and the usage of the new *-PSJob and *-Runspace cmdlets. The concepts of "fan-in", "fan-out" and interactive remoting will also be discussed. This is an intermediate session: You should have a basic understanding of PowerShell scripting in order to take full advantage of this session.
TP16Using PowerShell to Manage Group Policy
Darren Mar-Elia
3:30 p.m.
In this session, you’ll learn how you can use PowerShell natively and with freely available cmdlets to manage GPOs and their properties using PowerShell. The session will provide practical examples of using PowerShell and the GPMC to create and delete GPOs, link GPOs, change their permissions and perform other management tasks. We’ll also look at 3rd party solutions for managing settings within GPOs using PowerShell.
Wednesday, May 14
TP21Remote Management in PowerShell 1.0 Using WMI
Darren Mar-Elia
9:45 a.m.
In the current version of PowerShell, most cmdlets don’t provide support for the management of remote systems. However, PowerShell 1.0’s support for leveraging WMI provides a rich library of administrative tasks you can perform against remote systems. In this session, we’ll examine techniques and provide examples of using PowerShell 1.0 and WMI to get access to remote management information, and perform management tasks against remote systems.
TP26Automating Performance Management and Collection
Greg Shields
11:15 a.m.
Are you monitoring the performance of your servers? If not, then how do you know when “the server is slow today” message is really true? PerfMon has been around forever and it is still one of the best tools for finding out when Windows works well and when it doesn’t. In this session, we’ll talk about how to best use PerfMon in your network, including the best ways to automate it, script it, and otherwise alert you when things go wrong. We’ll discuss how to use performance indicators as a measurement for solving problems. You come away from this session knowing how to watch your performance logs for signs of trouble.
TP31Building a GUI in Windows PowerShell
Don Jones
2:30 p.m.
In this session, Don Jones will guide you through using Windows Forms from the .NET Framework to build lightweight, fully functional graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that run within Windows PowerShell scripts. You will be guided through the Windows Forms hierarchy and be shown practical and effective examples for creating, fine-tuning and using your using your own customized GUIs directly from within Windows PowerShell. This is an intermediate session: You should have a basic understanding of PowerShell scripting in order to take full advantage of this session.
TP36Error Trapping & Handling in Windows PowerShell
Don Jones
4:00 p.m.
Learn how to write scripts that deal with errors gracefully, by learning how PowerShell's complex and powerful error-handling and trapping systems are designed. Despite their complexity, these systems offer some of the most powerful scripting capabilities within PowerShell, allowing you to make scripts that stand up under a wider variety of production circumstances. Get real-world, take-home examples to get you started, along with Don Jones' famously clear and casual explanations.
Thursday, May 15
TP41Automated Server Core: Going Cold Turkey on the GUI
Mark Minasi
8:30 a.m.
For years you’ve known it: you’ve just GOT to get more familiar with the command line. You get things done faster, you can create simple batch files for automating many tasks, and, best of all, when you’re working from the GUI, then your boss starts to think, “hey, what IS that thing he/she’s using? We need to pay techie employees like them more money!” Well, Windows 2008’s command-line-only Server Core’s arrived, so here’s your opportunity. Building on his popular “Command Windows from C: Level” talk, Mark Minasi walks you through the process of building a Server Core server from setup to initial configuration to full-blown DNS, Active Directory and more.
TP46Automate Your Vista Installations
Rhonda Layfield
10:00 a.m.
It’s time -- to roll out Vista! Don’t get stuck with manual installations over and over again. In this session Rhonda Layfield (Deployment MVP) will show you how to automate your Vista Installations using the new Microsoft Deployment tool (the new BDD). Leaving this session you will be fully equipped with the knowledge and step-by-step instructions for automating your vista installations. When you get back to the office you will be ready to start using the new tools immediately. Let Rhonda show you some tips and tricks to make your automation of Vista installations rollout smoothly and efficiently.
TP51Leverage .Net from PowerShell
Darren Mar-Elia
11:30 a.m.
PowerShell is spawned from .Net. That doesn’t mean you have to be a programmer to use PowerShell. But it does mean that you have the entire .Net world at your fingertips when using PowerShell. In this session, we’ll present an introduction of how you can access these native .Net features from PowerShell without a lot of stress or development experience. We’ll look at how you can call .Net objects and methods and how you can leverage them in your PowerShell scripts for almost unlimited scripting power!
TP56Automating VMWare Administration with Windows PowerShell
Brandon Shell
2:45 p.m.
In this session you'll learn how to use Powershell to manage a VMWare environment including Virtual Machines, ESX Host, and Virtual Center. You'll learn about the VMWare roadmap, and where it is headed with Powershell - and how you can leverage the power of Powershell in your environment today. You will see how to perform everyday administrative tasks using Windows PowerShell, and learn how Powershell can make these easier. This is a demo-heavy session that focuses on real-world management tasks made faster and easier.
TP61Automating Citrix Server Administration with Windows PowerShell
Brandon Shell
4:15 p.m.
In this session you'll learn how to use Powershell to make Citrix server management easier. We’ll also walk through the Citrix road map and how Powershell fits in. We will cover several different common administrative tasks and show how Powershell can make these tasks faster and easier to perform, including publishing applications, unpublishing applications, getting application information, and getting servers online. We'll look at using the PowerShell pipeline, and see how to make your scripts output information that can be piped to other scripts. Finally, you’ll learn how to use MFCOM, get information from it, and look at some of the gotchas you'll need to be aware of when dealing with it.
