Articles from October 2014 on PowerShell.org - Welcome Automaters!

Our NaNoWriMo Challenge: Write a PowerShell Article

Sat, 25 Oct 2014 16:28:27 +0000

In honor of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), I wanted to offer a smaller, and more unique, challenge.
Send me a PowerShell article.
Seriously. My name is Don Jones, and this is PowerShell.org, so you can probably figure out how to contact me. Send me an article between 800 and 3,000 words (including code) in Microsoft Word format. Don’t attach any scripts. Please keep the formatting super-simple: paste code from the PowerShell ISE, and use Word’s default styles otherwise. If you must include screen shots, please embed them in the doc, but also include them as a a separate PNG in your e-mail.
You can write about anything, provided it’s PowerShell-related._ _What’s best? Some challenge that stumped you - and that you eventually solved (and please, tell us how). Something that you think folks could benefit from, or could learn to do better. Even an article that lays out both sides of a particular question, and outlines the pros and cons of each argument. Doesn’t matter. What matters is that you write. _
I will personally commit to reading every single one, and providing you with feedback on your article. When suitable, I’ll make some specific suggestions for improving the article. If you then fix it up accordingly, I’ll run it by a professional editor - and I’ll have it published. _In some cases, we’ll publish it right here on PowerShell.org. In other cases, I’ll submit it to my friends at 1105 Media for their consideration in one of their IT magazines, like Redmond Magazine or MCPMag.com. Still others will go into the PowerShell.org TechLetter, which would be a huge help to our editors, who are always hungry for content.
Being able to communicate well is important in all walks of life, but being willing to share is even more important. Think you’ve got nothing to share? _Wrong. _You have unique experiences that everyone can learn from. You do not need to be an expert in order to have something valuable to share. We would all benefit a lot more if more people shared their experiences and successes - so now it’s your turn.
The deadline is November 30th, of course, and I’ll work my way through them all as quickly as possible. You’re not going to be judged on your grammar or spelling (although do use Word’s tools to help those as much as it can). Don’t try to write fancy, or overly formal. In fact, just write like you’d talk. Read your piece back to yourself _aloud, _and if it sounds weird, fix it so it doesn’t. If it sounds good, it’ll read well.
C’mon. Take up the challenge. And tweet folks over to this article, too. Let’s make it a thing. My goal is to help at least a few folks because regular bloggers, either here or elsewhere, and my dream is to find maybe a couple of folks who can pick up a full-time column with a magazine or other publication. That’d be awesome. I know you’re out there - let’s get the party started.

How to Have the PowerShell Summit Come to You

Thu, 16 Oct 2014 18:24:25 +0000

We’re often asked if we’re planning to have a PowerShell Summit in (insert name of town/country/city). The answer is, “no,” because we’re usually not planning much in advance of whatever’s currently on the table. Keep in mind - **we’re all volunteers. **We don’t have a ton of free time to plan 3 years out! As you’ll see in a minute, it’s a lot of work.
That said, you can play a big role in bringing the Summit to your town. How? Simply write a proposal and submit it to us. Use the “Admin” e-mail alias at PowerShell.org. Here’s what to include:

When you’re proposing for. We typically need a proposal roughly 18 months out. The North America event is in April, and the Europe event in September, so you need to plan about a year and a half ahead of those dates.
A description of the local PowerShell audience. Helping us understand the local business environment, how many Microsoft IT pros are employes, and whether or not there’s a local user group, all helps. The more you can do to help us reach out to the locals, the more confident we’ll be in planning an event in your area.
A venue. This is the tough part, because we have a number of pretty strict requirements. Many commercial venues won’t talk to a smaller organization more than 6-9 months out, so in talking to a venue you’ll have to ask them to estimate pricing based on their current situation; we’ll nail down particulars closer-in if we select the venue. We don’t need you to guarantee dates; we just need an estimate of how much the venue wants to charge us.

Our venue requirements are detailed and pretty much non-negotiable.

The venue must be near an international airport - no more than a 30-minute drive. This must be accessible by a major air carrier, such that a flight from Seattle-Tacoma could make it to the venue’s airport with no more than one connection. We have to be considerate of the product team’s time!
The venue must be near a sufficient number of affordable, business-class hotels. We do not reserve room blocks or guarantee rooms, so if you’re talking to a hotel, they may not want to deal with you because of this.
The venue must offer parking - although we are okay if there are parking fees.
We must have 2 rooms capable of seating at least 50 people each. That seating can be “theater-style…”
…but we must also have a place for at least 100 people to eat lunch. Sometimes, that means a separate room. Other times, it may mean setting the session rooms “classroom style” so people can eat in the session rooms. Switching to “classroom style” still needs to afford seating for 50 people per room, minimum.
We prefer to buy “all-day” catering packages that include unlimited coffee, a continental breakfast (pastries), buffet lunch, and an afternoon snack. Pricing cannot exceed about $110 per person per day - and that must include taxes, service fees, gratuities, and so on.
We prefer not to guarantee a specific number of people until very close-in. However, most commercial venues require a commitment up front. In that case, we prefer to commit to no more than 50 people - even though we want the flexibility to have more than that.
If we’re paying top dollar for catering, we should get the venue itself for free. That’s traditional at most commercial venues. If we’re paying for the venue, then our per-person/per-day catering cost should be substantially under our limit.
We prefer to minimize A/V expenses, but do require an HD projector, screen, and wireless lav mic in each of the two rooms. We’d need pricing on that equipment if it isn’t included in the venue pricing.
The venue needs to have decent Internet. That doesn’t necessarily need to be included for free, but it needs to be available. We may purchase 2-4 connections for speakers to use when presenting, so knowing the pricing would be helpful.
The venue needs to be available for at least one evening event, where we’ll likely want a cash bar and some light snacks - we expect to pay extra for the evening food, but not for the venue itself.

As you can see, it’s a tough list, and it’s a lot of work for us to find venues. That’s one reason we tend to lean toward Microsoft facilities, when they’re available, because we get the venue cheaper, the food cheaper, and so on.
You’ll also see that our pricing doesn’t leave a ton of room for error. At $110/person/day, each attendee costs us $330. With 50 attendees, there’s another $130 per person in overhead to pay for speakers’ meals. We have about another $130 per person in hard costs like insurance, equipment shipping, and logistics planning. We carve off another $150 per person to help fund PowerShell.org itself, including this website. That’s $740 per person in costs - real close to the $800 we charge, which also has to cover VERIFIED EFFECTIVE exam costs and so on. We plan our numbers around a 50-person break-even point because we’re incredibly risk-averse - we don’t want to have to make up the difference on our personal credit cards, which has almost happened in the past. As you can see, we try to keep our numbers pretty tight - which means a lot of careful planning.
So… if you want to volunteer (it’s much appreciated!) and do some local legwork, you’re more than welcome to propose your favorite town. We understand that, working 18+ months out, some of the numbers will be estimates - that’s fine. Knowing that something is roughly in the right price range is a big start.
We do have other operational criteria that can come into play, so just because you propose someplace doesn’t mean we’re guaranteeing we’ll go there - but we’ll keep it in mind, even for future years.

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PowerShell Summit Europe 2014 – All videos available

Wed, 15 Oct 2014 07:08:48 +0000

All of the recordings from the recent PowerShell Summit in Amsterdam are now available through the PowerShell.org channel on youtube. The playlist for the Summit is https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfeA8kIs7Coehjg9cB6foPjBojLHYQGb_
Thank you again to the speakers, and attendees, who made for a wonderful first Summit in Europe and more thanks to the people who donated to our appeal to raise funds for the recording equipment.

PhillyPoSH 10/02/2014 meeting summary and presentation materials

Tue, 14 Oct 2014 01:35:26 +0000

John Mello gave a presentation entitled “Custom Object Creation”. A copy of his demo scripts and presentation are available here at our GitHub site.
- TJ Turner gave a presentation entitled “Runspace Pools”. A copy of his demo scripts and presentation are available here at our GitHub site.
- A recording of this meeting

has been posted to our YouTube channel

PowerShell Summit Europe 2014 – – videos from day 1

Thu, 09 Oct 2014 07:23:31 +0000

The videos from day 1 of the Powershell Summit Europe 2014 are now available on the PowerShell.org youtube channel. The European Summit playlist can be found at

Uploading of day 2 is in progress and I’ll supply notification when complete
Enjoy.

PowerShell Summit Europe 2014 – – slides and code

Tue, 07 Oct 2014 17:49:55 +0000

All of the slides and demo code the speakers wanted to share are available for your enjoyment at http://1drv.ms/1vMWmtm
I’m currently uploading the videos which is a slow process. I’ll post when hat activity is completed.

The current and future state of the Windows Management Framework

Mon, 06 Oct 2014 11:04:50 +0000

At the 2nd of October,Lee Holmes gave a presentation about the current and future state of the Windows Management Framework (WMF) during theDutch PowerShell User Group (DuPSUG) at the Microsoft headquarters in The Netherlands.
The slide decks and recorded videos will be made available soon, but this is what was discussed:

The release cycle of the Windows Management Framework (WMF)

Faster incremental releases of preview versions are being released. This rapid development means that companies that need specific new functionalities to tackle current problems they’re having, don’t have to wait as long as they had to in the past.
Everyone should keep in mind that documentation for preview versions can be more limited, but should still read therelease notescarefully. They contain descriptions of some of the improvements that are discussed in this blog post, but also cover other things that aren’t discussed here. Also be sure to take a look atWhat’s New in Windows PowerShell at TechNet.
A request from the audience was to include more helpful real-life examples until documentation is fully up-to-date.

Desired State Configuration (DSC) partial/split configurations

With DSC partial/split configuration it is possible to combine multiple separate DSC configurations to a single desired state. This could be useful when a company has different people or departments that are responsible for a specific part of the configuration (by example Windows, database, applications).

OneGet

OneGet is a Package Manager Manager (it manages package managers). It enables companies to find, get, install and uninstall packages from both internal and public sources. Public repositories can contain harmful files and should be treated accordingly.
Besides the OneGet module included in the Windows Management Framework Preview, updated versions are continuously being uploaded tohttps://github.com/OneGet/oneget by Microsoft. These can include bug fixes and new functionality like support for more provider types.
While in the past it seemed that Nuget was required, during thePowerShell Summit it was demonstrated that a file share can be used as well.
From the audience a question was raised whether BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service) could be used. This is currently not the case and there were also no plans yet to implement it.

PowerShellGet

PowerShellGet is a module manager which should make it easier to find the many great modules that are already available, but are not very discoverable because they’re fragmented on numerous websites across the Internet.
Microsoft is currently hosting a gallery of modules. The modules that are available in there are currently being controlled by Microsoft, but this might change in the future.
It is possible to create an internal module source and the save location for modules can be specified as well.

PSReadLine

PSReadLine is a bash inspired readline implementation for PowerShell to improve the command line editing experience in the PowerShell.exe console. It includes syntax coloring and CTRL+C and CTRL+V support, for more information about other improvements, view theirwebsite.
PSReadLine is one of the modules that can be installed using PowerShellGet:

Find-Module

PsReadLine

Install-Module

Security

Always be careful when running scripts that include Invoke-Expression or its alias iex because it might run harmful code.
- For a non harmful example, take a look at thisblog post by Lee Holmes.
Many people in the security community are adopting PowerShell.
PowerShell is done in memory and is therefore volatile. To improve security the following enhancements were introduced:
- Transcript improvements
  - Transcript support was added to the engine so it can used everywhere, also in the Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE).
  - A transcript file name automatically includes the computer name.
  - Transcript logging can be enforced to be redirected to another system.
  - Transcription can be enforced by default.
Group Policy
- An ADMX file is currently not available to configure it on all platforms, but it can be found in the technical preview versions of Windows 10 and Windows Server under: Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows PowerShell
More advanced Scriptblock logging
- Enable ScriptBlockLogging through GPO (in later Windows versions) or by registry by setting EnableScriptBlockLogging to 1 (REG_DWORD) in: HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\PowerShell\ScriptBlockLogging
- The additional logging will show you what code was run and can be found in event viewer under Applications and Services Logs\Microsoft\Windows\PowerShell\Operational.
- Scriptblocks can be split across multiple event log entries due to size limitations.
- Using Get-WinEvent -FilterHashTable it is possible to get related events, extract the information and combine it.
- Since attackers would want to remove these registry settings and clear event logs, consider using Windows Event Forwarding/SCOM ACS to store this information on another server. Also consider enabling cmdlet logging.
Just Enough Admin (JEA)
- JEA enables organizations to provide operators with only the amount of access required to perform their tasks.

New and improved functionality and cmdlets

Manage .zip files using Expand-Archive and Compress-Archive
.zip files can be managed using Compress-Archive and Expand-Archive. Other archive types like .rar are not currently supported, but this might be added in future versions.

New-Item
It is now not necessary anymore to specify the item type. To create a new item, simply run

New-Item

foo.txt

Get-ItemPropertyValue
This makes it easier to get the value of a file or registry:

Get-ItemPropertyValue

$Env:windir

\system32\calc.exe

-name

versioninfo

Get-ItemPropertyValue

-Path

HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PowerShell\1\ShellIds\ScriptedDiagnostics

-Name

ExecutionPolicy

Symbolic links support for New-Item, Remove-Item and Get-ChildItem
Symbolic link files and directories can now be created using:

New-Item

-ItemType

SymbolicLink

-Path

C:\Temp\MySymLinkFile.txt

-Value

$pshome

\profile.ps1

New-Item

-ItemType

SymbolicLink

-Path

C:\Temp\MySymLinkDir

-Value

$pshome

Junctions cannot currently be created, but this might also be added in a later version.

Debugging using Enter-PSHostProcess and Exit-PSHostProcess
Let you debug Windows PowerShell scripts in processes separate from the current process that is running in the Windows PowerShell console (by example long running or looping code). Run Enter-PSHostProcess to enter, or attach to, a specific process ID, and then run Get-Runspace to return the active runspaces within the process. Run Exit-PSHostProcess to detach from the process when you are finished debugging the script within the process.

Use Psedit to edit files in a remote session directly in ISE
Simply open a new PSSession to a remote computer and type PSEdit .

Classes and other user-defined types

The goal is to enable a wider range of use cases, simplify development of Windows PowerShell artifacts (such as DSC resources), and accelerate coverage of management surfaces.
Classes are useful for structured data. Think by example about custom objects that you need to change afterwards.
Name of the class and the constructor must be the same.
Code is case insensitive.
In classes, variables are lexically scoped (matching braces) instead of dynamically scoped.
Every return must be explicit.
Sample code:

Class

MyClass

{

MyClass

(

$int1

$int2

)

{

“In the constructor”

}

[int]

$Property1

[DateTime]

$Property2

[int]

MyHelper

(

$param1

)

{

return

}

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PowerShell Summit Europe 2014 – – Thank you

Sat, 04 Oct 2014 11:17:10 +0000

I would like to express a huge thank you to the speakers and attendees at our recent Summit.
The speakers delivered an excellent set of sessions that dived into PowerShell features new and old.
The attendees asked lots of questions, both during and after sessions, which is what we want. This is a Summit not a conference where a speaker rushes in, delivers a talk and rushes out. We wanted a healthy level of discussion and that’s what we got.
The feed back we’ve had has been very positive from both the attendees and speakers. We managed to record practically all of the sessions and those videos as well as the slides and code will be available for download soon.
This year’s event in Amsterdam has laid a very solid foundation for the future of the European Summit and our plans are to run a European Summit in 2015. Exact location and dates haven’t been decided yet but we will communicate them as soon as we know.