Articles from May 2015 on PowerShell.org - Welcome Automaters!

New PS Module for working with F5's LTM REST API

Wed, 27 May 2015 04:54:03 +0000

If you use F5’s BIG‑IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) for load-balancing, then you may find the new PS module I’ve written helpful. The module uses the REST API in ver. 11.6 of the LTM to query and manipulate an F5 LTM device. You can add and remove members from a pool, enable and disable them, and find out what pools a member is in, among other things.
I’ve made the module files available here. I welcome all comments.
A few notes: Since the module uses the Invoke-WebRequest cmdlet, PowerShell 3 or higher is required. Also, since some F5’s utilize self-signed certificates, and Invoke-WebRequest is unhappy if part of the certificate chain isn’t trusted, I’ve included a dependency on Jaykul’s PS module TunableSSLValidator, which allows for temporarily ignoring certificate errors. If you’re using a trusted certificate chain, then you don’t need the TunableSSLValidator module and can remove the -insecure flags from the Invoke-WebRequest calls.
Cheers,
Joel

Creating a small footprint, base image Part 2

Thu, 21 May 2015 00:56:25 +0000

I posted Part 2 of using PowerShell to create small footprint VHDX that are fully patched.
Patching and Cleanup via PowerShell

Creating a small footprint, base image Part 1

Tue, 19 May 2015 19:01:13 +0000

I’m starting a new blog series on using PowerShell to create small footprint VHDX that are fully patched.

Philadelphia PowerShell User Group Meeting – June 4th 2015

Tue, 19 May 2015 01:14:53 +0000

Join us on Thursday, June 4th when Dave Wyatt, will present The basics of encrypting and decrypting data, including symmetric and public key algorithms, key management / sharing, and digital certificates. This talk will focus on doing so in the .NET Framework and PowerShell.

About Dave

Dave Wyatt has been in the IT business since 1999 and is currently an Application Operations Engineer at DevOpsGuys. In addition Dave is a Microsoft MVP (PowerShell) and a member of PowerShell.org’s Board of Directors.
Please register if you plan to attend in person or online. The meeting URL to join us remotely will be included in your Eventbrite registration confirmation.

Survey Results: Source Control for the IT Professional

Mon, 18 May 2015 13:42:42 +0000

First off - thank you to everyone who participated in the version control survey!
We’ve had a fun few weeks - Somehow the PowerShell Summit, Build, and Ignite were scheduled back-to-back-to-back. Among a host of other announcements and tidbits, we found that Microsoft has open sourced the DSC resources on GitHub, that Pester will be included in Windows, and saw a cool demonstration from Steven Murawski on using Test Kitchen to test DSC resources.
These and other solutions and technologies are starting to assume you know how to use source control, and many require having a source control solution in place - how do you automate testing and deployment on a commit, if you have nothing to commit to?
Source control has long been an important component of IT, but it seems IT professionals, particularly those in Microsoft environments, aren’t consistently using it.
You might expect a gap between IT professionals and developers, but less than 50% of IT pro respondents used source control as a team.

Breaking down the IT professional population by environment, we see that Microsoft environments are even further behind. Many PowerShell aficionados work on teams that aren’t using version control.

Long story short? IT professionals, management, and vendors have work to do; these new tools and ideas that rely on source control are great, but we need to work on finding a horse for the cart. The rest of my rambling analysis can be found here.
If you want to get up and running quickly, consider using GitHub for your PowerShell projects. You can start with the easy-to-use GUI client, and drop into the command line when you want to get your hands dirty. It’s a great way to start learning about source control, and to get involved in the community.
Do you have any suggestions on how we can get to a place where using source control is common place for IT professionals? Is this a worthwhile goal? Sound off in the comments!

What's it Like at PowerShell Summit?

Sat, 16 May 2015 13:15:03 +0000

Ever wonder what it’s like to attend PowerShell Summit? Attendee Tommy Maynard blogged about his entire experience - including the build-up anticipation prior to the event - and it’s a great set of reads. Check it out.

Mississippi PowerShell User Group Virtual Meeting – May 12th 2015

Mon, 11 May 2015 14:30:40 +0000

Join us virtually on Tuesday, May 12th at 8:30pm Central Time when PowerShell MVP Kirk Munro will present “A peek inside the Poshoholic’s toolbelt”.
It’s easy to get excited about all of the new technologies that are being talked about these days. PowerShell 5. Windows 10. Nano server. .NET Core. But none of these technologies have been released yet, and even when they are released, it will be some time before we can fully adopt them in our organizations. That’s why I like to arm my PowerShell toolbelt with impactful modules that work with current releases, so that people like you and I can work with innovative solutions for today while we keep learning about what will be available tomorrow. This session is about those modules that I use in my toolbelt every day. HistoryPx, FormatPx, DebugPx, SnippetPx, TypePx, and others. Highly impactful, innovative PowerShell solutions that you can use, right now.
**About Kirk
** Kirk Munro is a Technical Product Manager at Provance Technologies, where he is helping build the next generation of Provance’s flagship IT Asset Management product, along with several smaller products such as the ScsmPx PowerShell module and the Auto-Close Work Item MP. He is also an 8-time recipient of the Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) award for his involvement in the PowerShell community. For the past 9 years, Kirk has focused almost all of his time on PowerShell and PowerShell solutions, including managing popular products such as PowerGUI, PowerWF and PowerSE. It is through this work he became known as the world’s first self-proclaimed Poshoholic. Outside of work these days Kirk is returning to his software developer roots, learning mobile technologies like Xamarin and Ruby on Rails, and taking courses on Coursera or edX whenever he can make the time to do so.
Register via EventBrite to receive the URL for this virtual meeting. Click here to be redirected to the original post of this article on the Mississippi PowerShell User Group website which contains additional information about the meeting including the system requirements to attend.
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Survey: Source Control for the IT Professional [Results in]

Sun, 10 May 2015 18:22:05 +0000

Edit: The results are in.
I was watching Don and Jeffrey’s PowerShell Unplugged session from Ignite the other day, and something stood out.
At 30 minutes in, Don asked the crowd whether they were using source control. Based on the video, the crowd wasn’t big on source control.
I work in IT. If I asked that same question at work, I would likely get a similar response. Why is that? Source control is incredibly important and can drive a number of other processes, yet it seems to be an afterthought for many IT professionals.
I drafted up a quick, informal survey on source control for IT professionals. If you have a moment, would love to see your responses. Stay tuned for a rough analysis and write-up on the results [Edit: Results are in].
Cheers!

NYC User Group Restart!

Thu, 07 May 2015 18:52:22 +0000

After a long hiatus, NYC Powershell User-group is back.
Tome and Sunny will be presenting 2 sessions
This is the inaugural series of Tome’s 1-year residency on Powershell Concepts (Beginner to Advanced)
Tome Tanasovski:
Concept of Objects

Object Characterization
Everything is an object
Sorting, Grouping, Counting
Where-Object and ForEach
Language Fundamentals
Operators, Variables.
Arrays and Hashtables
Loop structures
Conditional Structures
Useful rules to know.
Tome is an executive for a market-leading global financial services firm in New York City where he focuses on automation, private cloud, and distributed computing. He is the founder and leader of the New York City PowerShell User group, a blogger, and speaks regularly at conferences and user groups. In 2011 he became a cofounder of the NYC Techstravaganza, coauthored the Windows PowerShell Bible, and received the title of Honorary Scripting Guy from the Hey Scripting Guy! blog. Tome has also received the MVP award from Microsoft for the last five years in Windows PowerShell.
Blog: http://powertoe.wordpress.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/toenuff
Sunny Chakraborty:
Large scale Application inventory using Custom MOF Files.
Remote MSI Execution Tricks
Invoke-Command AST
Powershell Anonymous Functions.
Sunny is a Sr. Engineer with a global financial services firm in Philadelphia, where he focusses on Messaging, Microsoft Applications and Automation using Powershell.
GitHub: https://gist.github.com/sunnyc7
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sunnyc7
Pizza is being sponsored by SAPIEN, Makers of PowerShell Studio and Primal Script
6pm - 6:30 - Pizza and catching up
6:30 - 7:15 - Tome.
7:15 - 7:45 - Sunny.
8ish - ?? - Drinks at Beer Authority (next to Port Authority)
You must RSVP via Event Brite in order to attend:

Meeting Date:
Monday, May 11, 2015 - 18:00 - 20:00
Location
Microsoft - Times Square - 6th Floor
11 Times Square
New York, NY 10018
United States
See map: Google Maps

Setting up the PowerShell.org DSC tools from Github

Wed, 06 May 2015 04:27:34 +0000

I have created a short blog series about how to setup the DSC tooling from the PowerShell.org DSC repository. With the mindset of contributing changes.

-David Jones

Dealing with the Click-Next-Admin

Mon, 04 May 2015 17:24:17 +0000

I had a good deal of yard work to do this weekend; I see yard work in a similar way that a click-next-admin sees Windows PowerShell. I want no part in it. So I wrote a quick bit on how we can deal with the click-next-admin.
Jeffrey Snover recently gave a TechDays Online session where he candidly asked us to “make today the last day you hire a click next admin.”

This is a fantastic goal, but how do we get there? There’s no set answer, but I listed out some of the major challenges I see.
Would love to hear your feedback and ideas - flip through the post and stop back here to discuss!
If you’d like to have some fun, share your click-next-admin stories on twitter with the #ClickNextAdmin tag.

Aside: Thank you for the invite to contribute here, it’s an honor.
Cheers!