PowerShell for Sysadmins

INTRODUCTION
Throughout my career in IT, I ve worked a diverse range of jobs: I ve been in the trenches answering calls on the help desk, visited users to tell them to reboot as a technician, kept servers up as a systems administrator, designed and built solutions as a systems engineer, and learned the difference between OSPF and RIP routing as a network engineer.

It wasn t until I discovered PowerShell that I realized how passionate I could be for a particular technology. PowerShell has changed my life in more ways than one, and it s the technology that s changed the trajectory of my career most dramatically. This language helped me be a critical asset at my job by knowing how to save countless hours of my team s work, and it got me my first six-figure salary. PowerShell is just so cool that I decided I had to share it with the world, and since then, I ve been awarded the prestigious Microsoft MVP award for five years straight.

In this book, I ll show you how to use PowerShell to automate thousands of tasks, build custom tools instead of buying off-the-shelf products, and link various tools together. You may not be interested in becoming an active member of the PowerShell community, but I guarantee that learning PowerShell will give you skills that many businesses need and actively seek.
 
Why PowerShell?
Once called Monad (see https://www.jsnover.com/Docs/MonadManifesto.pdf ) and pitched as a more intuitive way to automate tasks than VBScript in 2003, Microsoft PowerShell is a universal automation, scripting, and development language. PowerShell was created to bridge the gap between scripting, automation, and operations personnel. It was meant to enable users to automate tasks with scripts without having to learn computer programming. This makes it particularly useful for system administrators who lack a background in software development. If you re a system administrator with not enough time to get everything done,

Introduction

Part I: Fundamentals
Chapter 1: Getting Started
Chapter 2: Basic PowerShell Concepts
Chapter 3: Combining Commands
Chapter 4: Control Flow
Chapter 5: Error Handling
Chapter 6: Writing Functions
Chapter 7: Exploring Modules
Chapter 8: Running Scripts Remotely
Chapter 9: Testing with Pester

Part II: Automating Day-to-Day Tasks
Chapter 10: Parsing Structured Data
Chapter 11: Automating Active Directory
Chapter 12: Working with Azure
Chapter 13: Working with AWS
Chapter 14: Creating a Server Inventory Script

Part III: Building Your Own Module
Chapter 15: Provisioning a Virtual Environment
Chapter 16: Installing an Operating System
Chapter 17: Deploying Active Directory
Chapter 18: Creating and Configuring a SQL Server
Chapter 19: Refactoring Your Code
Chapter 20: Creating and Configuring an IIS Web Server

Adam Bertram is a 25+ year veteran of IT and an experienced online business professional. He’s a successful blogger, consultant, Microsoft MVP, published author, and freelance writer for dozens of tech publications. Adam runs the popular tech learning site adamtheautomator.com and is probably on Twitter too much at @adbertram.

"This book is great, and I personally wouldn't hesitate to add it to a bookshelf of technical books."
ToastIT

"One of the perfect books to pick up when you want to get a first glance at the wonders of Powershell."
Ian Mizer, Atlanta Python Programmers Group