Enterprise PowerShell Scripting Bootcamp: The fastest way to learn PowerShell scripting

Disk configuration: You will be able to query the disk layout for a particular system and determine device type, drive letters, free space, and total disk size.

Scheduled task scanning: You will discover the scheduled tasks that are not running as built-in accounts, providing visibility into non-standard configurations.

Windows processes: You will identify the Windows processes on the system to determine what processes are running with alternate user credentials. This will help identify systems that have service accounts for process execution.

Windows services: You will review the Windows services on the system to discover what services are not running as built-in accounts. This will further identify service account usage in your enterprise.

Installed software: You will learn how to safely scan a system for software to identify software titles installed on a system.

User profiles: You will evaluate all of the user profiles created on a system to determine the last login usernames and times. This will help identify teams that own the management of the servers.

Windows features: You will determine the installed Windows features and roles on a system to help identify what role the server has in your enterprise.

Scanning files: You will scan individual files on a system for strings. This provides the ability to identify items such as user credentials and configured server names.

Measuring commands: You will evaluate a technique to measure the execution time for commands.

Cmdlet considerations: You will learn which cmdlets are more efficient than others and how to avoid common cmdlet mistakes.

Regular expressions over arrays: Regular expressions can be difficult to learn, but they provide significant performance improvements to your scripts. You will learn how to properly implement dynamic regular expressions in your scripts.

Switch statements: You will evaluate how to perform data sorting with switches and why switch statements are significantly faster.

Encryption and decryption technologies: Probably the most common requirement in enterprise environments is security. It's no secret that you should not have clear text administrative-level credentials in scripts. Providing an encryption and decryption function in your scripts is essential to maintaining a secure enterprise.

Logging mechanisms: The second most common requirement in enterprise environments is logging script actions. Since scripts are typically executed on a large number of systems at the same time, you will need the ability to track exactly what is being performed on these systems. Creating a logging function will provide the ability to log script actions to both the event log and a log file.

Answer file logic: One of the more advanced methods for PowerShell scripting is leveraging an answer file for script variables. The core to the answer file is that you can add, remove, and modify the values in the answer file without having to modify your script. This provides the ability to have flexibility in your scripts without needing to touch any lines of code.

Standardized comment blocks: When you are creating scripts, it's essential to give yourself and others reminders of what the script's function is. Comment blocks enable the ability to provide details about the script, revision history, and execution parameters of the script.