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Enterprise PowerShell Scripting Bootcamp
Enterprise PowerShell Scripting Bootcamp

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

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Profile Icon Brenton J.W. Blawat
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$19.99 per month
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.3 (3 Ratings)
Paperback May 2017 238 pages 1st Edition
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$27.98 $39.99
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$48.99
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Renews at $19.99p/m
Arrow left icon
Profile Icon Brenton J.W. Blawat
Arrow right icon
$19.99 per month
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.3 (3 Ratings)
Paperback May 2017 238 pages 1st Edition
eBook
$27.98 $39.99
Paperback
$48.99
Subscription
Free Trial
Renews at $19.99p/m
eBook
$27.98 $39.99
Paperback
$48.99
Subscription
Free Trial
Renews at $19.99p/m

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Enterprise PowerShell Scripting Bootcamp

Chapter 2. Script Structure, Comment Blocks, and Script Logging

The Windows server scanning script requires three core components to make the script suitable for enterprise environments. These components include developing a strict scripting structure, creating the comment block, and developing a flexible logging solution. Strict scripting structures ensure that all your scripts are created in the same order. This means that each section of the code is defined in the same place in all your scripts. A uniform structure helps others understand your code quickly and enables them to follow a standardized format for changes.

You will also learn how to create a comment block at the beginning of the script. The comment block ensures that you fully document the purpose, the requirements, the bug fixes, and change history for the script. It also provides details on how to execute the script leveraging command line parameters.

The final core component discussed in this chapter is logging...

Overall script structure

When you are creating scripts, you should adhere to a strict script structure. The structure of the script dictates the order of execution and how things are processed. The following diagram displays the proper method for organizing your script:

Overall script structure

It is recommended that you structure your scripts as follows:

  1. Declare the comment block: To start the scripting process, declare a comment block and include everything that is pertinent to the script. This may include a description, revision information, author, editor, and additional notes.
  2. Declare the input parameters: After the header, declare your input parameters, if required by the script. The input parameters are required to be directly after the comment block. Input parameters help the developers identify what is being inputted into the script, and what fields are required for proper execution of the script.
  3. Declare the global variables: You should declare your global variables after the input parameters. Since variables...

Comment blocks

The first recommendation is to create comment blocks for detailed tracking information about the PowerShell script itself. Comment blocks can track information about the script's creation, authors, changes, and other useful information that will enable you to quickly determine what the script is doing. PowerShell has built-in comment block support which integrates with the get-help cmdlet.

The required components include the following:

  1. Comment block location: The comment block must be the first item defined at the top of your script. If you use parameter blocks, you specify the parameter blocks after the comment block.
  2. Start comment block: In order to integrate with the help system, you need to specify the starting of the comment block. To start a comment block, you type <#.
  3. .SYNOPSIS: To create a synopsis for the script, type .SYNOPSIS on a line, and then on a subsequent line type a one-line description of why the script is being created.
  4. .DESCRIPTION: To create a full...

Script logging

As you create your enterprise script template, you will need to incorporate a logging mechanism. Logging allows you to capture script output, including informational, warning, and error messages. In typical logging scenarios, you will need to record script actions to either the event log, a log file, or a data collection file, like a Comma Separated Values (CSV) file. While PowerShell has a transcript which you can invoke, leveraging the start-transcript and stop-transcript cmdlets, it only allows you to record output to a single log file. This doesn't provide for writing to the event log or data collection files.

A popular logging mechanism is to create your own PowerShell logging function. This enables you to pass in parameters into the logging function to tell the script to either write to the event log, log file, or append data to the data collection file. It can also write the actions to the PowerShell window to view progress. This avoids having to write multiple...

Summary

In this chapter, you successfully learned the three core components of the scripting template. The first component is defining a script structure. You learned of all the required locations for the individual scripting components. You then learned how to write a comment block and the proper documentation to include in the comment block itself. Finally, you learned how to create a logging mechanism for your scripts. You started by learning how to create a time-stamped log file, followed by learning how to create a data collection CSV file, and then how to create a new event log source. Finally, you put all the components together to create a function named log.

In the next chapter, you will explore answer files and exclusion lists for your scripts.

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Key benefits

  • Introduces industry-proven techniques that improve script efficiency and reliability
  • Example-rich guide based on real-world scenarios
  • Facilitates building a script that can fully scan a Windows server and identify components

Description

Enterprise PowerShell Scripting Bootcamp explains how to create your own repeatable PowerShell scripting framework. This framework contains script logging methodologies, answer file interactions, and string encryption and decryption strategies. This book focuses on evaluating individual components to identify the system’s function, role, and unique characteristics. To do this, you will leverage built-in CMDlets and Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to explore Windows services, Windows processes, Windows features, scheduled tasks, and disk statistics. You will also create custom functions to perform a deep search for specific strings in files and evaluate installed software through executable properties. We will then discuss different scripting techniques to improve the efficiency of scripts. By leveraging several small changes to your code, you can increase the execution performance by over 130%. By the end of this book, you will be able to tie all of the concepts together in a PowerShell-based Windows server scanning script. This discovery script will be able to scan a Windows server to identify a multitude of components.

Who is this book for?

This book is for IT professionals and Windows administrators who would like to gain intensive, hands-on knowledge and skills on PowerShell without spending hours and hours in learning. If you have been struggling to find the time to gain proficiency and confidence with PowerShell and everyday scripting tasks

What you will learn

  • Create an advanced PowerShell scripting template that provides repeatable code to jumpstart all of your scripting projects
  • Learn how to securely encrypt and store usernames, passwords, and other sensitive data in PowerShell scripts and answer files
  • Understand how to optimize the performance of scripts to help process large datasets quickly and avoid time-consuming mistakes
  • Develop a script to scan for non-standard Windows Server configurations and identify
  • service accounts used on Windows Servers
  • Gather a large list of data from a Windows server without locally or remotely logging in
  • interactively

Product Details

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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : May 18, 2017
Length: 238 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781787288287
Vendor :
Microsoft
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Product Details

Publication date : May 18, 2017
Length: 238 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781787288287
Vendor :
Microsoft
Languages :
Tools :

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Enterprise PowerShell Scripting Bootcamp
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Windows Server 2016 Automation with PowerShell Cookbook
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Mastering Windows PowerShell Scripting (Second Edition)
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Table of Contents

14 Chapters
1. Getting Started with Enterprise PowerShell Scripting Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Script Structure, Comment Blocks, and Script Logging Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Working with Answer Files Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. String Encryption and Decryption Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Interacting with Services, Processes, Profiles, and Logged on Users Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Evaluating Scheduled Tasks Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Determining Disk Statistics Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
8. Windows Features and Installed Software Detection Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
9. File Scanning Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
10. Optimizing Script Execution Speed Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
11. Improving Performance by Using Regular Expressions Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
12. Overall Script Workflow, Termination Files, and Merging Data Results Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
13. Creating the Windows Server Scanning Script and Post-Execution Cleanup Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.3
(3 Ratings)
5 star 33.3%
4 star 33.3%
3 star 0%
2 star 0%
1 star 33.3%
Amazon Customer Jun 13, 2017
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The author is interesting and insightful. Makes PowerShell as easy as peanut butter!
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Gulmiguel Jul 27, 2017
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I'm a big fan of several of the authors over at Packtpub. Plus this book and it's format allowed me to truly excel in my PowerShell scripting.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
MQ Jul 23, 2018
Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 1
First time purchasing a hardcopy book from Packt - Bought it from Amazon like many other tech books in the past. This publisher has made downloading the example code difficult unless you buy direct from them. The book says they will send you the example code if you register on their site and then send an email requesting it. Created an account on Packtpub and found the book that I bought but no way to download the code and no instructions or support email to request it. Too time consuming and too hard. Next time, it will be easier to do an Amazon one-button-click on a different publisher.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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