Sunday, September 28, 2008

Sapien PowerShell poll

Check it out HERE. Very interesting comments.

I do agree with the resistance with putting .NET on production systems. That has stopped me from trying to roll out a few PowerShell scripts for various automation requests.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

OpsMgr Command Shell tip: where-object vs criteria

I've seen a few OpsMgr Command Shell users posting scripts that use the get-alert cmdlet.

I've seen a few references, where people are using the format:
get-alert|where-object{some_criteria}

When this format is used, get-alert retrieves *all* the alerts from the OpsMgr database, and leaves PowerShell to do all the work of handling all the objects that come in, and then where-object also causes more PowerShell processing time to handle all of the objects passed from get-alert.

Although this may work fine, and a larger environment, this approach will take longer to finish this particular pipeline.

Compare the above format to:
get-alert -criteria 'some_criteria'

I had recently mentioned this in a TechNet Magazine article I wrote. Now if you don't believe me... I'll quote a recent microsoft.public.opsmgr.powershell post by Boris Yanushpolsky a Program Manager on the Microsoft OpsMgr team:

"Using the criteria is significantly more efficient as the query is handled by SQL and only the instances/alerts which meet the criteria are returned to PS. Here is a link to an MSDN article which explains the syntax:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb437603.aspx"

The syntax and case used for the query can be a bit harder to master, but it is worth the effort to learn it in larger environment.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Book review: Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 Administrator's Companion, Second Edition

[Also posted on Amazon.com and Chapters.ca]

I just finished reviewing this book. I looked at it from the perspective of its Windows PowerShell content as I'm a Microsoft MVP who specializes in PowerShell scripting.

PowerShell is becoming more and more important. Under the covers, PowerShell is the basis of all administrative tasks done in the Exchange 2007 Management Console.

PowerShell is new and can be intimidating. However, for anyone who wants to automate tasks and become more productive, they should start investing some time in learning PowerShell. The time will soon come where PowerShell will be the common scripting language used by all Microsoft server products.

What I like about this book is that it isn't too heavy on the PowerShell content, which is good for people new to the scripting language. Concepts are clearly presented, and then there's a small section on how to do the task in PowerShell with an example provided.

Apart from its PowerShell content, the book is very well laid out, and covers every aspect of Exchange that an administrator should know about.

Overall: Five stars.

Monday, September 8, 2008

PowerShell user group update

I announced my user group plans for the next six months HERE.

I'm going to be a little bit behind on that schedule.

Unfortunately, the "Codeplex spotlight" session I wanted to have isn't going to happen as planned, but I might reschedule it for later...

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Upcoming book: Windows PowerShell 2.0 Unleashed

[Update September 12th, 2008: I mention "Windows PowerShell 2.0" as the title, but that title is tentative...]

Source: Amazon.com

Quote:
"Windows PowerShell 2.0 Unleashed (Paperback)
by Tyson Kopczynski (Author), Pete Handley (Author), Marco Shaw (Author)"

I'm pleased to finally see my name on the cover of a book, after having written a chapter in at least 2 books for far.

The image hasn't been updated, but I'm OK with that.

Release date is currently December 12th, 2008.