Outline of This Book

This book is divided into nine chapters, each covering a major facet of Windows PowerShell. The following sections describe these parts:

Chapter 1, “Overview of Windows PowerShell” Okay, so you’ve decided you need to learn Windows PowerShell-but where do you begin? Start here in Chapter 1! In this chapter, I talk about the difference between Windows PowerShell and the VBScript. There are actually times when you will use both in the same script.

Chapter 2, “Using Windows PowerShell Cmdlets” This chapter presents an overview of some of the more useful cmdlets included with the basic installation of Windows PowerShell.

Chapter 3, “Leveraging PowerShell Providers” Windows PowerShell provides a consistent way to access information external to the shell environment. To do this, it uses providers. This chapter shows how to leverage the PowerShell providers.

Chapter 4, “Using PowerShell Scripts” The ability to perform so many actions from inside Windows PowerShell in an interactive fashion may have some thinking there is no need to write scripts. For many network administrators, one-line PowerShell commands will indeed solve many routine problems. These commands can become extremely powerful when they are combined into batch files and perhaps called from a login script. However, there are some very good reasons to write Windows PowerShell scripts. We examine them as we move into this chapter.

Chapter 5, “Using WMI” Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is foundational management technology in the Windows world. To use WMI in Windows PowerShell, you need a good understanding of WMI.

Chapter 6, “Querying WMI” Nearly everything you want to do with WMI begins with a query. In this chapter, we look at some of the different ways to query WMI and work with the classes to produce useful management scripts.

Chapter 7, “Working with Active Directory” Network management in the Windows world begins and ends with Active Directory. In this chapter, we look at some of the different ways to work with Active Directory.

Chapter 8, “Leveraging the Power of ADO” ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) is the pervasive data access strategy used in the Windows world. In this chapter, we look at using ADO to query Active Directory.

Chapter 9, “Managing Exchange 2007” In Exchange 2007, everything that can done using the Graphical User Interface can also be done using PowerShell. This is because the Exchange 2007 admin tool is built using PowerShell. In this chapter, we look at how we can leverage PowerShell to simplify user management, Exchange configuration, and administration and as a tool for troubleshooting some of the common issues confronting the enterprise Exchange administrator.

The appendices in this book are not the normal “never read” stuff-indeed, you will find yourself referring again and again to these three crucial documents. Appendix A provides a listing of the cmdlets installed with Windows PowerShell that you can refer to when you find yourself stuck for ideas. Appendix B shows you the relationship between the cmdlet naming convention and the commands. For example, did you know there are four Add commands? This kind of linkage can greatly speed the learning process. Appendix C helps you make the transition from VBScript to Windows PowerShell. The Microsoft Scripting Guys-Greg Stemp, Dean Tsaltas, and Peter Costantini-gave me permission to print this here. It represents hundreds of hours of work in finding “new ways” to do “old things.” I wanted to put this in my book for a selfish reason: I used it nearly every day, so I wanted to make sure it was close by.

• Appendix A, “Cmdlets Installed with Windows PowerShell”

• Appendix B, “Cmdlet Naming”

• Appendix C, “Translating VBScript to Windows PowerShell”