New PowerShell user and a few questions on PowerShell

PowerShell Help
1

by dotps1 at 2013-04-22 04:08:29

Hi,

Greetings to the PowerShell Users and Masters.

I am comfortable with Perl to the extent where I have created script that read the output from command line output, extract the required portions from it and e-mail it to our DL. There’s a training coming up in about 10 days that will enable us to use PowerShell to automate certain tasks. Focus of the training will not be training on PowerShell however, it will assume that the attendees are familiar with PowerShell.

Given below are a few questions about PowerShell : -

Whats the best way to get familiarized with PowerShell in 10 days?. I have been fiddling with it for past 4-5 hours, and find it ok so far, but I am not able to get much hang of it (The language is fine, its my gray cells that are slow :slight_smile: )
Any books/videos that you would suggest?

I am not a programmer by formal education or by profession. It took me about 3-4 months to get comfortable with Perl to the extent where I could do the stuff mentioned above. Any approximate idea how much will it take to get familiar with PowerShell. I know learning is a continuous process and I am ready to invest some time every day, but would be thankful if someone could answer this.
My focus is the "10 day" mark. :frowning:

Are there some conflicting concepts in Perl and PowerShell ?

I dont know C#/.Net and such stuff…will I still be able to pick PowerShell?

Are there regular expressions in PowerShell…like Perl ? Can it slice and dice text files, Log in to remote windows/solaris/linux servers, pull out reports to/from Excel, send e-mails ?


Apologies for a long list of questions, but will be thankful if someone could help.

Regards,

dotps1
by happysysadm at 2013-04-22 05:24:44
Hi,

I suggest you start having a look at the following video by Ed Wilson:

Windows PowerShell: Learn It Now Before It’s an Emergency - Part 1 | WMA
http://dlbmodigital.microsoft.com/webcasts/wmv/1032481530_Dnl_L.wmv
Windows PowerShell: Learn It Now Before It’s an Emergency - Part 2 | WMA
http://dlbmodigital.microsoft.com/webcasts/wmv/1032481542_Dnl_L.wmv
Windows PowerShell: Learn It Now Before It’s an Emergency - Part 3 | WMA
http://dlbmodigital.microsoft.com/webcasts/wmv/1032481548_Dnl_L.wmv
Windows PowerShell: Learn It Now Before It’s an Emergency - Part 4 | WMA
http://dlbmodigital.microsoft.com/webcasts/wmv/1032481552_Dnl_L.wmv
Windows PowerShell: Learn It Now Before It’s an Emergency - Part 5 | WMA
http://dlbmodigital.microsoft.com/webcasts/wmv/1032481554_Dnl_L.wmv

This will guide through your first steps with Powershell. Otherwise there are good books out there, but I think a few video will give a quick idea of how Powershell works.

Of course you will have to get a grasp on WMI and .NET, but your knowledge will grow as you start playing with Windows system administration.

Of course there are regular expressions, but it a a bit more advanced.

Exporting data to excel or send it by email is a breeze. Have a look ath export-csv and send-mailmessage cmdlets, where a cmdlet is a Powershell command.

HTH
Carlo

PS forgot to say: Welcome onboard!
by DexterPOSH at 2013-04-22 18:12:40
Have a look here at all the books you can start using

http://powershell.org/wp/2012/04/21/powershell-book-recommendations/
by dotps1 at 2013-04-23 02:22:18
Hi Happysysadm and DexterPOSH,

Thank you very much for your replies and help.

I will surely go through the links you have provided.

Thank you once again.