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PowerShell Essentials (5 day)

This 5 day course is intended for students who need to learn the essential PowerShell skills required to automate day to day management and administration tasks in a Microsoft Windows Server/Client environment. Being concise and hands-on, it is aimed at quickly getting students familiar with PowerShell terminology and concepts, and in getting productive with the powerful automation features available through this modern scripting technology. In addition to looking at all of the core components of PowerShell, the concepts introduced throughout the course are augmented with plenty of practical hands-on exercises. Although many of the skills learnt can be applied to managing local computer systems, coverage is also provided in how to remotely administer multiple Windows based servers in a network environment.

While delivery is based on a PowerShell 5 platform, almost all of the course content is relevant to both PowerShell versions 3 and 4, enabling attendees familiar with any recent Microsoft Windows operating system to leverage the considerable functionality PowerShell provides.

Students are not expected to have prior scripting or programming experience, although this might occasionally prove beneficial.

This course is fully customisable and can be tailored to include only the material required.

Students should be familiar with working in a Microsoft Windows Server/Client operating system environment, and possess previous administration skills and hands on experience. No previous knowledge of PowerShell is assumed.

Upon successful completion of the full course, students will be able to:

 

  • Customise the hosting environment
  • Work with PowerShell’s help system
  • Run PowerShell commands utilising cmdlets and parameters
  • Work with built in PowerShell modules
  • Work with PowerShell’s operators
  • Select, filter, and manipulate PowerShell objects
  • Understand and work with the PowerShell pipeline
  • Manage data input and output, and format results
  • Understand and implement PowerShell remoting and sessions
  • Set up and manage scheduled jobs
  • Manipulate string data with regular expressions
  • Manipulate and manage HTML and XML data
  • Work with PowerShell Providers and PSDrives
  • Work with variables, arrays, and hash tables
  • Understand and manage PowerShell security
  • Manage command execution utilising “control of flow” scripting elements
  • Create reusable scripts and functions
  • Understand and create script modules and manifests
  • Handle and debug scripting errors
  • Work with Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and CIM
  • Utilise PowerShell to work with and manage web data and services
  • Automate various Windows administration activities

1. Introduction to PowerShell PowerShell – The Big Picture

Why use PowerShell

PowerShell Hosts

Customising the Hosting Environment

Navigating the PowerShell Host

Transcripts

 

2. Getting Help in PowerShell How to Get Help Using Help and “About” Files

Parameterising Help

 

3. Running Commands

Using Cmdlets

Aliases

Using Cmdlet Parameters

Basic Rules You Must Follow

 

4. Working with Modules What is a Module?

Using Modules

Managing Modules

 

5. Working with PowerShell Operators What are Operators?

Comparison Operators

Logical Operators

Arithmetic Operators

String Operators

Math Operators

Other Operators

 

6. Working with PowerShell Objects What are Objects in PowerShell?

Properties and Methods

Sorting Objects

Selecting Object Properties

Filtering Objects

Grouping Objects

Measuring Objects

Enumerating Objects

Working with Objects

 

7. Inside the PowerShell Pipeline What is the Pipeline?

Passing Objects through the Pipeline

Passing Parameters through the Pipeline

Other Pipeline Issues

 

 

8. Inputting, Outputting, and Formatting Data

Passing Data into the Shell

Outputting Data

Exporting Data

Formatting Data

 

9. Remoting in PowerShell What is Remoting?

Remoting Issues

Implementing Remoting

Creating Remoting Sessions

Managing Sessions

Testing Remoting

 

10. Running and Scheduling Jobs

Running Jobs Locally

Running Jobs with Remoting

Managing Jobs

WMI Jobs

Creating and Managing Scheduled jobs

 

11. Credentials

Credentials Overview

Implementing Credentials

 

12. Utilising Regular Expressions

Regular Expression Syntax

Working with Regular Expressions

Applied Examples

 

13. Working with HTML and XML Data

Reading and Manipulating an HTML Page

Converting Data to HTML

Reading and Manipulating XML Data

Exporting Data to XML

Reading XML Nodes with Select-XML

 

14. PowerShell Providers and PSDrives

Introducing PSProviders

Introducing PSDrives

Working with PSDrives

Refining Searches for Items

Working with Items

Working with Item Properties

 

 

15. Working with Variables and Arrays

Naming Variables

Variable Data Types

Working with Variables

Built in Variables

Working with Arrays

 

16. Hash Tables and Script Blocks

Working with Hash tables

Ordered Hash Tables

Implementing Hash Tables

Defining Script Blocks

 

17. PowerShell Security

Introducing PowerShell Security

How Security is Implemented in PowerShell

The Execution Policy

 

18. Advanced PowerShell Syntax

Here-Strings

Splatting

Running External Utilities

Other Techniques

 

19. Controlling Script Execution

PowerShell’s Scripting Language Defining conditions

Looping Through Code

Looping Through Collections of Objects

Break and Continue

Branching Constructs

 

20. Scripts and Functions

Creating Scripts

Passing Data to Scripts

Outputting Data from Scripts

“Filtering” Scripts

Creating Reusable Functions

 

21. Understanding Scope

Introducing the Concept of Scope

Dot Sourcing

Manipulating Cross Scope Elements

Private Scope and Strictness

 

22. Modules and Manifests

Creating and Using Script Modules

Creating and Using Module Manifests

 

23. Handling Errors

Concepts and Terminology

Techniques for Handling Errors

The Trap Construct

The Try...Catch...Finally Construct

 

24. Debugging Scripts

Using Write-Debug

Making Use of Breakpoints

Using Set-PSDebug

 

25. WMI and CIM

Introducing WMI

Using WMI

Introducing CIM

Using CIM

 

26. Working with Web Data and Services

Retrieving Data from the Web Working with Web Responses

Working with HTML Documents

Working with JSON Data

REST and SOAP Web Services

 

27. Windows Administration Examples

Prices below are for scheduled courses held in our Edinburgh Training Centre or Live Virtual Classroom. Major discounts available for onsite or private courses: click General Enquiry button below to enquire about private courses.
Group discount
1 place £ 3750 n/a
2 places £ 4500 n/a
3 places £ 11250 £ 5250
4 places £ 15000 £ 6000
5 places £ 18750 £ 6750
6 places £ 22500 £ 7500
7 places £ 26250 £ 8250
8 places £ 30000 £ 9000