PowerShell in Practice

One Minute Bottom Line

PowerShell in Practice is an excellent introduction to both PowerShell itself and PowerShell for systems administation. The author covers learning to use PowerShell and practical uses in many important Windows systems administration areas.

Review

PowerShell in Practice is an excellent book on PowerShell and using Powershell to administer Windows systems and applications. The book is divided into three parts and had five appendices.

Part 1, Getting Started with PowerShell is a great introduction to the language and writing scripts in it. Siddaway uses the 4 chapters in this part to lay the foundation for what will be learned in the last 2 parts of the book.

Part 2, Working with Users, introduces the basics of working with users and their mailboxes in Active Directory and Exchange, and also goes over using PowerShell to script administration of client desktops.

Part 3, Working with Servers, begins with administration of Windows servers themselves, similiar to the chapter on administering client desktops, and goes on from there. Siddaway then covers DNS and Active Directory administration in depth, as well as Exchange 2007, IIS 7 and SQL Server administration. The final chapter covers some of the many PowerShell innovations that are available in Windows Server 2008 R2.

The appendices include a PowerShell language reference, introductions to more advanced topics such as modules and events, and useful links.

I read an advanced proof of the book, so the finished product may have better readability than I rated here.

Overall, the book is excellent and I highly recommend it. Some of the material is more suited for larger enterprise situations, but most will be useful to any Windows system administrator.