Note to Self: Learn PowerShell by using it. Do one PS thing a day…

James O'Neill's blog - You can’t be a 21st century admin without PowerShell

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I’ve been saying the same thing in different ways a lot recently. The slide on the left was in the session I delivered at the big Wembley event in October.  A few people picked up that I’d said “Everyone should learn PowerShell”, and I’ve since had to explain that this requires a suitable definition of “Everyone”. But it is my firm belief that IT professionals working Microsoft technology are at an advantage if they know at least the basics of PowerShell. …

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I took the following list from one of the Slides in the Wembley deck: – it is not designed to be complete but to show pre-eminence of PowerShell in the Microsoft world.

In Server-R2 there is:

• PowerShell for Active Directory
• PowerShell for Applocker
• PowerShell for Best Practices
• PowerShell for BITS transfer
• PowerShell for Clustering
• PowerShell for Group Policy
• PowerShell for Installing components
• PowerShell for Migration
• PowerShell for Remote-Desktop
• PowerShell for Server Backup
• PowerShell for Web admin

Not forgetting that we also have;

• PowerShell for Exchange 2007
• PowerShell for HPC
• PowerShell for HyperV @ codeplex.com
• PowerShell for OCS in the OCS Res-kit
• PowerShell for SQL 2008 R2
• PowerShell for System Center

You can see anyone who says “I don’t do PowerShell” is at a disadvantage, …

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The successful admin is not automatically the one who knows every possible way to use every possible command in PowerShell. Nor the one who turns their back on GUI to do everything from the command line , but the one who understands the tools available for the task at hand, can select the right one, and can put it to use competently. PowerShell is one of the tools available in so many cases in the Microsoft world, that you can’t meet that definition without it.”

I really want to get comfortable with PowerShell. Like James I feel that not knowing it, not being comfortable with it, is going to put me at a disadvantage.

So I’m going to try something. I, like most of us, learn by doing so I’m going to try to do one PS thing a day. I’m not going to bore you all with posts of my journey, but instead simply try to make PS a part of my day to day life… We’ll see. Worth a try at least… :)