I’ll be fleshing this section out as the weeks go on with some of my favorite PowerShell and System Center Resources.

Books

My first exposure to PowerShell was during a competitive job interview. Head to head with another hopeful admin to be, both competing in a language we’d never used before: PowerShell!

They handed us a guide, and gave a list of tasks. This was the guide

Don Jones’ ‘18.8 Minute PowerShell crash course‘ –

My next exposure after my initial appetite was fanned was through his excellent Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches book, now in it’s third version! My own has dozens and dozens of tabs in it. I love this book, because I was able to pick it up, read a chapter and then by the end of my lunch, have learned something interesting, useful and new every day. Because the examples grew in complexity, I was constantly going back and upgrading my old scripts when I picked up new tips.

Been reading a lot of materials from the community, participating in scripting games and on forums like Reddit, Microsoft and PowerShell.org.

My new favorite book is Windows PowerShell in Action, by Bruce Payett. Awesome book, gives you a behind the scenes into how PowerShell was made, what the challenges were and how they dealt with ideas from other languages. Very very good source for some deep dive info.

Windows PowerShell in Action, Second Edition

Videos

Must watch! Jeffrey Snover and Jason Helmick in their fantastic PowerShell Jumpstart Course.  This is for version 3.0, so it doesn’t mention DSC, but it is still relevant.

https://mva.microsoft.com/en-US/training-courses/getting-started-with-powershell-30-jump-start-8276

The follow-up, advanced toolmaking with Jeffrey and Jason.  A must for any scripter.

https://mva.microsoft.com/en-US/training-courses/advanced-tools-scripting-with-powershell-30-jump-start-8277?l=WOWaGUWy_8604984382

The DSC Jump Start, w/ Jeffrey and Jason

https://mva.microsoft.com/en-US/training-courses/advanced-powershell-desired-state-configuration-dsc-and-custom-resources-8702

 

I really enjoyed this security talk by Chris Campbell on using PowerShell for incident response.

Using Microsofts Incident Response Language Chris Campbell

Much better quality video of Snover’s “Monad Manifesto Revisited”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0EX5R2nnRI&list=PLfeA8kIs7Coehjg9cB6foPjBojLHYQGb_&index=1

Videos from PowerShell Summit 2014 Europe

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfeA8kIs7Coehjg9cB6foPjBojLHYQGb_