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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Leverage the power of PowerShell to bring the best out of your AWS infrastructure
About This Book
- A collection of real-world-tested Powershell scripts that can be used to manage your Windows server efficiently
- Follow step-by-step processes to solve your problems with Windows servers using AWS tools
- Design examples that work in the Amazon free usage tier, which lets you run the Windows platform on cloud
Who This Book Is For
This book will be useful for (but not limited to) Windows System administrators, cloud engineers, architects, DevOps engineers, and all those who want to accomplish tasks on the AWS Public Cloud using PowerShell.
What You Will Learn
- Install the AWS Tools for PowerShell 6
- Understand key services provided by Amazon Web services (AWS)
- Understand the Virtual Private Cloud
- Use PowerShell 6 for AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
- Use PowerShell 6 for AWS Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
- Use PowerShell 6 for AWS Simple Storage Service (S3)
- Use PowerShell 6 for AWS Relational Database Service (RDS)
- Build fault-tolerant and highly-available applications using PowerShell 6
In Detail
AWS Tools for PowerShell 6 shows you exactly how to automate all the aspects of AWS. You can take advantage of the amazing power of the cloud, yet add powerful scripts and mechanisms to perform common tasks faster than ever before.
This book expands on the Amazon documentation with real-world, useful examples and production-ready scripts to automate all the aspects of your new cloud platform. It will cover topics such as managing Windows with PowerShell, setting up security services, administering database services, and deploying and managing networking. You will also explore advanced topics such as PowerShell authoring techniques, and configuring and managing storage and content delivery.
By the end of this book, you will be able to use Amazon Web Services to automate and manage Windows servers. You will also have gained a good understanding of automating the AWS infrastructure using simple coding.
Style and approach
This step-by-step guide starts with simple examples then expands to full-blown administrative tasks leading to the efficient management of Windows servers. Each topic covers a section related to Amazon Web Services products, and the examples are built on one another to deliver a comprehensive library of scripts for administrators.
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Seitenzahl: 380
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
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BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
AWS Tools for PowerShell 6
Copyright © 2017 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: August 2017
Production reference: 1020817
ISBN 978-1-78588-407-8
www.packtpub.com
Credits
Author
Ramesh Waghmare
Copy Editors
Yesha Gangani
Juliana Nair
Reviewer
Mark Andrews
Project Coordinator
Judie Jose
Commissioning Editor
Vijin Boricha
Proofreader
Safis Editing
Acquisition Editor
Shrilekha Inani
Indexer
Aishwarya Gangawane
Content Development Editor
Abhishek Jadhav
Graphics
Kirk D'Penha
Technical Editor
Aditya Khadye
Production Coordinator
Aparna Bhagat
About the Author
Ramesh Waghmare is a technology evangelist who has been in the IT industry for over 20 years and has extensively worked in ICT operations, software development, deployment, and critical systems production support. Throughout his IT career, he has had the opportunity to work in roles such as senior developer, senior database administrator, manager, and architect, which have helped him to build expertise in various IT solutions and implementations from the business perspective and its simplicity to use.
He is a strategic thinker, focusing always on quality delivery to the client ensuring satisfaction at both ends. He has experience of leading and managing a team of technical and non-technical team members. He is a natural leader who inspires, is curious, and is very self-aware. He has a strategic mindset with practical orientation that enables team growth and continuous improvement with a positive outlook. He has strong organizational, analytical, and problem-solving skills, with incredible attention to detail. He has successfully implemented solutions involving cross-functional/cross-geography teams.
He is a sound expert in database technologies such as Oracle, MYSQL, and SQL Server, and in operating systems such as Linux, UNIX, and Windows. In addition, he has a great understanding of open source databases. He is also a certified AWS solution architect and has helped a number of clients to move from their isolated data centers to the public/private cloud.
He has also published a Kindle version of the book called AWS for Oracle DBA and Architect.
Academically, he has completed his MBA in information system, backed by an engineering degree in computer science. He is also a certified AWS solution architect and DevOps engineer at a professional level, holding other several key industry standard certifications.
About the Reviewer
Mark Andrews' career in technology has been a varied one. Over the last 20 years, he has held several different positions, ranging from customer service to quality assurance. Throughout all of these positions, the responsibility of configuration and build management has always fallen either to Mark personally or to one of the groups that he managed. His "keeping a hand in" management style has kept him closely involved in the scripting and automation framework for this area. Creating scripted frameworks that intercommunicate across machine/operating system/domain boundaries is a passion for him.
He has also worked on the following books:
PowerShell 3.0 Advanced Administration Handbook
Windows PowerShell 4.0 for .NET Developers
PowerShell for SQL Server Essentials
Microsoft Exchange Server PowerShell Essentials
Microsoft Exchange Server PowerShell Cookbook (Third Edition)
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Table of Contents
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support
Downloading the color images of this book
Errata
Piracy
Questions
PowerShell Essentials
Why PowerShell?
Running PowerShell
Reading the PowerShell language
Getting and exploring help options
Discovering cmdlets and aliases
Learning cmdlets
Risk mitigation parameters
Working with output
Running PowerShell remotely
Building parameterized script
Comment-based help
Summary
The AWS Overview
Disruptive innovations - AWS Cloud
The benefits of AWS cloud computing
Common challenges of shifting to the cloud
The AWS global infrastructure
Security and compliance
AWS services
Virtual Private Cloud
Elastic Compute Cloud
Simple Storage Service
Glacier
CloudWatch
Simple Notification Service
Relational Database Service
CloudFormation
Identify and Access Management
CloudTrail
AWS Config
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
Laying out foundations
The AWS sign up
The organization provided AWS account
Get supported
Summary
Installing PowerShell Core and AWS Tools
AWS Tools for PowerShell
Installing PowerShell 6 On Windows
Installing PowerShell 6 on Linux
Prerequisites for AWS Tools
Downloading and installing AWS Tools
Enabling script execution
Finding the AWS Tool version
Updating AWS Tools for PowerShell
Summary
AWS Identity and Access Management
The AWS-shared responsibility model
Setting up AWS Tools for access
Managing AWS credentials
The AWS credential search order
Creating IAM users
Creating IAM groups
Accessing the AWS console
Accessing AWS via CLI
Removing a policy from the group
Revoking a policy from the user
What are IAM roles?
IAM policies
Dropping groups, roles, and users
Dropping PowerShell AWS profiles
The use case - access key rotation
Summary
AWS Virtual Private Cloud
Laying the foundation
Virtual Private Cloud
Internet Gateways
Route Tables
Subnets
NAT Gateway
Network Access List
Security Groups
Summary
AWS Elastic Compute Cloud
The characteristics of AWS EC2
The EC2 instance purchasing options
On-demand
Reserved
Spot
Dedicated
Understanding IP addresses on EC2
Storage options on EC2
Instance storage
Elastic Block Storage
Spinning up an EC2 instance
Accessing the EC2 instance
The EC2 instance metadata service
Stopping the EC2 instance
Starting the EC2 instance
The Elastic IP address
Terminating the EC2 instance
Placement Groups
Assigning an IAM role to the EC2 instance
The types of EBS
EBS SSD backed volumes
EBS HDD backed volumes
Amazon Machine Images
EBS snapshots
Summary
AWS Simple Storage Service
AWS Glacier
Storage classes on S3
The S3 bucket
Folders and objects
Downloading folders and objects from the S3 bucket
Managing S3 permissions
IAM policies
Bucket policies
Access Control Lists
Building S3 VPC endpoints
S3 Transfer Acceleration
S3 versioning
S3 lifecycle policies
Cross-region replication
Removing the S3 bucket
Summary
Elastic Load Balancer
Why load balancer?
Types of Elastic Load Balancers
Classic Load Balancer
Application Load Balancer
Application Load Balancer components
Creating Classic Load Balancer
Creating Application Load Balancer
Deleting Elastic Load Balancer
Summary
Auto Scaling
Auto Scaling components
Auto Scaling lifecycle
Fleet management
Dynamic scaling
Creating launch configuration
Creating an Auto Scaling Group
Increasing a fleet manually
Scaling-Out and Scaling-In dynamically
Scaling on schedule
Lifecycle hooks and cooldown
Termination policies
Termination protection
Suspending the Auto Scaling process
Standby mode
Deleting an Auto Scaling Group
Summary
Laying Foundation for RDS Databases
Database engines on RDS
Deployment consideration
DB instance classes
Multi-AZ and standby
Read replicas
Compliance
Data encryption
Database access and IAM
DB Security Groups
DB Subnet Groups
DB Parameter Groups
DB Option Groups
Summary
DB Instance Administration and Management
RDS storage type
Licensing models on RDS
Understanding maintenance windows
Spinning up RDS DB instances
Multi-AZ deployment
Enabling encryption on RDS
Connecting to an RDS instance with and without SSL
Stop, start, and restart of a DB instance
Adding space to a DB instance
RDS backup
RDS restore
Manual snapshot of the RDS instance
Deleting an RDS instance
Checking account limit and attributes
Summary
Working with RDS Read Replicas
Creating read replicas
Rebooting read replicas
Connecting to a read replica
Promoting read replicas to primary
Deleting read replicas
Use case - balancing traffic between read replicas
Summary
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
What is Elastic Beanstalk?
Elastic Beanstalk components
Environment types
Understanding deployment models on Elastic Beanstalk
Creating application
Creating a configuration template
Creating an environment
Deploying a popular WordPress application
Cloning an environment
Swapping an environment CNAME
Deleting an environment and application
Summary
AWS CloudFormation
What is CloudFormation?
Authoring and template anatomy
Intrinsic functions
Cross stack references
Creating a base network using CloudFormation
Validating a base network template
Running a base network template
Creating an EC2 instance using CloudFormation
Nested stack
Stack policies
Helper scripts
Dropping the template
Summary
AWS CloudWatch
CloudWatch
Types of CloudWatch monitoring
CloudWatch alarm states
Simple Notification Service
Creating SNS topics
Subscribing to the topic
Monitoring EC2 instances
Creating an alarm for an EC2 instance
Custom monitoring for an EC2 instance
Monitoring RDS DB instances
CloudWatch logs
Summary
AWS Resource Auditing
Introduction to CloudTrail
Why CloudTrail?
CloudTrail events
Create CloudTrail
Enabling CloudTrail
AWS Config
Enabling Config
Removing the delivery channel and recorder
Summary
Preface
PowerShell, originally developed by Microsoft, is a popular scripting language. With the cloud infrastructure addition and the heterogonous environment, there is a high degree of complexity in the IT environment. Without automating your routine task, it is practically impossible to keep the required governance, compliance, and control in your IT shop. Though there are many scripting tools available on the market that you can make use of to automate your workload, PowerShell stands out from others. With increasing complexity in the IT environment, you need a tool that can provide you a single pane to work with multiple cloud and hybrid environments. PowerShell provides you with that unified experience. It is a command-line and scripting language. Most of the industry-leading product creators have a module for PowerShell that can work with their product, whereas this is not the case with other tools. PowerShell is object-based, and this gives the incredible flexibility to filter, sort, measure, group, compare, or take other actions on objects as they pass through the PowerShell pipeline. Last year, Microsoft announced that PowerShell 6 is open source and will support Linux, macOS, and other platforms in addition to Windows. That makes PowerShell an even stronger candidate for providing universal shell to work in multicloud, hybrid, and heterogeneous environments.
In this book, we will explore how you can interact and work with many AWS services via PowerShell. We will learn how we can build highly available and fault-tolerant applications using Elastic Load Balancer and Auto Scaling. In addition, we will learn how Elastic Beanstalk and CloudFormation will help you to deploy the AWS infrastructure and application. We will also touch upon the popular MySQL Relational Database Service and learn how to spin up and work with DB Instances. Finally, we will learn about built-in monitoring and auditing capabilities that you should always consider in your AWS infrastructure.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, PowerShell Essentials, introduces the PowerShell and its cmdlet structure, provides ways to get help on specific cmdlets, and helps you build parameterized scripts with your own built-in help. We will also cover risk mitigation parameters in PowerShell that are required to know when you work in a highly complex environment.
Chapter 2, The AWS Overview, introduces you with AWS Cloud and helps you to understand the several benefits that AWS Cloud brings to the table. It also walks you through the different services provided by AWS and the signing up process with AWS.
Chapter 3, Installing PowerShell Core and AWS Tools, walks you through the installation process of PowerShell 6 and AWS Tools for PowerShell 6. It also discusses the security aspects in PowerShell and updating the new versions of AWS Tools as and when available.
Chapter 4, AWS Identity and Access Management, focuses on creating the PowerShell profile for storing the AWS credential. In addition, you will learn how to create IAM users, groups, and roles.
Chapter 5, AWS Virtual Private Cloud, dives more into the foundational network that you can consider before deploying your AWS infrastructure. It discusses more about the various components around building your AWS private network.
Chapter 6, AWS Elastic Compute Cloud, explains the EC2 service and also discusses how you can spin up and work with virtual machines in the cloud. It also focuses on the storage that can be used while working with EC2.
Chapter 7, AWS Simple Storage Service, introduces you the object store provided by AWS and discusses the various storage classes used by S3. You will learn about creating buckets and managing bucket permissions.
Chapter 8, Elastic Load Balancer, discusses two types of load balancer that are available with AWS and provides insight on how both of them work.
Chapter 9, Auto Scaling, focuses on the core components of horizontal scaling on AWS. It will cover fleet management and dynamic scaling of your application infrastructure.
Chapter 10, Laying Foundation for RDS Databases, introduces you to various aspects of Relational Database Service and helps you build the foundation for your RDS database deployment.
Chapter 11, DB Instance Administration and Management, introduces you to RDS storage types, licensing on RDS, maintenance windows, and working with DB instances. You will also learn multi-AZ deployment and running backups on RDS.
Chapter 12, Working with RDS Read Replicas, discusses MySQL read replica and how we can balance the traffic between multiple read replicas.
Chapter 13, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, focuses on deploying the application using Elastic Beanstalk. You will learn various deployment strategies that you can use while deploying your application on Elastic Beanstalk.
Chapter 14, AWS CloudFormation, discusses how you can build a CloudFormation template to deploy your AWS infrastructure. You will learn about the CloudFormation template YAML format and the structuring around it. We will also discuss submitting the template and tracking events generated by the stack creation process.
Chapter 15, AWS CloudWatch, introduces you to the in-built monitoring service and explains how we can create metrics and alarms using CloudWatch. It also focuses on CloudWatch Logs, which can be used for monitoring your application and server log files.
Chapter 16, AWS Resource Auditing, discusses the two most important management services, CloudTrail and Config. We will learn how you can enable CloudTrail and Config in your AWS account.
What you need for this book
You need an AWS account and basic knowledge of cloud computing. If you have some scripting experience using PowerShell, it would be a big plus. In addition, if you have any other cloud experience, that will help you to understand the concepts very easily.
In this book, you will need the following software:
PowerShell 6
AWS Tools for the PowerShell.NetCore module
Internet connectivity is required to install both the modules mentioned.
Who this book is for
This book is for all the cloud professionals who want to know the working of PowerShell with the AWS Cloud. If you are new to AWS, you can always refer to https://aws.amazon.com/ and read about various services provided by AWS. Mostly, DevOps cloud engineers will benefit the most from this book as it demonstrates command-line capability of doing many things via PowerShell.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning. Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Once you start PowerShell, you can mostly use get-host or $PSVersionTable to check the version of PowerShell."
A block of code is set as follows:
{ "Id": "key-consolepolicy-3", "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Sid": "Enable IAM User Permissions", "Effect": "Allow", "Principal": { "AWS": [ "arn:aws:iam::072316406132:root" ] },
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
PS C:\>Get-Service
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "You can start an ISE environment by clicking on Windows PowerShell ISE."
Reader feedback
Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book-what you liked or disliked. Reader feedback is important for us as it helps us develop titles that you will really get the most out of. To send us general feedback, simply e-mail [email protected], and mention the book's title in the subject of your message. If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide at www.packtpub.com/authors.
Customer support
Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.
Downloading the color images of this book
We also provide you with a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. The color images will help you better understand the changes in the output. You can download this file from https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/AWSToolsforPowerShell6_ColorImages.pdf.
Errata
Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books-maybe a mistake in the text or the code-we would be grateful if you could report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the Errata Submission Form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded to our website or added to any list of existing errata under the Errata section of that title. To view the previously submitted errata, go to https://www.packtpub.com/books/content/support, and enter the name of the book in the search field. The required information will appear under the Errata section.
Piracy
Piracy of copyrighted material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy. Please contact us at [email protected] with a link to the suspected pirated material. We appreciate your help in protecting our authors and our ability to bring you valuable content.
Questions
If you have a problem with any aspect of this book, you can contact us at [email protected], and we will do our best to address the problem.
PowerShell Essentials
PowerShell is marching toward one of the greatest scripting and automation tools of all time. It is increasingly important to learn PowerShell if you are working with Microsoft products and surrounding ecosystems. Considering various limitations on the command-line management exposed using MS-DOS, Microsoft started to develop a new approach to the command-line management way back in 2002 and introduced a shell called Monad. It was September 2006 when Microsoft renamed Monad to PowerShell Version 1. Since then, there have been several versions released, and the current stable version is PowerShell 5. Last year, in 2016, Microsoft announced PowerShell Core 6 on GitHub, being not only open source but also cross-platform. This is what will make PowerShell more popular because of its capability to automate things on Linux as well as macOS.
So, where is PowerShell heading from here on? What is the future of PowerShell? Microsoft is aware of the fact that every business will have a cloud-first strategy and a complex infrastructure to manage. Microsoft's initial intention was to ease the Windows-based server administration and maintenance, but now they are strategically moving ahead to make PowerShell as a standard scripting platform for customers so that it can be used on Windows, Linux, and macOS. The open source nature of PowerShell will fuel the PowerShell growth and will help to build the trusted artifact gallery quickly. Businesses will adopt the multi-cloud strategy and there is no single answer of how to best manage multi-cloud. Management is absolutely the secret ingredient for multi-cloud, and there is no common API that is available to manage multi-cloud effectively. Over a period of time, PowerShell will become a mature scripting language to manage the multi-cloud and hybrid environment. And this is one of the biggest intentions of Microsoft, making it cross-platform in the PowerShell Core.
In this chapter, we will learn about the PowerShell cmdlet and how to get help on each cmdlet. We will also touch base on how PowerShell cmdlets are structured. In addition, we will learn about risk mitigation parameters and building your own help for the scripts that you create.
Why PowerShell?
If you are an IT admin or a developer, you will want to learn PowerShell. Learning PowerShell will enhance your ability to manage your entire IT infrastructure. It is a very rich scripting environment, but I do not want you to limit your thinking that it is just a scripting language. First, it can perform the same task on thousands of servers without logging in and help IT admins or developers to keep all the work consistent on all the servers. This is amazing, isn't it? Second, it is also used for task automation. When we think about the server configuration or deployment, we can use PowerShell to do all kinds of things that we want in our environment. Third, it is also object oriented. What I mean here is that everything we do inside of PowerShell is treated like an object, even if the object is a service, process, or just a server. Because of its object-oriented capability, many developers started using PowerShell even though it traditionally looks like an IT admin tool.
Microsoft is putting its full weight behind PowerShell. PowerShell is not going away; it is rather creating a big footprint in the task automation area, as Microsoft announced its intention to make PowerShell open sourced. They know that customers are really having heterogeneous environment in their IT shops, and this is why they thought to make PowerShell available to the community so that it becomes standard for IT automation in data centers. Microsoft also made it mandatory to have a PowerShell support for each product they released. Other vendors such as NetApp, IBM, VMWare, Dell, AWS, and several others have strong support for PowerShell. So, PowerShell is going to stay, and your reward for learning PowerShell is the improved ability to control and automate many technologies that it integrates and works with.
Running PowerShell
Different versions of Windows come with different version of PowerShell. For example, Windows 8 and Windows Server 2013 have PowerShell 3.0, whereas Windows 8.1 comes with PowerShell 4.0 by default. On Windows 10 and later, you see PowerShell 5 installed by default. For now, we will just focus on running PowerShell on your Windows desktop. I am running Windows 10 at the time of writing this book; thus I will use Windows 10 to demonstrate the concept to know more about PowerShell. At the same time, this chapter is not intended to make you an expert in PowerShell scripting; it is rather to help you know the very basics of the PowerShell environment so that you are all set for the journey that you are planning in this book to learn AWS Tools for PowerShell Core. This would help if you are new to PowerShell. You do not need to be an expert, but understanding the basic commands in PowerShell will help you. If you are keen to learn more about PowerShell, my suggestion is to consider buying other PowerShell-related books or take some online training to gain more insight into this beautiful scripting language.
You only need to type the first few letters of the word PowerShell on the start screen. As we discussed earlier, Microsoft announced PowerShell Core 6, which is still in beta at the time of writing this book. So, I have downloaded the PowerShell Core 6 beta version from the GitHub repository. I will be using PowerShell Core 6 on Windows 10 as we move forward. You may want to pin PowerShell into your taskbar rather than starting this way, by typing in the start screen window every time you run PowerShell:
There are four options that you will see in most of the Windows PowerShell environment. If you see (x86) in the options, such as Windows PowerShell (x86) or Windows PowerShell ISE (x86), it means that it is 32-bit binaries for PowerShell, and without (x86) they are 64-bit binaries available for PowerShell. Windows PowerShell ISE is a nice GUI and an Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE). You can start an ISE environment by clicking on Windows PowerShell ISE ;or by just running the ise command inside PowerShell. The best thing about ISE is that it has a lot of advantages to it. Not only can you see the scripting pane at the top, which allows you to write rich and robust scripts, but you can also have error checks and debugging built into it, so you can step through the script one at a time if you want to do so.
Once you start PowerShell, you can mostly use get-host or $PSVersionTable to check the version of PowerShell. get-host works in all versions of PowerShell, whereas $PSVersionTable works in PowerShell version 2 and later.
Reading the PowerShell language
PowerShell is a natural language that you can learn quickly. There are four types of commands that PowerShell can run. Those are windows native, aliases, scripts, and cmdlet. Many people think that the only thing that PowerShell can do is run cmdlet, but that's not all true. Certainly, cmdlets are more popular, but in addition, you can run Windows native commands, aliases, and scripts. Cmdlets have a unique structure. There are thousands of cmdlet provided by AWS for managing the AWS infrastructure. Almost all the cmdlets work in a similar way, and this simplifies the scripting. All cmdlets have two parts. The first part is a verb and the second part is a noun. Usually, the verb indicates an action for the command, and the noun indicates a specific service or program. Set, get, add, and remove are some of the most popular verbs that you will see in PowerShell.
General syntax for cmdlet is:
Cmdlet structure: <verb> - <noun>
Dash (-) in between the verb and noun completes the Windows PowerShell command. It is also a PowerShell convention to use singular nouns. While it is not universally applied, if you are not sure whether a noun is singular or plural, go with singular. Let's say, if you want to see list of services running on Windows, then Get-Service is the cmdlet that you can use and not Get-Services:
PS C:\>Get-Service
Note that PowerShell cmdlets are not case sensitive, so if you type Get-Service or get-service in the PowerShell command prompt, both of them are going to yield the same result. You can get the list of common verbs used by PowerShell by running the following:
PS C:\>Get-Verb
This will give you an idea of how many verbs that PowerShell uses.
Getting and exploring help options
Microsoft has designed PowerShell in such a way that it is easy to use for complex scripting and automation tasks, and it is also easy to use for an interactive command. The standard naming convention used for a PowerShell cmdlet will assist you in figuring out how to accomplish certain tasks. Understanding the help system capability in PowerShell will help you to write the complex scripting cases in a large infrastructure setup, and the help system in PowerShell will become your most important resource. On some Windows systems, in case you do not find the help system installed, you can update it using the update-Help cmdlet:
PS C:\>Update-Help -Force
Force with Update-Help indicates that the Update-Help cmdlet does not follow the once-per-day limitation; it skips version checking and downloads files that exceed the 1 GB limit. Also, you need to ensure that you started PowerShell as an administrator before attempting to run this command.
The Get-Help cmdlet displays information about the necessary help for any other cmdlet that you need the information for. You can seek help on any cmdlet using Get-Help. For example, if you want to seek information on the Get-Process cmdlet, then you can use the following command:
PS C:\>Get-Help Get-Process
The output shows the help for Get-Process. I would encourage you to check the following commonly used variant of the Get-Help cmdlet, which would feed you more detailed information on the specific cmdlet. This is what will help you to understand the command usage in detail when you start scripting:
PS C:\>Get-Help Get-Process -ShowWindow
PS C:\>Get-Help Get-Process -Detailed
PS C:\>Get-Help Get-Process -Full
PS C:\>Get-Help Get-Process -Online
Discovering cmdlets and aliases
If you are new to PowerShell, you must be excited to know about all the cmdlets and aliases available. It is an easy language to read and learn. You might want to know how many cmdlets and aliases are out there that you can use in your scripting language. Wait, that's very simple. You can unleash the list of all cmdlets and aliases just using a couple of commands. Get-Command is the cmdlet that will list you all the available cmdlets:
PS C:\>Get-Command
You can further narrow down the discovery using some keyword, and this is major plus point, which lets you quickly search and use the appropriate cmdlet in your script. You do not need to remember any cmdlet; just think of a specific action or service that you want to do, and pass it on to theGet-Commandcmdlet to further refine the search. If you want to list all the process-related cmdlets, then you can use this:
PS C:\>Get-Command *process*
Once you see the available list, you can pick up the most appropriate one and get help using the Get-Help cmdlet. This is the best way to learn about various cmdlets. There is nothing like a fixed set of cmdlets available. This list is growing everyday. As and when you add a module, a new set of cmdlets associated with the service or product will be added in the list. Moving further, when we install AWS Tools for PowerShell, a new set of cmdlets will be added, and we will be making use of this new set of cmdlets to work with AWS Cloud.
Another way you can work with commands inside PowerShell is via aliases. Aliases are how you can bridge your knowledge about cmdlets, where you are coming from to where you want to go inside of PowerShell. For example, Get-ChildItem is the cmdlet used for listing all the items in the present working directory, or you can specify the location. If you are a Windows guy, using dir for quite a long time, you may prefer to continue to use this instead of using Get-ChildItem. If you are a Linux guy, then you may prefer to use ls. So, if you type dir, ls, or gci at the command prompt, then all of them will lead to the same result as thrown by Get-ChildItem. Are dir, ls, and gci different commands? The answer is NO. dir, ls, and gci are the aliases for Get-ChildItem. So, if you type Get-Alias in the command prompt, it will list you all the aliases defined in the PowerShell. You can also create your own aliases using Set-Alias. To get the list of existing alias, you can run the following command:
PS C:\>Get-Alias
You can specify the name of the alias with Get-Alias to know the parent cmdlet; for example:
PS C:\>Get-Alias
dir
PS C:\>Get-Alias
ls
PS C:\>Get-Alias
gci
Learning cmdlets
There are thousands of cmdlets available. Don't worry. It's not very scary. Don't think that you need to remember all those cmdlets to be a good IT admin or a developer. I do not know anybody who claims that he knows all the cmdlets. As I said earlier, the number of cmdlets are increasing day by day; what is important to know is how to get help on those cmdlets, discover the cmdlets, and learn the properties associated with specific cmdlets. Let's dive a little deeper into one cmdlet called Get-Service. Now, if you run this cmdlet in the PowerShell command prompt, you find that it returned just three columns.
Does that mean that it has just got three columns? The answer is NO. There are methods and properties associated with each cmdlet. You can learn more about those methods and properties using the Get-Member cmdlet with Get-Service.
This way you can learn about the cmdlet that you plan to use in your scripting. You can now see that there are several properties and methods that you can make use of instead of the default output. Usually, if you are a developer, you will love to know more about the methods so that you can interact with the service using code.
Let's assume that you are interested in Name, Status, and StartType. You can tweak the output now using Format-List or Format-Table cmdlet as follows:
PS C:\>Get-Service | Format-List Name, Status, StartTypePS C:\>Get-Service | Format-Table Name, Status, StartType
Risk mitigation parameters
PowerShell has two risk mitigation parameters called WhatIf and Confirm. They are very useful for testing complicated scripts without risking the code running amok. By appending WhatIf and Confirm, you get a preview of what could have happened without risking the damage. Let's take a real-life example of a file deletion using a wildcard. Consider that there are some files, and you plan to delete them. But you want to ensure that you are deleting the right set of files that you intend to delete. Because you are using a wildcard, the consequences could be very serious. Hence, it is always prudent to ensure that you are not risking the run of the command. Lets assume that you want to remove file*.txt files from some directory; you can use WhatIf something like following:
PS C:\>Get-Childitem C:\somedata\file*.txt -Recurse | Remove-Item -WhatIf
In the example, we used file*.txt (with a wildcard), and the command did not make any permanent change when you appended the command with WhatIf. The command run is just letting us know that if you run it without WhatIf, it is going to delete all those five files. Likewise, you can use Confirm by appending at the end of the command to get a confirmation if the specific file can be deleted or not:
PS C:\>Get-Childitem C:\somedata\file*.txt -Recurse | Remove-Item -Confirm
These two risk mitigation parameters are really powerful when you start rolling out the script to hundreds of servers, and it will help to ease your anxiety a little bit.
Working with output
As you work with PowerShell, sending out output and controlling the formatting of the output is very easy. Redirecting output is also a common use of the Pipe (|) operator that you find in PowerShell. There are different ways to deal with the output of the commands. As highlighted earlier, you can use the Format-List and Format-Table cmdlet to get the required properties in the output. In case you want to save the output to the file, you can use the out-file or export-csv parameter with the cmdlet. For example, let's say you want to save the services output to the file, then you simply use this:
PS C:\>Get-Service | out-file C:\services.txt
Or you use this:
PS C:\>Get-Service | export-csv C:\services.txt
One of the best things that you can find in PowerShell is called a grid view. It allows you to output the data to the GUI where you can work with it a little bit easier, especially when you are looking to manipulate data and get a quick peek on what's going on in a particular server or what's happening with a particular cmdlet. Out-GridView offers a great alternative instead of trying to figure out how to output to a file or a different table:
PS C:\>Get-Service | Out-GridView
This will just display the default properties into the grid view and not all the properties. But wait, you cannot combine Out-GridView with the Format-List and Format-Table commands. If you want to control what parameters go into the grid view, then the Select-Object cmdlet is what comes to the rescue:
PS C:\>Get-Service | Select-Object DisplayName,Status | Out-GridView
If you want all the parameters to send to the grid view, then you can use this:
PS C:\>Get-Service | Select-Object * | Out-GridView
If you are looking to get the quick details, then the grid view is the way to go.
Running PowerShell remotely
One of the advantages of PowerShell is accessing the remote servers. Running commands on remote servers is called PowerShell remoting, and this is not something new. Many IT admins run PowerShell on their client-side desktops and access servers located in different data centers to ease the administrative effort. In the cmdlets, there is a ComputerName parameter that you can use to run the command on the remote server. You just need to ensure that the ComputerName parameter specified is seen on the network and has a remoting option enabled. Let's say you want to run the Get-Service cmdlet on the server called apps1, then you can run this:
PS C:\>Get-Service -ComputerName apps1
So, all the cmdlets that you run locally can be run on the remote server just by specifying the ComputerName parameter with it.
PowerShell is locked down by default. In order to enable remoting, you have to run the Enable-PsRemoting cmdlet:
PS C:\> Enable-PsRemoting -Force
This command starts the Windows Remote Management (WinRM) service, sets it to start automatically with your system, and creates a firewall rule that allows incoming connections. The Force part of the command tells PowerShell to perform these actions without prompting you for each step. You should restart the WinRM service so that new settings can take effect:
PS C:\Restart-Service WinRM
For testing the connection, you can use this:
PS C:\Test-WsMan <RemoteComputer>
PS C:\Enter-PsSession -ComputerName <RemoteComputer>
Or you can run any other cmdlet with ComputerName parameter.
Building parameterized script
When you start building script for automation that can be used by yourself and others repeatedly for doing some task, building parameterized script is the key. In PowerShell, it is very easy to build the parameterized script using just a simple param keyword in the script file. You may have solved the problem using individual cmdlets, and you now want that one to be used repeatedly for building an automation. Let's review the following script for a better understanding of using parameters:
I created a file called DiskInfo.ps1 in the D:\scripts directory. This script provides you with free GB available on the drive that you pass to this script. I am using Get-CimInstance to get me the computer name and free GB. The param keyword at the top of the script can be seen. You might just need to get a feeling of writing that syntax and nothing more. To make the drive letter mandatory, I used a keyword called Mandatory=$true. Once you saved the file, the script can be run as follows:
PS :\D>.\DiskInfo.ps1 -Drive C:
The beauty of the script is that when you start hitting the tab after the script name on the command prompt, it starts displaying you the parameters that can be passed to the script, which is amazing. This is the way you start building a new set of cmdlets for you. There is nothing else that needs to be done to build your own cmdlets.
Comment-based help
Another very important thing in PowerShell that you must know is that you can build the script with in-built help. There are no separate files that you need to maintain for your script. This is an amazing capability. There are two ways that you can write help lines in your PowerShell Script. You can either use a hash (#) in the line to indicate it's a help, or you can make use of the <#..#> block level comment. Let's use the following script to continue the discussion:
I specified a block level comment in <#..#> with some other interesting things. Once the parsing engine sees the block of lines inside <#..#>, it starts ignoring the text and knows that it is help comment. But pay special attention to the lines inside that block, which are started with a dot (.). It has a special meaning in PowerShell. PowerShell starts building your help file once it sees this dot. This is extremely helpful in PowerShell when you build a complex script that can be used by others. There is no need to maintain a separate help file. It is just like the help you seek for any other cmdlet available in PowerShell. You can simply now type the following and see the magic:
PS C:\>Get-Help .\PS_Comment.ps1 -detailed
So, you just built a help file that looks like the cmdlet help.
