PowerShell 101
PowerShell 101
The No-Nonsense Beginner’s Guide to PowerShell
About the Book
Before PowerShell, I spent the first third of my career as an IT Pro pointing and clicking in the GUI and I decided to write this book to save IT Pros from themselves who are reluctant to learn PowerShell.
Instead of a book that just covers topics with fictitious scenarios, this book is more of a condensed version targeting the specific topics that I’ve found an IT Pro needs to know initially to be successful with PowerShell in a real world production environment. It’s a collection of what I wish someone would have told me when I started learning PowerShell along with the tips, tricks, and best practices that I've learned while using PowerShell during the past 10 years.
This book focuses on PowerShell version 5.1 in a Microsoft Active Directory domain environment running on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016. All currently supported versions of Windows and previous versions of PowerShell beginning with PowerShell version 1.0 are briefly mentioned in this book.
This book is now offered for free, but my hope is that you'll consider making a small donation to help bootstrap others into the industry. All (100%) of the royalties from the sales of this book beginning on June 3rd, 2020 and later are donated to the OnRamp scholarship program. More information about the OnRamp track at the PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit and their scholarship program can be found on the PowerShell.org website.
Reader Testimonials

Marvin Carpenter
I always learn something new or a new technique just by reviewing your code.
Table of Contents
- Preface
- Disclaimer
-
Introduction
- What is PowerShell?
- Who is this book for?
- About this book
- About the cover image
- About the author
- About the technical editor
- Conventions used in this book
- Lab environment
-
Chapter 1 - Getting Started with PowerShell
- What do I need to get started with PowerShell?
- Where do I find PowerShell?
- How do I launch PowerShell?
- What version of PowerShell am I running?
- Execution Policy
- Summary
- Review
- Recommended Reading
-
Chapter 2 - The Help System
- Discoverability
- The Three Core Cmdlets in PowerShell
- Get-Help
- Get-Command
- Updating Help
- Summary
- Review
- Recommended Reading
-
Chapter 3 - Discovering Objects, Properties, and Methods
- Requirements
- Get-Member
- Active Directory
- Summary
- Review
- Recommended Reading
-
Chapter 4 - One-Liners and the Pipeline
- One-Liners
- Filtering Left
- The Pipeline
- PowerShellGet
- Finding Pipeline Input - The Easy Way
- Summary
- Review
- Recommended Reading
-
Chapter 5
- Requirements
- Format Right
- Aliases
- Providers
- Comparison Operators
- Summary
- Review
- Recommended Reading
-
Chapter 6
- Scripting
- Looping
- Break, Continue, and Return
- Summary
- Review
- Recommended Reading
-
Chapter 7 - Working with WMI
- WMI and CIM
- Query Remote Computers with the CIM cmdlets
- Summary
- Review
- Recommended Reading
-
Chapter 8 - PowerShell Remoting
- One-To-One Remoting
- One-To-Many Remoting
- Windows PowerShell Sessions
- Summary
- Review
- Recommended Reading
-
Chapter 9 - Functions
- Naming
- A Simple function
- Parameters
- Advanced Functions
- SupportsShouldProcess
- Parameter Validation
- Verbose Output
- Pipeline Input
- Error Handling
- Comment-Based Help
- Summary
- Review
- Recommended Reading
-
Chapter 10 - Script Modules
- Dot-Sourcing Functions
- Script Modules
- Module Manifests
- Defining Public and Private Functions
- Summary
- Review
- Recommended Reading
- Appendix A - The Cryptic Help Syntax
- Appendix B - Other Resources
Causes Supported

DevOps Collective Scholarships
http://devopscollective.orgSupport IT education scholarships by giving to The DevOps Collective, Inc.
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