Powershell use in the real world

Just wanted to get an idea of what you guys may be using powershell for on a regular basis. I know it is powerful and can do a lot but I am one of those people that sometimes needs and example of how it can be used. Also looking for any good books that you guys may have picked up on it.

I often use the “New-Object -ComObject (ProgId)” to test DispInterfaces when an interactive CLI is more convenient than running something through wscript with a bunch of echo statements.

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If I have to do some development on Windows its a good small process and automation tool. I don’t use it a ton, but it has its moments for my work’s use case. I’ll also use it as a navigation and git management tool.

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I’ve been using it for general system management and basic data manipulation/processing for my job… Also monitoring servers, network connectivity, ect.

An old blog I posted has some stuff I’ve used it for: Powershell - Useful Commands

Outside of work, I’ll use it for stupid stuff like scraping craigslist or whatever and emailing/texting whatever it comes back with.

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I use the add on cmdlets for SQL server from dbatools.io — sometimes it’s just easier to do some admin tasks via the command line.

At a company I used to work at we’d would use Powershell scripts to deploy .NET applications to 100s of servers, I wrote some of those scripts, it feels like a full-on programming language for me somehow.
Also use it whenever I feel I need a more serious script. It’s been awhile though, as I rarely deal with Windows machines anymore, but if I would I would only script on Powershell, would toss Batch out the window (get it, hehe). Only complaint is, commands are not quick to type, so would not use as a daily terminal.

EDIT/PS: Ability to interface with .NET libraries is incredibly useful when dealing with .NET applications in general. You can load dll’s in Powershell, that means, use functionality of your application without actually running it full on. I would find it useful to deal with custom file databases etc.

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Everything from; standardising active directory user creation, scheduled copies between test and production web servers, active directory user data synchronisation to oracle financial databases, VMware server deployment scripts which also leverage sccm to deploy images to newly built virtual machines… It can do anything and everything!

Disclaimer… I’m a Windows sysadmin, and have used powershell for years now. I can’t see that changing any time soon.

I use it a lot to interact with my Hyper-v server.
Since hyper-v Core is free.

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I’m using it on 700 plus Servers together with Nagios and NCPA to do monitoring. I’ve written around 10 or so different scripts for Monitoring Backups, Citrix Server Status, Performance Counters, Windows Services, Exchange Status etc. Many Server Applications provide Snapins and you generally have access to a lot of information through Powershell that you’d have to bring in from other sources otherwise. And Powershell has a lot of tools to process the collected data in the script, that i’d have to do on our Monitoring server otherwise.

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Automation, like creating AD groups, AD users, directories and setting permissions from an input file, it is nice not having to do that manually.

We have a massive network storage that is accessed over network. We have a script that outputs who owns said folder.

Scripts to create AD accounts, exchange mail and lync all with a few clicks.

Script to check why peoples accounts are locked.

Mass name changes for everyones username listed.

Tool to check if it is win10 or 7.

The main tool we use has alot of tools collected in one place, so we enter a users username, it then brings up all their computers, with ping status and all of that, and then says what application each pc has etc. We use things information and copy it into error reports.

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