A warning on $ErrorActionPreference and Try/Catch for .NET developers
I recently stumbled upon a PowerShell Script from a .NET Developer/Architect who shall remain nameless, which contained this :
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.NET
Azure
Using Azure Monitor Workbooks to document your Azure resources
In this post, we demonstrate how to build a self-updating inventory of Azure resources in any Resource Group, across multiple subscriptions. Then, we share the workbook to make it available to colleagues and other stakeholders.
Making Azure infrastructure code more composable and maintainable with Terraform modules
In this post, we show how to make Azure “Infrastructure as Code” more concise and modular. We take an ARM template from the QuickStart Templates repo, we break it down into small, tightly focused units and we combine them as a Terraform configuration
Deploying a production-ready Azure Kubernetes (AKS) cluster with PSAksDeployment
In this post, we introduce PSAksDeployment: a tool which deploys an AKS cluster to a “ready-to-use” state in a few PowerShell commands. We also take a peek into how it uses Terraform and Helm under the hood.
Triggering the removal of machines from Octopus Deploy on Azure VM deletion
In this post, we take a look at leveraging Azure Automation and Azure Event Grid to ensure that deleting a VM from Azure will automatically trigger the removal of the corresponding machine from Octopus Deploy.
Career
My favorite PowerShell interview questions
As you may already know, the only PowerShell certification program is being abandoned. Some people in the PowerShell community are trying to justify this by saying “There is no need for PowerShell cert” or “it’s too difficult to test PowerShell knowledge”.
Chocolatey
Updating apps with PowerShell 5.0 and Chocolatey
An introduction to the PackageManagement module If you are using Windows 10 or if you have installed the Windows Management Framework 5.x available here, you may have noticed a PowerShell module named PackageManagement. This is the new name for what was called OneGet in previous versions of the ...
DSC
Merging data from 2 PowerShell DSC configuration data files
As you probably already know, when writing a DSC configuration, separating the environmental data from the configuration logic is a best practice. So all the environment-specific data gets stored in separate (typically .psd1) files. If you work with PowerShell DSC at medium-to-large scale, you (ho...
A Boilerplate for Unit testing DSC resources with Pester
Unit testing PowerShell code is slowly but surely becoming mainstream. Pester, the awesome PowerShell testing framework is playing a big part in that trend.
Adding ConfigurationData dynamically from a DSC configuration
When writing a DSC configuration, separating the environmental data from the configuration logic is a best practice : it allows to reuse the same logic for different environments, for example the Dev, QA and Prod environments.
Managing large numbers of registry settings with PowerShell DSC
Recently, I had to manage the configuration of the remote control settings of client machines with PowerShell DSC. These settings are located in the registry key HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\HidIr\Remotes :
Orchestrating the update of an IIS server farm with PowerShell DSC
PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) makes it easy to apply a configuration to a bunch of servers. But what if the servers are already in production, if the update requires a service restart and we need to make this happen with no service disruption ? That’s a different story.
Deployment
Using Pester to validate deployment readiness for a large number of machines
Recently, I had to roll out an upgrade of our software for a customer. The upgrade failed for about 80 client machines (out of around 400). There was a lot of head-scratching and quite a few :
DevOps
Adding PowerShell code quality gates in VSTS using the PSCodeHealth extension
In this post, we introduce the PSCodeHealth extension for Visual Studio Team Services. We look at how to use it to assess the quality of PowerShell code and to define and enforce quality gates in VSTS build definitions.
Making PSScriptAnalyzer a first-class citizen in a PowerShell CI pipeline
As you already know if you have read this or this, I’m a big fan of PSScriptAnalyzer to maintain a certain coding standard. This is especially powerful inside a release pipeline because this allows us to enforce that coding standard.
Where to start your automation efforts ? An analogy for IT infrastructure folks
Nowadays, many IT shops look a lot like the first few pages of The Phoenix Project : lack of automation and communication which leads to manual and unpredictable deployments, which in turn, leads to firefighting.
A Boilerplate for Unit testing DSC resources with Pester
Unit testing PowerShell code is slowly but surely becoming mainstream. Pester, the awesome PowerShell testing framework is playing a big part in that trend.
How to create a custom rule for PSScriptAnalyzer
As you probably know, PSScriptAnalyzer is a static code analysis tool, which checks PowerShell code against rules representing best practices and style guidelines. This is a fantastic tool to set coding style and quality standards, and if we want to, we can easily enforce these standards within a ...
Integrating PSScriptAnalyzer in an Appveyor Continuous Integration pipeline
Many of us who are writing PowerShell code are using Appveyor (especially for personal projects). And most of us use this to run Pester tests. Automated testing is great, it allows to set a certain standard of code quality without slowing down code delivery.
GitHub
Searching code, repos, issues, pull requests and users on GitHub using PowerShell
Coding, especially in PowerShell, is not about remembering the exact syntax of how to do something, it is more about knowing how to try things out and to get the information we need to do whatever we need to accomplish.
Jekyll
Reducing whitespace in the HTML generated by Jekyll
The output HTML of Jekyll-based sites may contain quite a lot a whitespace. This is especially noticeable with pages relying heavily on Liquid tags with conditional logic or looping.
Kubernetes
Deploying a production-ready Azure Kubernetes (AKS) cluster with PSAksDeployment
In this post, we introduce PSAksDeployment: a tool which deploys an AKS cluster to a “ready-to-use” state in a few PowerShell commands. We also take a peek into how it uses Terraform and Helm under the hood.
Linting
Making PSScriptAnalyzer a first-class citizen in a PowerShell CI pipeline
As you already know if you have read this or this, I’m a big fan of PSScriptAnalyzer to maintain a certain coding standard. This is especially powerful inside a release pipeline because this allows us to enforce that coding standard.
How to create a custom rule for PSScriptAnalyzer
As you probably know, PSScriptAnalyzer is a static code analysis tool, which checks PowerShell code against rules representing best practices and style guidelines. This is a fantastic tool to set coding style and quality standards, and if we want to, we can easily enforce these standards within a ...
Performance
Where to start your automation efforts ? An analogy for IT infrastructure folks
Nowadays, many IT shops look a lot like the first few pages of The Phoenix Project : lack of automation and communication which leads to manual and unpredictable deployments, which in turn, leads to firefighting.
Getting the CPU time and status of threads in a process with PowerShell
If there is a process hanging or consuming CPU resources and you have no idea why, a good place to start is to have a look at its threads and what they are doing. Fortunately, Threads are a property of the object you get when run Get-Process :
Pester
Writing and Using Custom Assertions for Pester Tests
Pester, the awesome PowerShell testing framework has recently introduced a capability which allows us to extend our test assertions. This allows to simplify our tests by abstracting custom or complex assertion logic away from the tests and into separate scripts or modules.
Unit Testing with Pester : Storing complex Mock objects in a JSON file
When unit testing with Pester, mocking is pretty much unavoidable, especially for code related to infrastructure, configuration, or deployment. We don’t want our unit tests to touch files, databases, the registry, and not to mention the internet, do we ?
Making PSScriptAnalyzer a first-class citizen in a PowerShell CI pipeline
As you already know if you have read this or this, I’m a big fan of PSScriptAnalyzer to maintain a certain coding standard. This is especially powerful inside a release pipeline because this allows us to enforce that coding standard.
Using Pester to validate deployment readiness for a large number of machines
Recently, I had to roll out an upgrade of our software for a customer. The upgrade failed for about 80 client machines (out of around 400). There was a lot of head-scratching and quite a few :
A Boilerplate for Unit testing DSC resources with Pester
Unit testing PowerShell code is slowly but surely becoming mainstream. Pester, the awesome PowerShell testing framework is playing a big part in that trend.
PowerCLI
Exploring the types exposed by PowerCLI
One of the things I love about PowerShell, is that once we know the fundamentals, we can learn the rest on our own, by just exploring and experimenting. As I like to tell people, discoverability is the number 1 feature of PowerShell.
Configure ESXi host RAMdisks with PowerCLI
The symptoms of a full RAMdisk on a ESXi host can be pretty nasty and diverse. The possible causes are also very diverse (search for ramdisk full in the VMware Knowledge Base, you will see what I mean).
A PowerCLI alternative to the Storage Reports feature
As you may know, the Storage Views and Storage Reports features have been removed from vSphere 6. Here is the official (and laconic) statement from the vSphere 6.0 release notes :
What’s the difference between ToolsVersionStatus and ToolsVersionStatus2
Recently, I had a customer who wanted to check if the VMware Tools were installed and up-to-date using PowerCLI.
PowerShell
Deploying a production-ready Azure Kubernetes (AKS) cluster with PSAksDeployment
In this post, we introduce PSAksDeployment: a tool which deploys an AKS cluster to a “ready-to-use” state in a few PowerShell commands. We also take a peek into how it uses Terraform and Helm under the hood.
Adding PowerShell code quality gates in VSTS using the PSCodeHealth extension
In this post, we introduce the PSCodeHealth extension for Visual Studio Team Services. We look at how to use it to assess the quality of PowerShell code and to define and enforce quality gates in VSTS build definitions.
Triggering the removal of machines from Octopus Deploy on Azure VM deletion
In this post, we take a look at leveraging Azure Automation and Azure Event Grid to ensure that deleting a VM from Azure will automatically trigger the removal of the corresponding machine from Octopus Deploy.
Writing and Using Custom Assertions for Pester Tests
Pester, the awesome PowerShell testing framework has recently introduced a capability which allows us to extend our test assertions. This allows to simplify our tests by abstracting custom or complex assertion logic away from the tests and into separate scripts or modules.
Adding a Quality Gate To a PowerShell Release Pipeline With PSCodeHealth
In this post, we’ll look at PSCodeHealth’s default code quality metrics rules and how to customize them to our requirements. Then, we’ll use custom metrics rules in a release pipeline to decide if the build should pass or fail.
How To Assess and Improve PowerShell Code Quality Using PSCodeHealth
In this article, we are going to start with what we mean by ‘code quality’ and why it matters. Then, we’ll see how PSCodeHealth can help assess the quality and maintainability of a PowerShell project.
Measuring PowerShell code complexity : Why and How
Why does code complexity matter ? As Administrators or engineers, we deal with complexity all the time. We build, document, support and deploy complex systems on a pretty-much-daily basis. The expertise required to work with these systems is part of what makes us valuable. So why should we st...
Unit Testing with Pester : Storing complex Mock objects in a JSON file
When unit testing with Pester, mocking is pretty much unavoidable, especially for code related to infrastructure, configuration, or deployment. We don’t want our unit tests to touch files, databases, the registry, and not to mention the internet, do we ?
Merging data from 2 PowerShell DSC configuration data files
As you probably already know, when writing a DSC configuration, separating the environmental data from the configuration logic is a best practice. So all the environment-specific data gets stored in separate (typically .psd1) files. If you work with PowerShell DSC at medium-to-large scale, you (ho...
Searching code, repos, issues, pull requests and users on GitHub using PowerShell
Coding, especially in PowerShell, is not about remembering the exact syntax of how to do something, it is more about knowing how to try things out and to get the information we need to do whatever we need to accomplish.
Getting the members of a type, without an instance of the type
I read Jeff Hicks’s article about “Dancing on the table with PowerShell”. The content is really quite fascinating (go read it !), but I got hung up on something.
Using Pester to validate deployment readiness for a large number of machines
Recently, I had to roll out an upgrade of our software for a customer. The upgrade failed for about 80 client machines (out of around 400). There was a lot of head-scratching and quite a few :
How to create a custom rule for PSScriptAnalyzer
As you probably know, PSScriptAnalyzer is a static code analysis tool, which checks PowerShell code against rules representing best practices and style guidelines. This is a fantastic tool to set coding style and quality standards, and if we want to, we can easily enforce these standards within a ...
Adding ConfigurationData dynamically from a DSC configuration
When writing a DSC configuration, separating the environmental data from the configuration logic is a best practice : it allows to reuse the same logic for different environments, for example the Dev, QA and Prod environments.
Integrating PSScriptAnalyzer in an Appveyor Continuous Integration pipeline
Many of us who are writing PowerShell code are using Appveyor (especially for personal projects). And most of us use this to run Pester tests. Automated testing is great, it allows to set a certain standard of code quality without slowing down code delivery.
My favorite PowerShell interview questions
As you may already know, the only PowerShell certification program is being abandoned. Some people in the PowerShell community are trying to justify this by saying “There is no need for PowerShell cert” or “it’s too difficult to test PowerShell knowledge”.
Managing large numbers of registry settings with PowerShell DSC
Recently, I had to manage the configuration of the remote control settings of client machines with PowerShell DSC. These settings are located in the registry key HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\HidIr\Remotes :
Orchestrating the update of an IIS server farm with PowerShell DSC
PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) makes it easy to apply a configuration to a bunch of servers. But what if the servers are already in production, if the update requires a service restart and we need to make this happen with no service disruption ? That’s a different story.
Checking vCenter Server certificate requirements with PowerShell
Given the number and the complexity of certificate-related issues we get at VMware Support, I wanted an automated way to check whether a certificate file meets the vCenter Server certificate requirements.
Updating apps with PowerShell 5.0 and Chocolatey
An introduction to the PackageManagement module If you are using Windows 10 or if you have installed the Windows Management Framework 5.x available here, you may have noticed a PowerShell module named PackageManagement. This is the new name for what was called OneGet in previous versions of the ...
Download Podcasts with PowerShell
A while back, I saw this article from the Scripting Guy on parsing RSS feeds. Being an avid RSS feeds consumer and podcast watcher/listener, this was a “aha” moment.
Automate the discovery of mandatory parameters
Sometimes, when trying out a cmdlet I rarely use, I get that : This means I forgot to enter a parameter which is mandatory for this cmdlet. PowerShell is very forgiving and asks me nicely to enter a value for this parameter. You see, learning PowerShell is not about rote knowledge of every sing...
Configure Windows crash behaviour with PowerShell
When there is a OS-handled crash (a blue screen), there are some settings in the Startup and Recovery Control Panel, which tells Windows how it should behave. For example, whether it restarts automatically or not, whether it writes a small, a kernel dump or a full memory dump, and where :
PowerShell equivalents for common Linux/bash commands
The majority of my colleagues have more of a Linux background than Windows. So their cat and their grep are near and dear to their heart and their first reflex when they get into PowerShell is to replicate these commands.
A warning on $ErrorActionPreference and Try/Catch for .NET developers
I recently stumbled upon a PowerShell Script from a .NET Developer/Architect who shall remain nameless, which contained this :
Rebooting a server remotely
“Have you tried turning it off and on again?” This quote from IT Crowd reflects probably the most universal stereotype about IT support. By the way, using this shortcut instead of actually diagnosing the problem shouldn’t be the usual course of action. But still, a reboot can really save you ...
Quality
Adding PowerShell code quality gates in VSTS using the PSCodeHealth extension
In this post, we introduce the PSCodeHealth extension for Visual Studio Team Services. We look at how to use it to assess the quality of PowerShell code and to define and enforce quality gates in VSTS build definitions.
Adding a Quality Gate To a PowerShell Release Pipeline With PSCodeHealth
In this post, we’ll look at PSCodeHealth’s default code quality metrics rules and how to customize them to our requirements. Then, we’ll use custom metrics rules in a release pipeline to decide if the build should pass or fail.
How To Assess and Improve PowerShell Code Quality Using PSCodeHealth
In this article, we are going to start with what we mean by ‘code quality’ and why it matters. Then, we’ll see how PSCodeHealth can help assess the quality and maintainability of a PowerShell project.
Measuring PowerShell code complexity : Why and How
Why does code complexity matter ? As Administrators or engineers, we deal with complexity all the time. We build, document, support and deploy complex systems on a pretty-much-daily basis. The expertise required to work with these systems is part of what makes us valuable. So why should we st...
Terraform
Making Azure infrastructure code more composable and maintainable with Terraform modules
In this post, we show how to make Azure “Infrastructure as Code” more concise and modular. We take an ARM template from the QuickStart Templates repo, we break it down into small, tightly focused units and we combine them as a Terraform configuration
Deploying a production-ready Azure Kubernetes (AKS) cluster with PSAksDeployment
In this post, we introduce PSAksDeployment: a tool which deploys an AKS cluster to a “ready-to-use” state in a few PowerShell commands. We also take a peek into how it uses Terraform and Helm under the hood.
VSTS
Adding PowerShell code quality gates in VSTS using the PSCodeHealth extension
In this post, we introduce the PSCodeHealth extension for Visual Studio Team Services. We look at how to use it to assess the quality of PowerShell code and to define and enforce quality gates in VSTS build definitions.
Windows
Configure Windows crash behaviour with PowerShell
When there is a OS-handled crash (a blue screen), there are some settings in the Startup and Recovery Control Panel, which tells Windows how it should behave. For example, whether it restarts automatically or not, whether it writes a small, a kernel dump or a full memory dump, and where :
Getting the CPU time and status of threads in a process with PowerShell
If there is a process hanging or consuming CPU resources and you have no idea why, a good place to start is to have a look at its threads and what they are doing. Fortunately, Threads are a property of the object you get when run Get-Process :
bash
PowerShell equivalents for common Linux/bash commands
The majority of my colleagues have more of a Linux background than Windows. So their cat and their grep are near and dear to their heart and their first reflex when they get into PowerShell is to replicate these commands.
vSphere
Checking vCenter Server certificate requirements with PowerShell
Given the number and the complexity of certificate-related issues we get at VMware Support, I wanted an automated way to check whether a certificate file meets the vCenter Server certificate requirements.
Configure ESXi host RAMdisks with PowerCLI
The symptoms of a full RAMdisk on a ESXi host can be pretty nasty and diverse. The possible causes are also very diverse (search for ramdisk full in the VMware Knowledge Base, you will see what I mean).
A PowerCLI alternative to the Storage Reports feature
As you may know, the Storage Views and Storage Reports features have been removed from vSphere 6. Here is the official (and laconic) statement from the vSphere 6.0 release notes :