UK Powershell User Group

Following on from the last great meeting the next UK Powershell User Group has been announced…

The November meeting of the User Group will be on Thursday 20th November

Time
6.30 – 9.30

Location
Memphis Room
Building 3
Microsoft campus
Thames Valley Park
Reading

Agenda

  • Powershell Introduction: Objects and get-member
  • PowerGUI SQL Server Reporting Services powerpack
  • PowerShell in SQL Server 2008

If you want to attend please send an email to powershell-uk@hotmail.co.uk expressing your interest.

Re-posted from http://richardsiddaway.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!43CFA46A74CF3E96!1806.entry

Using Powershell to make you money

We recently had to get some lists together for the Licensing department as there are virtualisation deals which can be used to reduce the amount of licensing costs for your VM’s.

Im not sure what they are this week but last time I checked you could license all VM’s on one host with 1 Data center license. I think there are also deals for 3 vm’s per Enterprise license or similar ?

So with the following powershell script we were able to integrate the VI toolkit with WMI information to gain the information needed…

connect-viserver MYVISERVER
$vms = Get-VM | select-object Name, Host

$myCol = @()
foreach ($vm in $vms)
{
$MyDetails = “” | select-Object Host, Name, OS
$MyDetails.Host = $vm.Host
$MyDetails.Name = $vm.Name
$OSDetails = Get-WmiObject -class Win32_OperatingSystem -computername $vm.Name
$MyDetails.OS = $OSDetails.Caption
$myCol += $MyDetails
}
$myCol | sort Host

Sample output:

Host : HOST01.TEST.gov.uk
Name : TEST01
OS : Microsoft Windows 2000 Server

Host : HOST01.TEST.gov.uk
Name : TEST03
OS : Microsoft Windows 2000 Server

Host : HOST02.TEST.gov.uk
Name : TEST02
OS : Microsoft Windows 2000 Server

Hyper-V Resources


As Hyper-V is now available Microsoft have some on-line presentations taken from the virtualisation launch last month.

These are available on their website at :
http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/getvirtualnow.mspx.
A good overview of Hyper-V is at http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/assets/media/hdbp/local/msm.htm, which is one of the breakout sessions entitled “Hyper-V Deployment and Best Practises”.

Thanks to AP

IP’08 & VM’08 – Day 1 Review

Day 1 sounded good, can’t wait to attend tomorrow….

Earls Court 2 buzzed with activity from the moment the enthusiastic voice announced that IP’08 and the new VM’08 were open for business. It was standing room only in the seminars and keynotes, particularly for the virtualisation sessions – there was a palpable sense of anticipation and curiosity for what is still, for many organisations, a new concept in computer engineering. Wth Microsoft, Citrix and VMware showing the latest solutions in action.

Among the exhibitors, the mood was surprisingly optimistic given the recent upheavals on Wall Street and Threadneedle Street, summed up by porttracker’s Caroline Barker-Littley: “If companies can get more out of their existing resources, it is good news at a time of belt-tightening. Tools like ours that can discover and re-utilise seemingly lost ports – just as virtualisation can utilise unused and ‘lost’ server capacity – become very attractive when efficiency is a priority.”

From the get-go there was little room to swing a virtual desktop on the stands of IP show regulars such as Avaya, handling wide-ranging enquiries from security to Unified Communications. Avaya keynote speaker Martyn Lambert noted that visitors were anxious to cope with the rapid pace of technological and social change and the need to respond effectively: “They know that if they haven’t got a strategy for customers using Web 2.0 and social networking phenomena, such as Facebook and blogging, their competitors will. It’s an exciting time to be here.”.

Map your VI using Netmap

At the UK Powershell user group James used Netmap, I was intrigued with this and what it could do, with a few lines to integrate this into the VI toolkit I managed to get a nice map of which VM’s were on each host.

Download Netmap here and try it for yourself….

Connect-VIServer yourserver
$vmhs = Get-VM

$myCol = @()
ForEach ($vmh in $vmhs)
{
$myobj = “” | select-Object source, target
$myobj.source = $vmh.host
$myobj.target = $vmh.Name
$myCol += $myobj
}

$mycol | Export-Csv .\Temp.csv
Import-Csv .\Temp.csv | show-netmap

Im also working on a Visio script which will produce a much more pleasing to the eye report…Watch this space and let me know if you would like to test it for me in its early phases.

WSUS PowerGUI Powerpack

Jonathan Medd has done it again, yet another great PowerPack for PowerGUI, following on from his Exchange 2003 PowerPack he has created a WSUS PowerPack.

This is still a work in progress project but it looks great to me.

WSUS Administrators can now access their servers using Powershell! Get access to information not accessible from the WSUS console.

Take advantage of the PowerGUI reporting actions to increase your ability to report on info direct from WSUS.

The tool could also prove a useful information gathering tool for a consultant going to examine an unfamiliar WSUS installation.


					

		
		
	

							
	

				

			
						

				PowerScripting Podcast
			

								


				

			
Ok, I have blogged about this before but am going to again, one of the most valuable resources I have found for learning powershell is podcasts, there are two PowerShell podcasts out there at the moment that I listen to, Get-Scripting by Jonathan Medd and The PowerScripting podcast by Jonathan Walz & Hal Rottenberg.


I started off listening to the latest episodes when I began with Powershell and then it was mentioned to me that the earlier episodes were great for newbies.


I have now been listening to the back catalogue of episodes (Currently they are up to number 42) and have found them a great resource for both learning PowerShell and keeping up to date with all the third party products, news and tips.

Recently they have also started recording the show whilst  using ustream which makes the whole experience far more interactive for us the users of powershell.


With recent guests such as ‘The Iron man’ aka Jeff Hicks and ‘Green Arrow’ aka Greg Shields I was left wondering who the presenters could be in there nightly fighting of crime ?!?


The only possible answer I could come up with was Batman and Robin, and I’m sorry Hal you have to be Robin as anyone who has listened to the earlier shows knows that Jonathan started fighting crime far earlier than you !


For anyone who has not yet listened to the shows, please go ahead and download them at the PowerScripting site and learn from the Powershell Guru’s today.


Get-Busy Scripting !


Update:  Hal has now become a MVP for his work in Powershell, Nice one Hal ! Also in the recent podcast they confirmed that if they were to be super heroes it would be someone from Heroes, personally I think they better suite Batman and Robin fighting the evil Javascript and Perl bad guys 🙂


(P.S. Any thought’s on both Javascript and Perl are that of my own and not any reference to anything from the podcast)

					

		
		
	

							
	

				

			
						

				VM’08 UK Virtualisation Event
			

								


				

			
Its not VMWorld but hey, its good for anyone in the uk.  I will be there on Thursday (Thanks Joes) 2nd Oct.


The impact of Virtualisation on the IT function is decisive and offers unparalleled opportunities for the enterprise from efficiency gains to cost reduction. This vendor neutral event will give you the opportunity to compare the offerings of over 45 vendors and evaluate nearly 100 products in two productive days. In addition seminar and keynote programmes will help you and your team learn about the latest trends and products.


Check out more here…..VM’08