PowerShell tutorial : Chapter 1 – Beginning with PowerShell

Hi All,

Greetings for the day!!!

We are continuing PowerShell tutorial. Today we will discuss some basics about PowerShell

Take away from this article – At the end of this article you will got to know about

• What is PowerShell
• What are PowerShell CMDLETs
• To whom for PowerShell
• PowerShell features
• Why to use PowerShell
• PowerShell tools
• Writing our first PowerShell – Getting started

What is PowerShell

• Microsoft defines PowerShell – PowerShell is a cross-platform task automation solution made up of a
  • command-line shell
  • a scripting language and
  • a configuration management framework
• PowerShell runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS
• PowerShell is commonly used for automating the management of systems
• PowerShell accepts and returns .NET objects. It works objects over texts
• PowerShell is built on .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR)
• Commands for PowerShell are known as CMDLETs(pronounced command-lets)

PowerShell CMDLETs

• Commands for PowerShell are known as CMDLETs(pronounced command-lets)
• PowerShell module is the collection of PowerShell CMDLETs
• PowerShell uses a Verb-Noun name pair to name cmdlets
• Examples –
  • Get-Help – Here,
    • Verb – Get : what action needs to perform and
    • Noun – Help : resource on which CMDLET perform its actions

PowerShell features

• Very good command-line history
• Intellisense – Tab completion
• Pipeline for chaining commands
• PowerShell scripting language is extensible through functions, classes, scripts and modules
• PowerShell scripting have built-in support for common data formats like CSV, JSON and XML
• Easy output formatting
• Built-in help system – Provides detailed information about commands and also integrate online help articles
• Aliases –
  • Aliases are alternate names that can be used to run CMDLETS
  • PowerShell supports the use of common aliases such as cls (clear the screen) and ls (list the files)
  • This helps users from other frameworks and helps to remember PowerShell name for there familiar commands

To whom for PowerShell

• Basically for all kind of administrators
• System administrators
• Cloud administrators (In case of Microsoft – Azure Administrator, Azure AD Administrator, SharePoint Online Administrators, Exchange Administrators and so on)
• Developers
• Deployment team
• Even for QAs as well for testing purpose

Why to use PowerShell

• To build, test and deploy the solutions and mostly in CI/CD environments
• PowerShell helps to automate administrative tasks
• To manage cloud – To manage cloud resources. Get / Update / Deploy – cloud resources
  • Creating users in Microsoft 365
  • Creating groups in Azure AD and so on
• CI / CD – used as part of a Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment pipeline
• This list is very long, we will be keep exploring in upcoming articles of tutorial

PowerShell tools

• We can use following tools to execute PowerShell CMDLETs or scripts
  • Visual Studio Code – https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode.PowerShell
  • Windows PowerShell ISE

Writing our first PowerShell – Getting started

• We could see all PowerShell releases at – https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/releases
• There are lots of available PowerShell CMDLETs we can use or we can write script as well as per our need
• Today as a first PowerShell CMDLET, I’ll discuss Get-Help CMDLET
• I’ll use Windows PowerShell ISE
• Following are the steps

STEP 1 – Choose the tool to execute CMDLET / write Script – Open the PowerShell ISE

• As PowerShell ISE opens it looks like as below
• There are two panes to – PowerShell ISE
  • Script Pane
  • Console

Step 2 – In console window use CMDLET – Get-Help as

Get-Help 

• Get-Help – Displays information about PowerShell commands and concepts.

REFERENCES

• Installing PowerShell on Windows
• What is PowerShell?
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/modules/introduction-to-powershell/