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PowerShellASP

Jesse Hamrick — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 22:26:51 +0000

I can’t tell you how excited I am about PowerShellASP, but I will… While making the transition from VBScript to PowerShell there were two pieces of functionality that I could not live without; HTML Applications (HTA) and Dynamic .ASP web pages. This functionality allows me to distribute VBScripts wrapped in an application or as a web page. I’m able to (and still do) write code that is utilized by clients who have no scripting or programming background, like my mom!

Let me show you an example of what an HTA is so that you get a better picture..

HTML Applications

This is my Server Maintenance HTML Application Tool:

HTA

And here is a snippet of the code behind the scenes, notice that the VBScript code is wrapped in HTML:

HTA VBScript Code

Basically an HTA is Internet Explorer with all the tool bars stripped out, looks just like a windows form application (okay close…).

What a great way to distribute your VBScript as a simple application. Distributing PowerShell scripts in the same fashion requires a .NET class called the Forms Class (Systems.Windows.Forms). We are starting to see Form editors for PowerShell emerge on the market, the most well know being the AdminScriptEditor(ASE). But what about using PowerShell for dynamic web pages?

ASP

Dynamic web pages require some type of programming language to make them… well, dynamic! The language I use as an administrator is VBScript. Here is a simple web page that allows you to enter a computer name to check that the Anti-virus engine and dats are up-to-date.

I know, not much to look at but it’s functional. The point is… I don’t have to distribute HTAs or PowerShell Windows Forms all over the place, I can centralize my tools on a website. Administrators in the organization can utilize this page and check their systems. So needles to say I was a bit disapointed that PowerShell was not supported in .ASP. Now that has finally changed and it was not Microsoft who came up with the answer…

PowerShellASP

From their site:

PowerShellASP is an ASP-like template language for Web Applications; templates contain a mixture of markup (HTML, XML or whatever you want to generate) and inline PowerShell code. At runtime, templates/pages are fully translated to PowerShell code and executed as a single unit inside a PowerShell pipeline, with the results sent to the client browser.

PowerShellASP runs off the ASP.NET platform, implemented as a custom IHttpHandler mapped to *.ps1x files. Because of this, you can mix PowerShellASP pages alongside any ASP.NET application. This provides a great way to leverage PowerShellASP inside your existing applications as needed or you can create complete applications from scratch based only on *.ps1x pages.

For anyone interested in PowerShellASP it is a Free download.

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VMWare VI Toolkit 1.0 Beta (for PowerShell)

Jesse Hamrick — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:24:50 +0000

March 14th 2008, VMWare launches the beta release of the VI Toolkit. I'm actually excited about this release as I manage a large ESX environment with over 100 VMs. The VI Toolkit provides 102 custom cmdlets written for ESX and VirtualCenter. So what can I do with these new cmdlets?

Here are some examples for the VMWare site:

Snapshot all of your virtual machines at once with a script like:

Get-VM | % { New-Snapshot -VM $_ -Name ($_.name + "-current") }

Automate long-running tasks like cloning using a script like:

foreach ($i in 1..30) { Get-Template "My Template" | New-VM -Name "Clone $i" }

Disconnect connected CD-ROM drives (to enable VMware VMotion, for example) using a script like:

Get-VM | Get-CDDrive | `
? { $_.ConnectionState.Connected -eq "true" } | `
Set-CDDrive -Connected:$false -Confirm:$false

Documentation provided:

VI API .Net Namespace Reference

VI Toolkit Cmdlets Reference

Documentation location (default install): C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\VIToolkitForWindows

Click to Download the VMWare VI Toolkit

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Download PowerShell 2.0 Community Technology Preview (CTP)

Jesse Hamrick — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 19:12:59 +0000

So you want to be the first on the block to start working with PowerShell 2.0 CTP? Here is the information regarding the Technology Preview release and links (bottom of page) to download.

From the Microsoft Site:

Brief Description

Windows PowerShell 2.0 CTP introduces several significant features to Windows PowerShell 1.0 that extends its use, improves its usability, and allows you to control and manage the Windows environment more easily and comprehensively.

Overview

This software is a pre-release version. It will not work the way a final version of the software does. Features will change before final release.

The goal of this CTP release is to provide a preview to the community on early thinking and direction on key 2.0 features and get early feedback on them.

Windows PowerShell 2.0 CTP release is compatible with and replaces Windows PowerShell 1.0. You must un-install PowerShell 1.0 to install the PowerShell 2.0 CTP release.

Windows PowerShell 2.0 CTP release will continue to use the execution policy setting of PowerShell 1.0, if present. PowerShell 1.0 installer does not remove or change the execution policy on un-installation.

PowerShell 2.0 Remoting features will not work correctly on Windows Vista RTM. Please install Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) Beta to enable PowerShell Remoting features.

When Windows PowerShell 2.0 CTP is launched with an execution policy of “Restricted,” it will display an error message while loading the types and formatting files. To prevent this error message, change the execution policy to one that enables PowerShell’s scripting features – such as RemoteSigned. For more information about PowerShell’s execution policies, type “Get-Help about_signing”.

Graphical PowerShell is a very early alpha version meant for previewing early thinking and getting feedback.

PsJobs rely on the remoting features of Windows PowerShell 2.0. To use PsJobs, remoting must be enabled on Windows PowerShell, even if the PsJob runs only on the local computer.

Selected New Features in Windows PowerShell 2.0 CTP
(Please refer to Release Notes and Help topics for more details)

PowerShell Remoting

Graphical PowerShell

ScriptCmdlets

Restricted Runspaces

RunspacePools

Background Jobs

Data Language

Script Internationalization

Script Debugging

24 New Cmdlets

Parser Tokenizer API

New PowerShell Hosting APIs

Metadata APIs for Command and Parameters

After you install this product, you might have to restart your computer.

Download PowerShell 2.0 Community Techology Preview

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PowerShell Graphical Help File

Jesse Hamrick — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 22:19:34 +0000

Kudos to the Microsoft Scripting Guys for editing the PowerShell help file and wrapping it into a graphical format. Here is what is contained in the file:

Windows PowerShell cmdlet help.
Windows PowerShell "About" files.
The Script Center's VBScript to Windows PowerShell conversion guide (my favorite).

Below is a link provided to download the tool. This is a "Must" download; highly recommended.
Even though the Microsoft Scripting Guys did minimal editing to create this tool, they were nice enough to make a few corrections in the original help file.

Thanks guys…

Download: Windows PowerShell Graphical Help File.

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Download PowerShell 1.0

Jesse Hamrick — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 23:12:26 +0000

First step: Download and Install PowerShell 1.0.

System Requirements:

Windows 2003 Server Family w/Service Pack 1 or greater
Windows XP w/Service Pack 2
Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0 (Version 2.0.50727) – Click here to download and install .NET 2.0. For the 64-bit edition click here.

If you are running Windows Vista and PowerShell RC1 (Release Candidate), PowerShell RC2 is available (English-US edition only) for Vista and Longhorn (server code name for Windows 2008 Server). More Detail available here. Note: You must uninstall RC1 or installation of RC2 will fail.

Download and install PowerShell 1.0 RTW (released through web)

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