Powershell | Server Ninjas

Find The Version Of Powershell You Are Running

Jan 272013

One of the questions I get from a lot of people is how do you tell what version of PowerShell you are running. The easiest way it to open up PowerShell and type get-host. See the screen shot below. You will see that the second line has the version number. This screen shot shows 3.0 which is the standard PowerShell version for Windows 8.

Get-Host output

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PoshWSUS on Codeplex

IT Admin Tips, Windows Server 2008 No Responses »

Jan 162012

PowerhShell has turned into one of the best tools that we have as administrators of windows products. Support from the community is truly amazing. PoshWSUS is a module that was created to help administrate WSUS. The below commands can be used instead of executing everything through the GUI. Stop by the CodePlex site and check it out. Below are also a couple more links you can reference. Please leave a comment if you have used it and what you think.

Current Commands From The PoshCode website. (http://poshwsus.codeplex.com/)

Current commands are:

Add-WSUSClientToGroup
Approve-WSUSUpdate
Connect-WSUSDatabaseServer
Connect-WSUSServer
Deny-WSUSUpdate
Disconnect-WSUSServer
Export-WSUSMetaData
Get-WSUSChildServer
Get-WSUSClient
Get-WSUSClientGroupMembership
Get-WSUSClientPerUpdate
Get-WSUSClientsInGroup
Get-WSUSCommand
Get-WSUSContentDownloadProgress
Get-WSUSCurrentUserRole
Get-WSUSDatabaseConfig
Get-WSUSDownstreamServer
Get-WSUSEmailConfig
Get-WSUSEvent
Get-WSUSGroup
Get-WSUSInstallableItem
Get-WSUSInstallApprovalRule
Get-WSUSServer
Get-WSUSStatus
Get-WSUSSubscription
Get-WSUSSyncEvent
Get-WSUSSyncHistory
Get-WSUSSyncProgress
Get-WSUSUpdate
Get-WSUSUpdateApproval
Get-WSUSUpdateCategory
Get-WSUSUpdateClassification
Get-WSUSUpdateFile
Get-WSUSUpdatePerClient
Get-WSUSUpdateSummary
Get-WSUSUpdateSummaryPerGroup
Get-WSUSUpdateSummaryPerClient
Import-WSUSMetaData
New-WSUSComputerScope
New-WSUSGroup
New-WSUSInstallApprovalRule
New-WSUSLocalPackage
New-WSUSUpdateScope
Remove-WSUSClient
Remove-WSUSClientFromGroup
Remove-WSUSGroup
Remove-WSUSInstallApprovalRule
Remove-WSUSUpdate
Reset-WSUSContent
Resume-WSUSDownload
Resume-WSUSUpdateDownload
Set-WSUSEmailConfig
Set-WSUSInstallApprovalRule
Start-WSUSCleanup
Start-WSUSInstallApprovalRule
Start-WSUSSync
Stop-WSUSDownload
Stop-WSUSSync
Stop-WSUSUpdateDownload
Test-WSUSDatabaseServerConnection

Examples Of PoshWSUS
http://learn-powershell.net/2010/11/14/wsus-administrator-module/

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PAL Version 2.1 Released

IT Admin Tips, IT News No Responses »

Jan 152012

PAL version 2.1 was released on November 8, 2011. I just wanted to take a few minutes to create another post so hopefully more people will hear about this great tool. PAL stands for Performance Analysis Of Logs and is hosted on SourceForge. Clint Huffman who is a premier field engineer (PFE) for Microsoft is the main contributor to the project.

PAL is used to read performance logs from Windows and analyze them based on thresholds that are set. From the SourceForge website here are some of the features.

Thresholds files for most of the major Microsoft products such as IIS, MOSS, SQL Server, BizTalk, Exchange, and Active Directory.
An easy to use GUI interface which makes creating batch files for the PAL.ps1 script.
A GUI editor for creating or editing your own threshold files.
Creates an HTML based report for ease of copy/pasting into other applications.
Analyzes performance counter logs for thresholds using thresholds that change their criteria based on the computer’s role or hardware specs.

In the future plan on looking for some tutorials on how to use PAL. In the meantime please check out the links below. If you have used to tool please leave me a comment on how you liked it.