Nicolas Prigent describes Powershell Desired State Configuration:

The management and maintenance of servers quickly becomes complex without standardisation. PowerShell allows us many ways of responding to different problems and occasionally bypassing certain restrictive techniques. The danger is that we end up with a plethora of scripts in order to manage a server, all more complicated than the other, and this works. We do much better with a standard way of automating a task

DSC gives us a declarative model for system configuration management. What that really means is that we can specify how we want a workstation or server (a ‘node’) to be configured and we leave it to PowerShell and the Windows Workflow engine to make it happen on those target ‘nodes’. We don’t have to specify how we want it to happen.

DSC is great for keeping servers and server configurations in sync.

Rob Sewell walks through a Powershell script failure:

Googling pester “The script failed due to call depth overflow.” returned only 7 results but the Reddit link contained the information I needed

For more on the depth call limit, Jon Galloway has a great post.

Mike Fal shows us how to mange SQL Server error logs using Powershell:

Reading SQL Server error logs is pretty simple, but requires us to make use of the SMO objects and the .ReadErrorLog() method to get the data from the log. Let’s start by simply reading the SQL Server error log and see what the output looks like (I’ll be using the SQL Server provider for this)

The big benefit, as Mike points out, is that the log rows are considered objects, meaning you don’t need to try to parse out things like the log date.

Laerte Junior has an article on writing re-usable Powershell scripts:

There are the rules that I use in my day-to-day work in PowerShell. They’ve worked well for me over the years, but I’m not saying that they are carved in stone.

• Learn the languageYou need to treat PowerShell as a serious .NET language. Like C#, F# or VB, it is impossible to know what the language can do, such as its features or commands without understanding the language and its paradigms? You can cut and splice other people’s scripts but you must have a good feel for the way that the language works before you can proceed any further

• Use The HelpFor PowerShell, the help system is the first thing you must reach for: it must be your best friend. The designers of the language intended it to be well-used.

• Use the  PowerShell CommunityThe PowerShell community is unique, because it has people who have come from a wide range of IT backgrounds. They bring their experience and wisdom with them. They will know more than you.  The combination of skills multiplies the speed at which the language develops. Read their posts, download their script and learn from them.

•  Keep It Simple

• Do not use Aliases, except for deliberate obfuscation.

•  Write with considerationDo not try to cram all your scripted process into one line.  In the Shared and Corporate environment other people will maintain your code and will not necessarily have the same PowerShell knowledge as you. Be kind in your code.

After reading his article, check out Carlos Perez, et al’s Powershell Best Practices and Style Guide.

Shawn Melton provides an introduction to various ways to interact with a SQL Server instance via Powershell:

The most commonly known cmdlet out of this module is, Invoke-Sqlcmd. This is generally thought of as a PS replacement for the old sqlcmd command-line utility, that to date is still available in currently supported versions of SQL Server. You utilize this cmdlet to execute any T-SQL query that you want against one or multiple instances. The advantage you get using Invoke-Sqlcmd over the command-line utility is the power of handling output in PS. The output from the cmdlet is created as a DataTable (System.Data.DataRow is the exact type).

This is a good overview of the different methods available.

Steve Jones shows us how to implement a hashtable in Powershell:

With that code, I could easily solve the puzzle. However I was struck by the various ways I work with the hash tables. I use braces, {}, to declare the table. I use brackets, [], to access elements and then parenthesis, (), when calling methods. All of that makes programming sense, but it’s something to keep in mind, especially as those three marks mean different things in Python.

Hashtables are easy to implement in Powershell and are extremely useful.