VCP5-DCV – Passed
I’m a VMware Certified Professional now. Hooray. VMware 5.5 to be precise. :oD
Steroids? – Yes please! ISESteroids
Just to rule things out of the bat, I am not talking about steroids for like sports, not I am talking about steroids for PowerShell. Huh? Yeah! Powershell!
ISESteroids is a PowerShell module, an add-on for the native PowerShell ISE. Sounds not too exciting but it is! Why?
Well, first of all, you do not need to install another application, not yet another editor, nope, it’s ‘just’ an add-on.
Second, as it is ‘just’ an add-on, you can run with minimal rights, thus no admin rights are needed to run it. Which is nice as my work computer, being it an enterprise and high security due to merchant processing, has only limited rights to what applications can be executed. As mentioned, no problem for the ISESteroids.
ISESteroids comes basically in 2 flavors, Professional and Enterprise.
(see for a comparison here)
Still not convinced? Let me show you a few examples how cool it is:
- As it is written as a module, a plug-in, it does not require administrative or other privileges to be used. As I work in a pretty secured environment I can not just install software on my laptop. It will be blocked and reported (yeah I actually tried…) so ISESteroids can still be used! Also, the install is super simple, download it, unblock the zip, extract the zip, run the .bat file enjoy ISESteroids!
<a href="http://www.powertheshell.com/isesteroids2/download/" target="_blank">Install details here</a>. 2. It gives you ‘advise’ and tips during regular coding (e.g. change not needed double quotes ” to a single quote ‘) or it changes automatically from CLS to a PowerShell native command as in Clear-Host.
[<img class="aligncenter wp-image-305 size-full" src="http://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell03.png" alt="powershell03" width="644" height="141" srcset="https://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell03.png 644w, https://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell03-300x66.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 644px) 100vw, 644px" />](http://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell03.png) [<img class="aligncenter wp-image-306 size-full" src="http://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell01.png" alt="powershell01" width="517" height="113" srcset="https://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell01.png 517w, https://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell01-300x66.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 517px) 100vw, 517px" />](http://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell01.png)Pretty handy huh!!? 3. Another thing you will notice immediately once you installed ISESteroids, is that you suddenly have a ton of more buttons to click on.
[<img class="aligncenter wp-image-304 size-full" src="http://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell02.png" alt="powershell02" width="797" height="249" srcset="https://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell02.png 797w, https://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell02-300x94.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 797px) 100vw, 797px" />](http://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell02.png) 4. Another feature that I love is applications. YES!! You can build .exe files straight from your PowerShell script. That used to be a major PITA to be able to get that to work. With ISE Steroids, a few click and voila, you have your own application. Awesome!
[<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-309" src="http://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell04.png" alt="powershell04" width="691" height="205" srcset="https://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell04.png 691w, https://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell04-300x89.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 691px) 100vw, 691px" />](http://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell04.png) 5. It comes with a pretty powerful File version History / Revision change tracker
[<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-313" src="http://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell05.png" alt="powershell05" width="992" height="296" srcset="https://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell05.png 992w, https://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell05-300x90.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 992px) 100vw, 992px" />](http://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell05.png) 6. Auto comment. How I hated it, you have to manually put a # in front of the line to comment it out. Starting in PowerShell Version 2 I think, they finally introduced the comment block <# Blah blah #> whitch which you could toggle whole sections to be commented out. ISESteroids has a nice little button for that build in.
[<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-315" src="http://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell06.png" alt="powershell06" width="520" height="192" srcset="https://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell06.png 520w, https://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell06-300x111.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 520px) 100vw, 520px" />](http://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell06.png)7. Did I already mentioned that I love snippet manager and text expander features, it just saves so much time. You can also read about that <a href="http://blog.vvittig.com/2015/10/07/powershell-clipboard-history/" target="_blank">here</a>.
And you guessed it, ISESteroids comes with a build in Snippet Manager.
[<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-316" src="http://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell07.png" alt="powershell07" width="581" height="369" srcset="https://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell07.png 581w, https://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell07-300x191.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 581px) 100vw, 581px" />](http://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell07.png)And my absolutely favorite part? You can define where the cursor is when you insert the snippet. I was missing that so much from TextExpander! Thank you Dr. Weltner!
8. Refactor – Clean up your scripts. Totally great feature. Love it, try it, use it!
[<img class="aligncenter wp-image-318 size-medium" src="http://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell08-232x300.png" alt="powershell08" width="232" height="300" srcset="https://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell08-232x300.png 232w, https://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell08.png 388w" sizes="(max-width: 232px) 100vw, 232px" />
](http://blog.vvittig.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/powershell08.png) There are many more features and options in this fantastic product, if you want to give it a shot, please go powertheshell.com/isesteroids2 and give it a test drive! :o)
So you want to learn more – A quick shoutout
So you’ve been working help-desk for a while and want to move on? What do you need? Right 2 things stand out, experience, be it hands on or in theory and the other thing is, well certifications to proof that knowledge.
I want to give here a quick shout out to CYBRARY.
They offer free courses for Systems Administration, Network Administration and Cyber Security.
Here you can see their current course catalog.
I mean how cool is that? I remember when I started studying for exams classes and study material was far from free.
We believe IT and Cyber Security training should be free, for everyone, forever. We believe that everyone, everywhere, deserves the OPPORTUNITY to learn, primarily because everyone is essentially forced to use internet enabled devices. However, we are not prepared to defend ourselves against the cyber threats that exist and are emerging. Join the free Cyber Security training revolution at Cybrary!
They also have a nice blog and a pretty active forum with a lot of information about various certifications and current cyber security trends.
If you are looking for more information on a certain subject or you are currently studying for a certification, I definitely recommend checking Cybrary out.
File copies…
Been busy today at work copying a lot of files. Though utilizing robocopy, the experience was pretty frustrating.
So here a funny yet true comic…
PowerShell Clipboard History
I’m a big fan of TextExpander which is sadly MAC / OSX only. A pretty cool free alternative (but not yet quite as good, at least in the free version) is called PhraseExpress. Making use of a clipboard history is really helpful, especially if you copy and paste a lot and don’t want to spend a lot of time, pressing UP UP UP UP UP just to eventually execute the wrong line.
PowerShell has it’s own version:
Get-History | Select-Object -ExpandProperty commandline | clip.exe
To copy only the last five commands, simply add the -Count parameter to Get-History:
(Get-History -Count 5).CommandLine | clip.exe
Pretty cool huh? Now that is pretty long. Another way you can do this is like so:
Get-History | ogv
And you can get it even shorter by using the alias:
h | ogv
This is handy because you can search using the gridview search functionality and then copy one or more commands by simply highlighted the ones you want and hitting Ctrl-C.
If you are only doing this to find a command to re-execute, v3 and later this is handy:
h | ogv -p | r