Practical Automation with PowerShell: Effective scripting from the console to the cloud

Practical Automation with PowerShell
brief contents
contents
preface
acknowledgments
about this book
Who should read this book?
How this book is organized: A roadmap
About the code
liveBook discussion forum
about the author
about the cover illustration
Part 1
1 PowerShell automation
1.1 What you’ll learn in this book
1.2 Practical automation
1.2.1 Automation goal
1.2.2 Triggers
1.2.3 Actions
1.2.4 Maintainability
1.3 The automation process
1.3.1 Building blocks
1.3.2 Phases
1.3.3 Combining building blocks and phases
1.4 Choosing the right tool for the job
1.4.1 Automation decision tree
1.4.2 No need to reinvent the wheel
1.4.3 Supplemental tools
1.5 What you need to get started today
Summary
2 Get started automating
2.1 Cleaning up old files (your first building blocks)
2.1.1 Your first function
2.1.2 Returning data from functions
2.1.3 Testing your functions
2.1.4 Problems to avoid when adding functions to scripts
2.1.5 Brevity versus efficiency
2.1.6 Careful what you automate
2.1.7 Putting it all together
2.2 The anatomy of PowerShell automation
2.2.1 When to add functions to a module
2.2.2 Creating a script module
2.2.3 Module creation tips
Summary
Part 2
3 Scheduling automation scripts
3.1 Scheduled scripts
3.1.1 Know your dependencies and address them beforehand
3.1.2 Know where your script needs to execute
3.1.3 Know what context the script needs to execute under
3.2 Scheduling your scripts
3.2.1 Task Scheduler
3.2.2 Create scheduled tasks via PowerShell
3.2.3 Cron scheduler
3.2.4 Jenkins scheduler
3.3 Watcher scripts
3.3.1 Designing watcher scripts
3.3.2 Invoking action scripts
3.3.3 Graceful terminations
3.3.4 Folder watcher
3.3.5 Action scripts
3.4 Running watchers
3.4.1 Testing watcher execution
3.4.2 Scheduling watchers
Summary
4 Handling sensitive data
4.1 Principles of automation security
4.1.1 Do not store sensitive information in scripts
4.1.2 Principle of least privilege
4.1.3 Consider the context
4.1.4 Create role-based service accounts
4.1.5 Use logging and alerting
4.1.6 Do not rely on security through obscurity
4.1.7 Secure your scripts
4.2 Credentials and secure strings in PowerShell
4.2.1 Secure strings
4.2.2 Credential objects
4.3 Storing credentials and secure strings in PowerShell
4.3.1 The SecretManagement module
4.3.2 Set up the SecretStore vault
4.3.3 Set up a KeePass vault
4.3.4 Choosing the right vault
4.3.5 Adding secrets to a vault
4.4 Using credentials and secure strings in your automations
4.4.1 SecretManagement module
4.4.2 Using Jenkins credentials
4.5 Know your risks
Summary
5 PowerShell remote execution
5.1 PowerShell remoting
5.1.1 Remote context
5.1.2 Remote protocols
5.1.3 Persistent sessions
5.2 Script considerations for remote execution
5.2.1 Remote execution scripts
5.2.2 Remote execution control scripts
5.3 PowerShell remoting over WSMan
5.3.1 Enable WSMan PowerShell remoting
5.3.2 Permissions for WSMan PowerShell remoting
5.3.3 Execute commands with WSMan PowerShell remoting
5.3.4 Connect to the desired version of PowerShell
5.4 PowerShell remoting over SSH
5.4.1 Enable SSH PowerShell remoting
5.4.2 Authenticating with PowerShell and SSH
5.4.3 SSH environment considerations
5.4.4 Execute commands with SSH PowerShell remoting
5.5 Hypervisor-based remoting
5.6 Agent-based remoting
5.7 Setting yourself up for success with PowerShell remoting
Summary
6 Making adaptable automations
6.1 Event handling
6.1.1 Using try/catch blocks for event handling
6.1.2 Creating custom event handles
6.2 Building data-driven functions
6.2.1 Determining your data structure
6.2.2 Storing your data
6.2.3 Updating your data structure
6.2.4 Creating classes
6.2.5 Building the function
6.3 Controlling scripts with configuration data
6.3.1 Organizing your data
6.3.2 Using your configuration data
6.3.3 Storing your configuration data
6.3.4 Do not put cmdlets into your configuration data
Summary
7 Working with SQL
7.1 Setting your schema
7.1.1 Data types
7.2 Connecting to SQL
7.2.1 Permissions
7.3 Adding data to a table
7.3.1 String validation
7.3.2 Inserting data to a table
7.4 Getting data from a table
7.4.1 SQL where clause
7.5 Updating records
7.5.1 Passing pipeline data
7.6 Keeping data in sync
7.6.1 Getting server data
7.7 Setting a solid foundation
Summary
8 Cloud-based automation
8.1 Chapter resources
8.2 Setting up Azure Automation
8.2.1 Azure Automation
8.2.2 Log Analytics
8.2.3 Creating Azure resources
8.2.4 Authentication from Automation runbooks
8.2.5 Resource keys
8.3 Creating a hybrid runbook worker
8.3.1 PowerShell modules on hybrid runbook workers
8.4 Creating a PowerShell runbook
8.4.1 Automation assets
8.4.2 Runbook Editor
8.4.3 Runbook output
8.4.4 Interactive Cmdlets
8.5 Security considerations
Summary
9 Working outside of PowerShell
9.1 Using COM objects and .NET Framework
9.1.1 Importing Word objects
9.1.2 Creating a Word document
9.1.3 Writing to a Word document
9.1.4 Adding tables to a Word document
9.2 Building tables from a PowerShell object
9.2.1 Converting PowerShell objects to tables
9.2.2 Converting PowerShell arrays to tables
9.3 Getting web data
9.3.1 API keys
9.4 Using external applications
9.4.1 Calling an external executable
9.4.2 Monitoring execution
9.4.3 Getting the output
9.4.4 Creating Start-Process wrapper function
9.5 Putting it all together
Summary
10 Automation coding best practices
10.1 Defining the full automation
10.1.1 Structuring your automation
10.2 Converting a manual task to an automated one
10.3 Updating structured data
10.4 Using external tools
10.4.1 Finding installed applications
10.4.2 Call operators
10.5 Defining parameters
10.6 Making resumable automations
10.6.1 Determining code logic and functions
10.7 Waiting for automations
10.8 Think of the next person
10.8.1 Do not overcomplicate it
10.8.2 Comment, comment, comment
10.8.3 Include help and examples on all scripts and functions
10.8.4 Have a backup plan
10.9 Do not forget about the presentation
Summary
Part 3
11 End-user scripts and forms
11.1 Script frontends
11.1.1 SharePoint trial tenant
11.2 Creating a request form
11.2.1 Gathering data
11.2.2 Creating a SharePoint form
11.3 Processing requests
11.3.1 Permissions
11.3.2 Monitoring for new requests
11.3.3 Processing the request
11.4 Running PowerShell script on end-user devices
11.4.1 Custom Git install
11.4.2 Running as system versus the user
11.4.3 Using Active Setup with PowerShell
Summary
12 Sharing scripts among a team
12.1 Sharing a script
12.1.1 Creating a gist
12.1.2 Editing a gist
12.1.3 Sharing a gist
12.1.4 Executing a gist
12.2 Creating a shared module
12.2.1 Uploading the module to a GitHub repository
12.2.2 Giving access to the shared module
12.2.3 Installing the shared module
12.3 Updating a shared module
12.3.1 Make the module self-update
12.3.2 Creating a pull request
12.3.3 Testing the self-update
Summary
13 Testing your scripts
13.1 Introduction to Pester
13.2 Unit testing
13.2.1 BeforeAll
13.2.2 Creating tests
13.2.3 Mocks
13.3 Advanced unit testing
13.3.1 Web scraping
13.3.2 Testing your results
13.3.3 Mocking with parameters
13.3.4 Unit vs. integration tests
13.4 Integration testing
13.4.1 Integration testing with external data
13.5 Invoking Pester tests
Summary
14 Maintaining your code
14.1 Revisiting old code
14.1.1 Test before changing
14.1.2 Updating the function
14.1.3 Post update test
14.2 Automating your testing
14.2.1 Creating a GitHub workflow
14.3 Avoiding breaking changes
14.3.1 Parameter changes
14.3.2 Output changes
Summary
Appendix—Development environment set up
A.1 Development machine
A.1.1 Clone the book repository
A.2 Automation Server
A.2.1 Set up Jenkins
A.3 Linux environment
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