Just wanted to let you know the near 8 hours of content is now available on YouTube.
The playlist is at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlVtbbG169nFq_hR7FcMYg32xsSAObuq8 and the course materials available at https://github.com/johnthebrit/PowerShellMC.
I hope you find it useful!
I’ve finally got round to starting recording on my PowerShell Master Class. This will be a long course that will be free on YouTube. I’ll be adding modules over the next month and updating as needed. I’ll tweet (@NTFAQGuy) when I add new things.
Module 1 is PowerShell Fundamentals and available at https://youtu.be/sQm4zRvvX58.
The course playlist is available at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlVtbbG169nFq_hR7FcMYg32xsSAObuq8.
The course assets are available via GitHub at https://github.com/johnthebrit/PowerShellMC.
It’s a quiet Sunday morning and what else is there to do but create a 40 minute video walking through what Infrastructure as Code and DevOps really means for an IT admin. I walk through Azure examples and cover key concepts and tools including Visual Studio Code, Git and Azure DevOps. Enjoy 🙂
Over the past two months I’ve been busy on some Data in Azure courses for Microsoft and Pluralsight. These are free and you just need to sign-up for a free account on Pluralsight. These will shortly be available via Azure as well but are available now through Pluralsight.
Been doing some work with Azure Stack and wanted to easily update all the Microsoft provided extensions and a set of core images if there are new versions by running a simple script.
Script available at https://github.com/johnthebrit/AzureStack/blob/master/azurestackmarketplace.ps1. Simply run the script and after it downloads the assets it will check if there are older versions and prompt you if you want to delete the old ones.
I may have seemed to be very quiet over the past few months but that’s because I’ve been working pretty much every night and weekend on 11 new courses for azure.com that will shortly be available via the site but are immediately available for free via PluralSight. If you don’t have an account simply sign up for a free account and you can then access my (and other peoples tracks).
Planning Microsoft Azure Identity and Security
Planning Microsoft Azure Infrastructure
The identity track looks at identity management before diving into authentication, authorization, auditing, monitoring and risk. The infrastructure track looks at compute, storage, networking and monitoring.
I hope you find these courses useful and there are more to come.
On a side note I’m trying to raise money for Cure Childhood Cancer as part of my Ironman Chattanooga on 9/30/2018. This will be my 5th Ironman this year and 12th overall. If you can help even a little please head over to https://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/john-savill/IM2018 and maybe your company matches so if they do that helps as well. I’ll be trackable on the day via https://bat.live/track/imchattanooga2018?bib=356.
Thank you!
Recorded two new videos this week. The first is an understanding of how tokens work with Azure AD and then one looking at conditional access (which can control the access to get those tokens for various scenarios).
Word of caution – I talk about terms of use in the second video. If you just enable this for ALL users it will break things that can’t accept it, for example the account you use for Azure AD Connect to sync to Azure AD so make sure you exclude accounts that can’t accept!
When using Azure AD there are two types of authentication available:
When using the cloud authentication there are two ways to validate the password:
There are therefore three options for the authentication configuration
The order I have them is generally the preference but there are some pros and cons of each (in addition to a few considerations) and I wanted to outline them briefly here.
Password Hash
Passthrough-Authentication (PTA)
Federation
Note that for all scenarios I can still use features like Conditional Access. I try to start at the top of the options and work down if needed. I really consider the federation a legacy option that most organizations are moving away from since Azure AD would be used for the actual application federations moving forward.
Microsoft has a good doc at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/security/azure-ad-choose-authn which should also be reviewed.
Any thoughts, please post below!
PowerShell 5.1 marks the last major update to PowerShell we are likely to see built into Windows. The future of PowerShell has gone the open-source path with PowerShell 6 being available via GitHub and available not just for Windows but also multiple Linux distributions and MacOSX. This is made possible as PowerShell 6, or rather PowerShell CORE 6.0 is built on .NET Core (which is cross platform) instead of the Windows exclusive .NET.
The good news is PowerShell 6 can be installed alongside the PowerShell that is part of Windows/WMF. Download and install from https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/releases. Once installed you can launch by running pwsh.exe. If you look at $psversiontable you will see you have the Core PSEdition instead of the standard Desktop.
I recommend installing this and running alongside the regular PowerShell and getting used to it. The good news is most regular PowerShell will run and if you execute get-module -listavailable you will see the built-in modules. For non-built in modules you will need to check if they are supported with PowerShell Core.
Read the Microsoft article at https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/2018/01/10/powershell-core-6-0-generally-available-ga-and-supported/ for a great overview and walks through the key features that are not part of PowerShell Core 6, e.g. workflows in addition to key considerations.
Tools like Visual Studio Code can be used with PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell Core 6.0. Simply change the settings for Visual Studio Code to add pwsh, e.g. add the following to user settings (File – Preferences – Settings) (change to your specific PowerShell version). I added this just under the existing User Setting (the , goes after the existing line in the file).
,
"terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\Program Files\PowerShell\6.1.0-preview.1\pwsh.exe"
Happy PowerShelling!
There are many ways to create functionality in PowerShell including basic cmdlets, aliases and functions. When you use multiple combinations its important to understand the precedence. This is best understood by walking through a basic example.
Firstly just run:
get-process
This will result in processes being displayed as expected.
Now lets create a function called get-process that lists child items.
function get-process { Get-ChildItem }
Now if you run get-process it will show child items so the function trumps the built-in cmdlet.
Now let’s create an alias so get-process points to get-service.
New-Alias get-process -Value get-service
Run get-process and it shows services so an alias trumps a function (which trumps the native cmdlets).
Note, you can always force running the cmdlet by its full name.
microsoft.powershell.managementget-process
Once you’ve finished you can reverse by deleting one-at-a-time.
get-process
function get-process { Get-ChildItem }
New-Alias get-process -Value get-service
Remove-Item Alias:get-process
Remove-Item Function:get-process
