PowerShell City

Have you ever dreamed of creating exe files out of your PowerShell scripts? If yes, read on. In this post I will show you how you can create exe …

PowerShell: Convert .ps1 Files to .exe Files

Writing scripts and functions we sometimes just want something to do or be one way with one purpose.

I have mulled over things and re-coded tools to work with different things. The one thing I find to be the best in every situation is always script or code with objects in mind so that the rescuing of old code is easier.

Yeah it takes more time to do this and ensure that you aren’t reinventing the wheel.

The reality of even using PowerShell is to make your life easier. You want to ensure the process you use is refined enough to keep management at bay on your decisions and feeling confident about your solutions by reassuring them with facts and successes.

So instead of making a paper air plane that only flys in circles. Create a small engine that can fly a tiny drone and can be controlled with a strict protocol.

You may think to your self drones are cumbersome and you don’t always need to fly things but, hang on! That tiny engine can go in to a tiny car and use the same controller and so on.

I don’t want you to only be a pilot but an engineer that can reuse useful creations. Explore your horizons during down time, explore modules and other scripts to become inspired.

Take what you see and make it your foresight for newer projects. Have you taken the time to create something lately and really make it reusable?

Remember the Shell runs on your mind Power!

There is a special place in my heart for tab-completion. Just invoking it brings peace of mind.

There are a lot of people that feel like they are retired school spelling-bee champs. I tend to like the command line validation. It sounds crazy but even when I spell it out all the way it feel like magic to watch camel case completely reshape the letters and when it doesn’t I feel this shame of losing my mojo!

I think having this as a fail-safe or a second way to verifying your typing prowess. It looks awesome when your boss is visiting your desk and you’re showing him the latest update to your project in a quick query or a possession to test connectivity to a server and it’s services and processes. It is massive when you install, update a role or feature.

Take some time and consider if you are using all the tools PowerShell can do and you can do this faster with tab-complete as it works with your own custom built functions and that adds to your highly stacked brownie points lol.

Thanks for reading and let the shell enlightened you.

It’s strange how often we talk about history and how many of us actually get it.

Today 42 years ago my brother was born on this day as mother’s first child, she celebrated her Mother’s Day two days in a row.

Although he passed away before his time. I will never forget how he affected my history. Without him or my mother I’m not sure we would be sharing or relating on this technical blog. I am thankful. So saying that I know you have to be thankful for the ups and downs and even mistakes that sort out where we end up or the solutions we find in life.

Get-history something that you have to go back and explore and see your mistakes. Your typos and your solutions that may be a reusable philosophy to include in your next project or script. I think using a PowerShell command box is just as important as using an ISE wether it is the OS built in one, visual studio code, notepad++, or even Sapian power Script.

As a challenge I want you to get-history and share your third from last command in the comments. Don’t include sensitive data. Just the command. Sounds silly but it could be fun.

Mine is Restart-Computer -Force

Looking back I think my computer wasn’t performing well after a long zoom meeting. I think it makes me want to see if there is anything in the system log. Had I not challenged myself to do this first. I may not have looked back at an opportunity to learn.

Thanks for reading.

Looking to make Reports more sharing friendly?

First start with an additional module known as “importExcel” (the link to the psgallery details is there)

Truth be told you can also Export to excel as well even though the name doesn’t give that away.

Script Time!!!! (I actually had to type this because I say this in real life in response to real challenges and tasks.

Here is a script that takes the performance counters from a machine, note this is different depending on the OS and the hardware. you can explore performance counters inside of the performance monitor tool searchable inside the start menu.

<#Script to gather Performance Data From PCs
#>

#load machines for Test
write-host "Gathering Worstation names" -foregroundcolor Yellow
$Workstations= Get-Content 'C:\Performance Data\workstations.csv'
$computers = Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_ComputerSystem -ComputerName $Workstations -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
#gather Memory Samples
Write-Host "Gathering Memory Data Samples" -foregroundcolor Cyan
$memoryData=Get-Counter -Counter "\memory\available mbytes" -SampleInterval 1 -MaxSamples 10 -ComputerName $Workstations -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue -ErrorVariable memerror 
#gather Processor Samples
Write-Host "Gathering Processor Data Samples" -foregroundcolor Cyan

$processorData=Get-Counter -Counter "\Processor(_Total)\% Processor Time" -MaxSamples 10 -SampleInterval 1 -ComputerName $Workstations -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue -ErrorVariable ProcErr
$processorReport=$null
$memoryReport=$null

$date=Get-Date -Format MM.dd.hh.mm.sstt                                              

foreach ($computer in $computers)
{
$processorReport=$null
$memoryReport=$null


#write the computername
Write-Host $computer.Name -ForegroundColor Yellow
$TotMEM='{0:0}'-f  ($($computer.TotalPhysicalMemory/1mb))

#Process Data Report
$processorReport+=$processorData.countersamples | Where-Object -Property path -Match $computer.Name | Select-Object @{name="Time";e={$_.timestamp| Get-Date -Format hh:mm:sstt}},@{name="Processor %";e={$_.cookedvalue}},@{name="Model";e={$computer.Model}},@{name="Computer";e={$computer.name}}




$memoryReport+=$memoryData.countersamples | Where-Object -Property path -Match $computer.Name | Select-Object @{name="Time";e={$_.timestamp| Get-Date -Format hh:mm:sstt}},@{name="MemoryUsed";e={$TotMEM-$_.cookedvalue}},@{name="Model";e={$computer.Model}},@{name="Computer";e={$computer.name}}

$MemChart = New-ExcelChartDefinition -XRange "Table1[Time]"  -YRange "Table1[MemoryUsed]" -ChartType Line  -Width 800 -Height 350  -Title "Memory Utilization" -SeriesHeader 'Memory(MB)' -XAxisNumberformat 'h:mm:ss AM/PM'
$ProcChart=New-ExcelChartDefinition -XRange "Table2[Time]"  -YRange "Table2[Processor %]"   -ChartType LineStacked  -Width 800 -Height 350  -Title "CPU Usage" -SeriesHeader 'Percent Utilized(Ghz)'  -XAxisNumberformat 'h:mm:ss AM/PM'
$memoryReport   |   Export-Excel "C:\Performance Data\Reportdata_$($computer.Name).xlsx" -WorksheetName MemoryUsage  -TableStyle Medium9 -AutoSize -Append -ExcelChartDefinition $MemChart  
$processorReport| Export-Excel "C:\Performance Data\Reportdata_$($computer.Name).xlsx" -workSheetName ProcessorData  -TableStyle Medium17 -AutoSize -Append -ExcelChartDefinition $ProcChart
}


Here is a quick post about setting the max memory in SQL Server so that you got no worries if you forgot to set this at installation.

I get it we all been there before. This was a step I over looked when starting out with SharePoint many years ago. However I did recently have this come up in a discussion and I remembered and thought I should do this in PowerShell to exercise my scripting technique. It seems to be best used as an expression.

Disclaimer:

Test this in a dev environment first and not production to ensure compatibility with versions and the .net framework:

The Nitty Gritty:

Function Set-SQLServerMemory
{
    [CmdletBinding()]
    Param(
            [parameter(ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName)][string[]]$ServerName,
            [parameter(ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName)][int[]]$MaxMemory,
            [parameter(ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName)][int[]]$MinMemory




         )
    Begin{
    write-verbose "Begining"
     $report=@()
     #$report+=New-Object -TypeName psobject -Property @{Servername="testServer"; TotalMemory=8076;} | select Servername,TotalMemory
     $servernames=$servername

    }

    Process{
    write-verbose "Begining the Process"

    foreach($ServerName in $ServerNames){
    Write-Verbose "In The Loop"
            $Rawmemorytotal = Get-wmiobject -ComputerName $ServerName -class Win32_PhysicalMemory | Measure-Object -Property Capacity -Sum
            $TotalMemory=$Rawmemorytotal.Sum
            $report+=New-Object -TypeName psobject -Property @{ 
                                                                ServerName="$Servername" 
                                                                TotalMemory=($Rawmemorytotal.Sum / 1MB)
                                                              }
    
            $min_os_memory = 2048 
            if( $TotalMemory -le $min_os_memory) {
                Write-Host "Memory too Low, Server could be Serverly impacted." -ForegroundColor Red 
            }
            if ($TotalMemory -ge 8192) {
                $sql_mem = $TotalMemory - $min_os_memory
            } else {
                $sql_mem = $TotalMemory * 0.79 ;
            }

    if ($MinMemory -eq 0) {
            $MinMemory = $MaxMemory
        }
        [reflection.assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo") | Out-Null
        $SQLServer = New-Object Microsoft.SQLServer.Management.Smo.Server($SQLInstanceName)
        if ($SQLServer.status) {
              $SQLServer.Configuration.MaxServerMemory.ConfigValue = $MaxMemory
            $SQLServer.Configuration.MinServerMemory.ConfigValue = $MinMemory   
            $SQLServer.Configuration.Alter()
            }#end if

    
        }#end Foreach
        }

        End{
        return $report | select Servername,TotalMemory
        #return [int]$sql_mem ;  

        }
}