Managing Azure with PowerShell - A Spiceworks Blog Series

One of my fun tasks these days is being a group administrator and moderator on Spiceworks community forums. The forums are IT Pro focused and include a great group dedicated to all things PowerShell. If you have issues or questions, you are most welcome to come on over and post away. If you know PowerShell, we'd love to have more folks answering the torrent of questions we get.

In that role, Spiceworks asked me to create a series of blog posts on the Spiceworks Cloud blog which covers PowerShell and how you use it in the context of Azure. I offered to update some of the content in my upcoming book (See http://tfl09.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/my-next-powershell-book.html for details). The publisher (Packt Publishing) kindly agreed.

The first article, Introduction to Managing Azure Services Using Windows PowerShell, was posted this week. The next blog post, which looks at getting the modules you need to manage  Azure whould be posted sometime next week. A third article on the basics of Azure storage and how to create an SMB share (and access the share across the Internet) is planned and should follow on in due course.

I have a number of additional posts to create, including one on building a Virtual Machine, and another on virtual networks and creating a P2S VPN into the VM. I am very much open to suggestions for more in this series.

SpiceWorld London 2014–A Wonderful Conference

Last week I had a wonderful opportunity to attend and speak at Spicework’s SpiceWorld London. It was a great 2-day event held at The Brewery, Chiswell Street in the city. I mentioned this event in my blog (see http://tfl09.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/spiceworld-london-speakers-announced.html).

The event itself was lovely – it was fairly small and intimate. This allowed time and space to meet other delegates and to talk to the exhibitors. The Exhibition was also pretty good – I got to talk to some great companies and picked up some great take-aways. Thanks especially to Acronis for a full copy of their software, which is really, really useful. And thanks to HP for the really nice phone charger – as it turns out, I needed it for the train ride home.

My talk was entitled Bringing Home The Bacon – an Introduction to Windows PowerShell. I’ve uploaded the slides to SlideShare (http://www.slideshare.net/ThomasFLee/2014-spiceworld-london-breakout) and you are free to take a look. The talk is introductory to PowerShell, but I did spend time both in slides and in the talk making the case for PowerShell. I certainly persuaded many IT Pros to at least take a look, but there are always going to be some die hards who will only relinquish the GUI when it’s pried from their cold dead hands. I can see their point – although my view is simpler. There are two types of admin – those who just know the GUI and those who know the GUI and PowerShell. The latter are always going to be the ones making the bigger bucks.

One unique aspect of the event was the presence of all of the founders of Spiceworks, who were there both to talk to the attendees, but also to listen. I had several great conversations around the use of PowerShell in the SpiceWorks applications and how that might be achieved. It was utterly awesome to have a view (i.e. SpiceWorks needs a PowerShell interface) and have the very people who can deliver that there and listening. It was very refreshing.

Of course, any great conference had to have good parties and that was sure the case. The pre-party was held at a pub – which was just able to hold all the attendees. And the main party, held at The Vault, was pretty cool too, complete with a nice band.

I am looking forward to next year’s event already!

SpiceWorld London Speakers Announced

Spiceworks is a free network management, monitoring, helpdesk, pc inventory and reporting solution. Produced by Spiceworks. But Spiceworks also has a very active technical support set of forums, including ones for Windows, VOIP, and of course PowerShell.

I’ve been contributing to Spiceworks since last autumn and am enjoying the place. I find the community a lot more supportive and a little less whiney than some of the other support boards. the place is very welcoming to newbies which I find especially good.

Every year, Spiceworks has a conference, SpiceWorld, which is held both in the US and in London. The conference is aimed at helping folks use the SpiceWorks app but also to be even more awesome IT Pros. AND, one feature that gets a lot of attention is the swag – I’m told I should bring an extra suitcase. This year’s London SpiceWorld is being held at The Brewery in Chiswell street on May 13-14. See http://www.spiceworks.com/spiceworld/london/ for the details.

Every year, one or two of the SpiceHeads (those of us active on the Spiceworks site) get asked to contribute. This year, it’s my turn and I’m going to be speaking about (ed: what else) PowerShell. My talk will be titled Bringing Home The Bacon With PowerShell with scripting and automation. It’s a short talk, I only have an hour, but I’ll be trying to cover the basics of PowerShell and looking more importantly at why every IT Pro should be keen to learn more.

I hope to see one or two of you there! http://www.spiceworks.com/spiceworld/london/

 

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