Windows PowerShell Cookbook: The Complete Guide to Scripting Microsoft's Command Shell / Holmes, Lee

Q&A with Lee Holmes, author of "The Windows PowerShell Cookbook"

Q. What makes your book important right now?

A. PowerShell and Windows, in general, are rapidly evolving technologies. As time passes, they evolve to solve significantly new challenges, and simplify challenges that were difficult in previous versions. With the release of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, Windows PowerShell has added many significant features to address the realities of modern, multi-machine environments. PowerShell has also made many changes to simplify and improve its fundamentals (scripting and built-in commands.) The sooner you can learn about those improvements, the better your life will be.

Q. What information do you hope that readers of your books will walk away with?

A. PowerShell is an amazing platform, an amazing glue language, and an amazingly powerful way to just get things done. For those just stepping into scripting or management, it may seem daunting at first. By breaking the "PowerShell Cookbook" into a series of simple, isolated recipes, I hope that they see evidence that you don't need to be an expert in PowerShell to start using it or improving your day-to-day tasks.

Q. What's the most exciting/important thing happening in your space?

A. Windows Administrators have long lived on a diet of point-and-click. The move to systems automation (as opposed to simply systems management) is becoming a driving force in the industry, and an accelerating factor in the careers of all who adopt it. This is especially true now that administrators are being asked to manage orders of magnitude more servers-- from large enterprise deployments, to the massive expansion of virtualization, to the DevOps role and operations management in the cloud. PowerShell is perfectly suited for this environment, and has been crafted from the start to make you efficient in it.