BackToBasic Learning

New PowerCLI Resource: PowerCLI Cookbook by Philip Sellers

All of you PowerCLI users, listen up. If you haven’t seen on Twitter already, a new PowerCLI book was released on March 25, 2015. I’ve had several individuals reach out to me directly and ask about this new cookbook, which appears to be a very good compliment to some of the other books already published.

We asked Philip to give us the lowdown on his new book:

PowerCLI-Cookbook.jpgPowerCLI Cookbook was written for beginner to intermediate PowerCLI users who mayhave some familiarity with the language but who want to learn more advanced techniques to leveraging PowerCLI for everyday problems. The book is written in a step-by-step, “recipe” format that is approachable and easy to learn from. I tried to include a lot of examples that may be specific to one problem but show a concept that could apply to hundreds of other uses.

The book goes beyond individual PowerCLI cmdlets and shows how to combine and pipe objects between cmdlets to harness the full power of the language and also covers some native PowerShell features to show how to package routines into modules and create scheduled jobs from PowerCLI.

I wanted to write this book because I have found myself going to PowerCLI first in my daily job as a systems administrator. There is so much capable with PowerCLI especially when you combine native PowerShell features.

I’ve seen and used a lot of scripts that other bloggers have contributed to the community and I try to take time to learn from their methods. You’ll find a lot of links to great scripts and resources other bloggers have produced in the PowerCLI Cookbook.

I hope that this book will share the knowledge needed for anyone to create their own scripts in addition to using ones that are available online. I tried to show how to investigate and enumerate objects to see what other capabilities are possible throughout all the examples, so that although the examples solve a specific problem, maybe the reader will learn how to find their own solutions, too. – Philip Sellers

It is available from PACKT Publishing and is also available on Amazon.com

We wanted to give a quick shout-out to Philip Sellers for his hard work and passion for PowerCLI. You can also follow him Philip on Twitter @pbsellers

 About the author

pbsellers.jpgPhilip Sellers is an IT enthusiast residing in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Philip has more than 16 years of industry experience in consulting and systems administration. Currently, he is a senior-level systems administrator with Horry Telephone Cooperative, America’s largest telecommunications cooperative. Philip focuses on Microsoft and VMware software solutions along with server and SAN infrastructure. He spends a lot of time wrangling unwieldy systems and tries to tame as much as he can with automation using tools such as PowerCLI. Philip has a bachelor of science degree in interdisciplinary studies with a minor in computer science from Coastal Carolina University and holds certifications as a VMware VCAP5-DCA and VCP5-DCV and is a Microsoft Certified IT Professional. He maintains a technology blog at http://www.techazine.com that provides explanations and reviews of enterprise IT solutions, and he is a leader with the Myrtle Beach VMware Users Group.