Off Topic: An Interesting SQL Query

It is likely that many of us working in the automation space and/or working with PowerShell will need to write SQL queries. We aren’t SQL developers by any means, but we do what we can to get by. When developing a recent piece of automation I ended up writing this query that I thought demonstratedContinue reading “Off Topic: An Interesting SQL Query”

Preparing for a PowerShell Interview

My PowerShell experience has been gained in roles that typically have a mash of other infrastructure skills, Hyper-V, vSphere, all things Windows (and sometimes Linux). It is not often you see dedicated PowerShell development roles come along, like you do with Python for instance. Last year I had the opportunity to apply for such aContinue reading “Preparing for a PowerShell Interview”

Native TAR File Extraction with PowerShell

That’s right, tar-ball 😉 On one of my projects recently, I had cause to extract a .tar.gz file during the automation process. If you are in this scenario there are potentially a couple of options around this which I’ll cover off. However, I wanted a simple, native function with no dependencies, so keep reading toContinue reading “Native TAR File Extraction with PowerShell”

Building ISO Files with PowerShell 7

A function that’s been part of my toolkit for a long time is New-ISOFile by Chris Wu. This excellent little function allowed you to build an ISO file directly from PowerShell, even a bootable one. I came to use it recently on an automation project with PowerShell 7 and discovered there was some compatibility issueContinue reading “Building ISO Files with PowerShell 7”

ESXi & The Big MAC Mystery

A scripting “opportunity” came up this week. Apparently ESXi assigns a virtual (or “shadow”) MAC address to each of its physical adapters, over and above the native physical MAC. The request was to report on all of these MACs across a large number of hosts. Read on to see how this resulted in the Get-esxiShadowMACContinue reading “ESXi & The Big MAC Mystery”