Archive for the 'PowerPack Challenge' Category

Next Entries »

And the winners are

Published September 3, 2008 PowerGUI , PowerPack , PowerPack Challenge , PowerShell 5 Comments

Susan has just announced the winners of the first sprint of the PowerPack challenge and these are…

Most Active Award ($500) – Adam Murray for his incredibly comprehensive SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services powerpack.

Adam's SQL 2005 Reporting Services PowerPack has 138 (!) powershell scripts

Adam's SQL 2005 Reporting Services PowerPack has 138 (!) powershell scripts

Second Most Active Award ($250) – Quintus Jones III who submitted two great powerpacks: Citrix and File Server management.

PowerShell library with a couple of dozen Citrix XenApp management functions

PowerShell library with a couple of dozen Citrix XenApp management functions

Find folder sizes, volume by file owner, old and unused files, and much more - all in a nifty powerpack by Quintus.

Find folder sizes, volume by file owner, old and unused files, and much more - all in a nifty powerpack by Quintus.

And finally… Best PowerPack Award ($500) – Jonathan Medd’s Exchange Server 2003!

Did you know you can do that much with PowerShell on Exchange 2003?

Did you know you could do that much with PowerShell on Exchange 2003?

The competition was tough and the Citrix pack was a very close second, but when we counted the scores submitted by all the judges (Jeffrey Snover, Marco Shaw, Hal Rottenberg, Kirk Munro, and myself) Exchange 2003 was number one.

This is quite exciting because the work on the pack became a true community effort with Aleksandar and Shay contributing to the pack, and feedback and additional feature requests coming from the forums at powergui.org. Jonathan was the one of the first to publish the first version of his pack which enabled that participation from the community, and got all the folks still on Exchange 2000 and 2003 a PowerShell library they can start using right away to manage their environment!

Check out the winners and submit your packs for the second sprint (which ends September 30th).

Tags: , , ,

SQL Reporting Services PowerPack

Published August 20, 2008 PowerGUI , PowerPack , PowerPack Challenge , PowerShell 3 Comments

In a pretty dramatic move Adam Murray submitted his SQL Reporting Services PowerPack just a few hours before the end of Sprint 1 of the PowerPack Challenge. And it was definitely worth the wait!

Adam's SQL 2005 Reporting Services PowerPack has 138 (!) powershell scripts

Adam's SQL 2005 Reporting Services PowerPack has 138 (!) powershell scripts

His PowerPack seems to have any SRS management feature you can think of. You can:

  • Work with Reports, Datasources and Folders
  • Create, move and delete items
  • List and modify security for items
  • List dependencies
  • Create linked reports
  • Delete history snapshots
  • Enable and disable datasources

All in all 138 nodes, links, and actions available with their PowerShell source code, and all of that working remotely via web services and compatible with SQL Server 2005. Go get it here!

Tags: , , ,

3 Days to Claim Sprint 1 Prizes

Published August 13, 2008 PowerGUI , PowerPack , PowerPack Challenge , PowerShell Leave a Comment

If you have a PowerPack you wanted to share with the community – it’s about time. Sprint 1 of the PowerPack Challenge 2008 will end this Friday and a bunch of $250/$500 Amazon certificates will be given away to the winners (here are the current scores).

Next week Sprint 2 will start – but because it goes well into September and that means that everyone will be back from vacation and competition will be way up! ;)

So spend a few hours tonight and get into the race! Rules & details can be found here.

Tags: , , ,

Citrix PowerPack

Published August 12, 2008 Citrix , PowerGUI , PowerPack , PowerPack Challenge , PowerShell 3 Comments

Quintus has just published a great PowerPack for managing Citrix XenApp (a.k.a. Presentation) Server.

It has 26 (!) different PowerShell functions to manage Citrix farms, users, applications, printers, and much more. He even has actions for application backup and restore!

PowerShell library with a couple of dozen Citrix XenApp management functions

PowerShell library with a couple of dozen Citrix XenApp management functions

Full list of functionality can be found at the powerpack page here.

The scripts use the MFCOM APIs which Christian described here a couple of weeks ago. It’s nice to see Quintus now taking the concept and running with it to create the whole Citrix management library!

(By the way, this is his second entry for the PowerPack challenge contest. You still have a few of days if you want to submit your pack for its first sprint. ;) )

Tags: , , , ,

Advanced file management

Published August 7, 2008 PowerGUI , PowerPack Challenge , PowerShell 3 Comments

Here’s another PowerPack Challenge contestant to check out – File System Management powerpack by Quintus Jones III.

Find folder sizes, volume by file owner, old and unused files, and much more - all in a nifty powerpack by Quintus.

Find folder sizes, volume by file owner, old and unused files, and much more - all in a nifty powerpack by Quintus.

It has a few really neat PowerShell scripts put together into a useful library which can help manage storage on your file servers or personal desktop:

  • Browse folders seeing their total sizes (I have always missed that in Windows Explorer ;) )
  • See total volume of files by owner (and drill down into any subfolder to track where they are),
  • Find the largest files on disk,
  • Locate temporary files,
  • Find old files,
  • Find compressed/archive files.

In addition to that, the pack adds a few nice actions such as AddTo-Zip which shows up for file objects, so you can select the old/large/temporary files and zip them so they take up less space on your drive.

Lots of useful functionality and PowerShell scripts to help you in your day by day file-related tasks. Get the pack here and submit any feedback in the library entry comments.

(There’s about a week left to submit your PowerPacks for the first sprint of the contest. Share your scripts with the community and get a chance to win one of the prizes.)

Tags: , ,

PowerShell disk defragmenter

Published August 4, 2008 PowerGUI , PowerPack , PowerPack Challenge , PowerShell , PSCX 2 Comments

Kuma\'s PowerPack to defrag your hard disk

Kuma's PowerPack to defrag your hard disk

Another PowerPack challenge spotlight: the second contestant is Kuma with his Volumes With XP Support powerpack. The PowerPack takes the Volumes pack which we had in the library for ages and makes it work for Windows XP.

The pack gives you a list of hard disk volumes on your computer and allows you to defrag them either with the defrag UI showing up on the screen or without it.

Kuma is actually running the defragmentation process in a pretty cool way. He is using the start-process cmdlet from the PowerShell Community Extensions library – so defrag is being started asynchronously and thus is not locking your PowerGUI console.

You can download Kuma’s powerpack here. And you have about two more weeks to get you chance to become of of the first round winners. ;)

Tags: , , , ,

Exchange 2003 PowerPack!

Published July 30, 2008 Exchange , PowerGUI , PowerPack , PowerPack Challenge , PowerShell 5 Comments

Did you know you can do that much with PowerShell on Exchange 2003?

Did you know you could do that much with PowerShell on Exchange 2003?

We all kind of knew that Exchange 2000 and 2003 can be managed with PowerShell via WMI or AD but Jonathan Medd has just taken this to the whole new level!

His powerpack for Exchange 2003 has 53 (!) different nodes/links/actions exposing features ranging from mailbox and server management to address books and message queues.

And because this is a PowerGUI pack, you can see all the PowerShell code behind each and every item by just clicking the PowerShell Code tab, or even tweak the things a bit by going into the Properties.

This is a great piece of work obviously making Jonathan the front-runner of the PowerPack Challenge 2008 (you obviously have 2 weeks ahead to challenge this ;) )

Check out the Exchange 2003 PowerPack and please let Jonathan know what you think.

Tags: , , , ,

PowerPack Challenge Scoring

Published July 9, 2008 PowerGUI , PowerPack , PowerPack Challenge , PowerShell Leave a Comment

We have just published the PowerPack which we will be using internally to score each entry submitted to the PowerPack Challenge 2008.

Import the pack, browse to the location of your powerpack file, and it will give you the score as well as the list of elements it counted (the score is basically the number of tree nodes, links and actions in your pack).

This score is the key to your success. Basically if you get the highest scores for the packs you submit you can walk away with the $500 prize in your pocket (well, actually you can get even more because there are 3 prizes in each of the two sprints – see the rules on this page.)

The rules are pretty simple and now with the scoring pack freely available you are totally in control of your destiny! The first packs are already starting to appear in the PowerPack Challenge folder of the PowerGUI library. Time to take the challenge! ;)

Tags: , , ,

Summer PowerShell Olympics

Published June 30, 2008 PowerGUI , PowerPack , PowerPack Challenge , PowerShell 6 Comments

Scripting Challenge logoJust like Scripting Games became real PowerShell Olympics this February, this summer – in fact tomorrow – starts the Summer Olympics – PowerPack Challenge 2008.

In a nutshell, all you need to do – is create a PowerPack (PowerGUI extension), export it, and post it to the PowerGUI library. This is easy and fun (watch this online tutorial) and you can compete for a bunch of prizes (sponsored by Quest). The jury includes Jeffrey Snover (!), Marco Shaw, Hal Rottenberg, Kirk “Poshoholic” Munro, and myself.

You can read more at the contest page. Time to have some serious fun here!

Tags: , , ,

 Subscribe in a reader

Subscribe by email

Add to Technorati Favorites

My Recent Tweets

RSS My company’s blog

  • Fun at HostingCon 2013
    The smell of the hosting industry’s finest is in the air, and of course we sent some of the Jelastic team to attend and proudly exhibit at HostingCon 2013 this week in Austin, Texas.  From what I have been reading, there are more than 50 scheduled sessions from Sales and Marketing, Technology, Issues and Trends and [...]The post Fun at HostingCon 2013 appear […]
  • Secure Access to Your Jetty Web Application
    Today’s post focuses on the web application security related features of Jetty app server. After reading this article you should be able to configure security realms to provide authentication and access control for your Jetty web application, as well as to grant access to your app for dedicated IP-addresses only. Before we start let’s examine what Jetty real […]
  • Software Stacks Market Share: May 2013
    We are back to update you with the latest trends in software stacks popularity for May 2013. This time we decided to collect the numbers in a different way to get more accurate statistics. As you remember previously we counted the number of the environments, where each software stack was used. We’ve changed the reporting [...]The post Software Stacks Market […]
  • Setting Up a Cronjob in Jelastic Cloud
    Cronjob allows you to configure regularly scheduled tasks so that the jobs can be run automatically at a pre-set point of time. It repeats itself and does not need any regular manual instructions. Cron automates your system and can be used for quite different purposes. This wonderful tool is a standard part of all sysadmins toolkit. Also cronjob has a [...]T […]
  • How to Deploy Joget Cluster into the Cloud
    Joget Workflow is an open source platform that allows you to build enterprise web applications easily, due to its rich set of tools. It is also a rapid application development platform that provides complete agile development capabilities, including consisting of processes, forms, lists, CRUD and UI; not just back-end EAI/orchestration/integration or the tas […]
  • Liferay Cluster in the Cloud
    Liferay Portal is one of the most popular Java CMSs in the world due to its impressive ease-of-use. Since we published the tutorial on Liferay deployment to the cloud we have seen an extremely positive reaction from its community. Also we have received multiple requests from Liferay fans asking about clustering, replication and fail-over capabilities in the […]
  • Mark Zbikowski Veteran Microsoft Architect Joins Jelastic
    Jelastic already has an impressive team of advisers including Serguei Beloussov, the founder of Parallels. We also have technical geniuses who endorse and use Jelastic including the father of Java James Gosling, David Blevins who founded the TomEE project, and Michael “Monty” Widenius, the author of the original version of the open-source MySQL database and […]

Legal

The posts on this blog are provided “as is” with no warranties and confer no rights. The opinions expressed on this site are mine and mine alone, and do not necessarily represent those of my former employer - Quest Software, or my current employer - Jelastic or anyone else for that matter. All trademarks acknowledged.

© 2007-2013 Dmitry Sotnikov

Pages

June 2013
M T W T F S S
« May    
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 67 other followers

%d bloggers like this: