Chapter 1. Solving administrative challenges
This chapter covers
- The administrator’s headache
- Solving the challenge with automation
- PowerShell and WMI—the automation tools
Ask any Windows administrator about their biggest problems, and somewhere in the list, usually near the top, will be too much work and not enough time to do it. They know that automation is possible, will be at least aware of some of the technologies that could solve their problems, such as Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and PowerShell, but don’t have the time to spend investigating the technologies. That’s a shame because it’s commonly accepted that 70 percent of an organization’s IT budget is used to “keep the lights on.” Automation can make a worthwhile contribution to reducing that percentage and freeing people and money to contribute to the business bottom line.
It’s also possible that they’ve looked at WMI or PowerShell and decided they were too difficult. This is an understandable view, given the issues with WMI in VBScript—especially the amount of work involved in getting WMI to work in VBScript, and the lack of usable examples that also explain the techniques that have to be used. Some horrendous examples of PowerShell have been posted on the web that put me off, never mind someone wanting to start with the subject! Unfortunately, administrators then miss out on the possibilities that automation provides to reduce their workload and accomplish more.