PowerShell was first introduced to the world at the Professional Developer’s conference in Los Angeles in 2003 by Jeffrey Snover. Monad, as it was originally known, represented a complete revolution in managing host servers. A white paper written around that time, The Monad Manifesto (refer to http://www.jsnover.com/blog/2011/10/01/monad-manifesto/), remains an amazing analysis of the problem at the time – that of managing large numbers of Windows Server systems. A key takeaway is that the GUI does not scale to the, whereas PowerShell can and does.

PowerShell has transformed the management of complex, network-based Windows infrastructure and, increasingly, non-Windows and cloud infrastructures. Knowledge of PowerShell and how to get the most from PowerShell is now obligatory for any IT professional. The popular adage continues to be true: Learn PowerShell or learn golf.

Windows PowerShell was developed on Windows for Windows administrators. PowerShell 7, the open-source successor, is also available for Mac and most of the more popular Linux distributions as well as Windows. This book, however, concentrates on PowerShell within a Windows environment.

This book takes you through the use of PowerShell 7.2 in various scenarios using many of the rich set of features included in Windows Server 2022. This preface introduces what is in the book, along with some tips on how to get the most out of it.