PowerShell has long been the workhorse of Windows server administration. But since 2016, Linux and Mac users have been able to use PowerShell as well. PowerShell has gained popularity on all platforms for its structured data processing capabilities as well cloud orchestration and test orchestration. As the world gets more and more API-driven, PowerShell stands out ahead of other shells and you will see some of the reasons why in this course.

Before we get into it, allow me to introduce myself. I'm a content researcher and developer here at Cloud Academy. I'm also a Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert: Cloud Platform and Infrastructure. You can connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. You can also get in touch with support and one of our experts will reply to your message.

This course is for anyone that wants to get into PowerShell. That includes Linux and Mac users since 2016. And in 2018, when PowerShell 6.0 was made generally available the same code base is used across all platforms. With PowerShell 6 Microsoft reached their goal for manage anything from anywhere be it running Windows, Linux, or Mac.

No prior experience is required for this course. If you do have experience with other command line shells like as BASH or WIndows' command prompt you will more easily digest the topics because there are similarities. You might also appreciate some of the strengths of PowerShell more knowing the weaknesses of other shells.

This course includes lessons on: The basic parts and patterns of PowerShell, different ways to get help at the command line, and we'll finish by highlighting one of Powershell's strong suits: Pipelines. After completing this course you will understand what PowerShell is, you will know how to issue commands at PowerShells interactive prompt, use PowerShell pipelines to create powerful chains of commands and gain hands-on experience working with PowerShell.

Now to get hands-on experience, this course has an accompanying Cloud Academy Lab that is actually what I will be using and I strongly encourage you to go through the lab as you go through this course. The lab has additional details and challenges to help cement the learning objectives of this course and to push your knowledge to the next level. With what you learn in this course and in the lab, you will meet the requirements for completing the other Cloud Academy Labs that use PowerShell.

Your feedback is very important for letting me know what's working well and what's not. I've used this byte session format of a short course and accompanying lab before and you've told me that you enjoyed it. That's why I'm making this one for PowerShell. I'll be very happy to hear your thoughts on it.

Now we are ready to get our first taste of PowerShell. It all starts with opening a shell. I have my PowerShell shell open here using Microsoft's Azure's cloud shell. It is actually running Linux but the shell experience is the same if it was running on Mac or Windows. At this point, start the PowerShell Byte Session lab and complete the first two Lab steps to get your own shell up and running. It only takes a minute. Even if your system has PowerShell installed, I'd recommend using the lab to get PowerShell up and running. That way you will have the same environment that I'm using. Continue on with the lessons once you are ready.