MCSE Studying - Week 17

Overview
I have completed week seventeen of studying for my MCSE exams. I continued the Live Learning course for exam 70-462 (Administering Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Databases), and finished Chapter 8 in the Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches book.

Cool Stuff
The coolest thing I learned this week was how to use the Get-Member cmdlet in PowerShell to find out what properties are passed through the pipeline. It was a very helpful concept to learn, and I have already managed to put it to use at work this week. Specifically, I was looking for an easy way to display the Wi-Fi MAC addresses on a group of computers. Using Get-Member, I was able to put together this little one-liner to do the job:

Invoke-Command -ComputerName Laptop1,Laptop2 -ScriptBlock {Get-NetAdapter -Name WiFi} | Format-Table -Property PSComputerName,Name,MacAddress

It would have worked too, except I was trying to use it on a group of Windows 7 computers, which don't support the Get-NetAdapter cmdlet. Oh well, I might just have to do it the old fashioned way for now.

PowerShell cmdlet of the Week
This week's cmdlet is going to be another simple one:

Get-Date

I learned about this one in the Learn PowerShell in A Month of Lunches book when learning about the Get-Member cmdlet. I discovered that one of the properties it contains is DayofYear. This is especially handy for me, as I have to do a calculation several times a month, and one of the pieces of data required is the day of the year. I used this one-liner to display the current day of the year:

Get-Date | Select-Object -Property DayofYear | Format-Table -AutoSize

or, you could shorten it down like this:

Get-Date | Select DayofYear | ft -A

Stats
Total time studying: 7 hrs.

• PowerShell: 1 hr.
• 70-462: 6 hrs.

Resources used:

KnowledgeNet Live Learning Course: Administering Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Databases

Learn Windows PowerShell 3 in a Month of Lunches - 2nd Edition: Don Jones & Jeffery D. Hicks

In Closing
This past week has been a little weak (read: non-existent) on the 70-410 studying, but it has been a great week for PowerShell! I am going to re-set my goal of finishing Chapter 7 in the 70-410 study guide, and complete Chapters 9 & 10 in the Learn PowerShell in A Month of Lunches.

Onward and upwards in our never-ending quest for more bandwidth...er...I mean...knowledge.


Have a great week everyone!

MCSE Studying - Week 16

Overview
I have completed week sixteen of studying for my MCSE exams. I'm still not hitting the books as hard as I'd like, but that will come with time. I did start Chapter 7 in the 70-410 Training Guide, started the Live Learning course for exam 70-462 (Administering Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Databases), and listened to the most recent episode of the PowerScripting Podcast. I listed the podcast episode under 70-410 in the stats, since it dealt less with PowerShell, and more with the basics of IPv6.

Cool Stuff
The coolest thing I learned this week, was just how easy it is to setup Hyper-V. It was nice to start learning about another virtualization platform other than VMWare. I'm looking forward to getting to know it better over the coming weeks.

PowerShell cmdlet of the Week
I've decided to add a new section where I share my favorite new PowerShell cmdlet for that week. There's a lot of cmdlets out there, so I don't think I'll run out any time soon.

This week's cmdlet is going to be a fairly simple one:

Clear-DnsClientCache

Long story short, it performs the same function as ipconfig /flushdns, which means that it will clear the client's local cache of DNS to IP mappings. It is very useful if there has been a recent change to an entry on the DNS server, and you want to make sure your client resolves the name of the newly updated entry to the correct IP address.

Stats
Total time studying: 8 hrs. 50 min.

• 70-410: 2 hrs. 50 min.
• 70-462: 6 hrs..

Resources used:

Training Guide: Installing and Configuring Windows Server 2012 R2: Mitch Tulloch

KnowledgeNet Live Learning Course: Administering Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Databases

PowerScripting Podcast: Episode 283

In Closing
It has been a bit better a week than some past weeks. I still need to be more consistent with my training, but that kind of discipline takes time to develop. This coming week, I will commit to finishing chapter 7 in the 70-410 Training Guide, and finish 2 more chapters in the PowerShell book. Check back in next week to see if I actually accomplished my goals!


Have a great week everyone!

MCSE Studying - Week 15

Overview
I have completed week fifteen of studying for my MCSE exams. I'm back in the game! The number of hours spent studying was fairly low, but I did manage to get back into the swing of self-paced studying. I finally finished of Chapter 6 in the 70-410 Training Guide, and finished Chapter 7 in the Learn PowerShell 3 in A Month of Lunches. I have also added to my training lab environment thanks to a generous loan of a pair of desktop PCs.

Cool Stuff
The coolest thing I learned this week, was how to set up a pair of DHCP servers, authorize them in Active Directory, set up a scope of IP addresses, and then configure load balancing and fault tolerance between them. Not a big deal really, but what was cool, was the fact it only took 5 separate PowerShell commands to achieve this. PowerShell is awesome!

Stats
Total time studying: 2 hrs. 40 min.

• 70-410: 2 hrs. 10 min.
• PowerShell: 30 min.

Resources used:

Training Guide: Installing and Configuring Windows Server 2012 R2: Mitch Tulloch

Learn Windows PowerShell 3 in a Month of Lunches - 2nd Edition: Don Jones & Jeffery D. Hicks

In Closing
This week, while not as productive hour-wise, was a huge leap forward for getting back on track with training. I am looking forward to next week, where I aim to finish the chapter on Hyper-V, finish a couple more chapters on PowerShell, and start a live, instructor led course on Administering SQL Server 2012 databases. It's going to be fantastic!


Have a great week everyone!

MCSE Studying - Week 14

Overview
I have completed week fourteen of studying for my MCSE exams. I am afraid that this will be another short summary. I was not on vacation, I was not kidnapped by a hoard of ravenous raccoons, nor was I on a secret mission aboard the ISS. I simply could not muster the enthusiasm to get my head back into studying. I did manage to listen to, and catch up on the PowerScripting Podcast. So, while I did not get any official study time in, the week wasn't a total wash.

Cool Stuff
Listening to the PowerScripting Podcast episode 282 left me feeling as though they were in our office and in our server rooms. It seems that they knew the challenges we are facing. The topics discussed also addressed some of my deeper concerns with being a sysadmin in this dawning new era. Evolve, or become a technological has-been seems to be an especially common theme for sysadmins now. One of the things that hit closest to home for me was the fact that many sysadmins are spending so much time fighting fires, that they don't have the time to learn the tools that would help them fight the fires more effectively. I strongly agree with that statement. That's one of the reasons I am dedicating so much time to studying (except for this past week).

Stats
Total time studying: 4 hrs. 45 min.

• PowerShell: 4 hrs. 45 min.

Resources used:
PowerScripting Podcast - Episodes 279, 280, 281, & 282

In Closing
We have made some changes to our routine at home now that the kids are back in school. The most helpful thing we are doing, which we learned from one of our children's teachers, is using a checklist. Specifically, we will be using one for our morning and evening routines. This allows me to block out time specifically for studying, without having to try to figure out when I'm going to find the time. Given a few weeks of fine tuning, I feel that it will be quite a powerful tool around our household!


Have a great week everyone!