Monday, May 9, 2016

MCSE Studying - Week Ending May 8, 2016

Overview
I missed last weeks summary, so I will combine them both into this weeks post.

I successfully finished the "Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches" book, though it did take a week longer than I had planned. I thoroughly enjoyed the process of learning the basics of PowerShell and I am looking forward to getting the next book, "Learn PowerShell Toolmaking in a Month of Lunches". I also spent some time doing some lab maintenance and getting the Windows Server 2012 R2 GUI and Core images patched and ready in order to speed up the deployment of test servers. I also spent a little bit of time learning about Office 365 and studying for the MCSA 70-411 exam.

Cool Stuff
The coolest thing I covered in the past two weeks was the DISM PowerShell cmdlets. I had previously been doing my image servicing using the classic dism.exe utility. I found it to be frustratingly inconsistent in it's usage. During the process of image servicing, I found that dism.exe had no less than three different switches, referring to the same piece of information, depending on what specific task you were performing. I always had to refer to a cheat sheet to successfully make it through the process.

I made a point of learning the PowerShell equivalents for these commands, and found that they are refreshingly easy to use. After just one run through, I was able to do the rest of the servicing tasks without referring to a cheat sheet, or even a help file. The cmdlets referred to the same information by the same parameter in each cmdlet that I used. Go PowerShell! I am becoming a bigger fan of PowerShell every day.

PowerShell cmdlet of the Week
This weeks cmdlet will in fact, be a set of cmdlets. Referring back to the previous section, I thought it fair to post a link to the page for the DISM cmdlets. Also included is a brief overview of the commands I used to add Windows Update packages to the install image for Windows Server. I will cover these steps and cmdlets in more detail over on The Frozen Geek sometime in the next week or so. (link to follow)

DISM Cmdlets

Listed below are the four cmdlets and the parameters I used:

Get-WindowsImage -ImagePath e:\Images\install.wim

 Mount-WindowsImage -ImagePath `
e:\Images\install.wim `
-Index 1 -Path e:\Mount

 Add-WindowsPackage -Path e:\Mount -PackagePath `
e:\msu\Core -Verbose

 Dismount-WindowsImage -Path e:\Mount -Save


Studying Stats
Total time studying: 5 hrs. 5 min.
  • PowerShell: 3 hrs. 50 min.
  • Office 365: 15 min.
  • 70-411: 1 hr.
IT News, Blogs, and Podcasts
Resources used:
In Closing
I had a great couple of weeks finishing off "Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches". It deserves a lot more than the brief mention that I am making here, so I am contemplating doing a full review of the book in a separate post. To be brief, however, I will say that the book was awesome!

Next week, I will be starting back into my studies for 70-411, and I will be setting a date for writing the exam. Now that the lab environment is set up (more or less) the way I want it, it should serve as less of a distraction from this point forward.

These posts will hopefully become a little more frequent, as I firmly believe that reviewing my studies a week at a time like this helps to solidify the information in my brain. Learning is something that I am enjoying thoroughly, and I am finding it easier than every to focus in on my studies. I don't see that ever changing, and I hope all of you are also adopting a philosophy of life-long learning. So, on that note...go learn something!

Have a great week everyone!
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