How can you avoid common PowerShell mistakes in system administration?

1 Use consistent naming and formatting

One of the easiest ways to avoid confusion and errors in PowerShell is to use consistent naming and formatting conventions for your variables, functions, parameters, and scripts. This will help you and others to read, understand, and maintain your code. You can follow the official PowerShell best practices guide, or use a tool like PSScriptAnalyzer to check and enforce your coding style.

3 Use modules and functions

PowerShell allows you to create reusable and modular code by using modules and functions. Modules are collections of functions, variables, and other resources that can be imported and used in other scripts. Functions are blocks of code that perform a specific task and can be called by other scripts or functions. By using modules and functions, you can avoid repeating yourself, reduce complexity, and increase maintainability. You can use the New-Module and New-Function cmdlets to create your own modules and functions, or use the Import-Module and Invoke-Function cmdlets to use existing ones.

4 Use secure practices

PowerShell can also expose your system to security risks if you are not careful. Some of the common PowerShell security mistakes are running scripts from untrusted sources, using plain text credentials, or allowing unrestricted execution policies. You can avoid these mistakes by following some secure practices, such as using the Get-AuthenticodeSignature cmdlet to verify the digital signature of a script, using the ConvertTo-SecureString and ConvertFrom-SecureString cmdlets to encrypt and decrypt your credentials, or using the Set-ExecutionPolicy cmdlet to limit the scope and mode of script execution.

5 Use advanced features

PowerShell also offers some advanced features that can help you improve your system administration skills. Some of these features are remoting, workflows, jobs, and classes. Remoting allows you to run commands and scripts on remote computers or sessions. Workflows allow you to run long-running or parallel tasks that can survive interruptions or restarts. Jobs allow you to run commands or scripts in the background or asynchronously. Classes allow you to create custom objects with properties and methods. You can use the Invoke-Command, New-PSWorkflow, Start-Job, and class keywords to use these features in your scripts.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?