Quickly Find the SharePoint 2010 Configuration Database with PowerShell

I wanted to share this quick tip with PowerShell. Many times, we need to have an easy way to find the configuration database, and like a good SharePoint administrator, you want to try and use PowerShell. I have come across other blogs here and others that mention finding this with the registry, so this is just another way to do it.

Easy Way to Get Relative Path of SharePoint 2010 Site via PowerShell

The more I learn and get to know PowerShell, the more I love it. I am able to perform what used to be time-consuming tasks (many hours or days) in seconds (after you write the script of course). While writing a script recently to perform some tasks on numerous SharePoint sites (webs to be precise), I was constructing URLs for the sites and using as variables and I needed only part of the URL (the managed path). After a little poking around, I found a nice easy way to do it.

Manage Dynamics CRM 2011 with PowerShell!

With the recent highly anticipated release of CRM 2011, you now have the ability to manage some parts of Dynamics CRM 2011 with PowerShell!  Ok not entirely, but it is a great start from Microsoft to providing the incredible flexibility of PowerShell to Dynamics CRM.  More specifically, you are able to script deployment management tasks only.  For the time being, you can only run PowerShell with CRM on-premise, NOT CRM Online.  Currently the functionality of PowerShell for CRM 2011 is limited, so this mostly would pertain to eithers with a large organization, or companies that do CRM hosting through SPLA agreements.  With these new PowerShell cmdlets, you are able to do things like:

• Create/Remove Deployment Administrators
• Create/Import CRM Organizations
• Review and configure CRM Organization settings

How to Format in PowerShell Webcast Available

For everyone starting to learn PowerShell, it’s hard to know where to start.  Thomas Lee (author of his blog Under the Stairs and a PowerShell MVP) worked with the great folks at PowerShell.com and Idera to put on a very useful and pertinent webcast on how to format PowerShell output.  It’s one in a series called PowerShell Power Hour.  Think about it, every command in PowerShell you run outputs data.  Wouldn’t you like to know how to get it to display like what you want? 

What’s the different in Format-List and Format-Table?  What’s a hash table?  Can we format currency?  He shows you!  This is not for someone who’s never used PowerShell before, but for those who are learning commands, getting some output, and need some tuning.  You can access the webcast at PowerShell.com’s site after registering for free.  It’s also available at Idera’s site as well.

If you need more of a getting started tutorial, check out the first webcast in the series “Getting Started with Windows PowerShell” by Tobias Welner (PowerShell MVP) here.  If you’re looking for more focused PowerShell information for SharePoint 2010, Joel Oleson wrote a great post on this topic.

Administrator’s Crash Course in PowerShell 2.0 E-Book

While doing some testing and research with PowerShell the other day, I came across a great free 4-part Crash Course e-book from Don Jones on PowerShell v2.0.  You can find it here.  You will need to create an account on the site, but it’s free.  Check it out!

How to Re-Create Default Security Groups in Multi-Tenant SharePoint 2010 Environment

If you’ve been dabbling in SharePoint 2010's new hosting (multi-tenant) environment and been creating host-named site collections, you have may noticed that the default SharePoint security groups typically created by default are not there in the root web.  These include:

Members

Owners

Visitors

These are created by the SharePoint API, and apparently isn’t called properly when host-named site collections are created through PowerShell in a multi-tenant environment.  This ONLY happens in a multi-tenant environment.  Even if you create the host-named site collections through PowerShell in a non-hosted environment, the first time you visit the site, you might be prompted to choose the site template and to create the default security groups.

So how do we get them back without creating them manually?  Read on...

SharePoint 2010 Granular Restores

I wanted to take a minute and talk about a really cool new feature of SharePoint 2010 relating to backups – Granular Restores.  While doing some test migrations from MOSS 2007 to SharePoint 2010, we needed to choose the best method to selectively move data from an old site to a new site. 

In SharePoint 2010, you have the ability to restore content (down to the list level) from an unattached SQL database.  How cool is that!  Here’s the new Backup and Restore options in Central Admin:

SharePoint 2010 Ignite Virtual Training - Day 2: Windows PowerShell

During today’s SharePoint 2010 Ignite training, it was apparent that Microsoft is now turning to Windows PowerShell as the primary command line tool for interaction with SharePoint. 

I learned about many of the advantages that are obtained by utilizing the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell to script administrative tasks in SharePoint Server 2010. Windows PowerShell cmdlets go far beyond the capabilities of previous command-line tools such as STSADM.  Windows PowerShell is not a replacement for STSADM, but it certainly seems to be more flexible and powerful.

The Hands-On labs gave me a test drive into the following areas:

•        How to use Windows PowerShell scripting techniques, such as pipes, filters, wildcards, and enumerations, for SharePoint Server 2010 administration.

• How to assign variables and use the SharePoint object model from Windows PowerShell.