In this post, I’ve tried to regroup useful resources to learn and expand your knowledge of PowerShell.

Tutorials

• PowerShell Pro! 
• Scripting with Windows PowerShell
• Windows PowerShell User’s Guide

Books

• Windows PowerShell 2.0 Best Practices
• Windows PowerShell Scripting Guide
• Safari Books Online – PowerShell

Videos

• Introduction to PowerShell (YouTube)

When I’m using the UI to install SharePoint 2010, I always wonder why at some point, I don’t have the possibility to add the database name myself. Like for the SharePoint Admin Content Database or the Search Services Databases, or the WSS Usage Database. On the other hand, some services offers the require fields to enter a database name. Of course, PowerShell come to the rescue. Great. But why I’ve need to do it that way when only a simple Database Name field would do the job… That my friend, it’s the mystory of life… Why do simple things when complicated one can be afford… I love my job by the way.

In the following table, I’ve put some link to great articles that help it to achieve this task. New links will come.

Excerpt from this TechNet Article

Methods available for pointing to renamed or moved service application databases

See my complete threads contribution within the TechNet Forum.

PowerShell
Windows PowerShell for SharePoint Server 2010 Administrators
What can I do with Windows PowerShell?

SQL server Connectivity and SharePoint 2010
How to TroubleShoot connecting to the SQL Server Database Engine
Find active databases used by SharePoint Server 2010

Microsoft Showcases
How does Microsoft IT do it?

Utilities
Mouse without borders

# Load SharePoint 2010 CmdLets Module 
Add-PsSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell
# Set Variables
$SiteName = "Contoso Site"
$dns = "intranet.contoso.com"
$url = ("http://" + $dns)
$AppPool = "SharePoint - intranet.contoso.com80"
$Port = 80
$AppPoolServiceAccount = "contoso\srvshpapppool"
$ApplicationPoolAccount = Get-SPManagedAccount $AppPoolServiceAccount
$ContentDatabaseName = "SHP_2010_Intranet_Content"
$DatabaseServer = "MySQLServerName"
$SiteCollName = "Home"
$Template = "STS#0"
$Language = 1033 #Other language required the installation of the Language pack
$Owner = "contoso\myuser" 
# WebApplication Creation
New-SPWebApplication -Name $SiteName -HostHeader $SiteHostHeader -url $url -ApplicationPool $AppPool -ApplicationPoolAccount $ApplicationPoolAccount -DatabaseName $ContentDatabaseName -DatabaseServer $DatabaseServer -Port $Port 
# Site Collection Provisioning 
New-SPSite -Name $SiteName -url $url -OwnerAlias $Owner -Template $SiteCollectionTemplate -Language $Language

Requirements

• SharePoint 2010 Service Account Requirements
• Configure SharePoint 2010 with PowerShell – How to

SharePoint 2010 (and MOSS 2007 also) always tries to be your friend. I mean, it tries to answer configuration question for you. One of it happens when creating a new Web Application.

Look this screenshot.

This is a default screen when creating a Web Application. SharePoint choose randomly a port number and leave the Host Header empty. I’ve seen a countless time this kind of default configuration leave like this by a SharePoint Admin. And then, the Network Administrator made special configurations in the Firewall, the Network switch and the Load balancer to make it work with a standard 80 port for the users. What a waste of time!

Why, oh why not configuring it with the port 80 right away? Some of these administrators said they weren’t aware that it was possible. Well, the Host Header field is the answer.

Domain Name System (DNS) are made to give users a friendly way to browse websites. Not only it applies over the Internet, it can be useful in a private network. Because SharePoint 2010 Web Application is, by definition, a WEB… Application, it’s a best practice to assign a DNS to each of them. Thus, everything in the network will be standard. No firewall special configuration. And even more, sometimes Firewalls do some filtering of standard port like 80, 443, 25, 21,… So keeping the SharePoint Web Application on a standard port is a good idea.

Now, in this second screenshot, here’s the good approach.

Before going further with the PowerShell syntax to configureSharePoint 2010. I suggest to review two previous articles I wrote.

• SharePoint 2010 – Best Installation Guides
• SharePoint 2010 Service Account Requirements

The following PowerShell Script allows to create the SharePoint 2010 Configuration Database and the Central Administration Content Database. Unlike the SharePoint Configuration Wizard, It is possible with this script to specify the name of these databases and thus avoid the horrifying GUID in the database name.

#-------------------------------------------------------------
#Loading SharePoint Powershell Snapin
#-------------------------------------------------------------
Start-Sleep 5
$snapin = Get-PSSnapin | Where-Object {$_.Name -eq 'Microsoft.SharePoint.Powershell'}
if ($snapin -eq $null) 
{ 
	Write-Host "Loading SharePoint Powershell Snapin"
	Add-PSSnapin "Microsoft.SharePoint.Powershell" 
}
 
#Set variables
$Credential = Get-Credential #Authentication Popup to Enter Farm Service Account Credential
$DatabaseServer = "smtlshpsql99" #SQL Server Name
$ConfigDatabaseName = "SHP_2010_DEV_Config_temp" #SharePoint Configuration Database Name
$AdminContentDatabaseName = "SHP_2010_DEV_Admin_Content_temp" #SharePoint Administration Content Database Name
$Passphrase = "test1234!" #Passphrase must be with a special character
$PassphraseConv = (ConvertTo-SecureString $Passphrase -AsPlainText -force) 
$CentralAdminPort = 65000
 
New-SPConfigurationDatabase -DatabaseServer $DatabaseServer -DatabaseName $ConfigDatabaseName -AdministrationContentDatabaseName $AdminContentDatabaseName -Passphrase $PassphraseConv -farmCredentials $credential
New-SPCentralAdministration -Port $CentralAdminPort -WindowsAuthProvider "NTLM"
 
#Provisioning Central Admin
Install-SPApplicationContent
Initialize-SPResourceSecurity
Install-SPFeature -AllExistingFeature
Install-SPService

The second line triggers the Windows Authentication Popup which allows to enter the Farm Service Account. The fourth line configure the Central Administration Web Application with the port 65000 and the NTLM Authentication Provider. I recommend to keep it that way. Using a specific port on Central Admin URL is much more easy to remember. As for the NTLM Authentication Provider, it is preferable to use NTLM instead of Kerberos for Central Administration.

I tried to create a calculated column in the Pages library of a publishing site. The idea was to allow filtering on the Modified Date. So my Calculated column held an easy formula.

=[Modified]

The problem was the Modified Column wasn’t showing up in the list of available columns to calculate with. Strange isn’t it!

And if I try to created it anyway, I’ve got this error:

FatalError: One or more column references are not allowed, because the columns are defined as a data type that is not supported in formulas.

After hours of research, countless backup / restore, iisreset and so on, I’ve managed to fix the problem in a simple dumbest way.

Go to the root site and change the URL after the DNS name for /_layouts/fldedit.aspx?field=Modified

Click OK and voilà.

By doing this action, SharePoint resets all the properties of the column in all subsites.

Why I’m taking these precautions? Because, modifying a SharePoint Database or its content could have a dramatic impact on the functionalities. If you don’t know what your doing, please don’t do it.

Here’s my story! We have a huge SharePoint Development Environment. Seven .Net Programmers who each hasa stand alone SharePoint 2010 development server. To minimize the SQL Licencing, all of them are using the same SQL Server environment. 186 databases in the same SQL Server, and because it’s a development environment, Storage Administrator set up a capacity limit on the database disk partition. Thus, we keep an eye on how much space we used. So far, nothing to report until this morning. During the week-end, the SQL Server went out of free space on the database partition. The responsible was a scheduled full crawl by one of the programmer on its server.

So, it was a day to clean. I began by checking the size of each MDF file in the database partition. I was surprise that all SharePoint Configuration Databases were 3 gigs or more. I opened up SQL Management Studio and I ran a Database size per table report on one of them. I found out the reason of this space appetite. 90% of the space used was on one table only: Timer Job History. I got more surprise. There is a Timer Job definition call Delete Job History that run every week. I opened up the table and I saw job entries four months before now. It’s great to have a job history list, but I don’t think I need to check so far in time.

Since all of configuration databases have data’s history four month before today, I was under the impression the job setting was set to 4 months. So I ran the following PowerShell cmdlets using the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.

$test = get-sptimerjob | where-object {$_.name -like “job-delete*”}
$test.DaysToKeepHistory

The result was 7 days. What? 7 days. So why there’s 4 months of data in the table. Many of these Cmdlets call Stored Procedure in the database. So I opened up the Configuration Database in SQL Management Studio –> Programmability. There is a stored proc: proc_DeleteOldTimerJobHistory. I executed it and it required a date. It clean up the table all right. So it might be a bug of the TimerJob.

Because of this name retention in the configuration database, do we need to reinstall the SharePoint Application if the name is changed? Fortunally no! Again PowerShell comes at the rescue.

1. First rename the server in Windows
2. Run this PowerShell Command using the SharePoint 2010 Shell Command.

Rename-SPServer –Identity “wfb1″ –Name “WFE1″

The complete reference is available on TechNet.