PowerShell Automation for DevOps: Building Scripts and Tools for Continuous Integration

Are you still clicking "Next, Next, Finish" to manage your servers? It is time to stop being a reactive operator and start being a proactive engineer. In the modern IT landscape, the manual administration of servers is a bottleneck. The industry has shifted toward massive scale, cloud resources, and ephemeral infrastructure. To survive and thrive, you must evolve. You must bridge the gap between traditional Operations and modern Development. PowerShell Automation for DevOps is your blueprint for this transformation. This book is not just a syntax reference; it is a comprehensive guide designed to take you from writing simple one-liners to building complex, automated software delivery pipelines. What You Will Learn This guide takes you through a structured journey of professional toolmaking: The Modern Toolkit: Leave the legacy console behind. Master PowerShell 7, Visual Studio Code, and Git to create a professional development environment. Advanced Toolmaking: Stop writing scripts and start building Modules. Learn to use [CmdletBinding], handle errors defensively with Try/Catch, and support standard parameters like -WhatIf and -Confirm. Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Treat your servers like software. Master the concepts of Idempotency and Desired State Configuration (DSC) to eliminate configuration drift. Automated Testing: End the "Scream Test." Use the Pester framework to write unit tests for your code and operational tests for your infrastructure, ensuring reliability before deployment. The CI/CD Pipeline: Automate the automation. Build a fully functional "Golden Pipeline" using GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps that tests, versions, and publishes your tools automatically. Real-World Projects: Apply your skills by building two massive projects from scratch: a Server Health Remediation Tool that auto-heals broken servers, and an Employee Onboarding Module that integrates with Active Directory and Microsoft Teams. Who This Book Is For This book is written for System Administrators, IT Pros, and aspiring DevOps Engineers who are tired of repetitive toil. Whether you are managing on-premise Windows Servers or cloud resources in Azure, this book provides the "glue" that connects your infrastructure to the future of automation. Stop maintaining servers. Start building platforms.