Lab: Using PSProviders and PSDrives with PowerShell

Scenario

You’re a system administrator for the London branch office of Adatum Corporation. You must reconfigure several settings in your environment. You’ve recently learned about PSProviders and PSDrives, and that you can use them to access data stores. You’ve decided to use PSDrives to reconfigure these settings.

Objectives

After completing this lab, you’ll be able to:

  • Use a PSDrive to create files and folders.
  • Create registry keys and values.
  • Use a PSDrive to create and view Active Directory objects.

Estimated time: 30 minutes

Lab setup

Virtual machines:

  • LON-DC1
  • LON-SVR1
  • LON-CL1

Username: Adatum\Administrator

Password: Pa55w.rd

For this lab, you’ll use the available virtual machine environment. Before you begin the lab, complete the following steps:

  1. Open LON-DC1, and then sign in as Adatum\Administrator with the password Pa55w.rd.
  2. Repeat step 1 for LON-SVR1, and LON-CL1.

Exercise 1: Creating files and folders on a remote computer

Exercise scenario 1

You need to make sure that you can create folders and files on a remote computer so that you’re able to copy automation scripts to the computer in the future. You’ve decided not to use the MkDir command or any of its aliases so you can be sure that you’re using the cmdlets associated with PSProviders and PSDrives.

The main tasks for this exercise are as follows:

  1. Create a new folder on a remote computer.
  2. Create a new PSDrive mapping to the remote file folder.
  3. Create a file on the mapped drive.

Task 1: Create a new folder on a remote computer

  1. On LON-CL1, open Windows PowerShell as an administrator.
  2. Review the complete help for the New-Item cmdlet. Notice the –Name and –ItemType parameters, and then review the example commands.
  3. Use New-Item to create a new folder (directory) named ScriptShare on \\LON-SVR1\C$.

Task 2: Create a new PSDrive mapping to the remote file folder

  1. In the Windows PowerShell console, review the complete help for the New-PSDrive command.
  2. Create a new PSDrive named ScriptShare, which is mapped to \\LON-SVR1\C$\ScriptShare.

Task 3: Create a file on the mapped drive

  1. In the Windows PowerShell console, review the complete help for the Set-Location cmdlet.
  2. Set the current working folder location to the mapped drive ScriptShare.
  3. In the ScriptShare drive, use the New-Item cmdlet to create a text file named script.txt.
  4. List the items in the ScriptShare drive and confirm that it contains the script.txt file.

Exercise 2: Creating a registry key for your future scripts

Scenario 2

In this exercise, you will create a new registry key to store configuration data for scripts that you’ll develop in the future. You’ll also create a registry value in that key where you’ll store the name of the PSDrive for the scripts to use. You want to verify that you can retrieve the value from the registry in scripts that you’ll create later.

The main tasks for this exercise are as follows:

  1. Create the registry key to store script configurations.
  2. Create a new registry value to store the name of the PSDrive.

Task 1: Create the registry key to store script configurations

  1. In the Windows PowerShell console, enter a command to verify that the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software does not have a subkey named Scripts.
  2. In the console, run a command to create a registry key named Scripts in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software.

Task 2: Create a new registry value to store the name of the PSDrive

  1. In the Windows PowerShell console, run a command to set the current working location to the path of the registry key that you created.

  2. Create a registry value to store the PSDrive name with the following configuration:

    • Name: PSDriveName
    • Value: ScriptShare
  3. Verify that you can retrieve the PSDriveName setting from the HKey_Current_User\Software\Scripts key.

Exercise 3: Creating a new Active Directory group

You want the ability to manage all AD DS object types through a PSDrive that’s mapped to the User organizational unit in Active Directory. This PSDrive will use the ActiveDirectory provider. Once the new PSDrive is mapped, you want to create a new London Developers group that you can use to assign permissions to the developers in the London office.

The main tasks for this exercise are as follows:

  1. Create a PSDrive that maps to the Users container in AD DS.
  2. Create the London Developers group.

Task 1: Create a PSDrive that maps to the Users container in AD DS

  1. In the Windows PowerShell console, load the ActiveDirectory module.

  2. Use the New-PSDrive cmdlet to create a new PSDrive with the following settings:

    • Name: AdatumUsers
    • Root: CN=Users,DC=Adatum,DC=com
    • PSProvider: ActiveDirectory
  3. Set the current working location to the new PSDrive.

Task 2: Create the London Developers group

  1. In the Windows PowerShell console, use the New-Item cmdlet to create a group named London Developers in the AdatumUsers PSDrive.
  2. Use the Get-ChildItem cmdlet to verify that the new group was created.