TEST OUT YOUR POWERSHELL SCRIPTS FIRST IN A NON-PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT FIRST

March 26, 2011 4 Comments

You may be wondering why I applied such bad grammar to the title of this post, it came from a comment on this: https://www.nothingbutsharepoint.com/sites/itpro/Pages/Seven-Virtues-for-the-SharePoint-IT-Pro.aspx

PowerShell is a beast. Sure, it’s hard to learn the syntax, and there are 600+ commands that come along with SharePoint 2010. But, it also gives you direct access to the API for SharePoint. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, under any circumstances what-so-ever, run un-tested PowerShell code in a production environment. ever. ever. ever. ever. ever. ever. ever. ever. ever. ever. ever. ever. ever. ever. ever.

What may have worked for one person, in which they have posted it on their blog, mailing list, or company-wide fax – it should be tested first, in a non-production environment.

It may work fine, sure, but, it may also grind everything to a halt, and end your career.

In closing, re-read the above, and make it your mantra. No go fourth, SharePoint admins (and devs – yes you too), and prosper.

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Filed under PowerShell, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010 Tagged with PowerShell, SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2010 Management Shell

About Geoff Varosky
Geoff Varosky is the Director of Development and Evangelism for Jornata (www.jornata.com), a Microsoft Gold Partner focusing on SharePoint solutions based out of Boston, MA. He has been architecting and developing web based applications for over 13 years, and has been working with SharePoint for the past 6 years. Geoff is an active member of the SharePoint community, Co-Founder and Co-Organizer of the Boston Area SharePoint Users Group (www.bostonsharepointug.org), co-organizer for SharePoint Saturday Boston (www.sharepointsaturday.org/boston) and speaks regularly at SharePoint events and user groups.

4 Responses to TEST OUT YOUR POWERSHELL SCRIPTS FIRST IN A NON-PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT FIRST

Anders Rask says:

March 26, 2011 at 3:45 PM

And before running it on your test env, UNDERSTAND what the script does. Copy pasting random scripts from the internet and runing them on the farm without really understanding what they do is an even worse practice
Yes PowerShell is powerful, so in the hand of the novice its downright dangerous. I try to do all PowerShell development on a dedicated dev environment that i wipe ever so often to keep it stable.

Reply
- Geoff Varosky says:
  
  March 28, 2011 at 9:07 AM
  
  Yes, not only important to test, but, to also understand. Thanks Anders!
  
  Reply
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