Practical Automation with PowerShell

Appendix. Development environment set up

One of the biggest challenges I faced when writing this book was how to make example automations that could appeal to large audiences. Therefore, for the most part, I tried to stick with base operating systems tasks or with software that almost everyone already has, like Office. Otherwise, the tools used in this book are either free or open source. The only exception is the cloud-based items, but they all offer free trials that you can use.

The majority of the examples in this book can be done using a single machine. However, to get the benefits and to be able to create every automation in this book, you will need three machines. These can all be any combination of physical or virtual machines. The three ...