Research Triangle PowerShell Users Group User Group, 13 Sep 2021

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From YouTube: ScriptRunner Making PowerShell a Real Solution in 5 Steps with Heiko Brenn

Description

We all love PowerShell because it’s an outstanding framework for automating recurring tasks. But there some aspects of PowerShell automation that are a challenge to work around.

For example, wouldn’t it be great if you could take your code and delegate the script execution to help desk teams and end users in a secure, straightforward way? That’s where ScriptRunner can step in and make your life easier!

Join our speaker, Heiko Brenn, for a look at the how ScriptRunner can simplify the way you develop, manage and delegate PowerShell scripts for Active Directory, Exchange, Office 365, Azure and others.

Heiko is a product expert at ScriptRunner, longtime PowerShell enthusiast who has over 25 years’ experience as a sysadmin, consultant and product manager. You can also catch Heiko playing drums at the ScriptRunner offices from time to time!

Join Heiko for a look at how ScriptRunner can help you simplify the management of 5 key areas that often a challenge for many admins:

- Centralizing your PowerShell scripts
- Manage credentials and permissions management, including password server support
- Automatically create web GUI’s and portal widgets
- Monitor PowerShell activities with a central dashboard
- Delegating script execution to helpdesk teams and end users

About the Research Triangle PowerShell User group (RTPSUG):
The Research Triangle PowerShell Users Group (RTPSUG) is the largest PowerShell group in the world! We meet twice a month to discuss all topics related to PowerShell and automation. Our topics cover beginner to advanced concepts and offer people a chance to learn new skills and ask questions. Our mission is to create a space for all attendees to feel welcome and be part of a community.

For more information on our group, please visit any of following links:

WEB: https://rtpsug.com
MEETUP: https://www.meetup.com/Research-Triangle-PowerShell-Users-Group
LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rtpsug/
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/rtpsug
GITHUB: https://github.com/rtpsug

A

Good evening everybody and welcome to another meeting of the research triangle- powershell user group, my name is mike canakis and on behalf of my co-host, phil bossman we'd like to welcome you all here this evening. Tonight. We're excited to be talking about script runner with our guest heichobrin, so we're gonna welcome him in one second, here, just like to remind everybody if you're watching this at home, please take a look at our youtube channel, youtube.com rtpsug.

A

We have meetings twice a month and we record all our content. We have about 95 videos in our contact catalog. So if you're looking for powershell content on how to do, infra, ops or things related to applications and enterprise operations, definitely take a look at our catalog. There's, probably something there for you. So without further ado, we'd like to welcome in our guest speaker tonight, hey haiku uh there we go I've messed it up already: hey haiku! How are you I'm fine? Oh you mike I'm doing well, hey phil! How are you tonight.

B

I'm doing well as well, um so I appreciate haiko, for you know, certainly staying up really late and joining this group. You know we're certainly glad to have you from halfway across the world close enough to halfway across the world. Now.

A

Yes, so for those of you who may not be aware because you're watching this is on a recording, uh haiku is in germany, our group is based in north carolina and it's 8 30 8 45 p.m, eastern standard time, but for haiku it is approximately 2 40 in the morning and he's been generous enough to stick up stay up late with us to present his product to us. So, first of all, thank you for sticking up late uh staying up late with us. We appreciate that.

B

A

B

Wanted to talk about, oh sorry, and then the idea that uh you know what. How did you kind of get into this? You know whole powershell thing and, like you know, give us a quick little background. You don't need to do well, ten minutes, but uh how are we doing.

C

Yeah, okay, so so I'm in in the ige uh industry for almost 30 years, I started as an administrator with mainframes and ibm ps2 models, and so I'm old, and then I did consulting and stuff like that and my first.

C

My first experience with powershell was with exchange 2007.

C

and I have to say it was not really love at first sight, because I was I was. um I had a couple of servers and then um I had to change the the ports of of the uh some smtp connectors and I thought well I go to the gui and I'm doing it, and then I was learning that it's not possible anymore.

C

I have to use this thing called powershell and then first I was like okay, okay, okay, okay, I can do it and then of course, uh a few days later, of course it's like okay. I had to do things on multiple servers at the same time and then it was like okay, it kind of clicked and said: okay, that's that's a cool thing, so I can really do this uh this stuff in a much easier way.

C

um Now that I have a script or a one-liner to do that and and from there I used it um quite quite frequently.

C

I was in the security um working for a security software company and we we had a powershell module as well to manage that and then I joined script runner actually two and a half years ago, and now I'm I'm yeah, I'm let's say fully into powershell so to speak, but I'm I'm still um yeah, of course, on a very um a beginner level, I would say so, um but um it's great that's what I just mentioned about the community, it's great to see what what people are doing and able to do with powershell and and to be part of that.

C

Is it's really it's awesome. It's it's really fun.

B

Yes, once you once, you find the love for powershell. It's like you, know, happy marriage and going all right. This is this. Is my baby. Now we're gonna we're gonna. You know it's gonna give back to me just as much as I give it back to it.

A

What uh we were saying uh prior to starting this recording tonight, that uh we wanted to say thank you to script. Runner they've always been a big supporter of the powershell community. It's really great to see a company helping user groups like ourselves and others get their feet wet and get themselves started by supporting user groups and being able to help them put content online. So we appreciate that very much um question about script. Runner itself.

A

I think this is a product that most people have heard of the name, because script runner is very active in the community, but a lot of people may not actually know what it does. So, if you had to give me like the 30 second elevator pitch, what is script runner and what's what's the problem that it solves.

C

uh Okay, so well, script runner is obviously is based on powershell and the idea of scripture is really to to to simplify the way you you develop, manage and delegate powershell scripts and that that all starts with centralizing all the different bits and pieces that you need to successfully run your scripts.

C

That's what I'm going to show you also later on it's like the scripts, the modules to credentials and and really enable and enable also non-it experts to kind of use powershell, maybe without even knowing it, because we're hiding all the complexity and the things the technical stuff in the background and people can just do their job spin up a new vm starting an onboarding process or whatever and and script runner takes care of all the logistics. In the background.

A

So this is a challenge: that's uh a product for a challenge, that's near and dear to my heart as we started this meeting some time ago this evening, phil- and I were talking- and I have this exact problem in my environment right now, so I work on a team that works with a lot of automation and we write a fair amount of scripts and my team is obviously very comfortable in writing and executing those scripts and now we're being asked to start to automate tasks for things like help desk and service desk people for onboarding and off-boarding, and they sort of say, find the top five tasks that you can automate for a team, but they never think about.

A

How is that team going to execute those tasks if they don't really have any real world experience with powershell or execution or remote execution or access on remote machines? So this is a challenge I have right now for myself, so I'm very interested to hear about this. um Maybe we should stop there and let you sort of take over with your natural start. There phil! Is there anything else you want to talk about before we get started this evening.

B

No, I think it's a it's a great natural start, and that's that is really. The whole point is that is you know it seems like so much of us at this point are able to write scripts and consume scripts for ourselves, but it is that that natural or it is that progression is like. Can you then take the next step and give a script to somebody else? Give them the next tool and then I'm really interested to see how script runner is allowing us to do that. So take it away.

C

Okay, great, so I'm going to start sharing my screen. I have a few slides in the beginning and then I'm going to switch to my demo environment. So we can really take a look at how the product actually works and how it looks like and what are the things that we can do with it. So yeah.

C

First of all, um thanks again for for giving me the opportunity to talk about our solution and about make powershell a real solution in five steps, which kind of uh is kind of a provocative thing, maybe to to say okay, because you might say powershell is already a solution which is true um in when it comes to the the foundation and the technology and stuff that you can do.

C

But I want to show you what what you could do uh with it when you use scriptwriter together with powershell and really kind of yeah, just do more with it. So um the two things I want to talk about the question number one is okay. Why um does it make sense to think about this um solution that script runner stuff and then it's about? Okay?

C

How we actually use that, and what's the benefit of all that before we start um at the end of this session, we're gonna, give away two amazon gift cards and it's gonna happen in a way that I'm gonna ask two questions and um for each question the first person who is uh yeah first in typing in the right answer in the chat, is going to win a gift card.

C

Okay, so if you take anything away, maybe it's going to be a gift card at the end, which is also not too bad and then okay, short introduction. So, as I said, we are into um powershell management. It's about simplifying um all the management and the the way you again you manage to develop and allocate powershell scripts. Here you see part of our team. um We are based in in germany, and um so this is me you can. You can hit me on twitter, you can uh on linkedin.

C

um You can even call me if you want to. uh You can write me an email and, um as mentioned, we are really supporting the community and people who are um maybe also starting to use it to use powershell and one of the things that that we offer and that you can um that you can get from us, is a powershell poster powershell cheat sheet which you can put on your on your office wall or your home office wall.

C

Maybe at the moment- and it shows you things like okay, how does the active directory module work? How does a pipeline work? How does uh how can I use xswmi and stuff like that? So you can go to our our website and register there and we'll send it to you and it's really helpful in it's like it's like.

C

Let's say the get, help that you can put on on your on your office wall, um all right, um so the problem that we solve or the things that we see as a as a challenge- and we already talked a little bit about that um just before I started the presentation here is really. um If we look at how powershell is being used in many organizations it, maybe it might look a little bit like this picture. It's like I.

C

I call it a decentralized powershell landscape, so you have your scripts and you wrote them, and you know exactly what which one to use when you want to spin up a vm or create a new user or create a new sharepoint site or whatever, and that's perfectly fine, because it's it's your script right and but if the question then maybe some becomes like. Okay, where is the latest script? um What what can I do um or how can?

C

How could I give this to somebody else to really maybe also run that script and another thing that that we experience quite often is no matter how small a beacon organization is. um There are always maybe a handful of people um that are really into powershell and so outside of this group of people.

C

It's really kind of difficult, um if you think about people in help desk or, of course, in the line of business and um another thing that we see, of course, is that to manage and to use powershell in a secure way, of course, that there needs there needs to be a secure, credential management on an all-white level, and now, yes, we have the sequence management module that also helps, um but in general um having these security things um being being configured in in a in a way that you can really use it on an enterprise level is is something that that is a challenge many times, and so, as a result, you have your scripts.

C

You write the scripts, you run the scripts, all the great stuff that you do, but it's still limited to really to you guys and girls who are actively working with powershell and from our perspective, this really means that the real potential of powershell remains untapped, which means using this technology to really do things, maybe for your whole organization. So the idea is to change from this picture.

C

To maybe something like this, where it is well organized- and you know exactly where to go to, if you want to do something, and um so it's about standardization, so make sure everybody has the right the right scripts, um it happens always this in in exactly the same way.

C

It's also, of course, then one of the one of the main things here is to really just to centralize all the different components in uh that you need to be able to run powershell and, of course, to do this in a secure way, um and because we talk about people outside of the ip expert circle, it has to be easy. It has to be accessible in an easy way and so um from a high level perspective. It's like okay. We want to transfer something like this into something like this.

C

That is here on the right side, so that at the end, it's just an input form, and um so nobody needs to know who's using that nobody needs to know that there's power in the background, or maybe their script and background, is just an input form to get things done. This isn't out of office example could be anything that you that you're doing with with powershell, and um so that's that's kind of really the idea and one of the important things to really kind of.

C

If you will democratize powershell uh this crazy little buzzwords and because we're centralizing all the different bits and pieces, um we have very good possibilities to monitor all the activities to find out, okay, which strength the script right at what time? How long did it take? Was there an issue, and we will see that, of course, there are different ways to run the script. One is like what we just saw as an example. There could be news in in input form, so it's an interactive way of using it.

C

The other one could be, of course, having scheduled um approaches for housekeeping processes and stuff, like that, and all these activities are can be monitored centrally, as well as the things that we will talk about integration where you want to enable other systems to also trigger scripts via a rest api, and so all this uh information and all these activities are ending up in in the centralized dashboard. So you have an overview about all this stuff. That goes goes on in the background, and so the question is okay.

C

How we do, how do we actually achieve that and it all starts with the script and the module so step. One is um all the scripts and modules are stored in a central place, um which also means, of course you could have github tfs azure devops, going on in the background, and I can see that funny little uh ac dc song names just now very good. um So you could you could synchronize your um your um scripts with with git or gps.

C

So let's say your your code management goes on in github, for example, once the script is being moved to the production branch and it automatically becomes available for script runner so step one. As I said, we we have all the scripts. We have all the modules and um we are and again depending on where you are on your powershell journey. We also um provide uh hundreds of scripts on our github repo.

C

We call them action packs and I will show you that also when you switch to the demo environment you will you find, I think it's 1500 something scripts for all kinds of platforms, all kinds of use cases active directory exchange over 65, azure, citrix whatever, and you can just take them- download them modify them to your needs. You can also see how we then write the scripts, which is basically based on the best practice approach by microsoft, and so this might also be interesting for you to get some info on that.

C

Okay, so we have the script in the modules. The second step is um okay. We need to have, of course, the credentials to to create established sessions to the backend systems, and um so what happens if we use script runner together with powershell?

C

um The only instance that's running scripts is the script runner server, which means only your script. It needs to have access to the backend systems, no matter if it's on premises or hybrid or in the cloud.

C

It also means only descriptor needs to have um the possibility to to use the credentials, um and this in itself, of course, already simplifies um again the whole the whole way of how you how you use powershell and also the the the um aspects of of how okay on how many machines I have to enable powershell and stuff like that and on the other side, if we look at the users right here, that might be somebody in helpdesk or maybe some some administrators or maybe even some end users.

C

These people right here they could be just stay normal domain user, but based on the delegation using script runner, they might be able to do things in azure on over 65 in citrix, in sql or whatever.

C

But the users don't need to have any access to these systems and they don't need to have any permissions in this system, because everything is managed within script. Runner and so is the delegation. So in script runner you decide what kind of use cases what kind of task a person is able to to start and work with and talking about the credentials they can be stored in two ways.

C

One is they can be stored in the windows, credential store on the windows on the script, runner machine and the second way of using um and storing credentials is um using password servers and at the moment we support three of them, cyber arc, blessed and psychotic. And so in this case, if there is a script that wants to connect to over 65, then script runner is going to ask the password server for the credential at in real time.

C

At this point in time, and then we establish the session, we run the scripts and once that's all done, then the password information is not stored anywhere. It's just stays in the in the in the password worlds, and so that's on one hand of course makes the whole process even more secure and you even more centralize the whole process, which becomes in handy of course, if you think about.

C

Maybe you might have not just one script runner instance, but maybe two or three or five, and you definitely don't want to maintain the credentials uh on on each and every box um individually, and so that's why this password server support really, of course, is a very important topic here and.

A

Can I in there for a second? So um I love where this is going already. This looks fantastic, so you mentioned earlier on about prudential support and there is the secret management module. Is there? Is there any chance in the future that script logic will support I'm script logic? Script runner will support the use of the script, the secret management module, that's provided by powershell.

C

Yes, yes, yes, we already have an experimental implementation in the solution. um We started pretty early uh when the first versions came out and then a lot of things got changed architectural ways.

C

So we have to kind of rebuild the stuff, but it as at the moment we have a, I would say, an early version of it not officially supported, but there will be definitely there will be support for that which, of course, then um in turn gives possibility to support other key walls that are uh connections that are that have been written by the community and and supporting azure key vault um and and stuff like that. Yes,.

A

Okay, and- and so I understand that you have sort of an a an order that you're probably looking to go through your presentation with, so that makes sense. We have some questions that are coming in that may not fit with where you are now, but someone's wondering like. Does script runner have a cross-platform support now that powershells cross platforms? So can you execute scripts in script? Runner against linux nodes?

A

C

And maybe maybe.

A

Maybe you want to answer that later, but that's just something that.

C

Someone's asking.

A

C

It's absolutely fine. No! So the answer is yes, so we support powershell seven, um so you can have ssh keys as the credentials uh and um so you you can use script runner to to manage. Also your linux and mac os machines. Yes, absolutely.

B

So, in that same regard, is it is effectively script. Runner becomes your script. Runner quote unquote is that it proxies all your scripts for it. So you would, then you know, dump the the all your script repositories into this, and then you basically have it do all the automation for you and then there's some web ui. I guess web ui, or can you just call this even through other like apis? Like hey call this?

B

Let me do this and I got I saw- or I heard earlier that there's you know, hey some automation, I mean like scheduler. So hey you have this job just running to send me a job kind of thing. So it's more than just do this on these ad hoc tasks that I want you to do, but it's monitoring.

C

Yes, absolutely so so we we have this this this three way of executing scripts right, one is the interactive one. The second one is really having a scheduled process, which is quite interesting, because many um companies come to us where they have priority. One is really to kind of get rid of this.

C

These decentralized windows task schooler that go on all over the place and they never know it doesn't really run or or not, and so they start with centralizing this first and then maybe there's interactive stuff coming into the picture or then uh using the rest api and- and it's it's it's exactly like you said in when we take all these three approaches together.

C

It's like script, runner becomes decentralized hub for all powershell activities, so which of course, also means that if there is something you you need to debug and to analyze, you know: okay, it's all happening on script, runner, which actually also happens if you have like third party systems that have some kind of powershell functionality, which but typically means that okay, I have to put the script over there and I have to make sure that the credentials are over there and then it becomes. It becomes uh complex with more and more systems.

C

So so, um let's say in our ideal world, so to speak, really script. Runner. Is this centralized um hub for everything that that has to do with with powershell running with the script, the modules the credentials creating this web user interface, but also, of course, managing the scheduled tasks and the fully automated rest api connectors?

C

A

So we sort of interrupted you here for a second and there are more questions coming and I think what I want to do is I want to batch them together so that you can get through some of the intro material that you're looking to cover and then just keep in mind that there are questions about running in distributed environments, running between different versions of posh, five and seven um running and kubernetes and stuff.

A

So I wanna, let you get back to your presentation, but keep in mind uh we'll cue up some more questions and maybe we'll take another pause in like 10 or 15 minutes and we'll get to some of the questions.

C

Excellent but then we're going to be in the solution, so I can show you all these things, how it actually, how it's actually configured um just to to finish up the security stuff here.

C

I also want to want to um mention that, because we have always this and we had a discussion just in uh before we started the session right, it's about powershell and security, and um there is a powershell um ebook, um powershell security, ebook that that you also can download from our website it's a 140, something page pages ebook and it covers all the built-in powershell security stuff things we like like chia um how to mental, how to store credentials um all this stuff. You can.

C

You can um yeah you read in this ebook, so it's also, I think it's quite helpful if you're, especially in this area- and you want to make sure okay, you use powershell in the most secure way possible, then that security ebook, I think, is a good. It's a good starting point all right, so we have the scripts. We have the modules we have the credentials. We.

C

We know that permissions are only necessary to to between the script runner instance and the backend system, and the user's uh delegation is independent from that, and then it's really about making it easy for the users and that's where um the next step comes into the picture where we automatically transform your scripts into a web user interface and by by looking into the scripts the synopsis where we hopefully find some parameter descriptions, because they automatically become part of this user interface. We look at the parent block, other mandatory parameters.

C

Do we have um date time parameters which we automatically translate into a daytime picker? Do we have parameters that that contain reg ex? So we we?

C

We checked this as well and that's all all that happens fully automatically, so there's no need to write any any ui code and um and, as a result, the user interface might look like this, which is a one for creating a new team where, in the background, if you look at the new team command, that has dozens of other parameters which we don't see because here the idea is, the user only sees which really needs the attention of a user where we need some input where the user needs to select something all the other stuff.

C

In the background, like security settings like here in teams, do we want to allow gifi's private public channels who are the owners and stuff like that? That can all be managed within script runner? But it's nothing that we need to show to the user, because, based on the standardized approach, you decided. Okay, that's our standard configuration and so only the things that really needs to be interactive with the user. That's what we see here and then step by step.

C

Other actions might become part for specific users, uh so my some users might maybe have five actions. 10 actions, 15 actions or whatever, whatever they their their job, is and then coming back to this integration. Part really is um as a as I mentioned, running the things interactively is one one possibility. The second one is the schedule part and the third one is really enable any kind of rest, ratified solution, so to speak, to talk to script runner to tell us, okay run this script with this parameters with this parameter rails.

C

Of course that needs to happen in authentication um before that, and um the rest, of course rest is the the preferred way of doing this. We also have an so called in email, inbound connector, which means, if you have like the legacy systems that are not able to talk rest, but they can send emails in a particular format. Formatted way, this could be another channel to communicate with script runner.

C

uh Okay. So with this I would switch to my demo environment.

C

Which is this one here so here we're looking at our admin interface for script? Runner- and this is the dashboard I'm coming back to this later. um As I said, it all starts with the scripts. So here I have all the scripts that I can use on my script on the machine.

C

It's like 1200 scripts, um and I mentioned this action packs on github, so most of the scripts, because I'm a lazy person are coming from um from these action packs uh and um we can take a look at an example here, like okay, creating a new team, for example, you can see how we provide how we um create these scripts, which is based on the the best practice approach. You can already maybe see here.

C

We already add some some additional functionality when it comes to multi-language support, which means, if, if a user switches the language in our interface, the parameter descriptions um also switch. If you have this information in your scripts, um so this is how you control what's actually um displayed in the user interface and then, of course, we have the the parameter, um the parent block, the the actual code and uh right here you already see. We also add some additional functionality and um information.

C

For example, you can control what you want to display to the user once once the script has has been executed.

C

um We will see the other examples where we, for example, we we know the ip address from the machine where maybe a person has started an action or or the user information that you might want to use to control the behavior of your scripts, for example, and um so yeah. So here we have the scripts.

C

You also might see here we also detect if script contains functions, which also means you can decide later on to maybe delegate the functionality of a whole script or maybe just a function, and we can work, we heavily work with tagging and and filtering so you can say okay, I only want to see work with my azure scripts, for example, or I want to have my exchange scripts here.

C

So, as I said, the idea is really have to hold all the order scripts in a single place and and to start using them and and manage them centrally. Second step credentials.

C

So here we have the credentials for all the different backend systems that we want to connect to and that they can be stored locally on the windows credential store or like. In this case, I have a credential for my local exchange server, which is stored in blessing so which what happened is that, instead of having the credential right here, it's just the id of the credentials.

C

So flipkart is going to take this id ask pleasant when there is a script that wants to connect to exchange and get this information in real time when this session has to be established- and here we also see already- we have this powershell sequence- management implementation in an experimental version right now, but there will be, uh of course, a an official one and we, as I said, supporting powershell 7.

C

You can also have your ssh keys here to be able to um manage your linux boxes as well, and um so these are the credentials and what we are going to do with this. We are mapping them to what we call targets and targets are the actual back-end systems that you want to that. You want to talk to and want to manage. Let's say you start again with this local exchange server here, so a target means okay. This is address. This is how I'm connecting that.

C

This is where I want to connect to, and this is the credential here that is going to be used every time this target later on is used for any kind of of action, as as we call them, which means this logistic information um doesn't have to be in your scripts, because it's managed as targets in your in your script, so no need to have any credentials there um and uh the the nice thing here, of course, about this, um you can have all kinds of different uh targets, so there could be targets for local execution for powershell remoting powershell remoting also, of course includes.

C

If you have chia endpoints that you want to connect there and then run the scripts from this chia endpoints you can, you can combine targets into collections, which is especially helpful for this housekeeping processes.

C

So if you have 200 servers that you want to do archiving or lock deletion every every saturday, you don't have to select all these 200 in in your in your configuration, you could put all them into a collection, say: okay, this is uh this collection, I'm going to use for this housekeeping process, and then we have these examples here for, for the typically uh frequently used cloud targets.

C

But of course it's not limited to that you could you can you can create targets for your vmware, for your hyper-v system, for your sharepoint for all kinds of of backend systems, so, for example, if I'm looking at over 65 as an example here, um you also can decide. Okay, what which kind of service I want to address.

C

Actually um is it's just going to be azure id and teams, or maybe it's also going to be something that I want to use the good old, ms online or exchange, or am I going to use xov2 already and I'm having already my certificates ready for doing the authentication here, which all depends, of course, on your configuration and the way you want to use um your your scripts together with script runner and um the the idea of having these targets really simplifies the whole process of what is really what has to be part of your script uh and the idea, if you do that, with script run, it really is okay, uh we're focusing on on the on the business case, so to speak, and the logistics are being managed um within script runner, and um so, as I said you can, you can create um all kinds of of targets, um on-premise hybrid in the cloud, and so the question is okay.

C

What are we doing with this now? So we have the scripts, we have credentials. We have targets where we know. That's the backend system, that's the credentials, and with this we can start creating actions and actions are the actual use cases. What do you want to achieve?

C

What do you want to do with your scripts and um we can look at it as an as a simple example here, which could be um create a a new vm, for example, um and um I'm just clicking here on run and remember, I'm I'm I'm in the admin context right now, I'm not in the context of an help desk person or an end user. I will do that in a minute, so here we'll see, we obviously have a mandatory parameter. We can select what kind of operating system we want to build this vmware.

C

We have the locations that we can select and we have the vm sizes that is available here, and the idea here is, of course- and we have queries here in the background- that that make sure that the user who is working with that is not able to spin up the most expensive vms in a azure region. That is, my that might be somewhere in asia and your location is, is in north america. For example, so um if I'm looking at this in in an edit mode, we will see number one.

C

um We have many different parameters that are pre-configured. For example, what's the resource group name um and we want to have always static ip addresses, for example, and this is something that we have decided? Okay, that's our that's the way we want to create our vms and then we hide that from the input form, which means users don't have to change it.

C

If, in another case, somebody should also be able to maybe um select a resource group, then we could do this, of course as well, and we have these queries enabled here, which means, instead of I'm, just disable this here, instead of just providing um just providing a. Let me just do it again, instead of just providing here, an input form where you need would need to know.

C

Okay, this is eqs, and this is, I don't know, standard d2, v2, whatever, which no other normal user in helped us would know and because we're thinking about delegation, of course, we we don't want people to type in stuff here, and especially, not stuff. That does things in the in the wrong way right.

C

So that's why we provide um the possibilities here to enable this queries and I'm going to show you how this gravity looks like, and here, for example, we have a list of the vm sizes and we also have a list of the possible locations, and so the thing might be.

C

You have people sitting in north america, so they can, they should be able to select the locations in in north america and others might sit in europe and they should be able to um to select the locations in europe now with when you, when you just have powershell you would you would have to have this in your scripts right, you might modify your scripts or you might maybe even even worse, maybe uh make copies of your scripts and have four different locations.

C

In this case, the underlying script to actually create a vm, is exactly staying the same you're just um changing the the um the management so to speak about what the user is able to select, which means you could just make a copy of this action and say this is my action for north america.

C

This is my action for for europe, and you might just have um provide a different set of possible options, for, in this case, the region and and uh evm sizes, for example, and um now, if you have so, we have implemented that now. In the background of course, we have your script right, um so I'm going to.

B

Can I ask a couple questions here, just coming along, so let's go back a little bit targets and stuff like that, and so the idea with targets is that so you can set different the script. Runner is I'm gonna, almost I'm trying to like envision the environment as a whole, so the script runner is a virtual appliance that then reaches out to talk to different clients, but there's also an agent running on the local machine that can locally run scripts.

B

Is that what it is like am like we kind of jumped right into the web interface, but bring me back to 10, 000 foot and say: what's the architecture? Oh okay,.

C

So you have a avm, a windows vm with an ios running script, runner on top of this, having the modules there having the scripts there and um what what? What you're going? What you? What you're doing is you have your script, runner and machine and enable them to connect to azure, to of 65 to hyper vmware or whatever, based on um the powershell connections right um so to to use the the modules?

C

Let's say the power cli module to connect to your your to your vsphere server, for example, and then manage your your vms on on that machine. So there is no need to have any agents um on on decentralized machines.

B

Then install power cli on the script, runner server, so that I can talk to power.

C

B

Know and then hey, if I want to have it, do you know again, my world is citrix and world. If I need to do talking to citrix, I need to install those powershell modules into this script. Runner server to then talk to citrix, as opposed to have another jump box that it's going to go or some other target.

C

Yes, exactly so, in this case you would install, maybe you would install the citrix studio which, which includes the the powershell sdk you would you would have this? Would you would include the ps snap-ins for citrix and then start using that to connect to your backend systems, that's kind of the the first step approach. Now we also have organizations that say: okay, we have, let's say 20 different backend systems and we don't want to have all the modules being also being part of the script on the machine.

C

So in this case what could happen is there is a separate box like next to scriptrunner, where all the modules are installed and then um the execution is being done via this jump box and then talking to citrix oops talking to.

B

So so, in that case, your most of your scripts are running toward that target and that target then jumps to the next server or is it I'm still jumping to the other thing, because some of the stuff I know I can, I can jump into like you, know another server and do that I can jump to my vcenter server.

B

I can jump to my vsphere and then I can jump to the other servers and even I can talk directly to azure ad, but some of the things is like well other stuff like I just want to like you know, query you know this. That can talk directly to the server or to the target itself. So some of those kind of things in like where do I put the scripts locally? Sometimes do I put the script remotely or everything needs to stay local and then it's going to start doing some delegation is that well.

C

The the default cons, the default scenario, really is. Typically, the scripts are really local on the script on the machine and then making sure script runner is able to connect to this to the to the target systems depending on your infrastructure. If you know the the direct connection is not possible because you have a layout network and you have firewall policies and stuff like that, then the scenario uh could be that: okay, you we real.

C

We are connecting to it, for example, to a chia endpoint where, from there the execution is is being done, because that's the only way that it can be established because it's not yes, it's not allowed to connect directly to the um to the backend system. So this these are things that typically really depend on the infrastructure um design and how script runner is able to to connect to this back-end system. I mean basically it at the end.

C

It all comes back to what can you do natively with powershell, because the way that you that we connect with script runner is underneath it's it's. It's a partial host right, so so everything that you can do with powershell you can, you can put into script runner and and have it managed in a in a proper way on a let's say on an enterprise level, so which also means that's coming back to or if you have like, okay you're implementing something and it doesn't work with in the script runner.

C

So the first thing that we always recommend is okay. Try it natively on this machine on your powershell console. Is it possible to connect to this to this system and are you able to to run that script against azure or of 65 or teams or or whatever? And so, if that's, if that's possible, um infrastructure-wise, then chances are very good that it also works within script runner. So.

B

Kind of relates that same fashion. Oh sorry, my next question mike um the idea that the architecture of script runner does it have multiple runners like if I needed to put something in asia and so that you know everything's running local in asia. I can have a script runner in asia and a script runner in north america so that it does that stuff, and then I can centralize, I'm not I'm also kind of following through some of that, like aj architecture, long term.

C

Yeah, so so, of course you could you can have a multiple description or instances, a description or service that that kind of uh share a common configuration, for example, which which brings us to low balancing um high availability scenarios, uh of course or other scenarios which we also see. Sometimes where customers say.

C

Okay, we have we started with one machine and we have 50 actions for manual tasks and we have now 80 actions that run scheduled, and then we have also a rest api calls coming in and we want to have a separation between the interactive actions and the ones that are being used for scheduled and rest. Api calls. So in this case also, you you end up with with two different in this case, maybe two or maybe even more servers to make sure.

C

Okay, these script runner servers are there to provide the the service for this interactive usage and the other ones for the for the uh for the scheduled one and and the and the rest api connector world. There would be.

B

The same same same web interface to actually control all of those.

A

B

A

So so it sounds like uh maybe an easier way to say this. Is this probably your preferred architecture right and then deviate from the preferred architecture based on client limitations, network limitations? But then I also heard here that hey when you start to get into a big deployment with a lot of runners and different nodes.

A

Maybe we need to load balance the system and we have jobs being split up between multiple work boxes, that script run owners controlling. So it sounds like we have an interface that we work on and the interface is smart enough to delegate work to targets uh and boxes that do work in areas based on predefined choices that we make in our environment, and it manages that all from the scenes. So I wanted to. Does that sound like a fairly good representation of how it works.

C

Yeah yeah, abs, absolutely absolutely okay,.

A

So, and- and I had a question from earlier- just to sort of uh verify so the target- I understand that the target sounds like a combination of a host, um a user and credentials and maybe a protocol right. So that's all sort of bundled together to call this thing called a target, and I would assume for environments like active directory and exchange.

A

You could have multiple targets targeting the same box based on what you need that target to do so. This target is able to run elevated commands. This target is used for lower commands and and and that's sort of, the idea there with the targets right.

C

Yes, so if let's say if the, if the configuration of let's say the ports could be different or or the way the modules you want to use, you could also say: okay, I'm I'm creating a new target. um Maybe I'm just let's go to this remoting example, for example. Maybe so here you can see? Okay, uh maybe it's a standard um remoting target that we want to create, uh and so um okay, I of course I need. I need an address some somewhere.

C

I need a credential, of course, and then, depending on again, depending on how I can connect to this backend system, um I, by default, okay, we would use w as man, but you could also customize that and then saying okay. I am really having particular endpoints that I'm going to address, which would be this, this g or example, um for example, um or a particular jump box.

C

Where, then, you would start running these scripts from this from this machine and then you you can create an unlimited number of of targets and you can you can duplicate the targets and have for different jobs or for different actions or for different scripts and but typically, of course, the customers were trying to to limit the number of targets, but based on the how to manage that, which also brings us to an interesting aspect. Because what might happen is uh you have one scriptor one script on a machine and then you have an azure team.

C

You have a sharepoint team, you have an exchange team and you want to make sure that the azure guys are not messing up with the exchange targets and the exchange scripts and the exchange credentials. So what you can do when you create any kind of object in script runner, you can say: okay should that be available for every admin that is able to work with scriptrunner, or should that be an object?

C

That is only there for the azure team, for example, um so, and that that can be done for scripts credentials, targets, queries and actions, and so, by doing that, you can make you can really have this multi-teams scenario with one single script, runner machine and still be sure that okay, these different teams are not messing up each other. Of course you might have.

C

You have to have at least one global admin who has access to everything, but you can have this multiple teams underneath um where then, you really have this um security, that okay, the exchange guys are only seeing their exchange scripts and exchange actions and can work with them and not kind of, I don't know accidentally deleting an action or script uh for the azure team, for example,.

B

So relationship that actions kind of stuff with you know, can you build up like actions that, like reach into somebody's? You know github repository and run scripts from there, so that the azure team can manage their own, effective scripts kind of thing or they need to move their scripting model into script runner and keep their scripts there yeah. So.

C

Typically, um when we talk about um git, this is one good example for having a scheduled action um which could be, which could be something like. um Let me just look at this one. Here you say: okay, I might have a action or a scheduled action here where I say okay, I want to monitor a particular repo and maybe a particular branch and want to make sure if some new scripts or updated scripts are stored there or coming up there.

C

We want to use it in script runner, so we are constantly monitoring this repository and this branch and then make it, make it locally available on the script runner machine, and that typically then happens of course, based on on a scheduled approach, where you say: okay, every hour, I'm going we're going to look at the github repo. Is there a new script that has got done successfully through testing and now it's in in the production branch and to make it available here?

C

So this is one one of one of the examples how to how you can use the scheduled part of script runner, but it could be anything else like when you ever wanna. Whatever you wanna run and when, whenever you wanna run it, and then you can also configure email notifications, so you get the info if something goes wrong in this process, for example. uh So this is. This is typically how um let's say the the connection between between git and the local scripts in the script runner environment is being um established.

B

So we still need to keep the scripts within script runner. So it understands that logic and all that kind of stuff, but there's a very easy mechanism to ingest those scripts, especially being dynamic enough to do that, and so, even if the script changes and did the work, but so long as the the action was doing all the same parameters and stuff like that, it's not going to break the script because hey the script is going to do.

B

You know step one through seven now, instead of one through five and so hey we're good to go because we're gonna change the underlying script, but the the action essex will do. The same thing is that yeah am I in the same place there ballpark.

C

Yeah, which also means, for example, let's say this- is the script changes in a way that okay, there is an additional parameter now in the script, then, of course the action realizes that, because what we're doing is we in real time when I'm opening an action uh in in run mode uh and even in edit mode? We look at okay, what parameters are available there, and so, if, if they are changed, maybe or maybe one parameter got deleted? Another one got added. um We we can.

C

We know that immediately once that script is available uh and someone starts using it. That's pretty cool.

A

All right so um so I want to give you enough time to get through the stuff you want to cover, and we had a few questions in the chat that I think most of them covered in general conversation, but I saw two here that may be relevant, so one person had asked well so scripts that are executed.

A

Are they elevated? Are they executed in an elevated shell? Always or can you elevate on a per job basis, or I mean does that depend on the script? I guess.

C

Well that this this basically um depends on on the target. um So let's say: if, if I'm creating, I want to run a script locally, I can decide um how that script should be in what context this script should be executed. The default would be um in in an impersonated mode, which means um we well this.

C

We have a script runner service in the background that runs as a local system right. um So, of course, the the targets or the the context in which we we run.

C

The scripts of course depend on the credentials, and um so depending on that, um this is how- or this is the context in which then the script is connecting to to the backend system, and we have scenarios where, um depending on modules, maybe there is a module that needs some specific information from a user profile that that's typically not would be that's not available uh by default.

C

Then you could say: okay, I want to run that in a particular run as mode with this particular user, because that's the only way that, from a central perspective like script, runner is executing scripts. We can get this information to use that module in a in the right way.

A

Okay, that makes sense.

A

I I almost hasten to ask you these questions, because when I watch I get the feeling that script run has been around for a little bit and you've come across a lot of different requests from clients and scenarios, and it seems like you're doing the demo to get us through the big features of the product but nestled below the scenes. There's a lot of choices to customize this product, basically to anybody's whim, um so I mean we could spend hours here going through all the various scenarios and configurations.

A

That's why I want to be cognizant of your time. The one thing that I did see in the questions that was interesting was you had showed off before this idea of um filtered I'll call them filtered lists. So I only want these people to see north american users, or only these people see a certain set of vms.

A

What about an environment that has a very large list or list that might be changing because of the size? Are those lists dynamically created on the fly or they can you like sort of pre-populate them or pre-cache them hourly, so that maybe a long user list doesn't take a long? You know take a long time to build in the interface.

C

Yeah very good question, so so queries in general play a very important role in in this way of simplifying the experience for the user and, of course, as you said, if there is, if, if an id contains, I don't know 120 000 objects, um we don't want to have to use a waiting for 10 seconds or even longer to get stuff back and they see the list being populated. So that's why, for example, um I'm always doing that for my of my my cloud queries, I'm always scheduling them. So what happens?

C

Is we have a local cache, um that's being updated, depending on what you configure so here in this case um every two hour, this query script runs coming back with the list of my office, 65 users, and so by by doing that, if the user opens up the interface, we immediately have the information, that's in the cache, and so um that's that's the preferred way, of course, for for big local uh infrastructures, as well as even more for cloud infrastructures where you want to make sure that, because this is a scripted query and it has to connect to all 65, it has to get the information and then um yeah present it to the user.

C

So this might take, I don't know, maybe five seconds 15 seconds and so to avoid that what we're doing here we have the scheduled um approach. We have this local cache, so this information for at least uh or the latest from two hours ago is available um based on um the entries that we got the last time. We ran that that query and.

A

Okay, um I I think we've covered. There was a bunch of other questions, but I really think that you and phil would was asking some of the questions he hit most of those scenarios. So I would say we're probably at a good point if you want to go back or maybe phil's coming on here, because he has another question: um if you want to go back to your sort of uh plan of action, feel free to do so.

B

Yeah and if I took you off, I apologize, but you know I think, I'm just going to try and ask questions. As I see you know, or at least I see them.

C

Okay, yeah, absolutely okay. So if there are other questions I would continue with uh with the yeah we we looked at this azure um example right, and um so we saw okay, we can simplify the user interface, we dynamically create that user interface and, of course it all comes down to using the script and that's behind the scenes so to speak.

C

So I want to what I want to show you here is and the reason why I'm using the ise is number one I still like it actually and number two is um we have a little add-in here that enables us to do some simple um checkout check-in mechanisms for formulas for our scripts, and so, for example, I can. I can look at the the script that does this um execution at the the um the way of the creation of the script. So here again um we we see okay, based on that name of the parameters.

C

That's what you see in the action right so which also means, if I'm, if I'm changing something in the script, I'm storing it and I'm refreshing the page it automatically, you will automatically see it in the user interface. The same is true: if you add parameters and stuff like that, so this is something that really happens instantaneously, based on on what you're doing in your script.

C

So are you saying.

B

That that the the ise plug-in that you just had is that is a direct representation of what's on the runner yeah, I can modify that script directly and I don't need to do the sync up copy. You know I can modify the script on the runner directly.

C

Absolutely so what you can do here is you can check out the script, because I'm I'm allowed to do that right. So that's why I can I can do a checkout. I can make some some changes. um Maybe I'm I don't know: uh uh uh okay yeah, maybe I'm removing that that was pretty silly anyway, so I can and then I can can check it in again, and maybe I all hopefully I do some good.

C

uh I'm writing in some good comments here, so so that when I'm now opening up the user interface- okay, now it's still here, it says: hiker was here, I'm doing a refresh and then hopefully it we will see that this is now being removed. So that's that's the way it works, and this nice.

C

This little um ad in here enables me to to check in check out, and it's it's by no means any code management solution in the sense of github or whatever, but it it might help you if you start writing scripts in the in a smaller team, and you want to make sure people are not messing around um working on the same script. At the same time, you can use that for using checkout check in. We also have you see here, just as you could do that with other objects.

C

You could say this is a script that belongs to the azure team and if I'm not part of the azure team, I will not see that as long as I'm or now, because I'm a global admin, I I see all the scripts, but if I would be from the exchange team, I would not see this script, for example, and I can also see that obviously that has been checked out already by user center here. So that's what you can do with that with this little um add-in here.

C

What we will see in the future uh latest by the end of the year is that this functionality will become um also part of the you, the web user interface directly. um So, okay, coming back to this action, um you might say. Okay, I have I have now tested it. Everything works fine and now I want to start to delegate that so because somebody helped us- or maybe even maybe- people in the development team should be able to spin up some vms because they need them for for some testing purposes or for qr or whatever.

C

And then here you can start to delegate this action. You can work with different color schemes and you can decide which groups of people should be able to use that, and once you've done that now here we have this this helpdesk team.

C

Now, if I'm switching roles, so to speak, so I'm now I'm not at the admin anymore. I'm logged in here as user tina, just normal domain user and based on the delegation, this user is able to do whatever has been configured here, for example, creating again a new vm in azure, and we see that this is an even more simplified user interface. I can select again here my regions and my vm sizes, and then I can start and run it, and so what happens now is that I have this user input.

C

We have the parameters that are part of the script by default. In the background and now script runner is executing the script based on all these parameters, and once that's done hopefully successfully, we can check back and we can also look at the dashboard to see what what happened there and the nice thing about this approach is that okay, we already have a web user interface, which is great, um but we can also we can.

C

We can make it um even easier because we could say we want to take this action to create a new vm and make it part of a existing web user self-service portal, for example,.

C

So, in this case, what you can do is so each action has an unique id so, based on this id, you can just say: okay, I want to integrate this action 158 in this case, which represents the okay, creating a new azure vm into this web user interface.

C

So in this case the user of course, number one doesn't need to know anything about powershell and in this case also didn't doesn't need to know that there is some some script runner going on in the background, and this could be all kinds of use cases right to create um sql data, back um backup or out of office self service portal or creating vms or whatever, or um or starting an onboarding process.

C

So by doing by using this one here, it's really like it's just okay, I'm selecting, I have some input form and um I'm selecting whatever is necessary to get the job done, I'm starting it and that's it um no need to know anything about powershell and again also this activities, of course, and these actions, whatever you do here, will end up in the dashboard.

C

So because, in the background, the authentication happens exactly the same way as if I would be here in my script runner portal, which here obviously got successfully built this vm, and so, as a result, I see this very technical information.

C

That's because that's how I configured it, you could of course, configure whatever result message you want to have, and you want to present to the user so that they know okay, everything got got created in in the right way and if I'm going back to my portal here and going back to the dashboard, I should see right here that okay, there was this user tina. She started this action and okay.

C

When the script runner went out to this azure target with this credential, this has been the parameter values, so we see the ones that got interactively uh typed in by the user, plus the ones of course that come from the predefined values. And then we see the detailed processing of that of this action out there of this script with the parameters, and so which also means. If something goes wrong, I can go back and analyze whatever has done. What has gone wrong here, for example, let's take a look at this one um and so see.

C

Okay, um actually, I did some experimental stuff here. I tried to switch from windows powershell to powershell, seven, um where which doesn't work, because the the um there is still some interactive typing of the credentials necessary at the moment. If you do teams with powershell 7, that's why this this didn't work, um but um so all kinds of activities, no matter if it's done by a user if it's done by a scheduler or if it would be done by by the rest api.

C

All this information ends up here, and so this is kind of the tactical information you can make drill downs to what which actions do I want to see and from let's say, the more management perspective. You can also have an overview about. Okay, we started to use powershell and we always we started to use a script runner. So what did we actually?

C

What's the? What's the benefit right? How much time and money did we save by automating the stuff with powershell script, runner, and so what what you can do is with for any in each action.

C

You can configure what the time that you saved compared to doing this manually and based on that we calculate the time and the money you can configure the hourly wage, and then we can export that, and so typically you know this is the things for for management right to see, okay, um which you might want to send out every friday or every week.

C

So you have an overview about okay, what's actually going on um behind the scenes so to speak, and maybe you also find out okay, we're wondering why this exchange actions are used um only a few times, because we thought that would be something that happens every day and then you could start also analyzing this in the background as well.

C

This is also something that helps you to get an idea about yeah. What? What does this automation really uh yeah? Bring you um in the sense of time and and money, um and then of course also you have so I showed you an example of okay having manual tasks, schedule tasks, a typical example for schedule. Task is also creating, of course, reports.

C

Things like this that you want to send via email to to your to your maybe to you or you to again to your management or stuff like that, um and the other thing then, of course, is enable a um third-party system to connect to script learner. In my environment, I have a phd monitoring system and I'm allowing the system to connect.

C

So that's why I said: okay, this machine is allowed to connect and then it has to authenticate, which is, of course crucial because, based on the authentication we check, if this machine is allowed to trigger the action, because, depending on what credential is being used, that of course becomes part of the let's say the delegation in the action, um and so what you can do here is really enable a fully automated approach of like in this case.

C

If your sensor detects an error and your solution is run the script to restart a service or whatever is necessary, then of course this happens automatically in this case, um it's a pretty stupid example, but I'm having if I'm stopping a service. In the background, um we are also sending uh we're writing a we're, pushing a message into a particular team's channel, which includes some variable information from the prtg um that tells us okay. What's what's actually what actually happened here?

C

There was a service that has been stopped and um so just as an example, um how you can use um the connectors and, as I said at every system that is, is ratified so to speak, you could you can integrate with script runner, and then you have this this third way of of running the scripts. As I said manually scheduled and using the connectors um and the manual approach also includes just to also show you that could be um client-side actions.

C

Let's say you want to make sure that you want to provide an easy way for users to clean their team's cache, because at the moment I don't know of any button in teams itself, you have to go to six or seven folders, I think, and so sometimes cleaning the cache is something that really helps to make teams work again.

C

So what you could do is um you could provide an action that says: okay, I click here on on the I start, this action now what should happen if everything goes goes? Fine uh teams should be closed, which just happened and then, in the background, um the the folders are being deleted and then okay, okay, a little bit fancy whatever.

C

So coming back with a message here, the interesting part here is, and that's what I want to show you is that in this case, um let me see if I'm, if I have it here, is it this one here see yeah. So in this this case um we know the ip address of the machine where I just clicked on that on that action. This is this.

C

Srx started ip address information and in fact we have um quite a number of information. This is just a subset. um The the the list is is um is really longer, but, for example, this one here helps you to say: okay, what what are we doing here? Okay, somebody clicks on the tile. We know based on this variable, okay, the ip address we transform this into the host name and then we're remoting into that machine and doing something on that client.

C

Given that remoting is possible right, we had the discussion just before we started the recording this is. It has to be done in a secure way. We. We know that, of course, um but um it is. This is the way how how you can use that, not just for managing your servers and your centralized systems and your your cloud services, but also doing things on the client side, maybe also pushing out new firewall policies or or another cleaning, the team's cache, uh the the dns cache on the machine and stuff like that.

C

So this helps you to control the behavior of the script and another thing could be okay. Was it the user or maybe in other cases? Maybe somebody started an action that coming from a wrong network segment, so to speak and say: okay, if this action has been triggered from this network segment, we're not going to allow that, for example- and so this is these are the information that you can use for controlling um the behavior.

B

At that point, those actions are open to everybody. Anybody can run those actions or that kind of thing you go to the web page and you click on an action. There's no login, there's no credentialing at that point. It's just these are actions for everybody. An on-demand kind of thing is that what you're saying.

C

No, this is this, is this happens exactly the same way like the one for azure, so you need to delegate that action to the users, so so, in this case, um looking at this this this action here it got delegated and because the user that I'm just used here on this other machine just going back, I think it was. It was tina who's logged in here yep. So here you can see I'm logged in as tina and because, based on the delegation, these actions are visible, are available for this user.

C

So there always has to be an authentication. So there is no way to provide any action without authentication, which is also true for the use cases where you just want to implement something or delegate someone.

B

Exactly sso, or do they have to actually type in their username and password to that? Do they like automatic yeah.

C

So this this would in this case, would be an active directory uh user. So what you can do is when it comes to delegation.

C

It can be an active directory user. It could be an azure active directory user. It could be a claim-based identity which is being used or can be used if you have multi forest scenarios uh and you want to delegate something from from a remote local identity typically is really just for testing, because it's your local user and basic out there, for particular connectors.

B

So kind of in that same fashion, at this point, I'm going to kind of come back to some of the architecture in the form of that is that a lot of us are. You know, at least in this group, are hey. We run our scripts and we're kind of managing scripts for other people in that regard, and the idea that hey you're running some scripts over here, I'm writing some scripts over there.

B

I know that guy over his his scripts and the idea that hey we're putting stuff together- and this is kind of like this- can be that centralized place for all that, but then effectively comes, who manages all these scripts and like hey. If these jobs aren't running like there needs to be defined a script, runner admin who you know coordinates all these kind of things at that point.

B

Is that kind of where we're kind of talking at this point, because I'm trying to envision that in my organization and just how would I put this into my own organization? Would it be a good fit and then going well? They all do their stuff, and I do my stuff and like well then there'd be a an automation, script runner, you know kind of admin who controls it. All kind of thing is that is that is that how it's been in other organizations?

B

A

I think I think what you're saying is, once you have a solution like this: what's the overhead to keep it running right, okay, is it some? Is it something that can sort of manage itself, or does this become someone's job to manage a console.

C

Okay, so so you will have at least one global script or admin who would be there to, for example, create new actions um so because, even if you have a script right here, the script itself is it's just a script right, because if, if you want to use it, you would say okay, I need to create a take this script and create a new action out of that and and I'll decide.

C

Okay from the configuration point of view who is going to be able to manage that, and then you start selecting the target and the delegation, and maybe scheduling and stuff like that. So that is something that that has to be done by one or maybe multiple people who have the admin access to to script runner and if, depending on how dynamic your the environment is, of course, um to create new actions.

C

um This is something that this person would be would be, uh would be doing and or if we're thinking about coming back to this team scenario.

C

Of course um you could say: okay, I'm I'm have a new script here and I make it available for a particular team and and then from there the people from this team can start putting it, creating an action for that or starting to delegate that so then you would have kind of a two-tier approach so to speak, um but you definitely would have somebody to to really um manage that um and what what it really depends on, of course, how many new use cases you want to implement and um who's the driving force for that?

C

What we see quite often are is that actually helped us people become the driving force of knocking at the door of the of the admin and saying couldn't you also delegate this and this use case to us, because then we can provide a better service and the admins are happy because then, of course, they don't have to do it in the uh in the future. um And so, but if we have this scenario, um we pretty in in a pretty short period of time.

C

We we see configurations when, where they started, maybe with five actions, then all of a sudden it's going to be 15 or 20, because then for the helpless people, typically in step one and then maybe also there are some end users scenarios um and some some some connectors scenarios, but um it typically uh starts with the delegation um to the helpdesk, people and um so yeah. So coming back to your questions, yes um related.

B

To that is that how do people kind of get started? You know um there's a free trial kind of stuff like how. How does it scale at that point, you know. Is it like? You know that kind of thing, so that's kind of where, like pricing and all that kind of stuff, but how does it scale when you introduce it into an organization? What's a typical, you know grants typical. It's not a real word, but.

C

You mean uh for for input, for let's say for first implementation and starting using it, okay, so so, okay, so first off um the implementation in the installation itself is, of course, pretty straightforward. It's done it's done, maybe in within an hour or something, and then it depends on really the scripts that you want to and the use cases that you want to implement. So the the what happens typically, is that we say: okay, take your top five or top 10, most annoying recurring tasks and start putting it into script.

C

Runner, because that's the way how the it admins the it pros get the benefits as soon as possible, because then they can say. Okay now I can delegate that to some in somebody help desk and I don't have to worry about the security stuff and I don't have to teach them any any powershell stuff uh and- and that is typically something that that happens within a couple of days.

C

Maybe sometimes we also doing the onboarding services, together with the with the customers, to to get this stuff up and running uh as soon as possible and uh and follow the best practice approach and then from there they're they're, adding new actions and they're, starting always, of course, with one of course, but they start with one script on the machine typically and then um scaling in the num in the sense of having multiple machines that that really happens.

C

um If you have environments with with number one really a bigger number of actions and there's distributed infrastructures where you want to have multiple machines. um So you don't want to have the us script gunner to talk to your resources in asia or something like this.

B

Well, we could certainly, you know, defer some of these conversations as far as like pricing and stuff like that too, if you want more information, certainly reach out to script runner and get some kind of information. But what's the you know, you know sea level kind of thing? What do I need to talk to my c level to say, hey? Is this even something that's possible or is it something that's not possible? How does that structure work.

C

Yeah, okay, um so let me just let me just.

C

Go to our website, because here you, you get some basic info understanding about the licensing, so we basically we have two. We have two flavors, we have an essential edition and we have a corporate suite.

C

An essential addition is uh typically is a good starting point or if you have a small environment that that might be already efficient enough for five users um and then the corporate suite. That's the one where you can add all kinds of this connectors that we talked about for password servers for automation, connectors.

C

um We also have a connector for for writing this dashboard information into a sql server so because we kind of delete this data after 90 days. If you need to keep that for a longer period of time, there is a particular way of doing that, um and so um so these are in general, the two flavors so to speak, and then it really it depends on the number of users that you would like to start with.

C

um Or let's say if you have a priority one having the scheduled execution, then also the essential edition might be the right solution and then, of course, you could always switch between the solutions or add users or whatever options you you might. You might need to do more with with with script runner.

B

All right, so that to know is that I don't have a lot of you know: people who are working with it. It's just a ton of scripts. So I'm not concerned about it's not by the script, run it's by the people who are accessing the system.

C

Yeah, so that's that's! That's what we license. It's really the people who are actively working with our solution. That's that's the main uh focus for for the solution. Yeah.

A

Okay, so so so haiku, I have to say, I'm I'm really impressed with the product. It looks fantastic and I feel like uh when the group started to ask questions about different scenarios.

A

Maybe the typical scenarios for you guys, but I feel like there's really nothing in the product that where we said, ah if you could have just done that man that'd be great, you seem to have um some thoughtful solutions for pretty much all the environments that we kind of threw at you, and uh so that was really great. So there was a few questions that came up recently in the chat that I want to run back through and they have to relate to.

A

um I guess, there's some members of our audience that are probably interested in kicking the tires. That's probably the easiest way to say it. They want to run a demo and they're curious about. um If I spin up a demo, how much work does it get me? Does it take me to get to what you showed tonight? In other words, what I mean is they're curious about are action. Packs included in the demo are any of those self-service dashboards.

A

um How do those get built? What kind of work is involved to get those set up? Those kinds of things.

C

Okay, okay, so so so number one. So if you want to start um using it, you you go to our website and um you just download the 30 day, try license, which we can always extend if you need more time to to test so with the with the installation. We we have um a number of sample scripts that you that you can use.

C

um The second step would be okay, you you take the scripts from our action packs to also download that and depending on, if you want, you can have all of them, or maybe you're, just interested in a particular platform for your starting for starting to use, um script runner, and then you put them into it onto the script on the machine and start creating the the main thing to make. The first steps is really um maintain and type your or fill in your right credentials and your right target.

C

So let's say: if you want to start with active directory, which is typically a good starting point. We need to have a credential to connect to ad um and um and then you can start with using the predefined target for for connecting to active directory, and then there are, I think, about 20 actions already available there in the in in the configuration for active directory.

C

There are also uh sample scripts that that show you things like, uh which is quite interesting. Having cascading queries where you want to lead a user through different steps like okay. First, you select the ou, then the next query shows you the existing um the existing groups in this ou and then oops.

C

B

The first, the second question is based upon the first answer.

C

Yes exactly so so you always, you can configure a search base, um and this scenario of course means okay, in this case, it's ad, but it could be. First selection could be the vsphere server. Second, one could be the vmware. Third one would be the existing snapshots, because you want to kind of restore a a snapshot, for example, this this happens based on the search base, where you say: okay, this is the first election and then based on the ou path.

C

That's what then the second query starts, and then the third one starts this by the way is always happening in real time. We talked about the scheduled and cached queries, uh these ones, of course, because they're really completely dynamic. They are always in real time anyway. So so this is.

C

These are things that are part of the solution um of the ins, the package, when you install it, um including also the portal and and the um and the uh the statistics and stuff like that and from there it's really up to so to get to this point, it's typically, um maybe it's it's a day or something we also support um customers during the configuration phase. um We are, we are um um doing online sessions to guide them through if they have.

C

Let's say I just just um last week, I had a session with with uh with somebody who wanted to do some very particular stuff with vmware, so we had a half an hour session and we went through okay power cli um how to how to configure a target to do things with with the local vmware server in this.

C

In this scenario, so we help based on the online sessions, but we also have, of course, our documentation that helps with the first steps, which you find right here in on our manuals manuals uh part here where it, it really adds and, as I said so ad is typically really a very good starting point to get to get some experience and to really see yes, it works in your environment or it always it's always all.

C

It also shows you that, okay, maybe there is some infrastructure thing not working, so you cannot connect also natively from this new description of machine to your ad, then to solve that first and then um adding additional back-end systems targets um over time.

A

All right, so why don't we? Why don't we put a put a bow on this and call it a night? First of all, again a big thank you to haiku for spending time with us, it's at a very late or early hour, depending on how you look at it and uh much appreciated for you spending time with our group, um as haiku said, you can reach out to him on twitter or various different social media platforms. He's very easy. Gotta get in touch with he's very active in the community follow-up questions.

A

Try out a demo, I'm sure he'd be happy to answer all the questions you have um if you're watching this at home. Thank you for joining us this evening. If you've never joined us before and you're, seeing this on youtube on the first time, we'd encourage you to check out our youtube channel uh youtube.com rtp sug.

A

We have about a 95 video catalog of all things covering powershell and but more than anything, we'd love for you to come and join us in person, and you can be a part of the next discussion and you can do that by finding us at rtpsug.com or on meetup.com, and look for the research triangle, powershell user group. So with that we're going to say goodnight to everybody thanks for joining us, it's been another great meeting. uh Thank you so much to script runner and thank you all for joining us.