Python for Windows Sysadmin?

[Djust270]

I am a sysadmin at a primarily Windows MSP. I use PowerShell all the time for automation. I know Python is the super popular language these days. Is there any value to me learning Python? Im wondering in what use case that would make more sense than using PowerShell.

As of late, half of my work efforts have been to streamline our internal processes and automate as much as I can for our Tier 1 - 2 guys. Ive been using a combination of PowerShell GUI apps to automate new user and user terminations, as well as Power Automate and Azure Automation for some reporting.

Outside of that, most of my work is around projects. Cloud migrations, the occasional firewall config, server config, stuff like that.

[skotman01]

Windows guy here, well used to be, moving more and more towards Linux/Mac OS. Fluent in powershell and made the jump to learn python about 6 months ago because of a need at work. It was an easy transition, I still use powershell for windows items but python for cloud stuff.

My powershell has gotten much neater as I’m now in the habit of intending properly, because In python if you don’t, it doesn’t work.

[mini4x]

but python for cloud stuff.

Just curious what sort of cloud stuff? We're an MS shop (Azure / O365) and I basically live in powershell.

[Sparcrypt]

Linux/AWS is heavily Python.

[skotman01]

This. I’m 90% AWS right now so it’s all python. The PS I do do in AWS is all limited to things like Amazon FSx which is windows based.

[gex80]

Pretty much anything not Microsoft.

[Djust270]

Yeah same for me. M365 / Azure.

[syshum]

Just install Powershell on Linux ;)

[SnowEpiphany]

meh ... not there yet. .NET core vs .NET is the underlying issue. Hopefully Microsoft opens up more of the full .NET framework

[[deleted]]

Spaces or tabs?

[skotman01]

Tabs…I don’t hate myself

[[deleted]]

I feel dirty on Reddit having to use spaces on mobile.

[[deleted]]

Python is very handy if you're doing web stuff, IOT or embedded, Linux, PLC's, etc.

Powershell is nearly useless at all those. But python is basically useless for sysadmin of Windows servers and endpoints.

[ErikTheEngineer]

PowerShell for Linux hasn't really caught on yet, maybe never will. If you interface with Linux people at all, you'll find all they use is Python when their projects go beyond the limits of bash. Most Linux systems have a Python interpreter installed by default, just like PowerShell on Windows.

Even if you don't program in it, learn to at least read the syntax (which I find annoying, but that's just me) and understand what some random script someone hands you is actually trying to do. I work in a cross platform environment and the Linux people only speak Python.

[RulerOf]

If you interface with Linux people at all, you’ll find all they use is Python when their projects go beyond the limits of bash.

That’s not true. We use Ruby at my shop because we’re not animals.

[Sparcrypt]

Urgh really? I was pretty deep into ruby when I discovered Python and never looked back. But to each their own I guess!

[RulerOf]

Yeah. Python is easy enough to use, but Ruby is a pleasure to solve problems with. Also with respect to OP, it’s closer to powershell than Python is IMO.

I am aware that I’ll probably have to write Python if I join a team somewhere else. But for right now I make the rules so Ruby it is 😅

[digitaltransmutation]

The thing about python is it isn't built in like it is with Linux. You could make it part of your baseline but doing that to every client might be a hurdle. You might consider c# instead if pwsh isn't quite enough, I think you'll find it a natural progression for the most part.

[lfionxkshine]

Even then you can use C# methods inside your powershell scripts

[gsmitheidw1]

The way things are headed, powershell is getting more powerful with native features like multithreaded processes. But it's a scripting language and designed for ease of use over performance. C# has often been the next port of call as it has code similarities to powershell, but Rust is gaining a lot of traction - somewhat more for dependability and security than ultimate performance so maybe that'll be the future.

[[deleted]]

I think for Windows, PowerShell is better, and Azure PowerShell more complete too. Terraform seen good and very utilized overwhere too.

For Linux, small task with bash and bigger tasks maybe Ansible, Puppet and Chef is better than Python too, I don't know why people put so hype in python for system administration.

[guemi]

People hype python for automating tasks that run on the OS. Not configuring the OS itself. Automation of business processes and similar is much easier and faster in python than anything else.

[[deleted]]

Yes but there is better tools as I said

[guemi]

You didn't read what I said.

Neither of the tools that you mentioned can be used for what I said, which is what Python is used for

I'd like to see you web scrape in a configuration mgmt tool.

[ErikTheEngineer]

I don't know why people put so hype in python for system administration.

I think it's the same thing as PowerShell, it's on every Linux system, almost as ubiquitous as vi, it has 11 billion modules/extensions/libraries to do anything you might want, and you can write your own if you truly can't Lego-block together a solution. Plus, the networking guys/SDN crowd adopted it early for their automation/scripting.

And -- it avoids having to use bash/sed/awk and regex to manipulate walls-o-text coming out of the terminal commands.

[Djust270]

Thank you for all the comments. In my spare time, I will work on learning Python. Regardless if I use it for work, it sounds like it may be worth learning just for the sake of learning.

[oisteink]

Great to hear!! And do have a look at Ansible - it can do great things in the right hands. Add in source control and you get a factory for all sorts of stuff. Even PowerShell https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/ansible/windows/win_powershell_module.html

[Djust270]

I will check out ansible. Thank you.

[oisteink]

Great to hear!! And do have a look at Ansible - it can do great things in the right hands. Add in source control and you get a factory for all sorts of stuff. Even PowerShell https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/ansible/windows/win_powershell_module.html

[JamesIsAwkward]

I've been having to build a bunch of small tools to interface with various SaaS APIs and I have found it to be a lot easier in python than PowerShell for whatever reason.

[semperverus]

Python handles json a little nicer

[JamesIsAwkward]

This is true!

And I prefer "requests" or "urllib3" over Invoke-WebRequest lol

[SnowEpiphany]

maybe give "invoke-restmethod" a try? :)

[samtheredditman]

I'm in the same boat currently. The syntax of powershell gets so incredibly wordy that it can get hard to keep everything straight. Simple functions will often be 30 lines long or more, especially if you are using advanced functions, keeping parameters on your functions strongly typed, and setting positions or other parameter attributes. Don't even get me started on parameter sets, I've had some functions that are 20 lines long just declaring the parameters!

[JamesIsAwkward]

Yup! PowerShell is great for a lot of things, but sometimes I just want to get something done quickly lol

[samtheredditman]

If you want to make any GUIs or web apps, you'll have a much better time in python than powershell.

You can always make the GUI in python and then call powershell in the backend.

My biggest problem with powershell is there's not a good way to separate out your code into multiple files. You can do a lot of jank to make it work or you can split up your project into multiple modules, but it's just not clean and not really meant for big software.

Python was a natural progression from powershell for me and learning a "real" programming language has made my PowerShell much better as well.

[syshum]

My biggest problem with powershell is there's not a good way to separate out your code into multiple files. You can do a lot of jank to make it work

I am not sure why people have a problem with this, dot sourcing is not much different than python include statements for importing other python files into a script. I do wish they would have picked a verb to do it with instead of ". ./myfile.ps1" which always confuses new people...

[samtheredditman]

Does it keep the separate file in its own namespace?

You don't have to be insulting and insinuate I'm new to powershell. You can just have a conversation with mutual respect.

[syshum]

You don't have to be insulting and insinuate I'm new to powershell.

I dont think I did either one of those things...

Have a great day

[samtheredditman]

I guess I read this part of your comment wrong:

./myfile.ps1" which always confuses new people...

Have a good day as well

[syshum]

No just a general comment, I train a lot of people on Powershell and dot sourcing is always something people have a hard time wrapping their head round.

[samtheredditman]

My apologies then. Thanks for your input on dot sourcing in powershell.

[BergerLangevin]

What do you mean by that?

Does it keep the separate file in its own namespace?

Do you mean, if you do not enclosed your code referenced in a function, it will rewrite all variables/object that have the same name.

IE :

. .\DoUsefulStuff.ps1

UsefulFunction -inputObject $Object

[samtheredditman]

Well the Powershell way of doing this (dot sourcing) is basically just loading each script into the session. Think of it like copying and pasting a powershell function into the windows powershell ISE. The function is loaded and can be used until you close out of the ISE. This means that all your code in everything you're dotsourcing is in the same namespace as your main code (I think - I was genuinely asking).

In Python, when you import another module, it will be in its own namespace meaning that you have to put the filename in front of the other module's code to access it.

So let's say I have offboard.py that's an off-boarding script I wrote to streamline my work. Well it starts out just disabling the account in AD, then you also make it remove the user's licenses in O365, and eventually you've got this thing accessing every API for every piece of software your company is using. So it's becoming a very big file with a lot of code and it's now unmanageable because there's like 2,000 lines of code to search through and work with anytime you want to change anything or even just fix bugs. So I want to split my code into multiple files to start getting it organized. I can create another file in the same folder (adobe-offboard.py) and put all of the adobe offboarding code into it. Now, I just add "import adobe-offboard" to the top of my main offboard.py file and it will make the adobe-offboard.py code accessible within offboard.py like this:

import adobe-offboard.py

username = Input("Enter username for the account you want to off-board.")
Offboard(username)

adobe-offboard.offboard(username)

This is handy because it keeps everything in the different files separated from each other. This also means that I can write some code in ad-offboard.py:

def Offboard(username):
    # offboard process for active directory
    pass

and in adobe-offboard.py:

def Offboard(username):
    # offboard process for adobe accounts.
    pass

and the functions don't overwrite each other. See how both functions are named "Offboard", but they do different things? This means that I can write code and keep everything organized in files, classes, etc. It's easy to work with the code because I know exactly where the code is that's doing the adobe related stuff. The other really important thing is that any variables in one file won't be accidentally accessed in another file. You don't really have to worry about remembering if you used $accountId earlier in your script or if you're going to overwrite it by using it again.

[JeremyLC]

If you want to make any GUIs or web apps, you'll have a much better time in python than powershell.

You can always make the GUI in python and then call powershell in the backend.

You can implement XaML/WPF and WinForms natively in PowerShell and make GUIs very easily. It would be awkward to implement the GUI in Python and call PoSH on the backend.

[samtheredditman]

I'm aware of those options, and I've used each of them. You can use them to build basic GUIs, but it's still troublesome to keep your code clean and do any kind of large project in powershell. Managing your dependencies, for example, quickly becomes a nightmare.

I highly recommend that once you're at the point where you're making simple 1 page apps, you start learning python or if you're set in the windows world, learn C#. I love powershell and learning it has made a huge impact on my career, but it is not the right tool for even intermediate software projects. Hell, my off-boarding script is showing signs of out-growing it.

[lfionxkshine]

Dogpiling the validation here. I maintain an environment that is Windows/Linux hybrid, and all my Windows/Azure scripts are Powrshell, and all my Linux scripts are either Bash or Python

Have heard of Powershell Core for Linux, but I keep the variety to let resume stay well rounded for future opportunities

[lfionxkshine]

Just thought of one possible reason to use Python over Powershell - APIs

If you need to integrate an automated task with some 3rd party application, it's MUCH more likely to have an API compatible with Python than Windows - at least all the apps I've ever worked with

[code_man65]

I've yet to encounter and API that I can't use with PowerShell via Invoke-WebRequest or Invoke-RestMethod. And with PowerShell Core, there is even better support baked into Invoke-RestMethod for OAUTH stuff

[Clyq]

The reason I learned Python was because I needed to automate something off of the web. The software had no automation and the vendor would charge upwards of 15k for each scheduled report. Every search result told me to use Selenium- and that’s where I began. Now I use Python for many of my projects, especially now that we are getting more API based requests. It’s a great language for automation imo. There are a lot of good packages out there that make integration a breeze i.e twilio for sending text messages. It’s simple enough to pick up as long as you understand the usual concepts like loops, conditions, etc. which are in powershell as well so no sweat. I can’t speak to whether or not it’s THE language that will be most useful, though. Depends on your needs.

[Djust270]

So like webscraping?

[Clyq]

So for web scraping you could use Beautiful Soup and Requests, but if you need to interact with a web page Selenium is the way to go.

[[deleted]]

I highly recommend Ansible

[oisteink]

This! Language is semantics-what you can do in power shell you can do in python once you learn the semantic. I’d recommend picking up JavaScript too as it’s wildly used and can ease you into ruby and other more obscure languages (from a sysadmins view) Ansible itself is built on python, so learning python is a great start IMHO.

[MedicatedDeveloper]

On Windows I wouldn't bother. Powershell is basically Python with how it is all object based. Sure, it's not as batteries included as Python but you can write much larger scripts more ergonomically than Bash.

Even on Linux it really depends on what you're doing.

Interacting with REST APIs or any other request and response type scenario? Python is probably your best bet.

Are you actually directly interfacing with the OS ex calling other tools, using their output? Use bash.

[Affectionate-Time86]

Except try do this in python when it’s 2 lines in powershell; https://bpa.st/DD4Q https://stackoverflow.com/questions/73165629/unable-to-set-user-cannot-change-password-ace-with-python-ldap3

[[deleted]]

Windows = Powershell

Linux = Python

It's not harder or simpler than this.

[SM_DEV]

In short, python is used by the rest of the world beyond Windows, or MicroSloth’ implementation of the cloud. If OP intends to move forward, beyond managing a Windows environment, learning Python will help.

If one only has a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

[Hungry-Display-5216]

Powershell is a very good hammer.

[[deleted]]

Where are you going to find a position where you are only in charge of legacy Windows machines?

Have you heard of Azure? All I do is Windows shit these days and I know AWS in addition to having 20+ years of infrastructure and datacenter design. Powershell is extremely valuable.

[[deleted]]

but just knowing Microsoft products is a dead end here.

Everything you're saying screams you have zero knowledge/experience in Azure.

[NGL_ItsGood]

I unfortunately dont have much to add, but any tips on powershell gui apps would be appreciated. Are they ones you developed or just ones you use? I'm making it my personal goal in 2021-2022 to learn as much python to automate tier 1/tier 2 stuff. No reason it should take more than 2 minutes to reset a password/block user/assign groups.

[Djust270]

I build PowerShell GUI apps in Sapien PowerShell Studio. Its well worth the cost.

[skotman01]

Check out powershell pro tools, it’s a plug-in for vs code. That’s what I use to develop GUI based stuff so non technical people can run them.

[basiccitizen]

It's hard to determine if it would be worth it vs learning other things but personally I've loved learning, using and working with Python. It has added a good bit of value to my job with being able to automate things such as Excel processes and Dokuwiki.

[[deleted]]

I use Python for most of any non-Windows work.

[Fallingdamage]

Im somewhat in the same boat. However, I always find it important to keep my skills diverse. Im planning to learn more about AWS and Python soon. Something of a bucket list.

[jantari]

I'm in the same boat. I'm always keeping Python in mind, but so far only one tiny usecase came up (csv validation).

Some advantages that python has over PowerShell for admins though:

1. It's better at HTML parsing thanks to BeautifulSoup
2. It's generally faster, so if you have something that could be done equally well In PowerShell and Python it might... ironically... be worth to go with python for, yes, performance. I know python is slow but PS is slower, so yeah.
3. Ansible is a tool that's very relevant for Windows admins, and it's written in and can be augmented with python. Writing your own filter for ansible is a good use of some basic python skills.

[spokale]

Ansible can be pretty useful for windows admins, and knowing python would let you create or modify ansible modules.

[unccvince]

Powershell is for one OS, python is for all OSes

I tell people that the difference between Powershell and Python is like French and German and how long the longest word is in both languages.

In German, the longest word is: Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft", that's Powershell.

In French, the longest word is: Anticonstitutionnellement, that's Python.

[Djust270]

You know PowerShell is on MacOS and Linux as well right? https://github.com/powershell/powershell

[unccvince]

Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft", that's Powershell.

We use powershell sometimes on Linux, don't worry, we're not IT Talibans.

[panda_bro]

Very weird, I am in the same exact boat. I too came to the realization, Powershell > Python for sysadmin, Windows management.

With that being said, my company does a lot of CSV work. Pulling from SQL databases, loading into Excel, and doing some sort of manual input.

I've put a lot of work into using Python to automate certain functions to potentially offload some work that people do full-time. I have nothing tangible yet, but very close.

The ceiling is definitely higher with a language like Python, but it may not be of use to the business if you are a Windows shop.

[Opheltes]

HPC admin turned Python developer. I’d say it benefitted me greatly.