PowerShell: Automating Administrative Tasks. The art of automating and managing Windows environments

Michael Shepard, Chendrayan Venkatesan, Sherif Talaat, Brenton J.W. Blawat

Are you tired of managing Windows administrative tasks manually and are looking to automate the entire process? If yes, then this is the right course for you. This learning path starts your PowerShell journey and will help you automate the administration of the Windows operating system and applications that run on Windows. It will get you up and running with PowerShell, taking you from the basics of installation to writing scripts and performing web server automation. You will explore the PowerShell environment and discover how to use cmdlets, functions, and scripts to automate Windows systems. The next installment of the course focuses on gaining concrete knowledge of Windows PowerShell scripting to perform professional-level scripting. The techniques here are packed with PowerShell scripts and sample C# code to automate tasks. You will use .NET classes in PowerShell and C# to manage Exchange Online. In the final section, you will delve into real-world examples to learn how to simplify the management of your Windows environment. You will get to grips with PowerShell’s advanced functions and how to most effectively administer your system. This Learning Path combines some of the best that Packt has to offer in one complete, curated package. It includes content from the following Packt products: [*] Getting Started with PowerShell by Michael Shepard [*] Windows PowerShell for .Net Developers Second Edition by Chendrayan Venkatesan and Sherif Talaat[*] Mastering Windows PowerShell Scripting by Brenton J.W. Blawat

Puppet: Mastering Infrastructure Automation

Jaime Soriano Pastor

Puppet is a configuration management tool that allows you to automate all your IT configurations, giving you control. It was written for and by system administrators to manage large numbers of systems efficiently and prevent configuration drifts. Puppet gives you control of what you do to each node, when you do it, and how you do it.This Learning Path will take you from the basics of Puppet to extending it and then mastering it. We will start off with a primer on Puppet, its installation and get a sneak peek under its hood. We will then move on to designing and deploying your Puppet architecture, learning best practices for writing reusable and maintainable code, and executing, testing, and deploying Puppet across your systems. Finally, we will deal with problems of scale and exceptions in your code, automate workflows, and support multiple developers working simultaneously.This course is based on the following books: 1)Puppet 4 Essentials - Second Edition 2)Extending Puppet - Second Edition 3)Mastering Puppet - Second Edition

Fuzzing Against the Machine. Automate vulnerability research with emulated IoT devices on QEMU

Antonio Nappa, Eduardo Blázquez, Nikias Bassen, Dr. Javier López-Gómez

Emulation and fuzzing are among the many techniques that can be used to improve cybersecurity; however, utilizing these efficiently can be tricky. Fuzzing Against the Machine is your hands-on guide to understanding how these powerful tools and techniques work. Using a variety of real-world use cases and practical examples, this book helps you grasp the fundamental concepts of fuzzing and emulation along with advanced vulnerability research, providing you with the tools and skills needed to find security flaws in your software.The book begins by introducing you to two open source fuzzer engines: QEMU, which allows you to run software for whatever architecture you can think of, and American fuzzy lop (AFL) and its improved version AFL++. You’ll learn to combine these powerful tools to create your own emulation and fuzzing environment and then use it to discover vulnerabilities in various systems, such as iOS, Android, and Samsung's Mobile Baseband software, Shannon. After reading the introductions and setting up your environment, you’ll be able to dive into whichever chapter you want, although the topics gradually become more advanced as the book progresses.By the end of this book, you’ll have gained the skills, knowledge, and practice required to find flaws in any firmware by emulating and fuzzing it with QEMU and several fuzzing engines.

Node.js Design Patterns. Master best practices to build modular and scalable server-side web applications - Second Edition

Luciano Mammino, Mario Casciaro

Node.js is a massively popular software platform that lets you use JavaScript to easily create scalable server-side applications. It allows you to create efficient code, enabling a more sustainable way of writing software made of only one language across the full stack, along with extreme levels of reusability, pragmatism, simplicity, and collaboration. Node.js is revolutionizing the web and the way people and companies create their software.In this book, we will take you on a journey across various ideas and components, and the challenges you would commonly encounter while designing and developing software using the Node.js platform. You will also discover the Node.js way of dealing with design and coding decisions.The book kicks off by exploring the basics of Node.js describing it's asynchronous single-threaded architecture and the main design patterns. It then shows you how to master the asynchronous control flow patterns,and the stream component and it culminates into a detailed list of Node.js implementations of the most common design patterns as well as some specific design patterns that are exclusive to the Node.js world.Lastly, it dives into moreadvanced concepts such as Universal Javascript,and scalability' and it's meant to conclude the journey by giving the reader all the necessary concepts to be able to build an enterprise grade application using Node.js.

Mastering Adobe Photoshop Elements 2023. Bring out the best in your images using Adobe Photoshop Elements 2023 - Fifth Edition

Robin Nichols

Produce impressive, high-quality pictures to influence your audience, grow your brand, and market your products and services.With its impressive range of sophisticated creative capabilities, Adobe Photoshop Elements 2023 is all you need to create photos you’ll love to share. Elements 2023 extends its AI capabilities by simplifying complex editing processes. Learn to stitch widescreen panoramas, remove people from backgrounds, de-focus backgrounds, re-compose images, and even create a range of calendars and greeting cards for your friends and family.The fifth edition of this widely acclaimed series will help you master photo-editing from scratch. Start by learning basic edits such as auto tone correction, image resizing and cropping, then master contrast, color, sharpness, and clarity.Take your prowess to the next level by learning how to correct optical distortion, re-shape images, exploit layers, layer masking, and sharpening techniques—create the perfect picture or imaginative fantasy illustration. You’ll also learn the online realms of animation, video creation, and third-party plug-ins.By the end of this book, you'll learn how to leverage the incredible features of Photoshop Elements 2023 with complete confidence.Note: All the images featured in the book can be easily downloaded via a direct link or from the GitHub repository link specified in the Preface.

SAP HANA Cookbook. Your all-inclusive guide to understanding SAP HANA with practical recipes with over 50 recipes

Chandrasekhar Mankala (USD), Ganesh Mahadevan V., Ganesh Mahadevan (USD)

SAP HANA is a real-time applications platform that provides a multi-purpose, in-memory appliance. Decision makers in the organization can gain instant insight into business operations. Thus all the data available can be analysed and you can react to the changing business conditions rapidly to make decisions. The real-time platform not only empowers business users and top management to make decisions but also provides the capability to make decisions in real-time.A practical and comprehensive guide that helps you understand the power of SAP HANA’s real-time and in-memory capabilities. It also provides step-by-step instructions to exploit all the possible features of the SAP HANA database, enabling users to harness the full potential of this technology and its features.You will gain an understanding of real-time replications, effective data loading from various sources, how to load data, and how to create re-usable objects such as models and reports.Use this practical guide to enable or transform your business landscape by implementing SAP HANA to meet your business requirements. The book shows you how to load data from different types of systems, create models in SAP HANA, and consume data for decision-making. The book covers various tools at different stages creating models using SAP HANA Studio, and consuming data using reporting tools such as SAP BusinessObjects, SAP Lumira, and so on . This book also explains the in-depth architecture of SAP HANA to help you understand SAP HANA as an appliance, that is, a combination of hardware and software.The book covers the best practices to leverage SAP HANA’s in-memory technology to transform data into insightful information. It also covers technology landscaping, solution architecture, connectivity, data loading, and setting up the environment for modeling purpose (including setup of SAP HANA Studio).If you have an intention to start your career as SAP HANA Modeler, this book is the perfect start. 

Biostatistics with Python. Apply Python for biostatistics with hands-on biomedical and biotechnology projects

Darko Medin

This book leverages the author’s decade-long experience in biostatistics and data science to simplify the practical use of biostatistics with Python. The chapters show you how to clean and describe your data effectively, setting a solid foundation for accurate analysis and proficiency in biostatistical inference to help you draw meaningful conclusions from your data through hypothesis testing and effect size analysis.The book walks you through predictive modeling to harness the power of Python to create robust predictive analytics that can drive your research and professional projects forward. You'll explore clinical biostatistics, learn how to design studies, conduct survival analysis, and synthesize evidence from multiple studies with meta-analysis – skills that are crucial for making informed decisions based on comprehensive data reviews. The concluding chapters will enhance your ability to analyze biological variables, enabling you to perform detailed and accurate data analysis for biological research. This book's unique blend of biostatistics and Python helps you find practical solutions that make complex concepts easy to grasp and apply.By the end of this biostatistics book, you’ll have moved from theoretical knowledge to practical experience, allowing you to perform biostatistical analysis confidently and accurately.

Instant Hands-on Testing with PHPUnit How-to. A practical guide to getting started with PHPUnit to improve code quality

Michael Lively

No developer wants to accept the inherent difficulty of writing software as an excuse for not finding the bugs in our code before anyone else does. PHPUnit is a framework that was created to allow developers to solve that very problem. It provides a feature-rich environment with most of the tools necessary to provide adequate tests for any project.Instant Hands-on Testing with PHPUnit How-to provides a thorough overview of the functionality provided by the PHPUnit framework. It shows how the plethora of features in the framework can be used to write tests for real world projects to ensure they function and will continue to function in the ways that you expect.This book will show how you can set up the scaffolding necessary to run unit tests in your project with PHPUnit. It will walk you through the process of how to write a basic test and how to maintain your project's test suite. You will learn how to use some of the more advanced features of PHPUnit and then see how you can use mock objects to isolate the code you are testing. We will then discover how to create tests that verify your interaction with databases and even see how you can use PHPUnit to understand which code you are actually testing.At the end of the book you will have all of the basic understanding necessary to begin adding tests to your project. This book provides a great foundation for becoming a expert at writing unit tests.