Which Windows command shell scripting books are useful?
The gold standard text for command shell scriptwriters is Timothy Hill's Windows NT Shell Scripting. Although the book is somewhat dated, it's still an excellent resource. Hill was the first author to introduce many administrators to the power of command shell scripting. Several recently published texts also provide information about command shell scripting. William R. Stanek's Microsoft Windows Command-Line Administrator's Pocket Consultant is one of the best. Stanek arranges the chapters by task, so you can quickly and easily determine which tool and code to use to accomplish a task.
I want to set up one machine on which to develop and test scripts and set up another machine in my production environment to run the scripts. What hardware and software are necessary?
I use a XP PC for script development and testing. I schedule production scripts to run on a Windows 2003 machine. This production server is a multiprocessor on a 1 GB network, which gives me enough power and network speed to run scripts simultaneously. At one time, I had about 2000 script instances running each day on my production server. If you're just getting started, you probably don't need that much computing horsepower. You can probably run scripts on your development machine. Another approach is to use a file server to do double duty as your production script server. . . .
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