PowerShell packs a real punch for Windows administrators
Thomas Lee, Chief Architect Global Knowledge and a
Microsoft MVP (Most Valued Professional) for the past 13 years,
explains how you can make the most of the vendors powerful new
command line interface tool for Windows
Windows PowerShell is Microsoft’s new administrative scripting
tool. A part of Windows Server 2008, PowerShell has been available
as a download for use on Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, and
Windows XP since late 2006 – and early 2007 for Vista.
Traditionally, Microsoft’s command line management tools were
neither complete nor integrated. Unlike Unix and Linux, where
administrators have several shell environments and a rich set of
tools, Windows administrators had to make do with a range of GUI
tools. While some of the Unix/Lunix shells and tools have been
"ported" to run on Windows, the overall administration and
management story was weak.
Microsoft went back to first principles to develop PowerShell.
The result is an object-oriented administration tool designed to be
used by administrators. PowerShell can also be integrated in to
applications as a part of that application’s administrative
experience. Exchange Server 2007 and other server products from
Microsoft have had their administration reworked around PowerShell.
Exchange Management Shell, for example, is based on PowerShell with
Exchange-specific extensions.
PowerShell is built into Windows Server 2008 and an increasing
number of Microsoft applications are being converted to enable
PowerShell to be used as a key administration tool, In fact,
PowerShell will almost certainly become the management tool of
choice for administrators, so learning about it now is
advisable..
Any administrator can choose to use PowerShell as:
• An interactive way to monitor, configure, and generally
administer Windows itself, and all applications and services on the
system.
• A way of scripting batch processes that can be event-driven
or run on schedule or on demand.
• A way of writing application software
PowerShell doesn't absolutely "replace" Visual Basic Script
(VBscript), Javascript, nor full Java (J#), VB, C#, or C++. But it
is very useful for both programmers and non-programmers
alike.
Another exciting part of the PowerShell story is the
extensibility model. It’s relatively easy for developers to create
additional cmdlets, providers that extend PowerShell. There is a
range of add-ons, including PowerGadgets, the Quest AD tools and
the PowerShell Community Extensions.
If you want reproducibility, accountability, testability,
review-ability, and other abilities that aid quality assurance,
auditing and disaster recovery, PowerShell is the answer. It is IT
administrators what C# is to computer science people. It harnesses
the power of .NET, COM, and WMI – which has been accumulating over
many years – and makes it more directly accessible to the masses of
IT administrators and in turn – though mostly indirectly and
invisibly – to end users.
For those interested in learning more about PowerShell we
offer a range of courses: