Oisín Grehan has a good list of the new cmdlets in PowerShell 2 (currently in CTP3 and the Windows 7 beta):

http://www.nivot.org/2009/02/04/DifferencesBetweenPowerShell10RTMAndPowershell20CTP3Win7Beta.aspx

It's cool having a list of all 106 new cmdlets, including such useful ones as:

• Test-Connection (ping)
• ConvertFrom/To-CSV
• Start/Stop/etc Jobs in the background
• Get-Random (useful for drawing prize winners at user groups!)
• ConvertTo-Xml

PowerShell 2 has a bunch of cool new features, and feels like it's getting real close now :)

Kirk

Well that's good news: Server Core changes in Windows Server 2008 R2

Server Core will soon allow ASP.NET and PowerShell to be installed as options. They've partitioned the .NET framework and only install those parts that are needed (presumably to remove those parts that depend on the UI). I haven't seen any details, but I expect that things in the System.Drawing space may not be there either.

This is good news for people with a farm of web servers, and also for those that want better management of their server core installs.

Kirk

I talked about this briefly last week -- if you want to administer Hyper-V using PowerShell, what options do you have?

WMI

Hyper-V proffers some functionality through WMI classes in the “root\virtualization” namespace. You can access the raw WMI classes from PowerShell using examples like in my talk, or you can use the great library James O'Neill has uploaded to CodePlex: PowerShell Management Library for Hyper-V

Ben Pearce is doing a series on scripting Hyper-V with WMI which you should definitely check out.

System Centre Virtual Machine Manager 2008

SCVMM is a new product that will be releasing soon. It offers a unified management interface and set of services for managing a datacenter full of virtual machines. It is an additional product purchase, and so not everyone will have it.

I haven't used them, but apparently SCVMM's PowerShell cmdlets are a lot more natural to use than WMI. Further information about the PowerShell interface is available in this Scripting Guide.

Ultimately, you'll need to evaluate both approaches to see which one fits. WMI-based scripts will probably be usable in more situations, but SCVMM scripts will be easier to author and maintain.

Kirk

As promised, here's the transcript of the PowerShell commands I used in my talk:

TechEdTranscript.txt (107.64 KB)

The bulkservers scripts that I used were from Ben Pearce's blog: Administering Servers in Bulk. I've uploaded my versions of the scripts here: BulkServerScripts.zip

Following is a synopsis of the commands I used in the talk.

Get a list of all classes in the CIMV2 namespace:

> get-wmiobject -namespace "root\cimv2" -list

Get a list of all disks on a remote machine:

> gwmi -class win32_logicaldisk -computer columbus

Update the Volume Name of a disk. Note that often when making changes to WMI properties, you need to Put() the object to set your changes back on the original machine:

> $disks[0].VolumeName = "Kirks disk"
> $disks[0].Put()

List hotfixes applied to a machine:

> gwmi win32_quickfixengineering | format-table hotfixid

Get a representation of the running OS. You can shutdown, reboot etc:

> $os = gwmi win32_operatingsystem

Get all the network adapters on a machine:

> $nics = gwmi win32_networkadapterconfiguration

You can update the IP addresses, netmasks etc:

> $mynic.enablestatic($newip, $newmask)

Get a list of the Hyper-V virtual machines:

$vms = Gwmi –namespace “root\virtualization” –class msvm_computersystem

Set one of the virtual machines to the running state:

> $VM.RequestStateChange(2)

I hope that these examples show you the variety and power of things you can manipulate using PowerShell over WMI. You can access almost every physical or logical device that is connected to your computer (or another computer on your network), as well as administer many different software products.

Kirk

 

Want to transfer your cheezburger skillz to the command prompt? Navigate your files using lolshell.

Download lolshell.ps1 [Requires PowerShell 1.0]

To give you a taste of the awesome powers of lolshell, here's a transcript. My favourite function is WTF.

          1>
          . ./lolshell.ps1 |\_/|
(. .) =w= (\ / ^ \// (|| ||) ,""_""_ . IM IN UR SHEL FIDLNG UR BITS 2>IM
IN UR C DRIVE KTHX 3>IM
WATCHN YR VIDEOS VIDEOS WATCHN U 4>WARE
AM I? LOL. I CAN SEEZ U HRE: C:\Users\kirk\Videos 5>GIMMEH
ALL MI FILZ Directory: Microsoft.PowerShell.Core\FileSystem::C:\Users\kirk\Vi
deos Mode LastWriteTime Length Name ---- ------------- ------ ---- -a--- 28/02/2007
12:40 a.m. 14882401 Vista_0001.wmv -a--- 28/02/2007 11:10 p.m. 14816631 Vista_0002.wmv 6>IM
WATCHN YR Vista_0001.wmv [Video opens in Media Player] 7>WARE
AM I? LOL. I CAN SEEZ U HRE: C:\Users\kirk\Videos 8>IM
WATCHN YR MOMMA U GO 'WAY 9>WARE
AM I? LOL. I CAN SEEZ U HRE: C:\Users\kirk 10>IM
IN UR Z DRIVE OMGWTF?! 11>WTF
JUST HAPND? WTF? LOL. HAPND JUST lolshell :) Cannot find drive. A drive with
name 'Z' does not exist. 12>HOW
DUZ I PRINT? NAME Out-Printer SYNOPSIS Sends output to a printer. ... [More
help prints here] 13>OKTHXBYE

• SVR308 - Windows PowerShell: The Future of Server Administration

• PowerShell gadget
• Windows PowerShell graphical help file
• Codeplex - powershell community extensions
• Windows PowerShell Team blog
• Windows PowerShell ScriptCenter 
• ShinyPower - help browser
• pshell.info - resource site
  

Last year at TechEd I was talking about the drive providers that ship with PowerShell, such as the ENV: drive that let's you view environment variables and the HKLM: and HKCU: drives that let you navigate the registry.

I said it would be cool if you could CD into your database server, and DIR the rows of a table. Here's how you can:

Demo SQL Provider Code

JD Trask has also put together a drive provider for mounting and navigating Zip archives:

How to Write a PowerShell drive provider

JD's example comes with some decent documentation explaining the four core classes that comprise the provider, showing how to install the provider and giving some ideas on how to extend the provider for extra credit.

It rather reminds me of a tcsh extension I used to use to cd into tar.gz's back in the day :)