This week’s blog was written by Scott Thibodeau who is one of our technical instructors on staff. Scott has been with New Horizons for 11 years and brings a wealth of knowledge to the classroom. Scott is certified as an MCSE with a focus on Messaging.
Are you curious about some of the new features in Exchange 2007 and Windows Server 2008? Are you interested in how to get the most out of these new products?
Then one of the answers to the above two questions is PowerShell.
PowerShell? What’s that?
“Windows PowerShell™ is a new Windows command-line shell designed especially for system administrators. The shell includes an interactive prompt and a scripting environment that can be used independently or in combination.” (from Microsoft’s PowerShell Getting Started Guide.)
I recommend that anyone who will be administering either of the two products listed above get familiar with PowerShell, as in the case of Exchange 2007, some things CAN ONLY be done via the command environment.
There have been several command environments; however their limitations were based on input and an output to the screen. PowerShell is different as it is built on the .Net framework AND it’s written for administrators! It is an interactive environment because it does react to what is being done, as in an administrator can use the tab key to complete commands.
Most of what administrators will use are cmdlets (command-lets) which execute a single instruction to the system. The cmdlets can be extended by linking cmdlets together to form more complex operations.
The PowerShell environment has its own language and syntax, rather than reusing existing an languages, for the following reasons.
· Windows PowerShell needed a language for managing.NET objects,
· The language needed to provide a consistent environment for using cmdlets.
· The language needed to support complex tasks, without making simple tasks more complex.
· The language needed to be consistent with higher-level languages used in .NET programming, such as C#.
It will be helpful for anyone that will be taking any of the current and future course offerings at New Horizons for Exchange 2007 or Server 2008 to take a look at the PowerShell Getting Started Guide, as well as the Exchange PowerShell Reference Guide.
The PowerShell environment is pretty powerfull as it does have access to the file system as well, and some basic actions are centered around these commands:
Get – which only returns information as well as setting the “focus” for further actions on the item.
Set – which actually modifies some attribute on the current item
New – which creates the type of item specified
The PowerShell environment is not only limited to administrators typing commands interactively. As a matter of fact, they try NOT to be tied to the system, rather they need to be able to automate processes as much as possible, so another great feature is the ability to take a series of cmdlets and put them together into a script which can be run in the PowerShell environment.
Well, that’s a quick overview of the new PowerShell environment from Microsoft, and it’s coming to a server product near you!
More information on Microsoft PowerShell
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/default.mspx