Powershell Cool things

Powershell has came a long way since version 1.0, Powershell is no longer Powerhell (although it still needs some work) 

but it’s enough to mention that as a long time UNIX/Linux Shell user, Microsoft has made enough progress for me to consider adopting powershell for a few reasons:

1) Server 2012 there’s no other way

2) Removing the Graphical Overhead of Explorer, and applications has it’s benefits

3) Windows updates only need to be applied 1-2 times PER YEAR if you configure the server right (pretty awesome, but not Linux)

4) Powershell supports a lot of common UNIX/Linux commands, so it’s not that hard of a transition.

Let’s talk about some reasons that powershell still needs some work:

1) Each Role/Server you have to learn a separate set of CMDlets, so you can be really advanced with normal powershell, until you need to perform an Exchange Powershell commnd, and you see the famous “what are you talking about error”

2) Powershell does not allow remote shell, so like in traditional UNIX/Linux systems, i can’t “POWERSHELL” into another box. Microsoft wants you to enable remote desktop (kind of doesn’t make sense)

You can do this with Telnet, but that would eliminate the idea of the extra security.

Anyways, now that i’m off my soapbox, i think it’s time to take a look at it, Microsoft has done some cool things to make powershell easy, for example, you can go from cmd to Powershell easy by using the phrase “powershell”

What are the main things you do from a UNIX/Linux Command Prompt for administration? Uptime?

powershell can do that with “systeminfo”

ok, now that out screen is all mucked up, let’s use a UNIX Command: Clear

that’s pretty cool, didn’t expect that?

what about….. if you don’t know what you are doing? Guess what RTFM’s, type the command “man” oh yea, they worked that in there too

what about the old ipconfig /all?

that beats ifconfig because it gives the IP and the DNS…. (cracking a smile yet?)

Alright, fine, what about editing code, how do you do that windows powershell?

Crap, they have an answer for that too! say we have a file in our C:/ named test, we can from powershell edit a file with notepad

Since when did Microsoft get so good at the shell? Alright, well for sure they don’t have a way to check free memory

Again, where did Microsoft Learn this?

ok, ok, i got one, What about Disk Space?

Crap, not only does it show that for local volumes, it also shows for shares and removable media 

ok, what about restarting services? they have that too

Restart-Service Netman  -f (restarts network connections the -f is to force because it has dependencies)

Most file move commands are the same such as “cp, mv, cd, ls”

…It’s time to blow the lid off this, powershell is here and it’s here to stay, and for the Smart admins that want to make their job easier by eliminating the GUI, this is the way to go.