David Strome's Blog : PowerShell

Windows PowerShell v2.0 CTP3 and Windows Remote Management 2.0 CTP3

dstrome — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 08:50:20 GMT

The Windows PowerShell and Windows Remote Management (WinRM) teams recently released updates to their products. Windows PowerShell v2.0 has many new features and improvements over v1.0. The most notable is the integrated scripting environment (ISE). The ISE is a new graphical PowerShell host that, in my opinion, makes Windows PowerShell much more usable for scripting and also for novice command line users. The things I find the most useful about the ISE are:

Intelligent formatting – the ISE colors the various command line components – cmdlet names, parameter names and values, etc like in C# and other languages. This makes it much easier to read your scripts
Tabbed runspaces – You can open new tabs which are each their own isolated runspace. This can be useful if you want to isolate your environments for testing or if you want to use WinRM to connect to remote runspaces.
Tabbed scripts within runspaces – Not only can you have multiple tabbed runspaces but within each runspace you can have multiple scripts open in their own tabs.
Interactive command window – While you are working on your script in the script window, you can try out commands in the command window without having to worry about accidentally changing your script. Or, if you just want to use the ISE as an interactive Windows PowerShell host, you can minimize the script window and just use the command window. I find myself using this over the original text-based console. There’s more screen real estate and the ISE also accepts unicode characters unlike the text-based window.
Dedicated output window – Any output that is displayed is sent to the output window.
Lots of other stuff – The ISE gives you lots of additional features that aren’t available in the text-based console – easy cut and paste, F1 help, a debugger, and more.

WinRM also shipped at the same time as Windows PowerShell. WinRM is a transport protocol that you can use with Windows PowerShell to allow a local Windows PowerShell session to communicate and run cmdlets on a remote Windows PowerShell host. Very useful if you need to manage multiple remote computers.

Give Windows PowerShell v2.0 CTP3 and WinRM 2.0 CTP3 a try by downloading them from the following locations:

PowerShell - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=135123
WinRM - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=135126

Be aware, however, that Windows PowerShell v2.0 isn’t supported with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. You must continue to use Windows PowerShell v1.0 to manage your Exchange 2007 server.

You can visit the Windows PowerShell blog here - http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/

The CTP3 versions of both Windows PowerShell and WinRM are included in the Windows 7 Beta release that comes out on Friday 1/9/2009. You can find out how you can get Windows 7 by visiting the Windows Team Blog.

Exchange Server 2007 Cmdlet Examples

dstrome — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 06:16:40 GMT

If you're new to Windows PowerShell and Exchange Server 2007, take a look at this link: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/scripts/message/exch2007/default.mspx?mfr=true. The link goes to the Exchange Server 2007 Script Repository which contains a few dozen cmdlet and script examples for common administrative tasks. It's a really useful resource if you're just getting started.

Take a look and if you have any suggestions for examples we should add, be sure to send me a note via the Email page or post a comment.

Exchange Management Shell Tips and Quick Reference

dstrome — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 02:40:43 GMT

I'm sitting here watching downhill skiing (a Canadian finished third! woo!), recovering from Christmas and a nasty cold. Colds aren't fun. But getting one at Christmas is just wrong. So I'm planted in an easy chair, staring at the TV. Bored. I've even clicked through pretty much all the various greetings that pop up when you play Scrabulous on Facebook. Did you know that Aloha means not only 'hello' and 'goodbye', but also reflects affection, love, mercy and compassion? You would if played Scrabulous (I hope they're right). Anyways. I want to highlight a couple of Exchange Server 2007 help topics that you may not have come across.

Exchange Management Shell Tips

When you open the Exchange Management Shell, a greeting is displayed to you with useful commands and a tip as is shown in the following screen shot:

Every time you open the shell, you receive a new tip. You can also bring up new tips by using the Get-Tip cmdlet. There are a few dozen tips available in the shell and the Get-Tip cmdlet (it's actually a function that gets defined in Exchange.ps1 in C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\bin and reads from an XML file in the directory that relates to your locale within the bin directory) randomly chooses one each time it's run. We figured it would be a good idea to take the tips and publish them as a single topic so that you could easily browse through them and discover tips that make your life easier.

The Exchange Management Shell Tips of the Day topic lists all of the tips along with links off to relevant topics for each time. Take a look through - I'm sure there are at least a couple of tips that would be useful to you. Be sure to take a look at the other topics beneath Understanding the Exchange Management Shell also. There's lots of good information for those who are new to the shell.

Exchange Management Shell Quick Reference

The second topic I wanted to highlight is the Exchange Management Shell Quick Reference downloadable sheet available at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads (you can get to it directly by clicking this link: Exchange Management Shell Quick Reference). When you click on the link, you will be prompted to download quickref.exe which when run will extract two files to the default location c:\ExQuickRef. Browse to that directory and then open ExQuick.htm.

The Exchange Management Shell Quick Reference sheet contains several dozen common commands that are categorized by task. For example, if you want examples of commands used to manage mailboxes, click on Mailbox Management. Below is a screenshot of a small section of the mailbox management section:

I recommend that you download the sheet and print it out so you have easy access to it.

For both the tips of the day and the quick reference topics, feel free to send in tips or examples commands that you use frequently or would benefit other administrators. For the tips, please use the feedback mechanism on the page to submit tip ideas - they will get entered into a database and assigned directly to me. For the quick reference, add a comment to this post, or if the comments eventually close, feel free to submit ideas through the contact form. I'd love to hear about ideas you have.

Hope you all have a great and safe New Years. I think it's time for a nap.

David.