Windows Server 2012 : Highly available, easy-to-manage multi-server platform - Management efficiency (part 3) - PowerShell 3.0

Windows Server 2012 includes hundreds of new PowerShell cmdlets that help you manage almost every aspect of your private cloud environment. Note that many cmdlets are only available when the appropriate server role or feature is installed.

PowerShell 3.0 includes a new cmdlet called Show-Command that displays a GUI for a command with a simpler overview of any PowerShell cmdlet. This capability can make it much easier to understand the syntax of a cmdlet, as opposed to using the Get-Help cmdlet. For example, if you want to understand the syntax of the Install-ADDSDomain cmdlet used to promote a server to a domain controller, you can type Get-Command Install-ADDSDomain in the PowerShell console to open the dialog box shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Example of using the Show-Command cmdlet.

PowerShell 3.0 now supports persistent user-managed sessions (PSSessions) that are not dependent upon the session in which they were created. By using the New-PSSession cmdlet, you can create and save a session on a remote server and then disconnect from the session. The PowerShell commands in the session on the remote server will then continue to execute, even though you are no longer connected to the session. If desired, you can reconnect later to the session from the same or a different computer.

To work with disconnect sessions, you simply do the following:

PowerShell workflows let you write workflows in PowerShell or using Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) and then run your workflows as if they were PowerShell cmdlets. This enables PowerShell to use the capabilities of the Windows Workflow Foundation to create long-running management activities that can be interrupted, suspended, restarted, repeated, and executed in parallel.

PowerShell workflows are especially valuable in cloud computing environments because they help you automate administrative operations by building in repeatability and by increasing robustness and reliability. They also help increase your servers-to-administrators ratio by enabling a single administrator to execute a PowerShell workflow that runs simultaneously on hundreds of servers.

PowerShell 2.0 introduced the concept of background jobs, which can be scheduled to run asynchronously in the background. PowerShell 3.0 now includes cmdlets like Start-Job and Get-Job that can be used to manage these jobs. You can also easily schedule jobs using the Windows Task Scheduler. This means that you, as the administrator, can now have full control over when PowerShell scripts execute in your environment.

PowerShell Web Access lets you manage the servers in your private cloud from anywhere, at any time, by running PowerShell commands within a web-based console. PowerShell Web Access acts as a gateway to provide a web-based PowerShell console that you can use to manage remote computers. This lets you run PowerShell scripts and commands even on computers that don’t have PowerShell installed. All your computer needs is an Internet connection and a web browser that supports JavaScript and accepts cookies.

To use PowerShell Web Access, begin by installing it using the Add Roles And Features Wizard, which you can start from Server Manager:

Installing PowerShell Web Access also installs the .NET Framework 4.5 features and the Web Server (IIS) server role, if these are not already installed on the server. You can also install PowerShell Web Access with PowerShell by using the Install-WindowsFeature cmdlet.

Next, configure PowerShell Web Access on your server. You can do this by running the Install-PswaWebApplication cmdlet. You’ll need to have already installed a server certificate on your server. If you are trying this in a test environment, however, you can use a self-signed test certificate, as shown here:

Once you’ve configured PowerShell Web Access, you need to grant users access explicitly by adding authorization rules. You can use the Add-PswaAuthorizationRule cmdlet to do this:

Administrators can then run PowerShell scripts and commands against servers they have been authorized to manage by accessing the gateway from a remote computer. They do this by opening the URL https://<server_name>/pswa in a web browser:

You can now use PowerShell cmdlets to manage any standard-compliant CIM-capable systems, which means you can manage non-Windows servers and even hardware devices using PowerShell just as you manage Windows.

Some other improvements in PowerShell 3.0 include the following;