Oct
2
PowerShell 3 has launched! Since september 4th you can download the final (RTM) release of PowerShell 3 from this link:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34595
Some of the best new features include:
- Automatic module loading, no more “import-module” required
- Lot’s of extra modules like DHCP, DNS, iSCSI, NetAdapter, NetTCPIP, Printing, ScheduledTasks, SMB, and many others.
- Few syntax changes. Get-Process | Where-Object { $_.vm -gt 150MB } can now be written as Get-Process | Where-Object vm -gt 150MB
- Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE) includes Intellisense, code folding, brace matching, code snippets, block select and much more!
- Show-Command let’s you use cmdlets in an interactive way.
- Out-GridView now has a -OutputMode parameter! That’s really awesome! For example: Get-Process | Where vm -gt 150 MB | Kill -confirm can now be written as: Get-Process | Sort vm -Descending | Out-GridView -Outputmode multiple | Kill. This means you don’t have to experiment with the parameters (like the VM-size of 150MB) to get the correct processes. And you can confirm in the GUI! What about the Active Directory recycle bin combined with Out-GridView? I’ll write a post about that very soon.
- Workflows. This is an excerpt from the documentation: “To author sequences of multi-computer management activities — that are either long-running, repeatable, frequent, parallelizable, interruptible, stoppable, or restartable — as workflows. By design, workflows can be resumed from an intentional or accidental suspension or interruption, such as a network outage, a reboot or power loss.” More info: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powershell/archive/tags/powershell+workflow/
- And one of my favorites: PowerShell WebApplication. This installs an IIS website where you can use PowerShell commands through a webbrowser. Internet Explorer required, you think? Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari are all supported!
I would recommend to install PowerShell 3 as soon as possible. If you’re concerned about backward compatibility then stay away from the syntax changes and new modules. But start using the ISE today. It’s awesome!
Dimitri
By the way, there’s also a new alias for select-string: sls. It should have been grep, if you ask me… 😉