IIS 7.0 PowerShell Support
Quite a few people have expressed disappointment about the lack of IIS cmdlets or namespace provider. It's been a long sad tale. It turns out that the IIS team (and Sergei Antonov in particular) was one of the first groups to truly "get" PowerShell. I can't tell you how many teams, in the early days, looked at us like we had a rat's tail hanging out of our mouth. The IIS team embraced PowerShell early and did a great prototype of a namespace provider. Actually, now that I think about it, I think they were the first group to ever do a namespace provider.
Things were going hot and heavy for a while there and then there was the "Vista reset" which changed the priorities for a lot of teams. Their PowerShell work was put on hold. Sergei remained a big PowerShell fan and was a constant force pushing to get IIS to support PowerShell. The IIS Product Unit Manager (PUM) Bill Staples and Group Program Manager (GPM) Mai-lan Tomsen Bukovec (I just love that name) have been long time advocates as well. The persistent advocacy has finally paid off. Today Thomas announced the availability of a Tech Preview of an IIS 7.0 PowerShell provider.
This is a huge milestone for both PowerShell and IIS. When you think through what people do with IIS and what is important to them (e.g. lowering operational costs through automation), PowerShell and IIS is a marriage made in heaven for these folks. I predict that this is going to be one of the most heavily used PowerShell components.
You can read the details about the preview and get download instructions HERE.
You can also take a look at a number of scenario walkthroughs HERE.
Grab the IIS provider and give it a try. Let them know whether you like it and if you don't, let them know why and what they can do to make it better.
What a great day today has been!
Cheers!
Jeffrey Snover [MSFT]
Windows Management Partner Architect
Visit the Windows PowerShell Team blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/PowerShell
Visit the Windows PowerShell ScriptCenter at: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/hubs/msh.mspx
