PowerShell will be installed by default on Windows Server 08 R2 (WS08R2) and Windows 7 (W7)!
Yes that’s right, it’s not a typo. At today’s PDC, all attendees received a Pre Beta of WS08R2 & W7 (there are advantages to going to the PDC J). Every version has PowerShell installed by default. The one exception is Server Core were we are trying to make everything an optional install. Our vision for the ultimate server OS is one that has exactly 1 feature: Load Optional Software. It will take us a while to get there but that is where we are headed so we are not installing PS by default there. Everywhere else – PowerShell is installed by default.
PowerShell on every copy of Windows.
Every copy of Windows has PowerShell installed on it.
Windows ó PowerShell.
Windows/PowerShell.
PowerShell/Windows.
No matter how I say it sounds great! Who could have guessed that that would be the destiny of something called “Windows PowerShell”? J Still the day as come and it is a wonderful day.
This now puts us firmly on the road to shipping >500 million copies. Every server, every workstation, every desktop, every laptop – they’ll all have PowerShell. This has a number of profound ramifications.
Let’s just think about this a second. In the future when you are visiting your folks and they ask you what’s going on with their PC, you’ll be able to fire up a PowerShell window and find out! One of my moments of clarity came during one the security crises a few years ago. Jim Allchin set out an email with instructions for how to configure your machine to avoid the problem and told us to get all of our friends and family to do the instructions. The instructions started with “go the Start Menu then go to All Programs then.. then.. then… then… click…then…click…then…click…” OMG! I can’t follow instructions so I keep screwing it up over and over again. I eventually got it done but then thought to myself, “wait – I’m supposed to call up my folks and have them do this?” That is a phone call that never got made. I remember thinking, “This is freaking crazy! If Jim gave me a command line, I’d just cut and paste it and be done. I could get my folks to cut-n-paste a command line!”. There was only two problems with that story – 1) PowerShell wasn’t installed on my folks machine and 2) PowerShell wasn’t written at that time. J We are now on a path were this is going to be simple and easy to do.
If you are writing a management product, you’d be crazy not to have a plan to leverage PowerShell. It is going to be on all boxes and it going provide access to everything on the box. YES – it will also be available down-level. It already is. PowerShell is the future of Windows management and the future is here today.
If you have are an ISV, it would be crazy to not expose your management interface as PowerShell. This is the new bar for manageability on Windows. Admins need high level task oriented abstractions (CMDLETS) and great interactive help documentation. Right now, providing Cmdlets is a customer delighter - you get a lot of credit and goodwill for doing this. Shortly after WS08R2/W7 ship, this will change and Cmdlets will be expected from all products (that have mgmt surfaces) and soon after that, not having cmdlets will become a customer dissatisfier.
If you are an IT Pro – you can lean PowerShell knowing that you’ll be able to use your skills on ALL WINDOWS BOXES! The story is actually even better than that but for that story you’ll have to come to my PDC talk on Thursday.
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
