So, now that you’re running Windows 7, you’re wondering how you can use all of the great Windows PowerShell version 2.0 features for managing your servers, although you’re not really to upgrade your organization’s production servers to Windows Server 2008 R2 yet, right?
Well, whether or not you were wondering that, you’re in luck. With Microsoft’s downloadable Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 , you can use a Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, or even Ultimate workstation (or notebook) to manage many features of Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 without having to wait for Windows Server 2008 R2. Yes, it’s true, there’s great synergy between Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (which I still sometimes refer to as Windows 7 Server), yet there’s also a great deal of backward compatibility in the management tools.
The reasonable expense and low risk of running Windows 7 on one administrative workstation to manage your servers (and other workstations) in more effective ways using PowerShell version 2.0 is great bargain. For those of you wanting to get off of XP and Vista for systems administration, the wait is over. Well yes, you could manage your systems from Snow Leopard, but that’s another story. We’re talking about Windows 7 and PowerShell version 2.0 for now. Even if you can get Windows PowerShell version 2.0 for Vista or XP, Windows 7 does have many other advantages, doesn’t it? Let’s not dwell on that.
One example of how the Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) for Windows 7 can help bring the power of PowerShell v2.0 is the Active Directory management tools included in the Active Directory module for PowerShell which is part of the RSAT AD DS and AD LDS Tools. Once again, not only can Windows Server 2008 R2 based domain controllers be managed using these tools, but Active Directory environments based on Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2003 domain controllers can be managed now with them. This does not require any schema changes. It simply entails using new tools with your existing directory services.
[to be continued...]
-Brad
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