Preface

Windows PowerShell is viewed by many IT professionals as a necessary evil, but we see it as a management marvel. The challenge from the beginning has been to wrap one’s head around the PowerShell paradigm of an object-based shell. Some people view PowerShell as just another scripting language like VBScript, but the truth is that PowerShell is an automation and management engine. You can run this engine in a traditional console application, which is how most IT pros are first exposed to it. You can also run it in a graphical environment like the PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE), or through a third-party tool like PowerGUI or PowerShell Plus.

As you might imagine, the fourth version of a product offers substantially more features and benefits than the first, and PowerShell 4.0 fits this model. This version of PowerShell naturally builds on what came before, but it takes off from there. If you think of Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 as operating systems for the cloud, then PowerShell 4.0 is the automation and management engine for the cloud, although PowerShell “scales down” to help you better manage any size environment.