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POWERSHELL HAS SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE 15
What Is PowerShell, and Why Do You Need It?
CHAPTER 1
them have their own set of PowerShell commands and functions to perform a vari-
ety of tasks speci c to the particular role or feature.
Beginning with basic installation of the roles and features on your server,
PowerShell can be used to perform these functions for your full and core Windows
Server 2008 R2 servers. Performing and scheduling a task such as a backup can be
quickly created in a PowerShell script and tied to the Task Scheduler.
PowerShell can provide a consistent approach to the daily maintenance of servers.
In some cases, PowerShell may be the only utility you can use.  is is the case with
the Active Directory Recycle Bin and managed service accounts, two features in
Windows Server 2008 R2 Active Directory.
IIS provides another scenario for IT professionals to use PowerShell. With
PowerShell, you can work with the core con guration to manage sites and work
with web applications.  is allows you to manage and quickly maintain web farms.
As an IT professional, you want PowerShell to be consistent when you work on
various tasks or when you download third-party tools.  is is where you see the
pervasiveness of PowerShell. For example, when you download the Microso
Deployment Toolkit (MDT), this free tool has built-in PowerShell cmdlets.
What makes PowerShell a unique tool set is the strong community following the
language. In some cases, Microso did not provide cmdlets for a Windows Server
2008 R2 server role. Yet you can  nd third-party ones with an Internet search.  is
is the case with Hyper-V. With PowerShell 2.0, there are no built-in cmdlets to sup-
port working with Hyper-V, and you may have to use WMI to work directly with
Hyper-V via PowerShell. However, the PowerShell community has created a dedi-
cated provider for managing Hyper-V in PowerShell, making it easier than having
to use WMI to accomplish the same tasks.
Chapters 7–12 focus on many of the daily workloads you may encounter when you
manage a Windows Server 2008 R2 server with PowerShell.  ese chapters will
show how to install server components; how to manage IIS, Hyper-V, and Active
Directory; and how to use many other roles and features you will  nd in Windows
Server 2008 R2.
What’s in It for Developers?
Although this book does focus on some of the IT professional and administrative
tasks performed on Windows Server 2008 R2 servers, there is a side of PowerShell
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