1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,000 We're at Microsoft TechEd IT Forum in Barcelona, 2007. 2 00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:09,000 And we've got someone else excited to talk with for a little bit. 3 00:00:09,000 --> 00:00:10,000 Would you like to introduce yourself? 4 00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:14,000 Sure. I'm Jeffrey Snover. I'm the architect for Windows PowerShell. 5 00:00:14,000 --> 00:00:17,000 And so, what is PowerShell exactly? Sounds very powerful. 6 00:00:17,000 --> 00:00:19,000 It is. Great name. 7 00:00:19,000 --> 00:00:23,000 So, Windows PowerShell is our next-generation command line shell and scripting language. 8 00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:27,000 So, it's as interactive and composable as the traditional shells, 9 00:00:27,000 --> 00:00:31,000 k-shell and bash. But it's programmatic as, say, Perl and Ruby. 10 00:00:31,000 --> 00:00:35,000 And then it has production qualities like AS400 or CL. 11 00:00:35,000 --> 00:00:40,000 And then we expose the object stores of Windows as file systems. 12 00:00:40,000 --> 00:00:42,000 So, it's easy to find all this stuff and manipulate it. 13 00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:44,000 So, essentially, it's a scripting language. 14 00:00:44,000 --> 00:00:47,000 And a shell builds around that scripting language for the Windows. 15 00:00:47,000 --> 00:00:49,000 Yeah, but it's really focused in on the interactive use. 16 00:00:49,000 --> 00:00:52,000 So, it's focused in on that interactive shell experience. 17 00:00:52,000 --> 00:00:56,000 And the big thing that differentiates PowerShell from everything else 18 00:00:56,000 --> 00:00:58,000 is our pipelines of objects. 19 00:00:58,000 --> 00:00:59,000 Right. 20 00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:01,000 In the traditional shell, you pipeline text. 21 00:01:01,000 --> 00:01:05,000 And so, then you've got to parse all this text, all this prayer-based parsing. 22 00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:06,000 Lots of grepping and knocking and everything. 23 00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:07,000 Exactly. 24 00:01:07,000 --> 00:01:08,000 And it's great stuff. 25 00:01:08,000 --> 00:01:12,000 But, man, when you just want to get the job done, it's a pain in the butt. 26 00:01:12,000 --> 00:01:13,000 So, we pipeline objects. 27 00:01:13,000 --> 00:01:17,000 And whereas that sounds like scary, oh my God, objects. 28 00:01:17,000 --> 00:01:21,000 In fact, it just dramatically simplifies the tasks of the registration. 29 00:01:21,000 --> 00:01:22,000 Right. 30 00:01:22,000 --> 00:01:24,000 It basically accesses everything in the CLR, if I remember, right? 31 00:01:24,000 --> 00:01:25,000 Yeah. 32 00:01:25,000 --> 00:01:26,000 I mean, you kind of have access to all the .NET objects. 33 00:01:26,000 --> 00:01:27,000 Yep. 34 00:01:27,000 --> 00:01:28,000 But then, also, everything outside of that. 35 00:01:28,000 --> 00:01:29,000 So, WMI. 36 00:01:29,000 --> 00:01:30,000 Right. 37 00:01:30,000 --> 00:01:31,000 We invoke traditional stuff. 38 00:01:31,000 --> 00:01:32,000 Get their text. 39 00:01:32,000 --> 00:01:33,000 We do text parsing. 40 00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:34,000 You bet. 41 00:01:34,000 --> 00:01:36,000 There's still stuff that does that. 42 00:01:36,000 --> 00:01:42,000 Support WMI, COM, ADSI, ADO, XML, and the entire .NET framework. 43 00:01:42,000 --> 00:01:43,000 Right. 44 00:01:43,000 --> 00:01:45,000 It's this universal blue language. 45 00:01:45,000 --> 00:01:46,000 What does Microsoft use it for? 46 00:01:46,000 --> 00:01:52,000 Oh, we're using it for--it is basically our strategy for the automating all of our operating 47 00:01:52,000 --> 00:01:53,000 systems and products. 48 00:01:53,000 --> 00:01:54,000 Right. 49 00:01:54,000 --> 00:01:57,000 So, it's what's called a common engineering criteria, which means you're in the server and 50 00:01:57,000 --> 00:01:58,000 tools business. 51 00:01:58,000 --> 00:02:00,000 You want to ship the product in 2009? 52 00:02:00,000 --> 00:02:02,000 You have to have PowerShell support. 53 00:02:02,000 --> 00:02:03,000 Right. 54 00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:07,000 And by PowerShell support, that means exposing different functions on whatever the software 55 00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:08,000 is you're working on. 56 00:02:08,000 --> 00:02:09,000 Exactly. 57 00:02:09,000 --> 00:02:11,000 Let's say your component is manageable via PowerShell. 58 00:02:11,000 --> 00:02:12,000 Right. 59 00:02:12,000 --> 00:02:18,000 The other thing is that all of our strategy now is to layer our admin GUIs on top of PowerShell. 60 00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:23,000 So, I mentioned scripting language is an engine, but it's also an engine that can be hosted 61 00:02:23,000 --> 00:02:28,000 by other language--by other executables, in particular, your admin GUI. 62 00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:31,000 So, now you write your admin GUI, lay it on top of PowerShell. 63 00:02:31,000 --> 00:02:34,000 Your GUI is a subset of the things you can do in the command line. 64 00:02:34,000 --> 00:02:35,000 Oh, right, right. 65 00:02:35,000 --> 00:02:38,000 So, not only is there a text interface, but you can have a--does the GUI--you have to code 66 00:02:38,000 --> 00:02:41,000 the GUI, or does it kind of figure out what the GUI would look like on top? 67 00:02:41,000 --> 00:02:42,000 Yeah. 68 00:02:42,000 --> 00:02:43,000 No, you have to code the GUI. 69 00:02:43,000 --> 00:02:44,000 For now. 70 00:02:44,000 --> 00:02:45,000 That's still a GUI. 71 00:02:45,000 --> 00:02:46,000 That's nice. 72 00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:47,000 Yeah. 73 00:02:47,000 --> 00:02:48,000 It's dramatically simpler. 74 00:02:48,000 --> 00:02:49,000 Right. 75 00:02:49,000 --> 00:02:51,000 Because all your logic's in the--in the--in the--in the automation engine. 76 00:02:51,000 --> 00:02:53,000 And then your GUI's a very thin layer. 77 00:02:53,000 --> 00:02:56,000 So, it reduces the amount of testing you have to do, the amount of coding. 78 00:02:56,000 --> 00:03:00,000 If you have to go from one GUI framework to another, it's really simple to do because 79 00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:02,000 all the--the tough stuff's in the logic. 80 00:03:02,000 --> 00:03:03,000 Right. 81 00:03:03,000 --> 00:03:05,000 How long has PowerShell been out for now? 82 00:03:05,000 --> 00:03:06,000 One year. 83 00:03:06,000 --> 00:03:07,000 Exactly one year. 84 00:03:07,000 --> 00:03:10,000 And the--the adoption rate's been, like, amazing. 85 00:03:10,000 --> 00:03:11,000 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 86 00:03:11,000 --> 00:03:12,000 Yeah. 87 00:03:12,000 --> 00:03:15,000 Before--about this time last year, we were sitting around saying, "Oh, how many people 88 00:03:15,000 --> 00:03:16,000 will adopt it?" 89 00:03:16,000 --> 00:03:19,000 And somebody said, "Oh, I bet you'll have a million downloads in a year." 90 00:03:19,000 --> 00:03:21,000 And I said, "My friend, let me explain how this works." 91 00:03:21,000 --> 00:03:23,000 These things take a long, long, long time. 92 00:03:23,000 --> 00:03:24,000 Right. 93 00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:25,000 And boy, was I wrong. 94 00:03:25,000 --> 00:03:26,000 Right, right. 95 00:03:26,000 --> 00:03:29,000 We had a million and a half downloads in a year. 96 00:03:29,000 --> 00:03:32,000 So, do you know, like, what types of people have been downloading it? 97 00:03:32,000 --> 00:03:33,000 Yeah. 98 00:03:33,000 --> 00:03:34,000 So, it's--it's across the board. 99 00:03:34,000 --> 00:03:35,000 So, it's developers. 100 00:03:35,000 --> 00:03:36,000 It's IT pros. 101 00:03:36,000 --> 00:03:39,000 People are running it in production. 102 00:03:39,000 --> 00:03:42,000 MySpace was running it in production six months before we released it. 103 00:03:42,000 --> 00:03:43,000 Oh, right. 104 00:03:43,000 --> 00:03:45,000 They were using an RC, like a beta or something, right? 105 00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:46,000 Yeah. 106 00:03:46,000 --> 00:03:47,000 Exactly. 107 00:03:47,000 --> 00:03:49,000 And so, now we see more and more customers using it in production. 108 00:03:49,000 --> 00:03:50,000 Right. 109 00:03:50,000 --> 00:03:51,000 So, that's an interesting example. 110 00:03:51,000 --> 00:03:54,000 I mean, what--what does--what does MySpace use PowerShell to accomplish? 111 00:03:54,000 --> 00:03:55,000 Yeah. 112 00:03:55,000 --> 00:03:56,000 Automation. 113 00:03:56,000 --> 00:03:58,000 Before that, they had a very manual process. 114 00:03:58,000 --> 00:03:59,000 Right. 115 00:03:59,000 --> 00:04:03,000 And so, they said that they were able to go--you automated their entire system using PowerShell. 116 00:04:03,000 --> 00:04:04,000 Right. 117 00:04:04,000 --> 00:04:08,000 And because of that, they were able to go from 1,000 servers to 4,000 servers. 118 00:04:08,000 --> 00:04:09,000 Right, right. 119 00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:14,000 So, automation in this instance, I mean, what do you mean exactly by automation? 120 00:04:14,000 --> 00:04:15,000 Just to clarify. 121 00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:16,000 Sure. 122 00:04:16,000 --> 00:04:18,000 So, something goes wrong. 123 00:04:18,000 --> 00:04:19,000 Right. 124 00:04:19,000 --> 00:04:21,000 You know, now I've got to go change a bunch of things. 125 00:04:21,000 --> 00:04:25,000 So, they have scripts that say, you know, find me all the things that have this condition. 126 00:04:25,000 --> 00:04:26,000 Right. 127 00:04:26,000 --> 00:04:27,000 And perform this operation on it. 128 00:04:27,000 --> 00:04:28,000 Right, right. 129 00:04:28,000 --> 00:04:31,000 So, it's sort of like batch operations over a bunch of different machines or objects or 130 00:04:31,000 --> 00:04:32,000 whatever. 131 00:04:32,000 --> 00:04:33,000 Yeah, exactly. 132 00:04:33,000 --> 00:04:34,000 And they wrote their own GUI on top of it. 133 00:04:34,000 --> 00:04:35,000 So, they've got their own GUI. 134 00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:36,000 Right. 135 00:04:36,000 --> 00:04:37,000 They're on top of their command line interface. 136 00:04:37,000 --> 00:04:38,000 And it's sweet. 137 00:04:38,000 --> 00:04:40,000 It does exactly what they want it to do. 138 00:04:40,000 --> 00:04:41,000 Right. 139 00:04:41,000 --> 00:04:43,000 So, I mean, that gets to one sort of interesting cultural thing. 140 00:04:43,000 --> 00:04:49,000 I mean, it doesn't seem like scripting has been huge in the Microsoft area. 141 00:04:49,000 --> 00:04:51,000 Even though there's VBScript and batch files and everything like that. 142 00:04:51,000 --> 00:04:52,000 Sure. 143 00:04:52,000 --> 00:04:56,000 And, I mean, do you think, first off, do you think that perception is kind of true that 144 00:04:56,000 --> 00:04:57,000 there wasn't much scripting? 145 00:04:57,000 --> 00:04:58,000 No. 146 00:04:58,000 --> 00:05:03,000 And then, if it is true, can you see that people are taking up scripting a lot more? 147 00:05:03,000 --> 00:05:04,000 Yeah. 148 00:05:04,000 --> 00:05:05,000 Like, being more Unix-like, if you will? 149 00:05:05,000 --> 00:05:06,000 Yeah, absolutely. 150 00:05:06,000 --> 00:05:08,000 In the sense that, you know, VBScript is great. 151 00:05:08,000 --> 00:05:11,000 But if you actually go and take a look at a VBScript. 152 00:05:11,000 --> 00:05:12,000 Right. 153 00:05:12,000 --> 00:05:15,000 It's essentially what I like to call systems programming parentheses. 154 00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:16,000 Right? 155 00:05:16,000 --> 00:05:17,000 Yeah, yeah. 156 00:05:17,000 --> 00:05:21,000 So, you take a look at the script and it's this horrible WebM Connect with all these things. 157 00:05:21,000 --> 00:05:23,000 And then you get this object. 158 00:05:23,000 --> 00:05:26,000 And it's all these, like, detailed, really fine-grained stuff. 159 00:05:26,000 --> 00:05:27,000 Right. 160 00:05:27,000 --> 00:05:28,000 But then, wait. 161 00:05:28,000 --> 00:05:31,000 I'll make it simple by your if statement doesn't have that parentheses. 162 00:05:31,000 --> 00:05:32,000 Right. 163 00:05:32,000 --> 00:05:33,000 Like, that was the problem. 164 00:05:33,000 --> 00:05:38,000 So, yeah, I don't think that enough scripting has been done on Windows. 165 00:05:38,000 --> 00:05:41,000 But I believe that's because we've tried to make it much too hard. 166 00:05:41,000 --> 00:05:42,000 Right, right. 167 00:05:42,000 --> 00:05:44,000 In fact, it's really been simple programming. 168 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:47,000 And then with PowerShell now, that's not at all the case. 169 00:05:47,000 --> 00:05:49,000 You know, you can start off with the GUI. 170 00:05:49,000 --> 00:05:50,000 If you like the GUI, that's great. 171 00:05:50,000 --> 00:05:51,000 You have the GUI. 172 00:05:51,000 --> 00:05:53,000 But then the GUI can teach you the command line. 173 00:05:53,000 --> 00:05:54,000 Right. 174 00:05:54,000 --> 00:05:57,000 You have the command line of these nice, high-level task-oriented abstractions. 175 00:05:57,000 --> 00:05:58,000 So, you can stay there. 176 00:05:58,000 --> 00:06:03,000 If you need to access something via com or XML or .NET or whatever, you can do that. 177 00:06:03,000 --> 00:06:06,000 But in general, you want to have nice, high-level abstractions. 178 00:06:06,000 --> 00:06:07,000 And frankly, everybody likes that. 179 00:06:07,000 --> 00:06:10,000 The nice thing about it is then, because you do that, you know, here's the deal. 180 00:06:10,000 --> 00:06:15,000 It's Friday night, and you want to be out with your wife watching a movie. 181 00:06:15,000 --> 00:06:17,000 And something goes wrong, right? 182 00:06:17,000 --> 00:06:18,000 Two choices. 183 00:06:18,000 --> 00:06:21,000 One, fly in, you know, click, click, click of the mouse. 184 00:06:21,000 --> 00:06:22,000 Right. 185 00:06:22,000 --> 00:06:26,000 Or, you have some monitor that's watching some event and runs a script for you automatically. 186 00:06:26,000 --> 00:06:27,000 Right, right, right. 187 00:06:27,000 --> 00:06:28,000 Right? 188 00:06:28,000 --> 00:06:29,000 You choose. 189 00:06:29,000 --> 00:06:36,000 Another aspect that's kind of easy to gloss over is the, I mean, how do you hook up PowerShell 190 00:06:36,000 --> 00:06:37,000 script to, like, events like that? 191 00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:38,000 Yeah. 192 00:06:38,000 --> 00:06:39,000 Or to the alarms? 193 00:06:39,000 --> 00:06:43,000 I mean, is that, is that just, you just add it as an execution task, or what's that? 194 00:06:43,000 --> 00:06:44,000 Yeah, that's exactly correct. 195 00:06:44,000 --> 00:06:48,000 You say, you just say PowerShell, and then minus command, and the command you want to run. 196 00:06:48,000 --> 00:06:49,000 Right. 197 00:06:49,000 --> 00:06:53,000 And then I assume that whatever's executing it passes in a bunch of some variables that 198 00:06:53,000 --> 00:06:54,000 it can use to get context. 199 00:06:54,000 --> 00:06:55,000 Yeah. 200 00:06:55,000 --> 00:06:56,000 You pass that. 201 00:06:56,000 --> 00:06:57,000 Right, right, right. 202 00:06:57,000 --> 00:06:58,000 Just in the command line. 203 00:06:58,000 --> 00:07:01,000 And so, so the last thing is, so since PowerShell's been out for a year, and obviously 204 00:07:01,000 --> 00:07:05,000 was in, you know, beta and release Canada for a little while before that, so what, what are 205 00:07:05,000 --> 00:07:07,000 some, some other non-Microsoft people that are using it? 206 00:07:07,000 --> 00:07:09,000 Yeah, so we've got great adoption in the community. 207 00:07:09,000 --> 00:07:10,000 Of course. 208 00:07:10,000 --> 00:07:15,000 So, F5, the guys who do the network stuff, they've done it. 209 00:07:15,000 --> 00:07:17,000 Quest Software's supported it. 210 00:07:17,000 --> 00:07:20,000 Citrix has recently announced in their conference that they'll be supporting it. 211 00:07:20,000 --> 00:07:21,000 Right. 212 00:07:21,000 --> 00:07:25,000 If you take a look at VMware, in their conference, they showed support for it. 213 00:07:25,000 --> 00:07:26,000 Right. 214 00:07:26,000 --> 00:07:27,000 They're showing up all over. 215 00:07:27,000 --> 00:07:31,000 If you go down to the, uh, environment here, there are folks that have, uh, group policy 216 00:07:31,000 --> 00:07:32,000 command lads. 217 00:07:32,000 --> 00:07:33,000 Yeah. 218 00:07:33,000 --> 00:07:38,000 Full Armor has this wonderful, uh, designer where it's a workflow and PowerShell together 219 00:07:38,000 --> 00:07:39,000 to run book automation. 220 00:07:39,000 --> 00:07:40,000 Yeah. 221 00:07:40,000 --> 00:07:43,000 And are, are they actually, actually executing that in the context of their own system, or, 222 00:07:43,000 --> 00:07:46,000 or making, like, operations manage or execute it, or, or? 223 00:07:46,000 --> 00:07:47,000 No, in the context of their own system. 224 00:07:47,000 --> 00:07:48,000 Oh, right, right, sure. 225 00:07:48,000 --> 00:07:53,000 So, they have, like, their own run book or something, and the run book stuff executes 226 00:07:53,000 --> 00:07:54,000 it. 227 00:07:54,000 --> 00:07:55,000 Yep. 228 00:07:55,000 --> 00:07:56,000 Right, right. 229 00:07:56,000 --> 00:07:59,000 So, the last question, this is one I get asked a lot, is, so, what's the state of remote 230 00:07:59,000 --> 00:08:00,000 operation of PowerShell? 231 00:08:00,000 --> 00:08:01,000 Yeah. 232 00:08:01,000 --> 00:08:05,000 The sense that I'm on one machine, and I want to execute on these three different machines. 233 00:08:05,000 --> 00:08:06,000 So, we've got great news there. 234 00:08:06,000 --> 00:08:10,000 Uh, we just released, this week, our CTP of version 2. 235 00:08:10,000 --> 00:08:11,000 And that, what, what's the CTP? 236 00:08:11,000 --> 00:08:13,000 Oh, Community Technology Preview. 237 00:08:13,000 --> 00:08:14,000 Right. 238 00:08:14,000 --> 00:08:16,000 So, the thing is, other people call it an alpha. 239 00:08:16,000 --> 00:08:17,000 Okay? 240 00:08:17,000 --> 00:08:18,000 Right. 241 00:08:18,000 --> 00:08:20,000 But it's Microsoft, so I call it a CTP. 242 00:08:20,000 --> 00:08:21,000 Yeah, yeah. 243 00:08:21,000 --> 00:08:24,000 And, uh, it has what we call this universal code execution. 244 00:08:24,000 --> 00:08:27,000 Actually, our first steps on a universal code execution model. 245 00:08:27,000 --> 00:08:29,000 And there, it's not just remote. 246 00:08:29,000 --> 00:08:31,000 It's the thing that says, I have code, and I want to run it. 247 00:08:31,000 --> 00:08:34,000 Sometimes I want to run it here, and sometimes I want to run it there. 248 00:08:34,000 --> 00:08:35,000 Right. 249 00:08:35,000 --> 00:08:37,000 And sometimes I want to run it to a bunch of machines. 250 00:08:37,000 --> 00:08:40,000 Sometimes those machines are over a local area network, sometimes over a wide area network. 251 00:08:40,000 --> 00:08:41,000 Right. 252 00:08:41,000 --> 00:08:43,000 Sometimes I want to run it and get the results immediately. 253 00:08:43,000 --> 00:08:46,000 Sometimes I want to run it and get the results asynchronously. 254 00:08:46,000 --> 00:08:47,000 Sure. 255 00:08:47,000 --> 00:08:49,000 Sometimes I want to run it under my current credentials. 256 00:08:49,000 --> 00:08:50,000 Sometimes I want to provide my set of code. 257 00:08:50,000 --> 00:08:51,000 You want to FD to someone else or whatever, right? 258 00:08:51,000 --> 00:08:52,000 Exactly. 259 00:08:52,000 --> 00:08:57,000 So it's kind of universal code execution model where you have code and you can run in lots 260 00:08:57,000 --> 00:08:59,000 of different places and lots of different conditions. 261 00:08:59,000 --> 00:09:00,000 Right. 262 00:09:00,000 --> 00:09:05,000 Over time we'll add things like, I'd like to run this at this time, every day, etc. 263 00:09:05,000 --> 00:09:06,000 Right, right. 264 00:09:06,000 --> 00:09:10,000 In the past, the remoting was done commandlet by commandlet, and now I have uniform support 265 00:09:10,000 --> 00:09:11,000 for you. 266 00:09:11,000 --> 00:09:13,000 All the version one stuff gets remoting for free. 267 00:09:13,000 --> 00:09:14,000 Right. 268 00:09:14,000 --> 00:09:15,000 We do the remoting. 269 00:09:15,000 --> 00:09:18,000 So it sounds like if you want to start playing around with remoting, that's available now, 270 00:09:18,000 --> 00:09:19,000 you can get the CTP, right? 271 00:09:19,000 --> 00:09:20,000 Yeah, exactly. 272 00:09:20,000 --> 00:09:24,000 And then, by the time you've figured it out, it'll probably, well, it'll be closer to 273 00:09:24,000 --> 00:09:27,000 being a final release and not just an alpha. 274 00:09:27,000 --> 00:09:28,000 Exactly. 275 00:09:28,000 --> 00:09:33,000 Well, then, now the great thing about the CTP is it's early enough that if you have comments, 276 00:09:33,000 --> 00:09:36,000 you have a very good chance of getting those comments active on it. 277 00:09:36,000 --> 00:09:37,000 Right, right. 278 00:09:37,000 --> 00:09:41,000 By the time we get to beta, basically, you know, if it's a real big problem, no one can 279 00:09:41,000 --> 00:09:42,000 address it. 280 00:09:42,000 --> 00:09:45,000 But if you just sit there and say, hey, you know, you ought to have done it this way or 281 00:09:45,000 --> 00:09:48,000 this would be a better way to do it, by the time we get beta, it's really hard to make 282 00:09:48,000 --> 00:09:49,000 those changes. 283 00:09:49,000 --> 00:09:50,000 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. 284 00:09:50,000 --> 00:09:51,000 That gets pushed off to the next release, right? 285 00:09:51,000 --> 00:09:52,000 Exactly. 286 00:09:52,000 --> 00:09:53,000 Yeah. 287 00:09:53,000 --> 00:09:54,000 Thanks for the update. 288 00:09:54,000 --> 00:09:55,000 I really appreciate it. 289 00:09:55,000 --> 00:09:56,000 Excellent. 290 00:09:56,000 --> 00:09:56,000 Thanks.