Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008: Implementation and Administration

8.1. Getting Familiar with PowerShell

Command-line administration and scripting is one area in which Windows has made slow but steady progress over the years. The advantage of the command-line interface (CLI) is that you get much faster access to system data since you don't need to populate a complete GUI with data. Windows Server has clearly lagged behind Unix and other network operating systems when it comes to CLI management. The earliest versions of Windows merely ported the 16-bit DOS command utilities, while later versions of CMD.EXE ran inside a 32-bit environment as a 16-bit emulator. All the while Microsoft continued to add additional commands that bolstered the new features that were being introduced but never really solved the problem ...