Windows PowerShell is viewed by many IT professionals as a necessary evil; 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. 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 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 third version of a product offers substantially more features and benefits than the first, and PowerShell 3.0 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 and Windows Server 2012 as operating systems for the cloud, then PowerShell 3.0 is the automation and management engine for the cloud, although PowerShell “scales down” to help you better manage any size environment.

Collectively, we have close to 70 years of IT experience. We have worked with PowerShell from its days as a beta product and have written on the topic for nearly as long. Our goal is to bring this knowledge and experience into a single reference book. Notice the key word, “reference.” This is not a how-to or teach yourself PowerShell book, although you can learn much from reading it cover to cover. Rather, this book is intended as the reference guide you keep at your desk or on your mobile device so that when you need to better understand a topic, like PowerShell remoting, you have a place to which you can turn.

We have tried to keep our examples practical and targeted towards IT professionals responsible for Windows system administration. It is our hope that this will be the book you go to for answers.