Windows 8 Server will bring a whole lot of changes compared to it’s predecessor: Windows 2008 R2. There has already been a lot of fuzz about these changes, and today I’d like to take a moment and take a look at what new cmdlets we’ve been given to manage Active Directory.

As you all know, Server 2008 R2 gave us the ability to natively manage Active Directory from PowerShell through the AD Module for PowerShell. Unfortunately, not everything could be managed. Although third-party tools (like Quest’s AD cmdlets) made up for it, I always missed the “native” support.

With Windows 8, Microsoft has added quite some new cmdlets to support Active Directory (58 to be exactly), which brings the total amount of cmdlets in the AD Module to 134! Please not that I got this number from the Developer preview and it’s always possible that this amount changes in the RTM-version.

A lot of the new cmdlets fit the gap with before (e.g. AD Replication), others are related to new features as the new claims-based “Dynamic Access Control”.

The following list shows all the cmdlets that have been added:

Add-ADCentralAccessPolicyMember
Add-ADResourcePropertyListMember
Clear-ADClaimTransformLink
Get-ADCentralAccessPolicy                                                     
Get-ADCentralAccessRule                                                       
Get-ADClaimTransformPolicy                                                    
Get-ADClaimType   
Get-ADDCCloningExcludedApplicationList  
Get-ADReplicationAttributeMetadata                                            
Get-ADReplicationConnection                                                   
Get-ADReplicationFailure                                                      
Get-ADReplicationPartnerMetadata                                              
Get-ADReplicationQueueOperation                                               
Get-ADReplicationSite                                                         
Get-ADReplicationSiteLink                                                     
Get-ADReplicationSiteLinkBridge                                               
Get-ADReplicationSubnet                                                       
Get-ADReplicationUpToDatenessVectorTable                                      
Get-ADResourceProperty                                                        
Get-ADResourcePropertyList                                                    
Get-ADResourcePropertyValueType
Get-ADTrust 
New-ADCentralAccessPolicy                                                     
New-ADCentralAccessRule                                                       
New-ADClaimTransformPolicy                                                    
New-ADClaimType            
New-ADReplicationSite                                                         
New-ADReplicationSiteLink                                                     
New-ADReplicationSiteLinkBridge                                               
New-ADReplicationSubnet                                                       
New-ADResourceProperty                                                        
New-ADResourcePropertyList 
Remove-ADCentralAccessPolicy                                                  
Remove-ADCentralAccessPolicyMember                                            
Remove-ADCentralAccessRule                                                    
Remove-ADClaimTransformPolicy                                                 
Remove-ADClaimType          
Remove-ADReplicationSite                                                      
Remove-ADReplicationSiteLink                                                  
Remove-ADReplicationSiteLinkBridge                                            
Remove-ADReplicationSubnet                                                    
Remove-ADResourceProperty                                                     
Remove-ADResourcePropertyList                                                 
Remove-ADResourcePropertyListMember  
Set-ADCentralAccessPolicy                                                     
Set-ADCentralAccessRule                                                       
Set-ADClaimTransformLink                                                      
Set-ADClaimTransformPolicy                                                    
Set-ADClaimType        
Set-ADReplicationConnection                                                   
Set-ADReplicationSite                                                         
Set-ADReplicationSiteLink                                                     
Set-ADReplicationSiteLinkBridge                                               
Set-ADReplicationSubnet                                                       
Set-ADResourceProperty                                                        
Set-ADResourcePropertyList
Sync-ADObject                                                                 
Test-ADServiceAccount  

Note: if you are interested in getting the full list of cmdlets, try running the following cmdlet:

Get-Command –Module ActiveDirectory

To view the total amount of cmdlets, you could easily do the following:

$commands = Get-Command –Module ActiveDirectory
$commands.count

Until later,

Michael