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
