<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>Articles from April 2015 on PowerShell.org - Welcome Automaters!https://powershell.org/articles/2015/04/Recent content in Articles from April 2015 on PowerShell.org - Welcome Automaters!Hugoen-usPowerShell.org Is Now On Imgur!https://powershell.org/articles/2015-04-30-powershell-org-is-now-on-imgur/https://powershell.org/articles/2015-04-30-powershell-org-is-now-on-imgur/Thu, 30 Apr 2015 17:00:11 +0000<p>Hey there everyone!  I&rsquo;m pleased to announce that PowerShell.org has a new feed on Imgur!</p><![CDATA[

Hey there everyone!  I’m pleased to announce that PowerShell.org has a new feed on Imgur!

During the PowerShell Summit, I began the hunt for a social photo sharing site that had a set of features that would meet the needs of PowerShell.org.  Our list of criteria was rigorous.  We required a site that was capable of providing embed code for posts.  We needed a site that would be easy to upload images and add them to albums for publishing.  It needed to be social media friendly.  And it needed to be free.
Mainly it needed to be free.
So I present to you, our newPowerShell.org Imgur feed!  If you want quick access to it and don’t feel like adding it to your favorites, you can just hit the Imgur icon on our nifty new social media bar on the right!
We shall be endeavouring to cover more PowerShell related events in our feeds and posts in the future.  I’m still working on a list of standards for photo submissions, but in the meantime, if you happen to be at a PowerShell event and have some photos that you’d like us to share on the Imgur feed, please feel free to contact me atwebmaster at powershell dot org and we’ll take a look at them!

PowerShell Summit NA 2015

]]>Why is Remoting Enabled by Default on Windows Server?https://powershell.org/articles/2015-04-28-why-is-remoting-enabled-by-default-on-windows-server/https://powershell.org/articles/2015-04-28-why-is-remoting-enabled-by-default-on-windows-server/Tue, 28 Apr 2015 23:16:44 +0000<p>There was a brief and lively discussion on Twitter recently stemming from someone asking for advice on how to convince management to turn on Remoting.<br> &ldquo;Fire Management, if they have to ask&rdquo; was apparently not an option, although it should have been. I mean, at this stage, you either know the value of PowerShell and its Remoting technology, or you&rsquo;re being willfully ignorant.<br> But that wasn&rsquo;t where the discussion got lively.</p><![CDATA[

There was a brief and lively discussion on Twitter recently stemming from someone asking for advice on how to convince management to turn on Remoting.
“Fire Management, if they have to ask” was apparently not an option, although it should have been. I mean, at this stage, you either know the value of PowerShell and its Remoting technology, or you’re being willfully ignorant.
But that wasn’t where the discussion got lively.

The real discussion was about why Remoting was turned on by default in the first place, on newer versions of Windows Server (since Win2012). After all, Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is turned off by default. Most Linux distributions, it was pointed out, turn off sshd by default. So why is Remoting turned on? Isn’t the safest bet to just disable everything, and let people turn on what they need?
I think Remoting (and by Remoting, I mean the Windows Remote Management, or WinRM service) being turned on by default gives us a valuable look at Microsoft’s psyche these days.
First, keep in mind that _you can turn it off. _You can even do that via a Group Policy for domain computers, and you could certainly do so in a server master image if you wanted to. So it’s pretty easy to have an “off by default” setup in your environment if you want. But wouldn’t it therefore be just as easy for Microsoft to leave it off, and let you “default it to on” by whatever means you prefer, if that’s what you want? Sure. But again, I think this is about Microsoft’s psyche, these days.
Understand that what follows is conjecture, but it’s conjecture based on more than 20 years of watching this company, and on a pretty good working relationship with many of the company’s technology leaders. This also isn’t intended to make you feel that “on by default” is the right answer for you, nor is it intended to convince you that “on by default” is the right answer for _anyone. _This is an attempt to speculate about the reasons behind “on by default,” whether the decision itself was correct or not.
The short reason is, “Nano Server.”
If you just nodded and went, “yeah, that would explain their thinking,” then you can skip the rest of this. Keep in mind that Remoting isn’t turned on for client computers by default, and that just pretty much reinforces the Nano Server reason.
The very long answer is that Microsoft, these days, is building _first for themselves. _Specifically, for Azure. They believe - and again, you’re free to disagree and I’m not pitching their belief as gospel - that enterprises should manage their datacenter in much the same way Microsoft manages Azure. Microsoft’s argument for this revolves around efficiency, primarily, and specifically efficiency at scale. Reliability factors into the argument, too. So Microsoft’s decisions have to be examined in light of what works in “the cloud,” because that’s how they expect you’re going to be managing your own servers in the future.
Microsoft has been on a long path, since 2008, of breaking down the monolithic Windows Server product into a discrete set of chunks that can be turned on or off at will. We say that first with the big refactoring of the product into Roles & Features, which could be installed or uninstalled pretty easily. We also saw them ripping out the GUI bits to create the first Server Core. Over the next 5 years, the company refactored Server more and more, through a series of three releases culminating in Windows Server 2012 R2. In that time, Server Core became more and more functional, as more and more of Windows Server was refactored into standalone little bits, and separated from the “GUI stuff.”
Microsoft’s direction here has never been a big secret: they want to ship a fully-functioning version of Windows Server that doesn’t have any… er… windows. They want it, in other words, to be a _server, _not a client that just happens to have a lot of RAM installed.
Once you kind of buy into the “no GUI on the server” idea, even if just for the sake of discussion, it’s not a far step to “no logging into the server at all, in any way.” Headless servers, in other words, where the host hardware might not even contain video output hardware. After all, if there’s no GUI, then you can be definition do everything via text, which is very easy to transmit over a network. Ask Unix, which has been doing it for decades over Telnet and SSH. If you can do everything remotely, why even support a local login?
Well, that’s Nano Server, an installation option in the version of Windows Server that is expected to ship in 2016.
_And if you can’t log on locally at all, then you need some way of connecting to the server to initially configure it. _Which is why Remoting is enabled by default, even though little else is. You use your existing OSD infrastructure to deploy new Nano servers, and then you Remote into them to set them up as needed. Unlike most Linux distributions, whichallow local login, Nano isn’t even going to provide a means to log into “the console.” At least, as far as we currently know, it won’t; Microsoft’s only made a few statements about it so far.
Windows Server’s architect, Jeffrey Snover, put it fairly concisely in the Twitter discussion: “We believe in a world of headless remote mgmt as the norm.” Headless meaning _no way to log in locally, no such thing. _Ergo, you need some way to log in remotely, and Remoting is it, and it therefore is enabled by default.
Now, in defense of this “on by default” approach, I’ll point out that unlike nearly every preceding remote management protocol introduced by Microsoft, Remoting is incredibly controllable. It uses WS-Management (WS-MAN), which is HTTP-based. It runs on just one incoming port, which is easy to lock down through physical, soft, and virtual firewalls. You can certainly have an environment that’s pre-engineered to protect that port. But if you buy into Microsoft’s “headless” approach - and whether you do or not, Microsoft certainly buys in - then they had to enable _something _so you could configure the server, at least initially.
So whether you agree with this direction or not is entirely up to you - and you’re welcome to add your polite, professional comments to this post. I wanted to write this in an attempt to _explain, _just justify, why I think Microsoft took this approach, and what I think it means for the long term of Windows Server itself. I think simply knowing that direction can inform a lot of your base infrastructure decisions and planning going forward, whether you buy into the approach or not.

]]>PowerShellTO's Next Meeting – May 6th, 2015https://powershell.org/articles/2015-04-27-powershelltos-next-meeting-may-6th-2015/https://powershell.org/articles/2015-04-27-powershelltos-next-meeting-may-6th-2015/Mon, 27 Apr 2015 23:00:51 +0000<p>Join us on Wednesday, May 6th for our second Toronto PowerShell User’s Group meeting.  This time you get to take the wheel!  Send us some of your PowerShell related challenges and we’ll pick the top ones to work out in a group together!  We’ll also be talking about some of the things learned at PowerShell Summit – North America, and more!</p><![CDATA[

Join us on Wednesday, May 6th for our second Toronto PowerShell User’s Group meeting.  This time you get to take the wheel!  Send us some of your PowerShell related challenges and we’ll pick the top ones to work out in a group together!  We’ll also be talking about some of the things learned at PowerShell Summit – North America, and more!

Hit us up and let us knowwhat PowerShell challenges you’d like to table at the next PowerShellTO meeting!
For this meeting, we’ll be located at the Microsoft Technology Center in Mississauga at 1950 Meadowvale Blvd - Mississauga, Ontario, L5N8L9.  Space is limited, so be sure to claim your EventBrite ticket below!
A note on parking: When you arrive at the MTC, go around to the side facing Meadowvale Blvd.  There is a visitor entrance and parking there.  See you soon!

[Online Ticketing](http://www.eventbrite.ca/r/etckt)

forPowerShellTO - May 2015 Meeting powered byEventbrite

]]>Management Information: The OMI/CIM/WMI/MI/DMTF Dictionaryhttps://powershell.org/articles/2015-04-24-management-information-the-omicimwmimidmtf-dictionary/https://powershell.org/articles/2015-04-24-management-information-the-omicimwmimidmtf-dictionary/Fri, 24 Apr 2015 22:57:48 +0000<p>Not too long ago, over on DonJones.com, I <a href="http://donjones.com/2015/04/14/omi-cim-wmi/">wrote an article</a> that tried to explain some of the confusion between Microsoft&rsquo;s World of Management Instrumentation - e.g., WMI, OMI, CIM, and a bunch of other acronyms. I glossed over some of the finer details, and this article is intended to provide more specificity and accuracy - thanks to Microsoft&rsquo;s Keith Bankston for helping me sort things out.</p> <h2 id="cim-and-the-dmtf" class="ps-heading">CIM and the DMTF<a class="ps-heading-anchor" href="#cim-and-the-dmtf" aria-label="Link to this section" title="Link to this section"><i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"></i></a> </h2> <p>Let us begin with CIM. CIM stands for Common Information Model, and it is not a tangible thing. It isn&rsquo;t even software. It&rsquo;s a set of standards that describe how management information can be represented in software, and it was created by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), an industry working group that Microsoft is a member of.</p><![CDATA[

Not too long ago, over on DonJones.com, Iwrote an article that tried to explain some of the confusion between Microsoft’s World of Management Instrumentation - e.g., WMI, OMI, CIM, and a bunch of other acronyms. I glossed over some of the finer details, and this article is intended to provide more specificity and accuracy - thanks to Microsoft’s Keith Bankston for helping me sort things out.

CIM and the DMTF