Windows 7 Manageability Overview
Published: February*2009
Information in this document, including URL and other Internet Web site references, is subject to change without notice. Unless otherwise noted, the companies, organizations, products, domain names, e-mail addresses, logos, people, places, and events depicted in examples herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, e-mail address, logo, person, place, or event is intended or should be inferred. Complying with all applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the user. Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of this document may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), or for any purpose, without the express written permission of Microsoft Corporation.
Microsoft may have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights covering subject matter in this document. Except as expressly provided in any written license agreement from Microsoft, the furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property.
© 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Active Directory, Microsoft, MS-DOS, Visual Basic, Visual Studio, Windows, Windows*NT, Windows Vista, and Windows Server are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.
All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
Windows 7 Manageability Overview
Windows 7 introduces a number of manageability improvements that can reduce total cost of ownership by helping to increase automation, improve user productivity, and provide flexible administrative control to meet compliance requirements. This paper provides an overview of each of these improvements.
IT professionals are often responsible for repetitive and time-consuming tasks. Windows 7’s comprehensive scripting abilities enhance the productivity of IT professionals by automating those tasks, which reduces errors while improving administrative efficiency:
Microsoft® Windows PowerShell™ 2.0 enables IT professionals to easily create and run scripts on a local PC or on remote PCs across the network. Complex tasks or repetitive management and troubleshooting tasks are automated.
Group Policy scripting enables IT professionals to manage Group Policy Objects (GPOs) and registry-based settings in an automated manner, thus improving the efficiency and accuracy of GPO management.
In addition to its powerful scripting capabilities, Windows 7 includes several features that improve user productivity and reduce costs:
Built-in Windows Troubleshooting Packs enable end-users to solve many common problems on their own, and IT professionals can create custom Troubleshooting Packs, thus extending this capability to internal applications.
Improvements to the System Restore tool inform users of applications that might be affected when returning Windows to an earlier state.
The new Problem Steps Recorder enables users to record screenshots, click-by-click, that reproduce a problem so IT can troubleshoot solutions.
Improvements to the Resource Monitor and Reliability Monitor enable IT professionals to more quickly diagnose performance, compatibility, and resource limitation problems
For IT departments to address their ever-increasing security needs and meet compliance requirements, Windows 7 also supports the following features:
AppLocker™ enables IT professionals to more flexibly set policy on which applications and scripts users can run or install, providing a more secure and manageable desktop.
Auditing improvements enable IT professionals to use Group Policy to configure more comprehensive auditing of files and registry access.
Administrators can require users to encrypt removable storage devices with BitLocker To Go™ via Group Policy.
Group Policy Preferences define the default configuration, which users can change, and provide centralized management of mapped network drives, scheduled tasks, and other Windows components that are not Group Policy-aware.
DirectAccess seamlessly connects mobile computers to the internal network, allowing IT professionals to manage them if the user has an Internet connection
Altogether, the improvements introduced by Windows 7 can reduce the time IT professionals spend maintaining and troubleshooting, improve user productivity, and enable IT departments to better meet compliance requirements.
Increased Automation
One of the best ways to improve the efficiency of IT professionals is through the use of automation. With automation, tasks that previously required hours of an IT professional’s time can be handled in seconds. By detecting a problem and automatically taking steps to resolve it, a process that an IT professional had previously performed manually can be entirely automated. An added benefit is that automation also reduces the possibility for human error.
Scripting is the most flexible and powerful automation tool for IT professionals, and Windows 7 includes an improved version of the Windows scripting environment: Windows PowerShell 2.0. Unlike traditional programming languages designed for full-time developers, PowerShell is a scripting language designed to be used by systems administrators and it does not require an understanding of complex development languages such as Microsoft Visual Basic®, Visual C++®, or C#.
Because PowerShell can use Windows Management Interface (WMI), scripts can perform almost any management task an IT professional would want to automate. You can call command-line tools from PowerShell, enabling full control over any aspect of the system that supports management. PowerShell can even leverage the full .NET Framework, providing access to thousands of powerful objects.
To develop or run a PowerShell script, it must be installed on the computer. PowerShell 2.0 is available as a download for Windows XP, Windows Server® 2003, and Windows Vista, and it ships with Windows Server 2008. In Windows 7, PowerShell 2.0 is built into the operating system, therefore, IT professionals can create, distribute, and run PowerShell scripts on computers running Windows 7 without having to deploy or service additional software to the PCs across their organization.
Some of the tasks administrators use PowerShell for with Windows 7 include:
Remotely creating a System Restore point prior to troubleshooting
Remotely restoring a computer to a System Restore point to resolve a problem that cannot be easily fixed
Remotely querying for installed updates
Editing the registry using transactions, which ensure that a group of changes are implemented
Remotely examining system stability data from the reliability database
The sections that follow describe key improvements to PowerShell in Windows 7 to help IT professionals automate time-consuming tasks.
PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment
PowerShell scripts are standard text files. With Windows Vista and earlier versions of Windows, the built-in editor was Notepad. While Notepad is perfect for quickly editing text files, and it is sufficient for writing scripts, a more robust editor would enable IT professionals to learn, create, and debug scripts more efficiently.
Windows 7 includes the PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE), a graphical PowerShell development environment with debugging capabilities and an interactive console, as shown in Figure 1.
Published: February*2009
Information in this document, including URL and other Internet Web site references, is subject to change without notice. Unless otherwise noted, the companies, organizations, products, domain names, e-mail addresses, logos, people, places, and events depicted in examples herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, e-mail address, logo, person, place, or event is intended or should be inferred. Complying with all applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the user. Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of this document may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), or for any purpose, without the express written permission of Microsoft Corporation.
Microsoft may have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights covering subject matter in this document. Except as expressly provided in any written license agreement from Microsoft, the furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property.
© 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Active Directory, Microsoft, MS-DOS, Visual Basic, Visual Studio, Windows, Windows*NT, Windows Vista, and Windows Server are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.
All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
Windows 7 Manageability Overview
Windows 7 introduces a number of manageability improvements that can reduce total cost of ownership by helping to increase automation, improve user productivity, and provide flexible administrative control to meet compliance requirements. This paper provides an overview of each of these improvements.
IT professionals are often responsible for repetitive and time-consuming tasks. Windows 7’s comprehensive scripting abilities enhance the productivity of IT professionals by automating those tasks, which reduces errors while improving administrative efficiency:
Microsoft® Windows PowerShell™ 2.0 enables IT professionals to easily create and run scripts on a local PC or on remote PCs across the network. Complex tasks or repetitive management and troubleshooting tasks are automated.
Group Policy scripting enables IT professionals to manage Group Policy Objects (GPOs) and registry-based settings in an automated manner, thus improving the efficiency and accuracy of GPO management.
In addition to its powerful scripting capabilities, Windows 7 includes several features that improve user productivity and reduce costs:
Built-in Windows Troubleshooting Packs enable end-users to solve many common problems on their own, and IT professionals can create custom Troubleshooting Packs, thus extending this capability to internal applications.
Improvements to the System Restore tool inform users of applications that might be affected when returning Windows to an earlier state.
The new Problem Steps Recorder enables users to record screenshots, click-by-click, that reproduce a problem so IT can troubleshoot solutions.
Improvements to the Resource Monitor and Reliability Monitor enable IT professionals to more quickly diagnose performance, compatibility, and resource limitation problems
For IT departments to address their ever-increasing security needs and meet compliance requirements, Windows 7 also supports the following features:
AppLocker™ enables IT professionals to more flexibly set policy on which applications and scripts users can run or install, providing a more secure and manageable desktop.
Auditing improvements enable IT professionals to use Group Policy to configure more comprehensive auditing of files and registry access.
Administrators can require users to encrypt removable storage devices with BitLocker To Go™ via Group Policy.
Group Policy Preferences define the default configuration, which users can change, and provide centralized management of mapped network drives, scheduled tasks, and other Windows components that are not Group Policy-aware.
DirectAccess seamlessly connects mobile computers to the internal network, allowing IT professionals to manage them if the user has an Internet connection
Altogether, the improvements introduced by Windows 7 can reduce the time IT professionals spend maintaining and troubleshooting, improve user productivity, and enable IT departments to better meet compliance requirements.
Increased Automation
One of the best ways to improve the efficiency of IT professionals is through the use of automation. With automation, tasks that previously required hours of an IT professional’s time can be handled in seconds. By detecting a problem and automatically taking steps to resolve it, a process that an IT professional had previously performed manually can be entirely automated. An added benefit is that automation also reduces the possibility for human error.
Scripting is the most flexible and powerful automation tool for IT professionals, and Windows 7 includes an improved version of the Windows scripting environment: Windows PowerShell 2.0. Unlike traditional programming languages designed for full-time developers, PowerShell is a scripting language designed to be used by systems administrators and it does not require an understanding of complex development languages such as Microsoft Visual Basic®, Visual C++®, or C#.
Because PowerShell can use Windows Management Interface (WMI), scripts can perform almost any management task an IT professional would want to automate. You can call command-line tools from PowerShell, enabling full control over any aspect of the system that supports management. PowerShell can even leverage the full .NET Framework, providing access to thousands of powerful objects.
To develop or run a PowerShell script, it must be installed on the computer. PowerShell 2.0 is available as a download for Windows XP, Windows Server® 2003, and Windows Vista, and it ships with Windows Server 2008. In Windows 7, PowerShell 2.0 is built into the operating system, therefore, IT professionals can create, distribute, and run PowerShell scripts on computers running Windows 7 without having to deploy or service additional software to the PCs across their organization.
Some of the tasks administrators use PowerShell for with Windows 7 include:
Remotely creating a System Restore point prior to troubleshooting
Remotely restoring a computer to a System Restore point to resolve a problem that cannot be easily fixed
Remotely querying for installed updates
Editing the registry using transactions, which ensure that a group of changes are implemented
Remotely examining system stability data from the reliability database
The sections that follow describe key improvements to PowerShell in Windows 7 to help IT professionals automate time-consuming tasks.
PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment
PowerShell scripts are standard text files. With Windows Vista and earlier versions of Windows, the built-in editor was Notepad. While Notepad is perfect for quickly editing text files, and it is sufficient for writing scripts, a more robust editor would enable IT professionals to learn, create, and debug scripts more efficiently.
Windows 7 includes the PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE), a graphical PowerShell development environment with debugging capabilities and an interactive console, as shown in Figure 1.