Powershell and server rambling
May. 3rd, 2008 10:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caffeineI pulled this to my own journal so I did not clog up ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
michaellee's twitter post on Powershell.
paraphrasing
It is good that Microsoft powershell is catching up to where Unix shell has been for 20+ years
Windows is in the datacenter
I realize it is there and it will continue to be a platform for applications. I like to pick on it due to the "rebooting required" (which MS has worked hard to minimize), and that Windows servers seem to breed like rabbits. Hopefully with virtualization technology (primarily VMWare and MS Virtual server) it will slow down the growth of physical servers. However, in mixed environments, it still seems that there are 10x the number of Windows servers as Unix servers. Also, many management tools are not up to speed and cannot appropriate link virtual servers to their physical hosts, making performance, capacity, and availability management more complex.
I am glad that MS is building a better shell for Windows. For far too long they held fast to the GUI-mostly approach. Along the GUI thinking, another good addition is the now-solid Remote Desktop. This is a great step to get to where Unix servers have been for 20 years with X-Windows, but it has a couple of benefits such as minimal configuration and no additional software on Windows clients. Citrix is the big leader here, but for simple tasks, RDP works great, and it is not nearly as network chatty as X protocol (and no font issues). The one thing I wish they would add to RDP is an FTP-like tunnel. I have some clients where I use RDP to access severs through firewalls. But the firewall does not allow drive mapping...
Since I am still extolling the virtues of Unix, let me just say that once you start working on 64 core servers and three-way clusters of 28 core servers, all with 4G or 8G of RAM per processor, looking at a "big" 4core/8GB RAM Windows server is rather unimpressive.
michaellee's twitter post on Powershell.paraphrasing
It is good that Microsoft powershell is catching up to where Unix shell has been for 20+ years
Windows is in the datacenter
I realize it is there and it will continue to be a platform for applications. I like to pick on it due to the "rebooting required" (which MS has worked hard to minimize), and that Windows servers seem to breed like rabbits. Hopefully with virtualization technology (primarily VMWare and MS Virtual server) it will slow down the growth of physical servers. However, in mixed environments, it still seems that there are 10x the number of Windows servers as Unix servers. Also, many management tools are not up to speed and cannot appropriate link virtual servers to their physical hosts, making performance, capacity, and availability management more complex.
I am glad that MS is building a better shell for Windows. For far too long they held fast to the GUI-mostly approach. Along the GUI thinking, another good addition is the now-solid Remote Desktop. This is a great step to get to where Unix servers have been for 20 years with X-Windows, but it has a couple of benefits such as minimal configuration and no additional software on Windows clients. Citrix is the big leader here, but for simple tasks, RDP works great, and it is not nearly as network chatty as X protocol (and no font issues). The one thing I wish they would add to RDP is an FTP-like tunnel. I have some clients where I use RDP to access severs through firewalls. But the firewall does not allow drive mapping...
Since I am still extolling the virtues of Unix, let me just say that once you start working on 64 core servers and three-way clusters of 28 core servers, all with 4G or 8G of RAM per processor, looking at a "big" 4core/8GB RAM Windows server is rather unimpressive.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-05 05:49 pm (UTC)One observations about Powershell -- it is as much a Perl (which I have exposure to) or Python (which I don't) targeted specifically for Windows as it is one of the unix command line shells.
And really, the virtues of a UNIX operating system are irrelevant if they don't have the Windows-specific application software that you are using.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-06 12:08 am (UTC)Yep. If the business or application development lines choose Windows applications, IT is pretty much stuck supporting those applications on their platforms. The only exception is if you have a very large IT organization and you have standards in place for commercial or developed applications (for example, applications for this use java and Oracle on Solaris, this other type of application uses .Net and SQL on Windows, etc.).
... it is as much a Perl...
I like perl. I have managed to do a fair amount with it. I even learned how to create Excel files with Perl. Pretty nifty. I have looked at Python scripts, but I have never written one, not even the "Hello World" application.