PowerShell

Microsoft PowerShell is the preferred way to perform many enterprise administrative tasks. The flexibility to quickly perform tasks on OUs of computers in AD, or query a network subnet of Windows machines, or even remotely query which host is locking out a user account are all things that PowerShell shines at enabling an administrator to perform at a moment's notice.

PowerShell has become robust enough that it is not unheard of for OEMs and partners to also create their own cmdlets that can be imported into your scripting environment and used. Script sharing is possible: the Microsoft TechNet Hey Scripting Guy! library is an excellent resource for accessing trusted and peer-reviewed PowerShell scripts to perform a variety of tasks. VMWare is one company that has created their own PowerShell scripts.

The ability to automate common administrative tasks in a scripted method means that the enterprise administrator can focus on making good decisions for their environment, as opposed to working quickly in ancient UIs, where repetitive tasks on large groups of computers or users often led to mistakes, typos, and subsequent outages as a result.

Microsoft Azure has further extended PowerShell with a large array of PowerShell cmdlets and sample scripts to administer Azure-based services, such as Azure AD and Azure RemoteApp.

Generally speaking, PowerShell follows a hierarchy of verb/noun: Get-Object, Get-Help, ConvertTo-HTML, and so on. These commands all create output that in turn can be an object for another script. Chaining together PowerShell cmdlets into scripted actions is the heart of how the language works.