Windows Management Framework 5.0 February preview available

Windows PowerShell team announced the availability of Windows Management Framework (WMF) 5.0 Preview February 2015. This preview is available for Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 R2, and Windows Server 2012.

As announced earlier, this WMF release continues to include both stable and experimental features. I mean a lot of them! 🙂

ScenarioDesign Status
Develop DSC resources with classes in Windows PowerShellStable
Remove DSC documents delivered to a systemStable
Support for inheritance with classes in Windows PowerShellExperimental
DSC resource script debuggingExperimental
Support for new RefreshModeExperimental
Partial configurations support mixed RefreshModesExperimental
PSScriptAnalyzer: static code analysis of Windows PowerShell artifactsExperimental
32-bit support for the configuration keyword in DSCStable
Generate Windows PowerShell cmdlets based on an OData endpoint with ODataUtilsStable
Manage .ZIP archives through new cmdletsStable
Audit Windows PowerShell usage by transcription and loggingStable
Interact with symbolic links using improved Item cmdletsStable
Network Switch management with Windows PowerShellStable
DSC authoring improvements in Windows PowerShell ISEStable

From a DSC point of view, there are many improvements.

Class-defined DSC resource authoring is improved and there are subtle changes that are required for the old class-defined resource, if you built any.

A new RefreshMode in DSC called disabled lets 3rd party configuration managers such as Chef manage a node configuration using their own agent or using the Invoke-DscResource cmdlet which means we would be able to do this directly using the CIM method as well. More on this later.

Partial configurations now support mixed refresh modes including Push and Disabled. Partial configurations are great way to enable delegated configuration authoring and management.

DSC resource script debugging is a great addition and my subsequent posts will talk about this.

Go ahead and start exploring WMF 5.0.

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