Question

Pick a PowerShell command and elaborate on how it can be used in a Server 2016 environment. Explain if there is a comparable way to do the same thing at the Command Line in Windows or by using the GUI.

Answer 1

The Windows PowerShellGet module has many commands that are

usable in Windows Server 2016 (Microsoft, The PowerShell Gallery,

2017). The PowerShellGet module allows users to update, install and

publish PowerShell artifacts. There are many cmdlets that are

available with the PowerShellGet module. Cmdlets such as the Get-

Command allows users to get all commands on a computer. The Get-

Command cmdlet can retrieve information from cmdlets, aliases,

functions, filters, scripts and applications. Get-Command has optional

parameters that allows the user to narrow search results. When using

the Get-Command, users can retrieve all PowerShell and non-

PowerShell commands by using the * wildcard (Microsoft, Get-

Command, n.d.).

Windows Server 2016 can retrieve files containing server information

using the Get-Command cmdlet. Retrieving files via Get-Command

can aid in processing data files stored on the server (Baretto, 2015).

Get-Commands may also be used to find all instances of a parameter;

this command can be executed by adding the “All” parameter to Get-

Command commands. Finding all instances of the named parameter

can assist in finding duplicate items (Microsoft, Get-Command, n.d.).

Getting the location of all parameters with the same name can help

an administrator find redundant or outdated files.

The Windows command prompt can perform similar tasks as the

PowerShellGet module. Syntax for these commands do not appear as

straightforward. Finding files on a localhost with a command prompt

requires multiple commands to be executed. Finding files with a

command prompt requires navigating to a root directory of the files

location. Using the “dir” command with a wildcard retrieves the file’s

location (Computer Hope, 2017)