We’re excited to announce Windows Management Framework 5.0 Production Preview, a new package introducing new and exciting management technologies, is now available for download on the Microsoft Download Center!
As announced earlier, WMF 5.0 Production Preview differs from older previews of WMF 5.0 in the following ways:
- It is fully supported until 90 days after WMF 5.0 RTM. By fully supported, we mean we will investigate production-blocking issues, and provide workarounds or updates as necessary.
- All features in the Production Preview are production-ready. No experimental features are in this package.
The following table provides an overview of all scenarios enabled by WMF 5.0 Production Preview.
| Scenario |
| New and updated cmdlets based on community feedback |
| Generate Windows PowerShell cmdlets based on an OData endpoint with ODataUtils |
| Manage .ZIP archives through new cmdlets |
| Interact with symbolic links using improved Item cmdlets |
| Network Switch management with Windows PowerShell |
| DSC authoring improvements in Windows PowerShell ISE |
| 32-bit support for the configuration keyword in DSC |
| Audit Windows PowerShell usage by transcription and logging |
| Extract and parse structured object out of string content |
| Configure DSC’s Local Configuration Manager with the meta-configuration attribute |
| Configure piece by piece with partial configurations in DSC |
| Manage with cross-computer dependencies in DSC |
| More control over configurations in DSC |
| Find more detail about configuration status in DSC |
| Support for -? during DSC configuration compilation |
| Support for DSC RunAsCredential |
| Rich information for DSC LCM State |
| Side-by-Side installation of DSC Resources |
| PSDesiredStateConfiguration Module version updated to 1.1 |
| Discover and install software with PackageManagement |
| Discover modules and DSC resources with PowerShellGet |
| Develop with classes in Windows PowerShell |
| More control and remoting in Windows PowerShell Debugging |
| Report configuration status from DSC to a central location |
| Software Inventory Logging. |
You can read more about these improvements, and other content in WMF 5.0 Production Preview, in the release notes (included in the download with the packages).
WMF 5.0 Production Preview installs exclusively on Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows 2008 R2 SP1, Windows 8.1, and Windows 7 SP1. You’ll need .NET Framework 4.5 installed to run WMF 5.0; you can also find that on the Microsoft Download Center, if you’re not running it already.
We’re excited to provide this new iteration of WMF to you all, and we’re happy to hear any and all feedback that you may have.
As usual, our main avenue of feedback is Connect: https://connect.microsoft.com/PowerShell
On behalf of everyone contributing to WMF, we hope you enjoy this Preview release.
Krishna C Vutukuri
Principal Software Engineering Manager
Windows PowerShell Team