Ah, this is what everyone really wishes for, isn’t it? Which, as you might have guessed from that intro, the answer is "no." See, PowerShell requires bits of the .NET Framework in order to run. Not the whole thing, you understand, just pieces – a fairly small subset, in fact. Unfortunately, you don’t get the Framework in pieces, you get the whole wodge in one big piece. That whole wodge was more moving parts than the Server Core folks wanted to have to deal with, since the entire Framework has its own dependencies on underlying bits of Windows – bits which Server Core doesn’t necessarily include. Like graphical stuff. So, until they modularize the Framework a bit, no PowerShell on Server Core.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t use PowerShell to manage Server Core. After all, the point of Server Core is to *not log onto the console at all,* so it shouldn’t really matter what’s *on* Server Core. What matters is what’s on *your management workstation.* So you run PowerShell there, and manage Server Core remotely using technologies like ADSI and WMI, and add-on cmdlets like the Quest PowerShell cmdlets.
Thanks to Dave for submitting this question. Submit yours on our "Ask the Experts" page at http://www.sapien.com/blog.
