Microsoft released some new reference guides: Group Policy ADMX Syntax Reference Guide, Windows PowerShell Quick Reference, Windows PowerShell Graphical Help File, VBScript Quick Reference. What I find interesting is that that Microsoft released these guides on the same day. Perhaps, this is just a mere coincidence. But maybe someone at Microsoft wants to remind us that there are quite a few technologies available to automate Windows management.

The question now is, on which technology should you focus on in the future? I think the answer is easy when the choice is between PowerShell and VBScript. It is not that PowerShell is just more “powerful”. It is quite clear that the future belongs to PowerShell. Microsoft certainly will support VBScript for some time; this new reference guide is one further indication for that. However, the longer you wait with the transition the more “legacy” scripts you’ll have to drag along later.

We used quite a few programming languages over the last years to automate system management tasks: Batch files, Visual Basic, VBScript, VB.NET, and C#. We probably will add PowerShell soon. I wished Microsoft would be more consistent in this field. It does not only costs time to learn a new language from scratch; it also is a problem to maintain the old scripts when all admins are already working with the new language. I really hope MS won’t release “superduper script” in a few years and just keeps on improving PowerShell.

It is a little like this with the transition from ADM to ADMX. We have extended Group Policy with many different ADM templates. I am not yet 100% convinced that the move from ADM to ADMX will bring us important new features. In my view, ADMX templates are more difficult to read than ADM templates. XML is easy to process for machines, but for humans it is not the best solution.

I just skimmed over this new ADMX guide. It has more than 176 pages, and that’s only for the syntax! However, we don’t have a choice anyhow, so we are going to make this move even before deploying Vista. Note that you can create ADMX templates much easier with the free Fullarmor ADMX Migrator.

We usually try to work with Group Policy whenever we can. Since Windows applications usually can be controlled by Registry settings, you can manage most apps with it, even though the software didn’t come with its own ADM or ADMX templates. If I am faced with the choice of writing a script or creating a new Group Policy template, I would always go for the latter.

I know that some sysops prefer to write scripts, but to my experience Group Policy is much easier to maintain, especially if multiple admins have to work together. It is certainly more difficult to understand a script which you didn’t write yourself than changing someone else Group Policy templates. Of course, there are many tasks where Group Policy won’t be of any use.

And of course there are also many problems which you can’t solve with GUI tools. That’s where scripting comes in, preferably PowerScript. In my view, however, scripting (and working on the command line) is only an option if you don’t have any choice. Even though writing programs is always fun, it is a time consuming and therefore an expensive way to manage a network. In my opinion this is the main reason why the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of Linux networks is so much higher. In Linux you often have no choice. With Windows, you have.

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