Idera Launches PowerShell Beta

By Jeff Feinman

August 25, 2008 —  Data management product provider Idera has created an editing, debugging and learning center product for Microsoft’s Windows PowerShell scripting environment.

PowerShell Plus Professional Edition, released today as a beta, combines a console that has code completion with a script editor for debugging, Idera executives said. There is also a learning center that provides interactive tutorials on PowerShell.

“PowerShell is an extremely rich language that provides IT administrators with the ability to automate systems administration and systems management; they can build their own automated solutions,” said Rick Pleczko, president and CEO of Idera. “What we are providing to help them do that is a very rich learning environment for PowerShell. You could basically get up to speed and start using it in minutes.”

PowerShell Plus Professional Edition is a console with a Windows-style interface that administrators are familiar with, Idera said. It allows IT administrators to develop scripts for tasks, including backup and recovery automation, status updates of the Exchange server, and performance monitoring for servers. It also provides sample scripts that enable things like calculating database disk space, Pleczko said.

“PowerShell allows you to write scripts for anything and everything in terms of systems management,” Pleczko said. “For example, if your Exchange server is about to go down because you’re running out of disk space, you could send an alert beforehand to allocate more space, or you could automatically allocate more space. You could automatically back up your SQL Server databases and send messages to let the database administrator know if those backups had succeeded or failed. You could also write a script that sends alerts out saying, ‘This server’s performing poorly, it’s been running at 90 percent CPU for the last three hours.’ It’ll list the processes causing that CPU issue.”

Pleczko compared Idera’s product to the debugging and code editing functions in Microsoft Visual Studio when developers create Visual Basic or C++ applications. Idera is providing those capabilities for PowerShell with the code editor, debugger and learning center in one package, he said.

The product was developed by Idera in conjunction with Dr. Tobias Weltner, creator of the PowerShell Plus console that is embedded in a rich user interface, and author of “Windows: Scripting Secrets.” Pleczko said Idera licensed Weltner’s core technology to develop PowerShell Plus Professional Edition, which is a commercial edition of the technology. The Idera president called Weltner a “well-known PowerShell expert.”

PowerShell Plus Professional Edition is priced at US$79 per copy while the product is in beta; after the beta period ends, it will cost $145.



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