Migrating from CMD to PowerShell: A Guide to AD Administration Commands and Cmdlets / Netwrix Blog

Windows administrators have long relied on time-tested command line tools like PING, IPCONFIG, and REPADMIN. And some still use them, instead of turning their attention to PowerShell. Ashley McGlone , Premier Field Engineer Active Directory and PowerShell (you can see his smiling face in the photo), created a wonderful 4-page manual that correlates well-known Active Directory CMD utilities with their corresponding PowerShell cmdlets. For example, instead of PING, you can use the PowerShell cmdlet Test-Connection, instead of NSLOOKUP - Resolve-DNSName, instead of GPUPDATE - Invoke-GPUpdate.

Many will ask a question, but why is it, in fact, worth switching to PowerShell cmdlets at all? The author of the manual gives several reasons for this :

1. The command line tools output simply text that requires parsing for further work with it. PowerShell allows you to transfer this data through the pipeline and work with it directly in the console or display it in a file.
2. Team availability. For example, if you remotely connect to the server via RDP, then adminpak.msi or the Windows Rerource Kit may not be installed on it. And PowerShell is on every machine Windows Sever 2008 R2 and higher.
3. The same syntax. The syntax for the various PowerShell cmdlets is similar.
4. A large number of cmdlets for all occasions.

Considered CMD utilities and their corresponding PowerShell cmdlets

The following CMD utilities are in the focus of the free manual:

1. REPADMIN
2. Dcpromo
3. CSVDE
4. NETDOM
5. NLTEST
6. GPUPDATE
7. Gpresult
8. DSGET
9. DSQUERY
10. DSADD
11. DSMOD
12. DSRM
13. DSMOVE
14. DSACLS
15. DNSCMD
16. NSLOOKUP
17. Ping
18. IPCONFIG
19. NETSTAT

The manual itself is based on the following logic:
CMD - Switch - PowerShell cmdlet - PowerShell module - Windows Server version.

Much attention is paid to the cmdlets that were introduced in Windows Server 2012 and PowerShell v3.

You can download it at technet .