What’s new in R2? Spot the Difference!

  • Article

I don’t know about you all, but I remember sitting in the doctor’s office as a kid, reading the kid magazines, where they had a game to spot the differences in two pictures.  Sometimes the differences would be easy to spot, and other times it'd be a bit more challenging.  Ah, childhood.

What’s that?  How is this related to System Center 2012 R2 you ask?  Well, with System Center 2012 Configuration Manager R2 we get a whole lot of new cmdlets available for our use.  Unlike the magazines at the doctor’s office, however, it isn't always easy to spot the differences in cmdlets between versions of products.  Also, unlike the magazines at the doctor’s office, we can use PowerShell to find the new cmdlets available!

First off, we need a reference machine.  Ah yes, my older System Center Configuration Manager 2012 SP1 CU2 site will serve nicely.  Here, we’ll export the cmdlets from the Service Pack 1 Configuration Manager module to a CSV for consumption later:

 Get-Command -Module ConfigurationManager | select Name | export-csv <path to CSV>

image

Great.  Now, we need to compare this to a newer version of the Configuration Manager Powershell module.  I'll copy the CSV we created in the last step to my shiny new System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager site server, and with a few lines of Powershell, we can compare to two and find new cmdlets!  Note, this won’t tell us any cmdlets that have changed, but it will tell us what is a new addition to System Center 2012 R2.

  $NewCmdlets = @()
 $CM12SP1Cmdlets = Import-CSV "E:\Output\CM12SP1CU2Cmdlets.csv"
 $CM12R2Cmdlets = Get-Command -module ConfigurationManager | select Name
 
 ForEach ($Cmdlet in $CM12R2Cmdlets)
 {
 
 If ($CM12SP1Cmdlets.Name -NotContains $Cmdlet.Name)
 {
 $NewCmdlets += $Cmdlet.Name
 }
 }

Cool!  Now if we look at the values of $NewCmdlets, we have an array of cmdlets that are new to System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager!

  Copy-CMClientAuthCertificateProfileConfigurationItem
 Copy-CMRemoteConnectionProfileConfigurationItem
 Copy-CMTrustedRootCertificateProfileConfigurationItem
 Copy-CMVpnProfileConfigurationItem
 Copy-CMWirelessProfileConfigurationItem
 Get-CMAccessLicense
 Get-CMClientAuthCertificateProfileConfigurationItem
 Get-CMClientOperations
 Get-CMDeviceVariable
 Get-CMInitialModifiableSecuredCategory
 Get-CMMaintenanceWindow
 Get-CMRemoteConnectionProfileConfigurationItem
 Get-CMRemoteConnectionProfileConfigurationItemXmlDefinition
 Get-CMTrustedRootCertificateProfileConfigurationItem
 Get-CMVhd
 Get-CMVpnProfileConfigurationItem
 Get-CMWirelessProfileConfigurationItem
 Invoke-CMClientNotification
 Invoke-CMContentValidation
 Invoke-CMDeviceRetire
 Invoke-CMDeviceWipe
 Move-CMObject
 New-CMClientAuthCertificateProfileConfigurationItem
 New-CMDeviceVariable
 New-CMMaintenanceWindow
 New-CMRemoteConnectionProfileConfigurationItem
 New-CMTrustedRootCertificateProfileConfigurationItem
 New-CMVhd
 New-CMVpnProfileConfigurationItem
 New-CMWirelessProfileConfigurationItem
 Publish-CMPrestageContentTaskSequence
 Remove-CMClientAuthCertificateProfileConfigurationItem
 Remove-CMContentDistribution
 Remove-CMDeviceVariable
 Remove-CMMaintenanceWindow
 Remove-CMRemoteConnectionProfileConfigurationItem
 Remove-CMTrustedRootCertificateProfileConfigurationItem
 Remove-CMVhd
 Remove-CMVpnProfileConfigurationItem
 Remove-CMWirelessProfileConfigurationItem
 Set-CMAssignedSite
 Set-CMClientAuthCertificateProfileConfigurationItem
 Set-CMDeviceOwnership
 Set-CMDeviceVariable
 Set-CMMaintenanceWindow
 Set-CMRemoteConnectionProfileConfigurationItem
 Set-CMTrustedRootCertificateProfileConfigurationItem
 Set-CMVhd
 Set-CMVpnProfileConfigurationItem
 Set-CMWirelessProfileConfigurationItem

No matter the technologies you have to support on a daily basis, this example code or variations of this example code can be used to find new Powershell Cmdlets across all Microsoft products.  Have you found an interesting new Powershell Cmdlet?  Let me know in the comments below!