I bit the bullet and bought Quest’s PowerGUI Pro. While I have made the full transition from PowershellPlus Pro, I really didn’t see value in upgrading from the already strong PowerGUI product. I really only use the editor and the “pay for” version doesn’t really seem to offer more than you can get from the download.
I couldn’t just leave it at that. One of the components that comes with the Pro package is mobile shell. I installed the MobileShell component on a laptop and answered a few questions or responded to the warnings, and in 25 minutes I was able to test it and have to say I was impressed. The first warning is logical as it warns you that this product was really intended for a server running IIS and it mentions verbiage about installing on Windows 7 for evaluation. It provides three options for SSL and again this is just a test so unsecured http was selected. The option to provide other users access to the mobile shell was pretty straight forward as well. Installation complete, time to test.
I was able to get to the shell interface from my desktop computer. Performance was as I would expect in such a test case. I was impressed with the interface and then kicked the tires and I can see how this would be very useful. Keep in mind this is from a computer, not necessarily the “mobile” but I can still think of some use cases. As the image shows, it loads the default profile on the hosting machine and any commands I run were in fact being run on the host.
I was reluctant to test a mobile device due to the ability to connect to the wireless network in the current environment where I work. Since my phone is a personal device I would have to connect to the wireless network designated for guest and I have experienced connectivity issues in the past when using a personal laptop onsite. Not to mention, accessing my personal email would then be interrupted. Oh well this will be just a quick test. I connected to the guest wireless network, opened the web browser on my WP7 device and connected to the url. Connected… very nice.
The interface is broken into three tabbed windows for Favorites, Run Script and Results. Again I can not verify this should even work, so when I received errors when running scripts or executing one of the “Favorites” never seemed to complete and show results could be a factor of several things (WP7 browser issue, guest access rules, etc). Just having that connectivity and knowing the shell does work, just being able to see the interface was a win.
With the success I saw in a short testing period here, I will now try a similar test on my home network with a few mobile devices.
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