Upgrading from Powershell v2 to Powershell v3

Hi,

My corporate arrangement with my IT department is a funny one. Â They’ve put together the server (Windows 2008 Enterprise x64 under VMWare). Â They apply patches and otherwise maintain the O/S. Â However, I have admin rights and maintain other software that I and my department use. Â I’m an “IT Type” with a fair bit of experience, but in the business unit.

Why they don’t consider Powershell to be part of the operating system is beyond me. Â My request to upgrade has been met with “that’s a Server 2012 feature, but you can do it yourself”. Â Perhaps they’re just lazy :wink:

In any case, they have left it to me to upgrade to PS V3, should I so desire. Â Which I do.

So, are there any gotchas or issues with an upgrade to PS V3 on this environment? Â Is there anything I need to know other than launch the installer and click next/ok? Â Is PS V3 fully backwards compatible with PS V2, i.e. it won’t break existing scripts?

If I stuff this up it would be a “career limiting move” lol.

Thanks for the advice!

Several gotchas, in fact. Most of the server products (Exchange, SQL, etc) aren’t supported with v3 installed. v3 is not, it seems, completely backward compatible. You’ll want to use caution and research each product, and have a rollback plan.

One big tip. I installed Powershell V3 on a production server which is only available through RDP. When I restarted the box, RDP broke i.e. I could no longer RDP into the server. This is a known issue.

What we found out was that there was a problem with MS update KB2667402 which, combined with POSH v3, breaks RDP.

What I do now if I want to install V3, is to see if the server has hotfix 2667402 installed. If it has, I uninstall it and then install Posh v3. So far things are OK.

Thanks Dave. Â This is a <span style=“text-decoration: underline;”>huge</span> gotcha for us. Â We (my entire team) RDP into this server on a daily basis.

If 2667402 was installed, and I installed Posh v3, I’d have no way to get back into the server and fix it.  And IT might take days to rollback the install.

If 2667402 is not installed, and I install Posh v3, and later IT apply the hotfix, RDP again breaks.

I think at this point I’ll hold off on Posh v3. Â A pity, but the new features do not outweigh the risks.