Accessing the Improved Administration, Monitoring, and Backup Tools

There are two major improvements in the area of administration for SharePoint. The first comes in a revamped SharePoint Central Administration tool, shown in Figure 1.4. The second comes with the addition of Microsoft PowerShell as a scripting administration interface.

Figure 1.4. Examining the revamped SharePoint Central Administration tool.

Administrators familiar with SharePoint 2007 will recall the SharePoint Central Admin tool, a web-based interface used to administer SharePoint functionality. SharePoint 2010 greatly improves this interface, organizing functional tasks within specific pages, adding support for the SharePoint Ribbon to make tasks easier to perform and adding new functionality that previously was unavailable. More information on the use of the SharePoint Central Administration Tool can be found in Chapter 6, “Managing and Administering SharePoint 2010 Infrastructure.”

The addition of Microsoft PowerShell as a SharePoint administration tool enables administrators to have a robust and comprehensive scripting interface that allows for automation of manual tasks, scripted installations, and remote administration support. Microsoft created more than 500 commandlets for PowerShell specific to SharePoint, some of which are shown in Figure 1.5. Detailed information on PowerShell administration for SharePoint can be found in Chapter 7, “Leveraging PowerShell for Command-Line SharePoint Administration and Automation.”

Figure 1.5. Using PowerShell for SharePoint 2010 Administration.