AWS Support for PowerShell Core 6.0

Announced in a Microsoft blog post yesterday, PowerShell Core 6.0 is now generally available. AWS continues to support this new cross-platform version of PowerShell with our AWS Tools for PowerShell Core module also known by its module name, AWSPowerShell.NetCore. This post recaps the modules available from AWS for PowerShell users wanting to script their AWS resources.

AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell

Released in 2012, this module, also known by the module name AWSPowerShell, supports users working with the traditional Windows-only version of PowerShell. It supports PowerShell version 2.0 through to 5.1. It can be installed from the AWS SDK and Tools for .NET Windows Installer, which also contains .NET 3.5 and 4.5 versions of the AWS SDK for .NET and the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio 2013 and 2015. The module is also distributed on the PowerShell Gallery and is pre-installed on Amazon EC2 Windows-based images.

AWS Tools for PowerShell Core

This version of the tools was first released in August 2016 to coincide with the announcement of the first public alpha release of PowerShell Core 6.0. Since then it has continued to be updated in sync with the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell module. This module, named AWSPowerShell.NetCore, is only distributed on the PowerShell Gallery.

Module Compatibility

Both modules are highly compatible with each other. In terms of the cmdlets they expose for AWS service APIs, they match completely and both modules are updated in sync. As noted in our original launch blog post for our module running on PowerShell Core, back in August 2016, the AWSPowerShell.NetCore module is missing only a handful of cmdlets, as follows.

Proxy cmdlets:

Set-AWSProxy
Clear-AWSProxy

Logging cmdlets:

Add-AWSLoggingListener
Remove-AWSLoggingListener
Set-AWSResponseLogging
Enable-AWSMetricsLogging
Disable-AWSMetricsLogging

SAML federated credentials cmdlets:

Set-AWSSamlEndpoint
Set-AWSSamlRoleProfile

Now that PowerShell Core is generally available (GA), we’ll be taking another look at these to see if we can add them.

We hope you’re enjoying the new PowerShell Core GA release and the ability to script and access your AWS resources from PowerShell on any system!