Microsoft outlines Windows 7 Enterprise edition features

Microsoft has outlined the features that will be included in Windows 7 Enterprise Edition in a series of briefings to product reviewers. Windows 7 Enterprise edition will include support for scripted PowerShell commands for centralized management, help desk-friendly tricks and desktop virtualization options along with various other administration GUI tools.

The free set of Windows 7 tools to be included are based on PowerShell 2.0, which is currently in CTP and will include more than 500 scripts and 'commandlets' with PowerShell to take advantage of enhanced group policy controls. The scripts will help system administrators build and deploy tailored group policies that are easier to understand and manage.

Administrators can use PowerShell policy directives to push, multicast-style, immediate changes and updates to group policies to logged on users. These 'pushed' remote policy executables can perform rudimentary functions like adding network shares or applying regular updates as well as emergency operations such as closing ports to block zero-day vulnerabilities.

Help desk tricks will include:

• Problem Steps Recorder
• 'On-Demand' Diagnostics that can be loaded from policy-defined resources and locales
• 3rd party application/component troubleshooting steps
• Revamped Performance and State Monitoring through the addition of WinInternal application suite

• Presentation virtualization (video, audio, keyboard & mouse)
• Desktop virtualization (Hyper-V & Virtual PC)
• Profile virtualization (user states and configuration)
• Application virtualization (to allow application sandboxing - Execution of applications on external servers in a seamless fashion as though the application is running on the local machine)