Send administrative commands to my C# Windows Service using own PowerShell CmdLets

Question

I have a C# Windows application which runs a service. I would like to leverage PowerShell in order to offer a command line management interface for administering my running service.

From my point of view, I am trying to offer the same administrative interface a la Exchange 2007.

Do you have any suggestion or sample code on how to start/design the management cmdlets in order "connect" to the running service to query or send administrative commands?

How can I access service's internal runtime state from powershell command line? For example I would like to implement a cmdlet called Get-ConnectionsInfo to find out how many outbound connections my Windows service is using when the cmdlet is executed.

A practical example or web link to an example would be more than welcomed.

Thanks, Robert

Answer 1

A solution would be for your Windows Service to expose an administrative interface through WCF. Your PowerShell commands would use this WCF service to pull out information and make the Windows Service perform actions.

Answer 2

The key here is to start by writting an API that you can access from .Net, then you can easily wrap the calls to this API into a DLL that exposes classes that are PowerShell cmdlets. If you want someone to be able to administer your service remotely then I think probably the best thing is to create either a webservice or WCF Service that does this and then you can wrap that in PowerShell. If you have a look on codeplex you will find some examples of administer remote web based services like GoGrid and SQL Data Services that will give you some sample code to get you started.