Microsoft Will Start Supporting SSH For Windows Systems

Microsoft announced today they will begin contributing to the OpenSSH project, as well as enabling PowerShell to be a native SSH client. In the Windows world it has been traditional to use a program such as PuTTY to remotely manage Unix boxes from Windows clients, but no more.

This is the third time that Microsoft has tried to support SSH in PowerShell, the earlier two times were cut short due to culture-clash between Management and Teams, but this time around the Company appears to be supportive, says Angel Calvo, in the recent blog post. Calvo continues, saying: "A popular request the PowerShell team has received is to use Secure Shell protocol and Shell session (aka SSH) to interoperate between Windows and Linux – both Linux connecting to and managing Windows via SSH and, vice versa, Windows connecting to and managing Linux via SSH. Thus, the combination of PowerShell and SSH will deliver a robust and secure solution to automate and to remotely manage Linux and Windows systems."

There is currently no time table available for when these contributions will start, or when PowerShell will accept SSH commands, but the future looks bright for Windows & SSH. More details via this MSDN.com blog post from today.