Environments
Information about execution environments.
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Information about execution environments.
Last updated
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Environments allow you to define an executable, arguments, modules and variables to use when running scripts, hosting APIs and dashboards.
Environments are stored within the environments.ps1 file.
To configure environments, you can use the Settings \ Environments page.
Environments support setting the name, path, arguments, modules and variables.
The name of the environment. This name will be shown throughout the rest of the platform when running scripts, configuring the API host environment and hosting dashboards.
Environments support defining a path to an executable and arguments for that executable. These should be either PowerShell.exe or Pwsh.exe.
You can also define modules and variables.
The modules list allows you to define zero or more modules to load in the PowerShell runspaces for the environment. These modules will be part of the initial session state so they will not need to be loaded manually. Items added to this list can either be module names or full paths to module files.
The variables list allows you to define zero or more variables to load in the PowerShell runspaces for the environment. This list can consist of variable names from the variable configuration.
You can also use wildcards (*) to bring in multiple variables that match a pattern.
You can use the -PSModulePath parameter of New-PSUEnvironment to configure additional PSModulePaths to include within the environment.
Startup scripts are run once when the environment first creates a runspace. For APIs, this happens whenever a runspace is created to service an HTTP request. This can happen frequently if the server is busy. For apps (formerly known as dashboards), this will happen whenever a runspace is created to service an endpoint being run while the user views an app (dashboard). Busy servers and apps with many dynamic components will do this more frequently. For jobs, this will happen once when the job is started.
Startup scripts are relative to the Repository folder. For example, if you had a script in your repository folder named startup.ps1, you would just list the file name in the configuration. If you had a script in a directory, you would need to include that as well.
Platform variables are not available in startup scripts.
Environments can be used across the platform.
To select the environment to use, modify the settings.ps1 file and include the -ApiEnvironment parameter of Set-PSUSetting. It needs to be the name of the environment.
Each script, job and schedule can use an environment. You can define environments for scripts by modifying the scripts.ps1 and setting the -Environment parameter of New-PSUScript. To set the environment of a schedule, set the -Environment parameter of New-PSUSchedule in schedules.ps1. When invoking a script, you can also choose an environment to use.
To use a particular environment for an app (dashboard), set the -Environment parameter of New-PSUApp in dashboards.ps1.
By default, authentication and authorization happen within the Universal.Server.exe process. To run these from a different process, you can select an environment by setting the -SecurityEnvironment parameter of Set-PSUSetting in settings.ps1. See Security for more information on this.
The integrated environment does not support running as alternate credentials.
The integrated environment uses the PowerShell Universal server process directly rather than starting external PowerShell processes to service requests.
The integrated environment is easier to configure and use than having multiple disparate environments. You will also see a performance improvement because there is no need to serialize and communicate via interprocess communication.
The downside is that you cannot elevate to alternate credentials or use alternate PowerShell versions. You will be using the current version of the PowerShell Universal server's PowerShell SDK. Additionally, since all the PowerShell scripts are running within the service, you can affect the stability of the platform with your PowerShell scripts.
Please read Best Practices for more information.
The integrated environment is always available and you do not need to configure it directly. If you do want to import modules or set up persistent runspaces, you can set settings for the integrated environment in environments.ps1.
To set the integrated environment, you can use the Set-PSUSetting in settings.ps1.
You can assign the integrated environment to scripts and schedules. You can also set the integrated environment as the default environment for the platform.
You can also choose the integrated environment from the run dialog.
You can run dashboards in the integrated environment. Select the integrated environment from the environment drop down.
The integrated environment works by creating multiple runspaces within the PowerShell Universal service. Some modules do not work well when run within a single process. Below is a list of modules with known issues running within the integrated environment.
VMware.PowerCLI
Az
PowerShell Universal includes an agent process that can be executed outside of the PowerShell Universal service. Similar to the Integrated environment, it uses the current version of PowerShell that PowerShell Universal includes. Unlike the integrated environment, it spawns an external process and doesn't require PowerShell 7 be installed on the target machine.
The Agent environment also supports 'Run As' credentials.
Minimal environments allow for running scripts in command line applications that do not integrate with the PowerShell Universal hosting environment. PowerShell Universal captures STDOUT and STDERR and displays it within the job log. Some use cases for minimal environments include:
Python Scripts
PowerShell Scripts with Problematic Modules
Minimal environments do not support the following:
Feedback
Progress
Secrets
Universal Integrated Cmdlets
Minimal environments will receive variable values as environment variables. When defining a minimal environment, you can use the {scriptPath} replacement string to setup the arguments for the environment to set the proper path when running the script.
For example, the following creates a PowerShell 7 environment that does not load the PowerShell Universal hosting libraries.
To create a Python environment, you could do the following.
Windows PowerShell Compatibility is a feature of PowerShell 7. When commands and modules are not available in PowerShell 7, the platform will automatically start a Windows PowerShell process in the background and perform local remoting from the PowerShell 7 process. This achieves backwards compatibility with Windows PowerShell modules.
You may see a warning in the environments page when this feature of PowerShell is enabled due to the implications on the PowerShell Universal platform.
For each runspace opened by PowerShell Universal in which Windows PowerShell Compatibility is used, a new Windows PowerShell process will be started. These processes will only stop once the runspace is recycled.
This greatly reduces performance due to an excessive number of processes running and memory and CPU usage attributed to serialization and remote runspace management.
The most common cause of this is using the Active Directory 1.0.0.0 module from PowerShell 7.
You can disable Windows PowerShell Compatibility via the settings within the environment's properties.
Windows PowerShell Compatibility is disabled for the Integrated environment by default and cannot be enabled.
If required, you can remove the Windows Compatibility runspace after executing a command using the feature. This will remove the Windows PowerShell process. Each time this endpoint is run, it will need to re-establish the session.
You can learn more about Windows PowerShell Compatibility here.
