This is probably 'Powershell 101' but I've heard/read where you can use cmdlets that aren't necessarily part of the core Powershell installation  to do specific tasks (ie. get-vmguest).

My question is... how do you add these cmdlets to Powershell? 

Is it as part of the vmware installation?  are they just specific files that you refer to?  I'm missing the basic point of that.

thanks,

 

(note: Yes HAL, I'm referring to the cmdlet you mentioned in episode #36 of the podcast)

Go get the VI Toolkit for Windows to start with:
http://www.vmware.com/download/sdk/

In version 1 of PowerShell, new cmdlets come part of a packaged "snapin". You list installed ones with get-pssnapin, and you add them to your current session with add-pssnapin. A snapin is a .DLL, and it has to be installed using a certain .NET tool called installutil. Luckily, this part of the process is rarely shown to the end user, instead an installer package will do that part (as with the VMware ones Marco mentioned).

PowerShell in fact comes with a core set of snapins, as you'll see when you type get-pssnapin.

In version 2, there will be additional methods to distribute cmdlets in both a script and binary form.

The gory details of manually loading a DLL:
http://marcoshaw.blogspot.com/2007/09/howto-invoking-cmdlets-within-cmdlet_24.html

Sorry, I was a bit brief on my reply.