Vista - powershell script to execute simultaneously instead of sequentially

i would like to execute a script to execute the same command to a list of servers, listed in a text file (hopefully later from an excel file), simultaneously by opening separate foreground powershell windows to run the command per machine name.

i have figured out how to run it sequentially by pulling the array of names from the txt file and using the names as the variable but with many machines - this takes much too long. i dont want to do this as a background job as i like seeing the action as it happens on all the machines.
i can and do currently have a script that i can enter the names individually as well but this is error prone as i can skip a name by accident.

i.e. as an example - i would like to take a text file with 50 pc names - and have a script open 50 seperate powershell windows simlultaneously per pc name and ping them all and import the results back to the local machine....
this should be rather simple but i cant figure it out...!

Well, opening 50 console windows is not going to be trivial, in terms of
time/resources, but ... you would run something like:

# get your data here, somehow
$servers = gc servers.txt

$procs = $(
foreach($server in $servers) {
$si = New-Object -TypeName System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo
$si.FileName = "powershell.exe"
$si.Arguments = "-command ping.exe $server"
[diagnostics.process]::Start($si)
}
)

But there's no easy way to get the output from a console window if you
let it start up in GUI mode like that, so I definitely don't recommend
going that route.
--
Joel


jlo wrote:

i was able to apply this for the ping but this didnt work when i tried to use an existing script in place of the ping command. its a great start though... any thoughts on how to adapt it to a script as the command and the location variable pulled from the txt file?

An another way :
Split-Job (use runspace Posh V1)