I'll admit I was disappointed by the fact that the IIS 7.0 development team stuck with AppCmd even after the decision was made to ship PowerShell with Windows Server 2008. I like AppCmd and all, it is a great tool; however why would they disrespect (or diss for those down with the young peeps) PowerShell!!?!

I am happy to report that they have had some time to work on a PowerShell provider, and have released a technical preview that is now available for download.

• Create Web-Sites, Web Applications, Virtual Directories and Application Pools
• Change Simple Configuration Properties on Web-Sites, Application Pools, Web Applications and Virtual Directories
• Add and Change Complex Configuration Settings
• Query Run-time Data (Web-Site State, Application Pool State, Currently Executing Requests)
• Execute Advanced Configuration Tasks, Scripting, Integration with other PowerShell Snap-Ins and features
• Search and Discover Configuration Settings

You can download the tech preview of the provider here... x86 and x64

More information can be found here and the documentation can be found here.