Google is stepping up its efforts to woo Microsoft .NET developers with the introduction of new tools aimed at helping them utilize its Cloud Platform environment.

Late yesterday the company unveiled a new set of Cloud Tools for PowerShell that allow developers to automate, manage and script Windows workloads on the Google cloud. With the Cloud Tools, developers can use PowerShell’s command line to control Windows resources, automate tasks, and run scripts to analyze data and generate reports, without the need to write custom apps for each of these tasks. Google says the PowerShell update is free to Google Cloud Platform customers, and can be used with its Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL and Cloud DNS products.

In a post on the Google Cloud Platform blog, Google’s developer advocate Mete Atamel gave several examples of the Cloud Tools’ capabilities in each of the above environments.

For example, the PowerShell tools allow developers to create a new virtual machine (VM) on Compute Engine, or to start, stop or restart existing VM instances. In addition, developers can add or delete firewall rules and create snapshots of the disk.

In Cloud Storage, developers can use the PowerShell tools to create storage buckets via the command line. They can also list each storage bucket within a project and view the contents of each of them, and add or delete the contents of a storage bucket.

With Google Cloud SQL, the tools enable developers to set up Cloud SQL instances, and create failover replicas. Meanwhile with Cloud DNS, developers get capabilities such as being able to create managed zones for DNS domains, add and remove resources, and create resource record sets, Atamel said.

Google’s release of Cloud Tools for PowerShell is in line with its strategy of wooing developers to its cloud platform, by helping them move and manage Windows workloads on its infrastructure. The news follows a streak of similar announcements, such as the recent beta release of additional functionality for managing cloud platform resources from Visual Studio. Previous to that, Google released a new edition of SQL Server for Google Compute Engine that’s tailored to handle workloads on the Google cloud.

Google has stated it aims to make ASP.NET applications “first-class citizens” on its cloud, and has provided support for SQL Server and Windows Server that makes it easy for enterprises to shift their applications and data to its cloud more easily.

In addition, Google last year announced a partnership with disaster recovery firm CloudEndure to enable companies to move Windows apps and data to its infrastructure without needing to configure new machines beforehand.

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