PowerShell Jobs

Background jobs with Start-Job, Receive-Job, and parallel execution workflows.

Background Jobs Quick Reference

Start a background job

$job = Start-Job -ScriptBlock { Get-EventLog System -Newest 1000 }

Check job status

Get-Job
Get-Job -Id 1 | Select-Object Id, Name, State, HasMoreData

Get job results

Receive-Job -Id 1
Receive-Job -Id 1 -Keep    # Keep results for re-reading

Wait for job to complete

Wait-Job -Id 1
$result = Receive-Job -Id 1

Run on multiple servers in parallel

$servers = "server01", "server02", "server03"
$jobs = $servers | ForEach-Object {
    Start-Job -ScriptBlock { param($s) Test-Connection $s -Count 4 } -ArgumentList $_
}
$jobs | Wait-Job | Receive-Job

Cleanup

Get-Job -State Completed | Remove-Job
Get-Job | Stop-Job | Remove-Job    # Kill and clean all

ForEach-Object -Parallel (PowerShell 7+)

$servers | ForEach-Object -Parallel {
    Test-Connection $_ -Count 1
} -ThrottleLimit 5

PowerShell Jobs

Background Jobs Quick Reference

See Also