Execute the desired powershell command and ensure that it returns data
    in json format and load that into python

def _pshell(cmd, cwd=None, json_depth=2):
    '''
    Execute the desired powershell command and ensure that it returns data
    in json format and load that into python
    '''
    if 'convertto-json' not in cmd.lower():
        cmd = '{0} | ConvertTo-Json -Depth {1}'.format(cmd, json_depth)
    log.debug('DSC: %s', cmd)
    results = __salt__['cmd.run_all'](cmd, shell='powershell', cwd=cwd, python_shell=True)

    if 'pid' in results:
        del results['pid']

    if 'retcode' not in results or results['retcode'] != 0:
        # run_all logs an error to log.error, fail hard back to the user
        raise CommandExecutionError('Issue executing powershell {0}'.format(cmd), info=results)

    try:
        ret = salt.utils.json.loads(results['stdout'], strict=False)
    except ValueError:
        raise CommandExecutionError('No JSON results from powershell', info=results)

    return ret