get-scripting

Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 27 - (The One Where They Catch Up and Share Loads of PowerShell Tips and Tricks)

2011-11-30T22:38:00.003Z

This is Episode 27 of the Get-Scripting podcast. Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about PowerShell.

Download it here, subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

Intro:

Alan:

PowerCLI @ VMworld

PowerCLIMan - The Return

Alan on PowerScripting

Jonathan:

HP WMI Provider

Simple Talk - How to add a GUI front end to your PowerShell scripts

What's New In PowerCLI 5.0 at the UK PowerShell User Group

PowerShell V3 Blog Series

PowerShell News:

PowerShell V3 Preview Out as part of Win8 Developer Preview

2012 Deep Dive Conference Announced for San Diego

PowerShell Resources:

Distributed Switch Cmdlets available as a fling

PowerShell scripts to leverage UBERalign for virtual disk alignment

Get-FriendlyUnits from @lucd22

Jeffrey Snover has a blog

Cmdlet of the day podcast

Powershell Tips:

Copy-Item With Alternate Credentials

Netstat for ESXi

Splitting a string with the split operator containing a ".", e.g. test.test.com

$EscapeTest = [Regex]::Escape("test.test.com")
$EscapeTest.split("\.")

Also [URI]"http://test.com/alan"

How to create a PSCredential object

PowerShell Gotcha

'Set-Service -Status Stopped' fails with "Cannot stop service 'servicename' because it is dependent on other services‏

Catching WMI Query Errors with Try / Catch

- Workaround: You can make non-terminating errors get thrown by using: - -ErrorAction "Stop"

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Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 26 - Ben Vierck and Kirk Munro from Devfarm Software

2011-09-15T22:20:00.003+01:00

This is Episode 26 of the Get-Scripting podcast. Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about PowerShell.

Download it here, subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

Intro:

Alan:

PowerCLI Poster

PowerCLIMan

Jonathan:

Available for contract!

Jonathan Walz Tornado Video

Interview:

Ben Vierck - Blog

Kirk Munro - Blog

PowerWF

PowerShell News:

Kirk Munro - New Product Manager for PowerWF and PowerSE

Deep Dive Conference Sessions Announced - still time to register

Build conference upcoming

PowerShell Resources:

Coming soon to a Hey Scripting Guy near you! "Batchman and Cmdlet!"

VIProperty Module

Powershell Tips:

How to Hard Kill a stuck VM with PowerCLI

Test a website availability with PowerShell

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Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 25 - Kirk Munro and PowerGUI 3.0

2011-08-04T12:54:00.002+01:00

This is Episode 25 of the Get-Scripting podcast. Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about PowerShell.

Download it here, subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

Intro:

Alan:

vSphere 5 Launch

vRAM License Script

VMworld Sessions

Jonathan:

vExpert 2011

London VMUG Presentation

ESXi upgrade to 4.1 including Dell Agent

Interview:

Kirk Munro - Blog

PowerGUI 3.0 - Download

Statement from Kirk about leaving Quest

PowerGUI Pro and PowerGUI are fantastic products with a great team, and the guys still working on the product deserve all the praise and attention they can get. I still want the recording to be available so that it can help that product grow and prosper, giving back to those guys the support (and hopefully more revenue to help pay for their mortgages) that they so deserve.

For the listeners of this podcast, if you are in need of someone with my skills, either as a Product Manager, a PowerShell MVP, an expert in Windows management (with a strong focus on Active Directory and Exchange although I’ve also gotten deeply involved in virtualization with Hyper-V and VMware as well), a social media/community site manager, or as a freelance writer, my schedule has all of a sudden become much less busy and I’m interested in filling up that time with new work once I come back from vacation, so please get in touch, either through http://poshoholic.com/contact-me/ or through comments on my blog post about my departure from Quest (http://poshoholic.com/2011/07/28/one-for-the-road/).

PowerShell News:

Kindle Version of the PowerCLI book available

European PowerShell Deep Dive Conference - Mon 17th - Tue 18th Oct in Frankfurt

PowerShell Resources:

Using the Cisco UCSM Toolkit with the Cisco UCS Emulator

Powershell Tips:

Automatically elevate a PowerShell script

Download the podcast with PowerShell

$iTunes = New-Object -ComObject iTunes.Application
$itunes.subscribetopodcast("http://feeds.feedburner.com/Get-scripting")

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Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 24 - Jonathan Noble

2011-05-24T21:50:00.005+01:00

This is Episode 24 of the Get-Scripting podcast. Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about PowerShell.

Download it here, subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

Intro:

Alan:

PowerShell Deep Dive - Alan and Luc's fans

HA and DRS Audit Script

Primal Forms 2011

Jonathan:

UK PowerShell User Group - Modules

vSoup Podcast

Interview:

Jonathan Noble - Blog

NEBytes

PowerShell Resources:

Ten tips for better PowerShell Functions

Brownbag - PowerCLI 101

NetApp PowerPack

PowerShell News:

PowerShell Available to License

Powershell Tips:

Determine the number of users on Exchange 2010 CAS server

PowerShell Requires

Get-WorldTime Function

PowerShell Gotcha

Problems with PowerShell Comment Based Help

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Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 23 - (PowerCLI Book Special)

2011-04-08T20:27:00.002+01:00

This is Episode 23 of the Get-Scripting podcast. Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about PowerShell.

Download it here, subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

Intro:

Alan:

EMC PowerShell Cmdlets

Enabling/Disabling VAAI with PowerCLI

Jonathan:

Interview:

PowerCLI Book authors:

Luc Dekens - Blog

Arnim Van Lieshout - Blog

Glenn Sizemore - Blog

PowerCLI Book Website

PowerShell Resources:

Scripting Guys Webcasts x 5 - Learn PowerShell before its an Emergency!

PowerCLI Training from TrainSignal - Hal Rottenberg

PowerShell News:

Scripting Games - April 4 - 15th

- All links on one page

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Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 22 - Travis Jones (PowerShell Deep Dive Conference)

2011-03-18T16:26:00.002Z

This is Episode 22 of the Get-Scripting podcast. Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about PowerShell.

Download it here, subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

Intro:

Alan:

EMC PowerShell Cmdlets

PowerCLI Freebies

Jonathan:

Simple-Talk Article on Modules

Interview:

Travis Jones - PowerShell Team Blog

PowerShell Deep Dive Conference

Four more reasons to come to the PowerShell Deep Dive

More Deep Dive Info

PowerShell Resources:

WMI Query Language via PowerShell eBook

PowerGUI Add-Ons

- Script Editor Essentials

- Create your own colour theme

Say Goodbye to Vesi

PowerShell News:

UK PowerCamps with Thomas Lee

- London
- York

Scripting Games - April 4 - 15th

- All links on one page

UK PowerShell User Group

- Regular Expressions with Tome Tanasovski

PowerShell Tips:

Speed up the reading of large text files

Getting registry last write time with PowerShell

Get-Variable Definition

Remoting tip

PS> Invoke-Command –computer XXX { Get-foo |Select-Object a,b,c}

Does the filtering on the remote computer and only transfers the properties you ask for:

PS> Invoke-Command –computer XXX { Get-foo } |Select-Object a,b,c

Returns ALL the properties and filters them locally.

Competition:

Prize Giveaway - Just write a review

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Prize Giveaway - just write a review!

2011-01-19T12:48:00.005Z

As mentioned in Episode 21, we are having a prize giveaway of some swag we collected whilst at VMworld. The prizes are:

Official VMworld Rucksack and goodies
Trainsignal DVDs
Limited Edition Get-Scripting VMworld T-Shirts
VMware Stickers
Limited Edition PowerCLI Poster

All you need to do is write a review of the podcast and send us a link to where you have posted it. It could be on iTunes , another podcast review site or your own blog. Leave a comment on this page, send us an email at get [dash] scripting [at] hotmail [dot] co [dot] uk or contact us via Twitter.

Closing date is 1st March 2011 when we will randomly pick some winners.

Here's our good friend Stu McHugh stylishly modelling one of the T-Shirts!

Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 21 - (Richard Siddaway - PowerShell MVP)

2011-01-18T22:29:00.003Z

This is Episode 21 of the Get-Scripting podcast. Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about PowerShell.

Download it here, subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

Intro:

Alan:

Clintons Kitson vCenter Plugin Walkthrough

Dutch VMUG Presentation

Jonathan:

Citrix Monitoring Script

Interview:

Richard Siddaway - Blog

PowerShell in Practice

PowerShell and WMI

PowerShell Resources:

Dell Equalogic PowerShell Quick Reference Guide

Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches

PowerShell Tips:

Comparing Installed Hotfixes on a 2 Node Cluster

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Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 20 - (Jeffrey Snover - Microsoft)

2010-12-13T17:03:00.002Z

This is Episode 20 of the Get-Scripting podcast. Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about PowerShell.

Download it here, subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

Intro:

Alan:

EMC PowerShell Toolkit

PowerCLI book Update

Jonathan:

PowerShell 2.0 One Cmdlet at a Time blog series published as a pdf

Interview:

Jeffrey Snover - PowerShell Team Blog

PowerShell Resources:

Checking File Associations with the help of PowerShell Remoting

PowerChumby

PowerShell Tips:

Dollar Dollar Automatic Variable

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Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 19 - (Kirk Munro - Quest Software)

2010-07-30T17:03:00.003+01:00

This is Episode 19 of the Get-Scripting podcast. Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about PowerShell.

Download it here subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

Intro:

Alan:

London VMUG

Book Update

Jonathan:

PowerShell 2.0 One Cmdlet at a Time blog series

Exchange 2010 Training DVDs

PowerCLI Getting Started Guide at Simple Talk

Interview:

Kirk Munro - Blog

PowerGUI

vEcoShell

PowerShell Scripts:

Export-XLS function

Script to change output type changes in PowerCLI 4.1

PowerShell News:

NetApp PowerShell Toolkit

PowerCLI 4.1 is released

PowerShell in Practice book published

UK PowerShell User Group Live Meetings

Quest AD cmdlets 1.4 released

PowerShell Tips:

Disable IPv6

Read-Host - add colour to text

PowerShell.exe -file parameter

Working with WMI and Win32_ComputerSystem class and the Win32_Processor class in Windows Server 2003 NumberOfProcessors

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932370

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Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 18 - (Thorbjörn Sjövold - Specops)

2010-06-01T11:37:00.002+01:00

This is Episode 18 of the Get-Scripting podcast. Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about PowerShell.

Download it here subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

Intro:

Alan:

VMworld Session

PowerCLI book

Jonathan:

PowerShell 2.0 One Cmdlet at a Time blog series

Expert Solution: Beginner Event 10 of the Scripting Games

PowerShell 2.0 Remoting Article at Simple Talk

Interview:

Thorbjörn Sjövold - Specops

Specops Twitter

Version 2.0 Cmdlets

ConvertTo-CSV
ConvertFrom-CSV
ConvertTo-XML

PowerShell Scripts:

Find unused portgroups in a cluster

PowerShell News:

Scripting Games 2010 April 26 - May 7

PowerShell Tips:

PowerShell Visual Search on Bing

Ricky El-Qasem from Veeam's intro to PowerShell / PowerCLI

Mike Pfeiffer manage Exchange 2010 thumbnail photos with PowerShell

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Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 17 - (Dr Tobias Weltner and Aleksandar Nikolic)

2010-04-20T21:29:00.002+01:00

This is Episode 17 of the Get-Scripting podcast. Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about PowerShell.

Download it here, subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

Intro:

Alan:

vCheck V5

Dell ESXi Management - Deployment Scripts

Getting Started with the VMware Update Manager Cmdlets

Jonathan:

PowerShell 2.0 One Cmdlet at a Time blog series

PowerShell Remoting in the Enterprise

Interview:

Dr Tobias Weltner - Twitter

Aleksandar Nikolic - Twitter

PowerShell Remoting Guide

Version 2.0 Cmdlets

Start-Transaction
Complete-Transaction
Undo-Transaction

PowerShell News:

Scripting Games 2010 April 26 - May 7

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Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 16 - (Ed Wilson - The Scripting Guy)

2010-03-11T20:42:00.002Z

This is Episode 16 of the Get-Scripting podcast. Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about PowerShell.

Download it here, subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

Intro:

Alan:

Deploying VM's in the Snow. New-WebServiceProxy

London VMUG Presentation

Appeared on the Mike Laverick Chinwag

Who created that VM?

Jonathan:

PowerShell 2.0 One Cmdlet at a Time blog series

File PowerShell bugs here

Interview:

Ed Wilson - Hey Scripting Guy

Version 2.0 Cmdlets

Out-Gridview

Show-EventLog

PowerShell News:

Doctor DNS (aka Thomas Lee) Powershell Training Class - http://www.powershellmasterclass.com/

TrainSignal - PowerCLI Training DVD

PowerGUI Pro has been released - $99 until June 1st 2010

Create your own PowerGUI MobileShell Client

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Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 15 - (Luc Dekens)

2010-02-08T12:53:00.004Z

This is Episode 15 of the Get-Scripting podcast. Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about PowerShell.

Download it here, subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

Intro:

Alan:

Version 3 of Powerpack. Winner of PowerPack Challenge 2009 - Best Powerpack.

vSphere Quick Start Guide available on Amazon/Lulu/pdf

Update PowerCLI Quick Reference Guide

Top 10 VMWare Bloggers

Jonathan:

PowerShell 2.0 One Cmdlet at a Time blog series

Interview:

Luc Dekens - PowerCLI guru

PowerShell News:

Sapien PowerShell TFM 2nd Edition available as a free e-book

PowerShell Tips:

List all COM objects on a machine @r_keith_hill

Sync Folder Script

Find cmdlets with specific parameters, e.g. get-command | where {$_.definition -match 'asjob'} or get-command | where {$_.definition -match 'computername'}

Send-MailMessage: Splatting

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Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 14 - (Thomas Lee and James O'Neill)

2009-12-03T12:38:00.002Z

This is Episode 14 of the Get-Scripting podcast. Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about PowerShell.

Download it here, subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

Intro:

Alan:

Skydive - Sponsor Alan here.

Book Released. vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide

Virtu-Al.net Scripts PowerGUI PowerPack

vCheck 3.0

PowerCLI: Where do I start?

Jonathan:

Co-hosted PowerScripting Episode 90

PowerCLI workshop at London VMUG

New Simple-Talk Article: Managing Active Directory with PowerShell in Server 2008 R2

Interview:

Thomas Lee

James O'Neill

PowerShell News:

PowerShell 2.0 for 2008/Vista and 2003/XP released.

PowerCLI v4 U1 released

Project Onyx

PowerShell Tips:

Creating custom objects in PowerShell 2.0

Select the last element in an array - $array[-1]

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Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 13 - (Antoine Habert - PoshBoard)

2009-10-15T20:17:00.003+01:00

This is Episode 13 of the Get-Scripting podcast. Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about PowerShell.

Download it here, subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

Intro:

Alan's vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide book.

Jonathan's article over on Simple-Talk.com about the AD Recycle Bin in Windows Server 2008 R2.

Jonathan's AD PowerShell Quick Reference Guide

Interview:

Antoine Habert - PoshBoard

You can follow updates for PoshBoard at http://twitter.com/poshboard

PowerShell Gotcha:

Get-Content gotcha

PowerShell News:

PowerShell Usergroups Worldwide

PowerShell Tips:

Pipeline Parameter Binding - Example New-ADUser

Select -Expand

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Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 12 - (Carter Shanklin - VMware Product Manager for PowerCLI)

2009-08-27T00:21:00.003+01:00

This is Episode 12 of the Get-Scripting podcast. Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about Powershell.

Download it here, subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

Intro:

Jonathan's article over at Simple-Talk.com on PowerShell and Twitter.

Richard Siddaway's PowerShell In Practise book.

Ways to learn PowerShell - Part 12

-like, -match, -contains

Interview:

Carter Shanklin - VMware Product Manager for PowerCLI

Carter's Blog

Download PowerCLI

Special guest appearance from Scott Herold

Scott's Blog

VESI

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Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 11 - (MoW aka the PowerShell Guy)

2009-07-13T22:06:00.002+01:00

This is Episode 11 of the Get-Scripting podcast. Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about Powershell.

Download it here, subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

Intro:

PowerCLI Snap Reminder

PowerWF

Microsoft AD Cmdlets for 2003 / 2008 DC's.

Advanced reporting for VESI and PowerGUI

Ways to learn PowerShell - Part 11

PowerShell 1.0 Operators

Interview:

/\/\o\/\/ aka The PowerShell Guy

PowerTab

PowerShell WMI Explorer

Eureka Script:

Exchange 2007 Audit Script

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Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 10 - (Shay Levy - PowerShell MVP)

2009-05-26T21:43:00.002+01:00

This is Episode 10 of the Get-Scripting podcast. Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about Powershell.

Download it here, subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

Intro:

The VESI has launched! Including some work from our very own Alan Renouf.

Get the Twitter PowerPack for PowerGUI

Jonathan's article at Simple-Talk.com about Exchange 2003, WMI and PowerShell

Ways to learn Powershell - Part 10:

Sort-Object

- Tip: Sort in Multiple Directions

Where-Object

Select-Object

Interview:

Shay Levy - PowerShell MVP

Blog

Powershell Toolbar

Registry Functions Library

Running PowerShell v1 and v2 on the same machine using Windows 7 XP mode

2009 Scripting Games

Eureka Scripts

Jean Louw's Exchange 2003 Audit Script

Jean Louw's other cool scripts

Powershell Tips:

Sign up for Dr Tobias Weltner's PowerShell tips.

PowerShell cmdlets in Windows 2008 R2 Clustering

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Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 9 - (Scott Herold - Virtualization EcoShell Initiative)

2009-04-15T08:06:00.002+01:00

This is Episode 9 of the Get-Scripting podcast. Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about Powershell.

Download it here, subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

Intro:

Alan is a vExpert!

AD Cmdlets in Windows Server 2008 R2

Ways to learn Powershell - Part 9:

Introduction to key PowerShell commands

Interview:

Scott Herold - Virtualization EcoShell Initiative

VMGuru.com

Free VMWare books

TheVESI.org

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Get-Scripting Guys At the March UK Powershell User Group

2009-03-23T22:34:00.002Z

You've heard the show, if you want to meet the guys in person they will both be presenting at this week's UK Powershell Usergroup at Microsoft in Reading.

Alan Renouf will be talking about the VI Toolkit - Powershell cmdlets provided by VMware for managing ESX.

Jonathan Medd will tell you what he has found out so far about the new AD cmdlets which will ship as part of Windows Server 2008 R2, currently in Beta.

Full details for how you can attend are here. You need to let Richard know if you are going to attend so that he can arrange the pass for you at the Welcome Desk.

Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 8 - (Jonathan Noble - Hitting Moving Targets With Powershell & Tweetertags)

2009-02-23T23:38:00.003Z

This is Episode 8 of the Get-Scripting podcast. Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about Powershell.

Download it here, subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

Intro:

Alan's Visio Script

Ways to learn Powershell - Part 8:

Objects and Pipelines

Interview:

Jonathan Noble

Noble Musings

Setting AD Logon Hours in Powershell

Tweetertags

Cool functions:

James O'Neill's cool Twitter functions

Feedback

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Powershell Toolbar featuring Get-Scripting Podcast

2009-02-12T19:53:00.003Z

Shay Levy has updated his Powershell toolbar to include the Get-Scripting podcast. As well as our show you can get all the Powerscripting episodes and a ton of other Powershell resources from it too.

Nice work Shay!
Thanks

Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 7 - (Thomas Lee - Chief Architect Global Knowledge )

2009-01-27T21:48:00.009Z

This is Episode 7 of the Get-Scripting podcast. Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about Powershell.

Download it here, subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

Intro:

Ways to learn Powershell - Part 7:

Interview:

Thomas Lee

1. Under the Stairs - a mainly PowerShell blog:
http://tfl09.blogspot.com

2. PowerShell Scripts blog - scripts, scripts and more scripts
http://pshscripts.blogspot.com

3. Chief Architect's corner - related to his work at Global Knowledge.
http://cacorner.blogspot.com

The $20 note Thomas paid up to Jeffrey.

http://www.reskit.net/powershell/swag1.jpg
http://www.reskit.net/powershell/swag2.jpg

Company which offers web services on the cloud

http://www.webservicex.net/WCF/default.aspx

Powershell Tip

Set-PSDebug - strict

Feedback

Send us feedback at

get [dash] scripting [at] hotmail [dot] co [dot] uk

or leave a comment here on the blog

Follow us on Twitter and join our Facebook Group

http://twitter.com/getscripting
http://twitter.com/jonathanmedd
http://twitter.com/alanrenouf

Get-Scripting Facebook Group

Extensive list of Powershell Twitterers

Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 6 - (Ben Pearce - Microsoft Premier Field Engineer)

2008-12-29T15:29:00.003Z

This is Episode 6 of the Get-Scripting podcast. Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about Powershell.

Download it here, subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

Intro:

Ways to learn Powershell - Part 6:

Powershell TFM book 2nd edition.
Powershell releated blogs we read

Interview:

Ben Pearce's blog

Ben's 6 tips for learning Powershell:

#1 - Don't use cmd.exe anymore
#2 - Ed Wilson's Powershell Step-by-step book
#3 - Scripting Guy's Powershell Week
#4 - Beginner's Guide to WMI
#5 - Powershell Cheat Sheet
#6 - Channel 9 quick start

Eureka Script:

Add custom fields to VI client

Christmas scripts:

write-host ("Christmas Day in " + ( (get-date -date 25/12/2008) - (get-date)).TotalDays.tostring('0') + " Days")

write-host ("Christmas Day in " + ( (get-date -date 25/12/2008) - (get-date)).TotalMinutes.tostring('0') + " Minutes")
write-host ("Christmas Day in " + ( (get-date -date 25/12/2008) - (get-date)).TotalSeconds.tostring('0') + " Seconds")

Competition:

Win a signed copy of Jeff Hick's book 'Managing Active Directory With Windows Powershell' .

Fill in some of the speech bubbles in the picture below and send your entries to

get [dash] scripting [at] hotmail [dot] co [dot] uk

Feedback

Send us feedback at

get [dash] scripting [at] hotmail [dot] co [dot] uk

or leave a comment here on the blog

Follow us on Twitter and join our Facebook Group

http://twitter.com/getscripting
http://twitter.com/jonathanmedd
http://twitter.com/alanrenouf

Get-Scripting Facebook Group

Extensive list of Powershell Twitterers

Episode 5 - Competition: Win a print copy of Jeff Hicks' Managing AD with Powershell book

2008-12-02T11:46:00.006Z

In Episode 5 of the podcast we announced details of a competition to fill in some of the speech bubbles above the heads of community members from the Teched Powershell Panel Discussion photo.

Those nice people at Quest have given us a print copy of Jeffrey Hicks' recent book 'Managing Active Directory With Windows Powershell' to give away as a prize - they are also going to get Jeffrey to sign it too.

If you'd like to be in with a chance of winning simply send us some suggestions for what some of the panel members below might be thinking and the one we think is the best will get the book. We've got a few other freebies left over from Teched in the Get-Scripting prize cupboard so there should be a runners up prize too.

Send your entries to:

get [dash] scripting [at] hotmail [dot] co [dot] uk

We'll announce the winner in Episode 6 of the podcast which should be recorded mid-December.

Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 5 - (Dmitry Sotnikov - Quest AD cmdlets and PowerGUI)

2008-11-26T21:26:00.003Z

Episode 5 of the Get-Scripting podcast. Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about Powershell.

Download it here, subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

Intro:

Alan's audit script.

TechEd Powershell Panel Discussion Video:

Download (High res - approx 900MB): http://microsofttech.fr.edgesuite.net/TechEdOnline/Videos/406_high.wmv

Or if you prefer not to crack your monitor / TV screen

Download (Low res): http://microsofttech.fr.edgesuite.net/TechEdOnline/Videos/406_low.wmv

A big thank you goes to PowershellCommunity.org for helping put this discussion panel together. We were joined by:

Ben Pearce - Microsoft
Richard Siddaway - Powershell MVP
Dmitry Sotnikov - Powershell MVP
James O'Neill - Microsoft
Tobias Weltner - Powershell MVP
Jeffrey Snover - Microsoft and Powershell Creator
MoW - Powershell MVP

Teched Powershell Community Dinner photos

Ways to learn Powershell - Part 5:

Powershell TFM book 2nd edition.
Course 6434 "Automating Windows Server 2008 Administration with Windows Powershell".

Course slides

Course demos

Interview:

Dmitry's blog

Quest AD cmdlets

Full list of Microsoft's AD cmdlets

PowerGUI

Competition:

Fill in some of the speech bubbles in the picture below and send your entries to

get [dash] scripting [at] hotmail [dot] co [dot] uk

We will announce details of the prize(s) for the best entries ASAP.

Feedback

Send us feedback at

get [dash] scripting [at] hotmail [dot] co [dot] uk

or leave a comment here on the blog

Follow us on Twitter

http://twitter.com/getscripting
http://twitter.com/jonathanmedd
http://twitter.com/alanrenouf

Get-Scripting Facebook Group

Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 4 - (TechEd EMEA Powershell Panel Discussion )

2008-11-05T01:42:00.006Z

(aka...The one where we discover Jeffrey is a Kung-Fu master and a Kaiser Chiefs backing singer - ruby, ruby, ruby, ruby!)

Welcome to Episode 4 of the Get-Scripting podcast! Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about Powershell.

Download it here, subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

This episode was recorded live on Tuesday 4th November at TechEd EMEA, Barcelona and features only the recorded Powershell Panel Discussion.

Please bear in mind that it was recorded in a large exhibition hall full of people, so there is a lot of background noise going on during the discussion - the content was so good I decided to get this out as I guess an 'out of band' episode and you never know I might even beat the Teched website for which it was also videoed.

A big thank you goes to PowershellCommunity.org for helping put this discussion panel together. We were joined by:

Ben Pearce - Microsoft
Richard Siddaway - Powershell MVP
Dmitry Sotnikov - Powershell MVP
James O'Neill - Microsoft
Tobias Weltner - Powershell MVP
Jeffrey Snover - Microsoft and Powershell Creator
Mow - Powershell MVP

Thanks for listening!

Update 8th November:

We managed to track down a photo on someone's blog.

Feedback

Send us feedback at

get [dash] scripting [at] hotmail [dot] co [dot] uk

or leave a comment here on the blog

Follow us on Twitter

http://twitter.com/getscripting
http://twitter.com/jonathanmedd
http://twitter.com/alanrenouf

Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 3 - (Richard Siddaway - Powershell MVP)

2008-10-30T22:36:00.007Z

Welcome to Episode 3 of the Get-Scripting podcast! Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about Powershell.

Download it here, subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

In this episode we welcome long time friend of the show Alan Renouf as our new co-host - you can find out more about Alan via his blog: http://teckinfo.blogspot.com/

Today's interview is with Richard Siddaway - Powershell MVP.

Blog note links:

Ways to learn Powershell:

Go to a Powershell Usergroup.

UK - Next meeting
Scandanavia - Website
Germany - Website

Interview

Richard Siddaway's Blog

Richard's book, Powershell in Practice

How to add SQL 2008 snappin into your own Powershell Profile

Make Powershell talk to you

$SpVoice = New-Object -Com "SAPI.spvoice"

Function Global:Say { $SpVoice.speak("$Args") | Out-Null }

Say "X"

(Thanks to Andrew Tearle for sending this in.)

Feedback

Send us feedback at

get [dash] scripting [at] hotmail [dot] co [dot] uk

or leave a comment here on the blog

Follow us on Twitter

http://twitter.com/jonathanmedd
http://twitter.com/alanrenouf

My stuff is moving......where and why

2008-10-27T20:21:00.002Z

So with the imminent arrival of the new podcast co-host I decided it would make sense for me to split off my own posts and leave the Get-Scripting blog for the podcast only.

So you can now find my own postings over at:

http://jonathanmedd.blogspot.com

and from now everything on here will be about the podcast.

Speaking of which we shall be recording Episode 3 tomorrow night Tue 28th Oct, so hopefully should have the show out by the end of this week.

70-113: TS: Windows® Server 2008 Active Directory, Configuring - Beta Exam

2008-10-17T13:16:00.003+01:00

After seeing James' post about this exam I decided to give it a shot - given the fact that you have a pretty good chance of getting 3 free exam vouchers valid for any other MS test it seemed like a useful way to spend a couple of hours.

The interesting thing about this exam is the interactive lab sections. For a long time in some corners the MS exams have been looked down on for people's ability to pass them without having much experience of the products themselves. This was particularly so back in the NT4 days, although the situation seems to have improved a fair amount with the 2003 track.

Taking this forward MS seems keen to add a more interactive element to the exam, i.e. gearing it more to the use of the product, rather than just theory. This is obviously a good step since it should give the certification more credibility.

Having passed the upgrade for the MCSE 2003 back in March which includes a third on AD 2008, I decided to not spend too much time preparing for it, just a general refresh, so here's how it went. (Obviously I cannot reveal details of the exam, but I can give you a flavour of the experience)

Format:

There were two performance labs to complete and then a third section with the standard multiple choice type questions - each section had 60 minutes to complete it.

Problem #1

So I'm all geared to start the first lab and click the launch button to start it. It appears to be connecting to a virtual machine on the Internet, similar to the test labs available on the Technet website, but it fails to connect. So I try again, and again, and again...eventually give up after about the 10th time. I call in the exam moderator, show her the problem and she suggests I continue to the next section and leave comments about the problems.

Problem #2

So I continue to the next section, it warns me I can't go back and then presents the comments screen. I intend to leave some notes, but for some reason the keys I type don't match what appears on the screen! So I give up with that too.

Problem #3

So I'm now on Lab 2, hit start lab, it tries to connect and fails with the same 'lab not available' message as Lab 1. At this point I'm starting to think I've wasted my time, its not going to work, maybe even this machine doesn't have web access. Give it another couple of tries, still nothing. Just about to give up, one more try and it works - the lab begins, hurray! I've never been so pleased to start an exam. :-)

(I guess that's why it's a beta exam)

The lab works as smoothly as you would expect connecting to a VM over the Internet. You are presented with a set of tasks which you can complete in any order during the time limit - this is useful because if you get stuck on one you can just skip it and come back to it later.

The difficulty level ranged from the fairly basic to some where more advanced knowledge would be required, i.e. knowledge of command line tools - overall I felt it was a good mix.

Tip #1: If you get stuck, don't forget although there is no Internet access you do have access to Windows Help. :-)

Once complete, it was then on to the final section which was very familiar to the multiple choice style of exam if you have taken MS exams before.

Funnily enough I felt I did a lot better on the interactive section than the multi-choice questions and this has left me with the opinion that this is definately a good route for the exam style to take since it tests your ability to use the product, rather than just memorising factual information.

Overall, I'm pleased the exams are heading in this direction, they just need to iron out the issues connecting to the labs because you really wouldn't want the experience I had if you were taking the exam for real.

Episode 2 - Competition

2008-10-12T22:20:00.003+01:00

In Episode 2 of the Podcast those great guys at Specops gave me a couple of the below magic pens to give away. Not only are they a nice pen, but they also contain a 1GB USB drive and a laser pointer.

So if you want to win one all you have to do is send in your favourite Powershell cmdlet and why. We'll pick the best couple and announce the winners (x2) in Episode 3 (recording towards the end of Oct). We've had a few entries so far, but there's still time to send yours in. Send them to

get [dash] scripting [at] hotmail [dot] co [dot] uk

Also, I'm pleased to say joining us from the next episode will be a regular new co-host to beef up the Powershell knowledge on the show. He's UK based and is a well known member of the Powershell community through his forum postings and blog. If you want to take a guess at who it is then send an email to the usual address before the next show and we'll draw any correct entries out of a hat and dig something out of the Get-Scripting prize cupboard for you.

Clue 1: He has quite an interest in VMware.

get [dash] scripting [at] hotmail [dot] co [dot] uk

Powershell UK User Group November Meeting

2008-10-08T10:41:00.003+01:00

Richard has confirmed details of the next Powershell UK User Group Meeting.

Date: Thursday 20th November
Time: 6.30 - 9.30pm
Location: Memphis Room, Building 3, Microsoft Campus, Thames Valley Park, Reading

Agenda:

Powershell Introduction: Objects and get-member
PowerGUI SQL Server Reporting Services powerpack
Powershell in SQL Server 2008

If you want to attend please send an email to powershell-uk@hotmail.co.uk so that you can have a badge waiting for you on arrival.

These are always great events and are well worth attending for anyone with an interest in Powershell (or even SQL this time!). There'll be free pizza too. :-)

Barcelona....it was the first time that we met.

2008-10-07T21:21:00.002+01:00

I just found out I won I competition I entered, run by Technet Plus subscription, for a place at tech.ed in Barcelona next month! This is so exciting!

I keep re-reading the email because I can't quite believe that I won!

I'm going to be able to get such great material for the podcast........

The only thing is I think on my budget (i.e. the reason I had no chance of going in the first place) I'll have to hitch-hike my way there and stay at the YMCA, but who cares. :-)

Specops Remote Admin CTP

2008-10-01T09:23:00.011+01:00

So I recently saw a demo of Specops Remote Admin CTP, an update on the very popular GPUpdate tool, which is now based around Powershell. I was particularly excited by it because they have taken a similar approach to the Exchange 2007 team , i.e. build the GUI tool on top of Powershell cmdlets and show in the tool the Powershell commands which are running to complete your GUI actions. This approach is great because it gets people interested in Powershell and shows them how simple it is to be very effective with it.

There are two flavours, GPUpdate 2.0 and Remote Admin. GPUpdate is free, Remote Admin is currently CTP and will be chargeable on full release.

The Setup Assistant gets you up and running by checking if you meet the system requirements and installing them for you if you don't have them. Basically you need .Net 3.5, Powershell and register a Display Specifier in AD.

Once installed, within ADUC right-click a computer and you will see Specops Remote Admin.

Choosing Specops Remote Admin displays a list of the tools you can use.

Selecting one of the tools shows the available options you can execute or schedule and best of all it shows the Powershell code which is running the command!

Of course you can use all of these tools from the command line. First you need to add the Specops snapins to your profile.

add-pssnapin Specopssoft.GpUpdate
add-pssnapin Specopssoft.Adx

Then you can find the commands available to you from Specops.

So, say you want to get all the machines in a particular OU to check in with the WSUS server, its as simple as:

Try it out for yourselves here. You can also listen to Thorbjörn Sjövold CTO of Special Operations Software talk about the tool in Episode 2 of the Get-Scripting Podcast.

Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 2 - (If you don't learn Powershell, tomorrow you'll be serving fries in McDonalds)

2008-09-23T08:57:00.005+01:00

Welcome to Episode 2 of the Get-Scripting podcast! Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about Powershell.

Download it here, subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

In this episode we have an interview with Thorbjörn Sjövold CTO of Special Operations Software.

Blog note links:

Ways to learn Powershell:

Windows Powershell Cookbook - Lee Holmes.

Powerscripting Podcast - Check out their back catalogue if you are new to Powershell, there is a lot of great content for you. Recent interviews include Jeffery Snover, Jeffery Hicks......upcoming is an interview with Don Jones and Greg Shields.

Interview

Special Operations Software

New version of Gpupdate based on Powershell

Specops Command - Powershell remoting through Group Policy

Other Specops products we talked about

Scandinavian Powershell Usergroup

Favourite cmdlets

Get-Date

Eureka Scripts

Jon Noble - Setting AD logon hours in Powershell, or "How to disable an AD user account and still allow delivery to the Exchange mailbox"

Dmitry Sotnikov - Setting Demo AD environments

Favourite Cmdlets

Send us what your favourite cmdlet is and why, and we'll enter you into the prize draw for Specops USB Pens and Mug.

get [dash] scripting [at] hotmail [dot] co [dot] uk

Feedback

Send us feedback at

get [dash] scripting [at] hotmail [dot] co [dot] uk

or leave a comment here on the blog

Exchange 2003, WMI, AD and Powershell - Part 5 (Querying AD for Exchange 2003 Information)

2008-09-10T13:12:00.005+01:00

In previous posts in this series we have looked in particular at some of the Exchange 2003 WMI classes. So far this has required manual specification of which Exchange server you want to retrieve info from; wouldn't it be nice if you could use Powershell to find all the Exchange 2003 servers in your environment then run the WMI query against the results? Fortunately for us Exchange 2003 stores a lot of configuration information in Active Directory so we can query AD to retrieve what we need. There is a great article here which details how you can do this. We do the following:

Create a new directory object using .Net for the current AD domain.

$root= New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry("LDAP://RootDSE")

Use ADSI to get the configuration partition of AD.

$cfgNC = [adsi]("LDAP://" + $root.Get("configurationNamingContext"))

Create a directory search object

$search = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher($cfgNC)

Filter on the Exchange Server object class - the below image should help illustrate what we are doing here. (other classes you can search on can be found here)

$search.filter = '(objectclass=msExchExchangeServer)'

Use the FindAll method to execute the search.

$ExchServer = $search.FindAll()

Finally, return the names of all the results.

$ExchServer | foreach {$_.properties.name}

Which in the example from the screenshot would produce a result:

EXCH

You can now combine this with any of the previous WMI scripts to run them against all the Exchange servers in your environment, e.g. for Top 10 largest mailboxes on each server:

$root= New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry("LDAP://RootDSE")
$cfgNC = [adsi]("LDAP://" + $root.Get("configurationNamingContext"))
$search = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher($cfgNC)
$search.filter = '(objectclass=msExchExchangeServer)'
$ExchServer = $search.FindAll()

foreach ($server in $ExchServer)
{
$ExchangeServers = $ExchangeServers + $ExchServer | foreach {$_.properties.name}
}
foreach ($computer in $ExchangeServers) {
Get-Wmiobject -namespace root\MicrosoftExchangeV2 -class Exchange_Mailbox -computer $computer | sort-object Size -Descending | select-object -First 10 MailboxDisplayName,Servername,StorageGroupName,StoreName,Size}

IKEA, Bjorn Borg, Henrik Larsson, Powershell.........the Get-Scripting Podcast heads to Sweden.

2008-09-03T22:32:00.006+01:00

In the interests of audio quality (ok so they have invited me over and are funding the trip) I'll be interviewing the great guys at Special Operations Software in person in Stockholm for Episode 2 of the podcast. If there's anything you always wanted to ask them then let me know.

Coinciding with the visit they are helping to run a Powershell event at Microsoft in Sweden. This will be a great event to attend if you are in the area and / or able to make it there since Richard Siddaway from the UK Powershell user group will be presenting the event.

In case you can't speak Swedish, in the morning is an official Technet event (sign up here) and in the afternoon is the inaugural meeting of the Swedish / Nordic Powershell usergroup.

Update 10/09/08: the Scandanavian Powershell Usergroup now has a website!

Since I'll be in town for the interview I'll be tagging along to the event, hopefully I might bump into some of the listeners to the podcast there - if you are going please say hello if you see me. I'll be the other English guy there who isn't at the front of the room. :-)

Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 1

2008-08-27T00:12:00.004+01:00

Welcome to Episode 1 of the Get-Scripting podcast! Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about Powershell.

Download it here , subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

In this epsiode we have part 2 of an interview with James O'Neill from Microsoft - we talk about Cmdlets v Providers, V2 CTP and the Powershell Community.

Blog note links:

Ways to learn Powershell:

Powershell Step by Step - Ed Wilson is available as a free eBook. (Look on the Special Offers tab)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update 29/08: A helpful listener Brad Bruce has pointed out the above link no longer has the ebook available. I checked it out and he is correct. :-( It was there last week when I prepared the show and has been for around the last year, unfortunately I never got round to downloading it myself - if anyone has it can they please get in contact and I can then pass it around to anyone who wants it.

Maybe they removed it because so many people tried to get it after listening to the podcast!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2008 Scripting Games

Interview

James O'Neill's blog

OCS Powerpack for Powergui. Authors blog

Eureka Scripts

Check Active Directory Latency - Brandon Shell

Exporting Virtual Infrastructure Information to MS Word - Alan Renouf

Selling Powershell to IS Management

Don Jones / Jeffrey Snover video

Powershell Event / Usergroup in Sweden

Sign up here

Richard's Blog post about it

Send us feedback at

get [dash] scripting [at] hotmail [dot] co [dot] uk

or leave a comment here on the blog

Exchange 2003, WMI and Powershell - Part 4.5 (Counting Users in Storage Groups and Mailbox Stores)

2008-08-26T11:51:00.004+01:00

OK, so this wasn't going to be in the original series I was writing, but an issue came up at work where I needed to quickly find the total number of users in each Storage Group.

Naturally I turned to Powershell for the solution.

Just supply the names of the Storage Groups in a text file, use Powershell to open the text file and for each of the Storage Groups use the Exchange_Mailbox class and filter on the Storage Group name. Use the feature .count to just return the number of users rather than any properties and write to the screen the result.

$StorageGroups = Get-Content c:\Scripts\StorageGroups.txt
foreach ($SG in $StorageGroups){
$Total = (Get-Wmiobject -namespace root\MicrosoftExchangeV2 -class Exchange_Mailbox -computer ExchangeServerName -filter "StorageGroupName = '$SG'").count
Write-Host $SG ":" $Total "users"
}

Which produces something along the lines of:

Storage Group 01 : 152 users
Storage Group 02 : 373 users
Storage Group 03 : 259 users
Storage Group 04 : 220 users

Taking this one step futher you can drill down into the Mailbox Stores with similar code (this time with the names of the Mailbox Stores in a text file) and find how many users on each store:

$MailboxStores = Get-Content c:\Scripts\MailboxStores.txt
foreach ($Store in $MailboxStores){
$Total = (Get-Wmiobject -namespace root\MicrosoftExchangeV2 -class Exchange_Mailbox -computer ExchangeServerName -filter "Storename = '$Store'").count
Write-Host $Store ":" $Total "users"
}

Which gives you the result:

Mailbox Store 01 : 23 users
Mailbox Store 02 : 32 users
Mailbox Store 03 : 41 users
Mailbox Store 04 : 30 users
Mailbox Store 05 : 26 users
Mailbox Store 06 : 39 users
etc.............

Exchange 2003, WMI and Powershell - Part 4 (Disconnected Mailboxes)

2008-08-08T12:57:00.004+01:00

In parts 1 , 2 , 3 we looked at retrieving mailbox information from Exchange 2003 using WMI and Powershell.

In part 4 we're going to take another look at this topic area for something slightly more advanced - how to get a list of all mailboxes which have been deleted, but are still in the time frame for 'Keep Deleted Mailboxes for: x days'.

A typical scenario might be a mailbox has been deleted incorrectly and you need to re-connect it to an AD account; however, since the AD account has gone, how do you know which Mailbox Store was the home for the mailbox?

In the Exchange management GUI you would need to browse through each mailbox store looking for mailboxes marked with the red cross. Not too bad a job if you only have one mailbox store, but if that number is in the 10's of Mailbox Stores then its a pretty tedious task.

Step forward Powershell!

Again use the Exchange_Mailbox class and this time look for the DateDiscoveredAbsentInDS value. This value gets populated after the mailbox has been marked for deletion. We look for a value which begins with "2", i.e. the mailbox has been deleted sometime after the year 2000 (there may be a better way to do this), and return info about each mailbox in this state, including the Servername and Mailbox Store Name so that you can easily track the mailbox down.

Get-Wmiobject -namespace root\MicrosoftExchangeV2 -class Exchange_Mailbox -computer ExchangeServerName | where { $_.DateDiscoveredAbsentInDS -like '2*' } | sort-object MailboxDisplayName | ft MailboxDisplayName,ServerName,StorageGroupName,StoreName,Size,DateDiscoveredAbsentInDS

Update 12/08/08:

Thanks to Shay Levy who has come back with a better way to do this!

"Using a -filter parameter which makes your query run on the server and return only the relevant mailbox objects". You should find that this significantly improves the speed of the query. Check the comments for this post for full details.

Get-Wmiobject -namespace root\MicrosoftExchangeV2 -class Exchange_Mailbox -computer ExchangeServerName -filter "DateDiscoveredAbsentInDS is not null" | sort-object MailboxDisplayName | ft MailboxDisplayName,ServerName,StorageGroupName,StoreName,Size

Get-Scripting Podcast - how frequent?

2008-08-08T12:53:00.002+01:00

A few people have asked "how often we are going to release new episodes of the podcast"?

We hope to record one every month, so all being well look for Episode 1 in the week beginning Monday 25th August.........

Get-Scripting Podcast Pilot Episode

2008-07-29T21:39:00.006+01:00

Welcome to the pilot episode of the Get-Scripting podcast! Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about Powershell.

Download it here , subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader.

In the first epsiode we have part 1 of an interview with James O'Neill from Microsoft - we talk about Powershell, and in particular the work he has done with Hyper-V.

(It's a pilot OK, so bear with us as we get to grips with things like editing and publishing podcasts :-) )

Blog note links:

Ways to learn Powershell:

Download Powershell

Powershell Getting Started Guide

Interview

James O'Neill's blog

Hyper-V functions on Codeplex

Send us feedback at

get [dash] scripting [at] hotmail [dot] co [dot] uk

or leave a comment here on the blog

Exchange 2003, WMI and Powershell - Part 3 (Mailboxes Over 2GB)

2008-07-25T15:56:00.002+01:00

In parts 1 and 2 we looked at retrieving mailbox information from Exchange 2003 using WMI and Powershell.

In part 3 we're going to take another look at this topic area for another potential common request along the lines of 'can you give me a list of all mailboxes over 2GB?'

Again we use the MicrosoftExchangeV2 WMI namespace and the Exchange_Mailbox class and this time use the where-object cmdlet to only return results where the size of the mailbox is greater than 2GB - obviously you can change this value to your own needs. (Note: the value is specified in KB)

Once again very simple to achieve a really effective result.

Get-Wmiobject -namespace root\MicrosoftExchangeV2 -class Exchange_Mailbox -computer ExchangeServerName | where-object { $_.Size -gt 2097152 } | sort-object MailboxDisplayName}

Exchange 2003, WMI and Powershell - Part 2 (Top 10 Largest Mailboxes Per Server)

2008-07-24T11:49:00.003+01:00

In part 1 I looked at how to retrieve mailbox information from Exchange 2003 using WMI and Powershell.

Taking this on one step further along the lines of your manager asks for a list of the biggest Exchange mailboxes, we can use a similar command to get the mailbox info, sort the list by size and then use the -First parameter of the Select-Object cmdlet to bring back only the top 10 say.

Its as easy as that. Of course you could then output the data to a csv file using an additional pipeline so that the info is easy to forward on.

Get-Wmiobject -namespace root\MicrosoftExchangeV2 -class Exchange_Mailbox -computer ExchangeServerName | sort-object Size -Descending | select-object -First 10 MailboxDisplayName,Servername,StorageGroupName,StoreName,Size | export-csv c:\scripts\top10.csv

Exchange 2003, WMI and Powershell - Part 1 (Get Mailbox Info)

2008-07-22T11:59:00.004+01:00

OK, so I had some fun making a Powergui Powerpack for Exchange 2003, but its probably about time I wrote about how to do this natively in Powershell.

There is a lot of information you can get out of Exchange 2003 using WMI. Yikes, you might say if you previously thought about doing that with VBScript; however, with Powershell its easy!

We simply use the Get-WMIObject cmdlet, use the ExchangeV2 namespace and Exchange_Mailbox class and connect to the Exchange Server in question.

(You can find all about the Exchange_Mailbox class over on MSDN. Sysadmins amongst you might think MSDN is only for developers, but the Exchange WMI pages are pretty straightforward and all contain a very nice example in VBScript where you can figure most stuff out which is available to you.)

This will return you all the mailbox objects on that server. We then use some basic sorting and selecting to present the info nicely.

Get-WMIObject -namespace root\MicrosoftExchangeV2 -class Exchange_Mailbox -computer ExchangeServerName | sort-object MailboxDisplayName | format-table MailboxDisplayName,Servername,StorageGroupName,StoreName,Size

Checking AD replication latency with Powershell

2008-07-17T10:45:00.003+01:00

Having suffered from some AD replication issues in the past (the dreaded lingering objects), its been at the back of my mind on how to keep an eye on replication between all the DC's.

Also a frequent question from the helpdesk goes along the lines of they've made a change to somebody's AD account and how long is it going to be before that change will make it around to all of the DC's? In the past I've kind of stuck my finger in the air and given an approximate time based on replication intervals in the site links.

So how about some Powershell which checks AD replication latency for you (and at the same time confirms all DC's are replicating) so you can give a more precise figure on how long it takes for a change to replicate the whole way around?

Brandon at the BSonPosh blog has a frankly brilliant post with a script you can run which creates a temporary contact in AD, then polls each DC until it appears, records the time taken and finally removes the test contact.

For me this was a Snover moment (i.e. the top of my head exploded!), this is so useful for me its unreal, and possibly the best bit: my finger in the air estimate was pretty darn close. :-)

PowerGUI / Exchange 2003

2008-06-26T20:49:00.003+01:00

I've used the PowerGUI script editor as my editor of choice ever since I started using Powershell, but I never really got the PowerGUI thing.

Recently at the UK Powershell User Group we had the brilliant opportunity to visit Quest in the UK and be presented to by Dmitry Sotnikov about PowerGUI and the AD cmdlets. Before going I figured I'd better get to grips with PowerGUI so spent some time watching the online tutorial videos and started playing around with it.

Doing this combined with what I picked up from the Quest visit it started to dawn on me how useful this could be. It had frustrated me for a while that although there is great support for Powershell in Exchange 2007 there wasn't anything native for Exchange 2003, which is what we use in our environment.; so I thought why not try and make a PowerGUI powerpack for it.

There's a fair bit on the web about using WMI to manage Exchange 2003, in particular a very helpful article from Dmitry.

So with a little bit of playing I have posted version 0.1 to the PowerGUI powerpack library. With a bit of work I think it could be improved a lot (I have no actions or links yet, just script nodes), but I'd be interested in any feedback so leave me a comment if you've used it. I know there's a lot of uptake with Exchange 2007 now, but I'm sure there's plenty of 2003 sites still out there.

Even while putting the powerpack together I discovered things I could manage with Powershell so easily which would be really tricky to do through the Exchange Management GUI - my favourite is Get-DisconnectedMailboxes.

Quite often I need to find mailboxes which have had the AD account deleted and are waiting to expire from Exchange - not easy to do when the AD record has gone so you don't know which database they were on (we have over Exchange 40 databases). With the below Powershell WMI script it is dead easy to get a list of all disconnected mailboxes and which database they are in by using the DataDiscoveredAbsentInDS property:

Get-Wmiobject -namespace root\MicrosoftExchangeV2 -class Exchange_Mailbox -computer $computer | where { $_.DateDiscoveredAbsentInDS -like '2*' } | sort-object MailboxDisplayName | select-object MailboxDisplayName,Servername,StorageGroupName,StoreName,Size,DateDiscoveredAbsentInDS}

PowerGUI then displays the results in a really nice view!

I think I'll be using PowerGUI a lot from now on...........

HP Lights-Out Authentication With Active Directory

2008-06-16T13:06:00.005+01:00

OK, so its not exactly scripting, but I just spent a bunch of time getting this working in our lab environment before a production rollout. Hit a number of not very obvious gotchas so thought I would put the information out there to assist anyone else trying to get the same thing working.

If you're not familiar with it then the HP Lights-Out management processor is typically a built-in (it used to be a seperate PCI card) component in Proliant servers which enables remote management of the physical machine independent of the OS. For instance, you can effectively access the power button or the console of the machine on a server in a remote office which has become unresponsive. Full details here. The feature which usually impresses people the most is the ability to view the console as the machine is booting up - remember those times when you rebooted a remote server and it didn't come back up because it was waiting for an F1 key press which you couldn't press!

We are looking at deploying this to all of our AD DC's, which are typically the only server at branch offices and can involve long and costly trips for engineers should the server need maintenance. One requirement we have for the project is auditing and accountability, i.e. if an engineer has used the tool to power off a DC we may need to know who did it. Consequently we examined in the lab how to use the authentication that HP Lights-Out provides against Active Directory.

First of all here are the requirements for what you will need:

HP servers with iLo enabled management processors. For advanced features like Remote Control you need an advanced license which typically can be purchased for around £80 per machine.
LDAP directory, we're using Active Directory. You will need admin accounts which belong to a group which iLo can use.
ilo wants to authenticate over SSL so you will need to enable your Active Directory to respond to LDAP requests on SSL which it does not do by default. (detailed info to follow)
HP Directories Support management software - download from the Proilant driver page.
A brick wall to bash you head against when you try to figure out the (undocumented) format to specify the login name as.

iLo
-------

Get the latest Proliant support pack (currently 8.0) onto your server, there are some OS iLo updates in there. Update iLo itself to the latest firmware release. Patch the iLo card into your network, give it a DNS name and network settings - Tip: make sure the DNS server settings are correct (obvious, but I had it incorrect which led to some headscratching later on)

Active Directory
-------

Download and ingest the Integrating HP Proliant Lights-Out processors with Microsoft Active Directory guide. Note there is an option to extend your AD schema to get some extra features, this blog post is around the schema-free integration.

You will need to enable SSL over LDAP on your DC's. There's a KB which makes it look very simple and in the main it is. Two tips from the field:

You may need to reboot a DC before it will pick up the certificate.
Add the Domain Controllers group to the CERTSVC_DCOM_ACCESS group as detailed in this KB article.

HP Lights-Out Directories Migration Utility
--------

Run this tool as per the ilo AD guide - note: maybe it's just me, but it is not intuitve at all, you should be able to figure it out though. Essentially it will configure most of the settings you need, its just not obvious what to put in there sometimes.

A key gotcha later on is the naming context so make sure you populate the Directory User Context with the path to where you admin accounts and the 'ilo-admins' group which contains them lie.

Directory testing
-------

Login to iLo via the webpage at its configured IP address and the local iLo Administrator account (you may want to keep this as an emergency account if directory login is not working). Navigate to Administration, Security, Directory and you should see settings you specified during the migration utility. Check these settings are what you expect and then use the very useful Test Directory Settings link at the bottom.

Obviously, this will test all the settings you have input and tell you anything which is incorrect. The key point here is that you have to input a username and password to use for the testing, what it does not tell you is that it is expecting the username in the format of the DN, e.g. CN=test admin,OU=admin accounts,dc=testdomain,dc=com (of course this is not in the iLo AD guide!)

Once you have successfully passed all of the tests you can then logout and log back in with an AD admin account. If you have correctly populated your directory search context you can use either:

test admin (note the space) or
CN=test admin

otherwise you will have to specify the full path, i.e. CN=test admin,OU=admin accounts,dc=testdomain,dc=com .

Final note:

If you specify a search context of @testdomain.com some newgroup posts alledge that you can then login as test.admin, i.e. the accountname , but I couldn't get this to work.

Do I need all the transaction log files Exchange creates? Part 2

2008-06-09T13:22:00.003+01:00

Back in April I posted about what to do if the disk your Exchange transaction log files reside on runs out of space. This was all done through the eseutil utility.

If you are not comfortable with this tool or would simply prefer a GUI-based way to do it, its possible to acheive the same result through the Exchange Troubleshooting Assistant (2003 or 2007).

There is a great post here which documents how to do it.

Something tells me I may well need to use this again sometime in the future.......

Compare-Object gotcha

2008-06-06T13:21:00.002+01:00

A while back I used Compare-Object to examine differences between two AD groups. Unsuccessfully. The results appeared to come back inconsistently with known matches showing incorrect, double-entries etc.

At that point I unfortunately ran out of time to look into it any further. However, I have just read a great post from Dimitry which probably explains why it happens.

Its to do with SyncWindow parameter - basically Powershell by default only looks at items + or - 5 elements away. You can use -SyncWindow to extend this to what you need.

Powerscripting Podcast

2008-06-03T16:50:00.002+01:00

Found this the other day - great resource for what's going on in the Powershell World. New episodes weekly which is excellent, I like regular content.

Available through iTunes as well which is v. handy, easier than manual download of MP3s.

Currently working through the back catalogue which has some great tips on learning Powershell.

Storage VMotion Plugin for VI client

2008-05-17T20:20:00.002+01:00

Got pointed in the direction of this at a VMWare seminar last week. Previous storage vmotion was only on the command line from a downloaded VM appliance.

The very nice guys at Lost Creations have developed a great GUI plugin for the same job.

Thanks guys!

Powershell on Server Core

2008-05-17T20:16:00.002+01:00

So you thought you couldn't install Powershell on Windows Server 2008 Server Core install?

Don't think too soon, Dimitry has the answer for you!

This is unsupported, but great for a testing environment.

More on Password Policies

2008-05-06T16:24:00.003+01:00

As touched on in the previous post, doing a lot of work with password policies at the minute.

Say you need to find the date all the members of a group last changed their password, below is all you need to do:

Get-QADGroupMember 'domainname\groupname' | Get-QADUser -IncludeAllProperties | ft displayname,pwdlastset

The pwdlastset parameter will (obviously) give you the time and date the password was last checked. It's pretty straightforward moving on from there to start doing things like finding which of these users' passwords will expire shortly.

Password Policy Details / Updated Quest AD Cmdlets

2008-05-06T11:30:00.003+01:00

Quest have released an updated version (1.1.0) of their AD cmdlets.

Published as part of the update is the ability to find details of the default domain password policy, previously a little tricky to get hold of.

A simple:

Get-QADObject domainname/ | format-list *

exposes the information you can obtain.

We've been doing a lot of work recently with password policies and

(Get-QADObject domainname/).MaximumPasswordAge

makes some of this work now a snap!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update:

Or even easier

(Get-QADRootDSE).Domain | Format-List Name, *Password*, *Lockout*

Name : springfield
MinimumPasswordAge : 7 days
MaximumPasswordAge : 90 days
PasswordHistoryLength : 10 passwords remembered
MinimumPasswordLength : 6 characters
LockoutDuration : 30 minutes
LockoutTreshold : 5 invalid logon attempts
ResetLockoutCounterAfter : 30 minutes

Thanks Mr Sotnikov!

Do I need all the transaction log files Exchange creates?

2008-04-22T10:37:00.004+01:00

Excellent posting here about Exchange transaction log files, in particular what to do if your transaction logs disk fills up.

www.exchangerecovery.org

Kind of handy when you come back to work after a week and the log file disk is full. ;-)

The main point I got from it was the fact that you do not necessarily need all of the transaction logs for a storage group. So say if your disk has filled up with transaction logs you can run eseutil to find out which log files you actually need and move the rest to a temporary location. This should then buy you some time to run a backup to flush the rest out properly.

Disabling Outlook Web Access on AD accounts

2008-04-07T12:35:00.006+01:00

A request came up asking, "If we need to could we disable Outlook Web Access for a particuar list of users?"

After some digging around and some great help from Shay Levy on the Powergui message board I was able to come up with the following:

Set-QADUser 'springfield\homer.simpson' -ObjectAttributes @{ProtocolSettings='HTTP§0§1§§§§§§'}

If you need to disable more than one of the options it would be

Set-QADUser 'springfield\homer.simpson' -ObjectAttributes @{ProtocolSettings='HTTP§0§1§§§§§§,IMAP40§1§§§§§'}

The options detailed on the 'Exchange Features' tab of an AD account are stored in the ProtocolSettings field. If you look at that field in Adsiedit, you will see which options have been disabled, if any. From there you can grab the HTTP,IMAP etc string that you need.

More info here:
Making bulk protocolSettings changes

Add Users to an AD group from a CSV file

2008-03-28T09:49:00.004Z

So I had a text file containing data in the following format:

username1.xxx.xxx.xxx.companyname

username2.xxx.xxx.xxx.companyname

username3.xxx.xxx.xxx.companyname

basically Novell usernames.

These accounts have equivalent usernames in Active Directory in the format

username1

username2

username3

ie. everything after the first dot is removed.

The task is to open up the text file, convert the Novell usernames to the AD format and then add each user to a group. With a bit of help from a post of Richard Siddaway's (http://richardsiddaway.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!43CFA46A74CF3E96!822.entry) the below script does the job.

(As usual the Quest AD cmdlets are required)

# Open the text file, split out each username at the first '.' and keep the first part of each split.
$users = Get-Content C:\Scripts\UserList.csv | %{$_.split(".")[0]}

# For each username get the user's AD DN and add the user to the specified group.
foreach ($a in $users)
{
Get-QADUser -Identity $a | Add-QADGroupMember -Identity 'domainname\groupname'
}

ADMT and Windows Server 2008

2008-03-24T15:17:00.001Z

Need to migrate from 2003 to 2008 using ADMT 3.0? Looks like you might be able to do it before the 3.1 release which supports 2008. Some great info here:

http://blogs.technet.com/ad/archive/2008/03/10/admt-and-server-2008.aspx

VMware Powershell Cmdlets

2008-03-18T09:53:00.003Z

These are going to be seriously useful.......

http://blogs.vmware.com/vipowershell/

I've been trying them out with some basic Get-VM commands and it is so easy to get info out of your VM infrastructure.

HP, VMM and Powershell

2008-03-14T16:32:00.001Z

Really interesting webcast here on Virtual Machine Manager and Powershell

http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032369390&CountryCode=US

Find Last Logon Date

2008-03-07T16:22:00.004Z

This script will find the last logon date for a supplied user on each DC in your domain and output to a text file. You can then pull the text file say into Excel and sort on the date column to find when the user last logged in.

(You need the Quest AD cmdlets to run this one)

$DomainControllers = Get-QADComputer -computerrole domainController

foreach ($DC in $DomainControllers)

{
$a = Get-QADUser -Service $DC.name 'domain\user'
$dc.name +" " +$a.lastlogon | Out-File -Append C:\Scripts\LastLogon.txt
}

Scripting Games Results

2008-03-05T10:50:00.001Z

That was fun! Didn't do too bad for a beginner.....

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/funzone/games/games08/psbscores.mspx

Send Welcome Email

2008-02-19T12:24:00.004Z

Wouldn't it be nice to send your new users an email welcoming them to the company and providing them with some info about how things work. Anyway, I had a request to do this and since I don't think you can do it natively within Exchange 2003 I turned straight away to Powershell.

So, all you need to do is run a daily sceduled task which calls the below Powershell script. It finds the current and next days's dates, searches AD for users created between those dates (i.e. on the current day) and sends an email to the users it finds with the relevant info attached.

(Note: You need the Quest AD cmdlets installed unless you want to use ADSI for the AD search part.)

Doing the search by specifiying the exact date didn't seem to work very successfully. Digging around the Internet revealed the correct format to get the dates into and also searching between the two adjacent dates.

#Find today's and tomorrow's dates and store them in the 'yyyyMMdd}000000.0Z' format
$dayStart = "{0:yyyyMMdd}000000.0Z" -f (Get-Date)
$dayEnd = "{0:yyyyMMdd}000000.0Z" -f ((Get-Date).AddDays(1))

#Find AD users created between the two dates
$newuser = Get-QADUser -searchroot 'springfield.local/userou' -LdapFilter "(&(whenCreated>=$dayStart)(whenCreated<=$dayEnd))" -size 0

#Find the email address for each of the users and send a mail to them with the WelcomeTo.doc attachment
foreach ($address in $newuser)
{
$recipient = $address.mail
$sender = "sender@domain.com"
$server = "smtpservername"
$file = "path to attachment"
$subject = "subject"
$body = "body text"
$msg = new-object System.Net.Mail.MailMessage $sender, $recipient, $subject, $body
$attachment = new-object System.Net.Mail.Attachment $file
$msg.Attachments.Add($attachment)
$client = new-object System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient $server
$client.Credentials = [System.Net.CredentialCache]::DefaultNetworkCredentials
$client.Send($msg)
}

Scripting Games 2008

2008-02-13T22:54:00.000Z

Scripting Games 2008 - looking forward to it. Entering the Powershell Beginners divison which should be interesting!

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/funzone/games/default.mspx

Bye bye my vbscripts?

2008-02-13T21:46:00.000Z

OK, so I've moved onto Powershell these days, but I thought I'd start my blog posting with one of my favourites. Its adapted from a great idea at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/resources/qanda/apr05/hey0429.mspx and essentially makes the description field of your computer accounts dynamically populated.

Why might you want to do this you ask?

Well, have you ever needed to find a computer name easily without needing to get the user to find it out? This script if run at login will populate the description field of the computer account with: username, current AD site, make and model of machine, time logged in, e.g.

Joe Bloggs logged on in Paris using HP 6710b, 08:30.

Simply sort your computer accounts by the description column and hey presto easy to find the computer the user is logged into. Simple, but very effective.

I also used it to easily sort computers into separate OU's for laptops and desktops.

On Error Resume Next
Set objSysInfo = CreateObject("ADSystemInfo")

Set objUser = GetObject("LDAP://" & objSysInfo.UserName)
Set objComputer = GetObject("LDAP://" & objSysInfo.ComputerName)
objSitename = objSysInfo.SiteName

strComputer = "."
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_ComputerSystem")

For Each objItem in colItems
strManufacturer = objItem.Manufacturer
strModel = objItem.Model
Next

strMessage = objUser.CN & " logged on in " & objSitename & " using " & strManufacturer & ", " & strModel & " " & Now & "."

objComputer.Description = strMessage
objComputer.SetInfo

(By the way you'll need to add the 'Write description' property on the OU(s) where your computer accounts reside to something like Authenticated Users.)