A little while back I posted a Powershell 1.0 script to backup all the GPOs in a domain. Now that Powershell 2.0 is available together with the Group Policy module it is much easier to script Group Policy tasks. The attached script is basically a re-write of my previous script, but now using the… Read More: Powershell 2.0 Script to Backup GPOs »
The Get-MailboxStatistics cmdlet is great for showing a range of detailed information about the mailboxes in your organisation. Sometimes you need to pare down the information to just the really useful stuff (such as mailbox size, item count, etc.) and push it to a CSV file. Here’s one that I find helpful: get-exchangeserver… Read More: Powershell one-liner for gathering mailbox stats »
If you’re creating contact objects in Active Directory the Exchange cmdlets New-MailContact, Set-MailContact and Set-Contact are usually sufficient. On the other hand I haven’t found a way using these cmdlets to set all the attributes that I might need. For example, the “description” attribute doesn’t appear to feature anywhere. Things have obviously changed with the… Read More: Bulk Create Active Directory Contact Objects »
The other day I applied Update Rollup 1 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 in my test lab and wanted to check that the update was successfully applied. Being something of a Powershell fan I first tried the command shown below: (get-exchangeserver MyE2K7Server).admindisplayversion The output showed Version 8.2 (Build 176.2), which is the same… Read More: How to Find Exchange Server 2007 Build Information »
Windows Server 2008 R2 introduces the ability to revert to an earlier forest or domain functional level. Previous versions of Active Directory did not have this ability and raising the forest or domain function level was, effectively, a one-way operation. I say “effectively” because it is possible to revert, but only through highly disruptive recovery… Read More: How to revert the forest functional level in Windows Server… »
Earlier this week Nathan Mercer (Technology Advisor for Microsoft) gave me a brief look at the new Powershell Integrated Scripting Environment available with Windows Server 2008 R2. ISE allows you to run commands and write, test, and debug scripts in a Windows GUI. It also has multi-line editing, tab completion, syntax coloring, selective execution and context-sensitive help. The best thing… Read More: The goodness that is Powershell ISE »
I have recently spent some time working with Xpath queries as part of Event Log filtering in Windows Server 2008. It’s a great feature, but one limitation I found was that it doesn’t appear possible to use the starts-with() function when querying Event Logs with either the UI or Wevtutil.exe. Here’s an example. Let’s say… Read More: Powershell script to filter events using an Xpath query »
In my last post, I provided a small batch file to support scheduled IFM dumps of an AD LDS instance. Afterwards, I realised that batch files are sooo last century and decided to have a crack at the Powershell version. I’m no Bwandon, but the script below seems to do the trick. # # Name: Create_IFM_Dump.ps1 #… Read More: Schedule backups of your AD LDS instance using Dsdbutil [2] »
The other day I had a need to configure scheduled backups of GPOs to file on a Windows Server 2008 Domain Controller. Aha (I thought), I’ve done this before using the BackupAllGPOs.wsf script that is included along with a whole bunch of other handy scripts when you install the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC). … Read More: PowerShell GPMC scripts »
Or at least it nearly did. I was working a script and because of a small typo very nearly lost most of the data on my C: drive. It’s very easy to get wrong, so treat this as a cautionary tale. The example below shows the error I made and the potential impact. I’ve used… Read More: PowerShell ate my C: Drive »