Richard Siddaway's Blog : PowerShell and Active Directory

Codeplex AD Replication Module

RichardSiddaway — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 08:25:44 GMT

The other codeplex project that caught my eye was a brand new one to create a PowerShell module to manage AD replication. This one will be very useful and one I will be using a lot.

There is still time for suggestions as to content for this project – see http://adreplicationmodule.codeplex.com/

Technorati Tags: PowerShell v2,Active Directory,Replication

Tombstone Periods

RichardSiddaway — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 19:58:17 GMT

We can get the tombstone period of our Active Directory by

            001              
002               
003               
          $root = [ADSI]""                
$ds = [ADSI]("LDAP://CN=Directory Service,CN=Windows NT,CN=Services,CN=Configuration," + $root.DistinguishedName)               
$ds.tombstoneLifeTime 
       
 

But if the value isn't set it means we are using the default which changes depending on the version of Windows used to create the forest in the first place. If we have upgraded then the value may not be what we think it is.

So far I haven’t found a way to get the original version of Windows used to create the forest. It may not be possible in which case time for a rethink

Technorati Tags: PowerShell,Active Directory,Tombstone

AD PowerShell on Windows 2008/2003 - supposedly

RichardSiddaway — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 19:39:22 GMT

As James pointed out recently the AD Web Service from Windows 2008 R2 has been released for Windows 2008 and Windows 2003 - see http://blogs.msdn.com/adpowershell/archive/2009/06/23/use-active-directory-powershell-to-manage-windows-2003-2008-dcs.aspx for details.

Having installed it there doesn’t appear to be any sign of the AD cmdlets or Provider. On this basis it is useless. If anyone knows different please let me know because I’ve looked in all the logical (and illogical) and I can’t find those cmdlets. The Windows 2008 R2 RSAT won’t install so that source doesn’t work.

Technorati Tags: PowerShell,Active Directory,Windows 2008

AD attributes

Richard Siddaway's Blog — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 07:25:39 GMT

I had a question come through as a private message regarding how to extract a particular attribute for user objects. The script wasn’t working because the label name in AD Users and Computers didn’t match the attribute name. This is a fairly common scenario...(read more)

Forest and domain modes

Richard Siddaway's Blog — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:37:55 GMT

We can find the forest and domain modes using the following commands Get-ADDomain -Identity grayson | select DomainMode Get-ADForest grayson | select forestmode The modes can be set from the GUI as normal or Set-ADDomainMode -Identity grayson -DomainMode...(read more)

Windows 2008 R2 PowerShell for AD

Richard Siddaway's Blog — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:23:07 GMT

Back in this post http://richardsiddaway.spaces.live.com/default.aspx?_c01_BlogPart=blogentry&_c=BlogPart&handle=cns!43CFA46A74CF3E96!2214 we looked at creating OUs using the AD cmdlets in Windows 2008 R2. We may want to look at the OUs we have...(read more)

Select-String

Richard Siddaway's Blog — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 19:48:34 GMT

One task I had to do a a few times recently is track down which GPOs had a particular setting enabled. If you are working in an environment with a signifcant number of GPOs this can be a tedious task. The easier way - use the SDMSoftware GPMC cmdlets...(read more)

Windows 2008 R2 - OU

Richard Siddaway's Blog — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 12:03:41 GMT

One of the big benefits of Windows 2008 R2 is the fact that PowerShell v2 is installed by default and that AD can be administered by PowerShell. There are 76 AD cmdlets and an AD provider. We’ll start by looking at the cmdlets. Organizational Units are...(read more)

Active Directory Cookbook third edition

Richard Siddaway's Blog — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:29:23 GMT

The original AD cookbook by Robbie Allen was published back in 2003. It has been one of my favourite, and most referenced, books. When I used to use VBScript (shudder) it was indispensible and saved me vast amounts of time. One AD implementation I did...(read more)

Quest AD cmdlets

Richard Siddaway's Blog — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 08:47:21 GMT

If you have followed this blog over any period of time you will know that I am a big fan of the Quest AD cmdlets. The good news is that version 1.2 of the cmlets has gone RTM. The bad news is that it won’t be available for a little while yet. The major...(read more)

AD PowerShell blog

Richard Siddaway's Blog — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:35:33 GMT

The blog of the AD PowerShell Team can be found here - http://blogs.msdn.com/adpowershell/default.aspx If you work with PowerShell & AD will be worth a read Technorati Tags: PowerShell , Windows 2008 R2 , Active Directory...(read more)

PowerShell in Practice – Chapter 10

Richard Siddaway's Blog — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:45:56 GMT

Chapter 10 is now available as part of the MEAP - http://www.manning.com/siddaway/ This one deals with the structure of Active Directory. After a quick look at the schema there is a good look at working with OUs and GPOs. The chapter closes by showing...(read more)

Sites and SiteLinks

Richard Siddaway's Blog — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 14:36:27 GMT

In my series on System.DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory I was going to cover creating sites and sitelinks – Rolf has just covered this material so I will point you there instead. http://www.powershell-ag.de/ps/Blog/tabid/73/EntryID/1123/Default.aspx...(read more)

S.DS.AD - SiteLinks

Richard Siddaway's Blog — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 17:26:30 GMT

SiteLinks are used to control replication between Active Directory Sites. We have already seen how to find the current site and how to view the domain controllers in that site. How do we know what sites our site is replicating with – follow the sitelinks...(read more)

S.DS.AD - sites

Richard Siddaway's Blog — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 10:27:26 GMT

Sites are the foundation of the physical topology of Active Directory. While there has been a lot posted about working with users and groups i.e. the data in Active Directory there hasn’t been as much posted about working with the physical structure....(read more)

S.DS.AD – netlogon service 2

Richard Siddaway's Blog — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 14:02:48 GMT

Last time I said that I wanted to improve the way the data was displayed when we interrogated the netlogon service on our domain controllers. One way we could do it is to use Add-Member to add the data to an object $a = @() $type = [System.DirectoryServices...(read more)

S.DS.AD - Replication

Richard Siddaway's Blog — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 14:03:50 GMT

We can us e what we have learnt about domain controllers to enables to have a way to examine the replication between domain controllers. $type = [System.DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.DirectoryContextType]::Domain $context = New-Object -TypeName System...(read more)

S.DS.AD – Domain Controllers

Richard Siddaway's Blog — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 07:38:31 GMT

We saw one method of accessing domain controllers when we were looking at the domain class - http://richardsiddaway.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!43CFA46A74CF3E96!1932.entry If we want to work directly with a domain controller we can create an object for the...(read more)

S.DS.AD - Domain

Richard Siddaway's Blog — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 17:51:58 GMT

We looked at AD Forests last time – moving along we come to domains. We can discover the current domain in a similar manner to the forest $dom = [System.DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.Domain]::GetCurrentDomain() $dom The standard output includes Forest...(read more)

S.DS.AD - Forest

Richard Siddaway's Blog — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:07:50 GMT

System.DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory – its a bit of a mouthful so I’m going to abbreviate it to S.SD.AD – is a .NET namespace that works with Active Directory. Unlike System.DirectoryServices it is not an ADSI wrapper but works through non-LDAP protocols...(read more)