PowerShell - Get-DomainComputer (ADSI)

The following function use ADSI to query Computer objects from the Active Directory. Optionally an alternate credentials and/or a different domain can be specified.

Once in a while, everyone "enjoy" doing Auditing at work...,ok maybe not everyone :-).... so last week, an colleague of mine needed to get the name of the Primary user of each workstations that connect to one of their critical application.

Lucky for me, first he had the list of workstations and second we have the name of the primary user information in the Active Directory located in the description property ! :-) (This is added when the computer is built and joined to the domain the first time).

So he asked me if I could help and get this information somehow. My answer was obviously ... PowerShell!
This could be done very easily using the ActiveDirectory Module but unfortunately RSAT (Remote Server Administrator Tools) feature was not installed on his computer. Why not use ADSI then ? :-)

PowerShell - Using ADSI with alternate Credentials

The following PowerShell code will show you how to run ADSI with alternate credentials to get information from the Active Directory.

I will query Group objects in this example, my filter is define by the following line: "(objectCategory=Group)"

PowerShell 4.0 is now available

PowerShell 4.0 has been released by Microsoft and  is now available to download and install with the Windows Management Framework 4.0 (WMF 4.0).

Windows PowerShell

Windows PowerShell is a task-based command-line shell and scripting language designed especially for system administration. Built on the .NET Framework, Windows PowerShell helps IT professionals and power users control and automate the administration of the Windows operating system and applications that run on Windows.

Windows PowerShell allows you to run scripts, functions, and modules of cmdlets. Cmdlets are simple verb-noun commands that help you automate management of roles and features that run on the Windows operating system.

After you install WMF 4.0, Windows PowerShell is upgraded to version 4.0.

DOWNLOAD HERE

PowerShell - Renaming a bunch of folders

In my previous post I talked about Organizing my script directory, naming convention, preferences and bottlenecks... Today let's reorganize some of those script folders.

Renaming a bunch of folders

At my work, all the scripts related to VMware are named ESX-<Category>-<Explicit Title>. And I use the same naming convention at home for my own scripts. So let's say I want to rename all those *ESX* folders by VMWARE instead.
Something like this: VMWARE-<Category>-<Explicit Title>

PowerShell - Organizing my Scripts

With time, the number of PowerShell scripts I write keeps growing and growing, and I feel it is getting more and more difficult to find what I have done in the past. I won't say that all my scripts are great! Especially when I look at the scripts I wrote back in 2010/2011 or even 2012. I'm really happy to see the evolution as I keep learning about PowerShell. And honestly ... I think it is really fun to update old scripts, and it is always a good topic for a new blog post.

Today I will talk about my scripts directory, how I maintain it, which naming convention I use, what are my bottlenecks, my preferences ...

PowerShell - Report the AD Missing Subnets from the NETLOGON.log

Today I will share with you a script that report the Missing Subnets detected in the NetLogon file(s) of your Active Directory Domain Controller(s).

Update: See my Github repository for the most recent version

Missing Subnets

When a computer is joined to a domain It knows for sure of which AD domain it is a member. However once the computer is joined to the domain, It may or may not know which AD site it belongs to. Even if it thinks it knows the AD site, it may not even be in the correct AD site (e.g. because it was moved, AD site was renamed, Subnet not declared, Subnet was removed from a site and add to another...etc.).

PowerShell - Get a SubString out of a String using RegEx

Last week one of my colleague asked me if I could help him with some Regular Expression (Regex) to select some text inside a String.

I don't work a lot with RegEx but when I do, I use tools like PowerRegex from Sapien, RegExr, the technet help for about_Regular_Expressions or RegExlib.com. And to be honest, most of the time I'm trying to avoid it...trying to find a solution the "PowerShell Way"  before trying with Regex...

Problem

So here is what he asked me
Out of the following string "OU=MTL1,OU=CORP,DC=FX,DC=LAB" (Which is a Distinguished Name), he wanted to get the name "MTL1", (SiteCode for Montreal).

PowerShell - Get-DomainUser

Today one of my IT coworkers, in another department, sent a couple of emails to the Ops to get the username (SamAccount) from a couple of Active Directory users accounts. This guy, which is not familiar with AD, had only the DisplayName properties information.

I wrote him back that he could just request RSAT(Remote Server Administration Tools) to be installed on his workstation or just use this small PowerShell that I just wrote in minutes. Since Active Directory does not require any specific permission to access this kind of information. Here is the code, nothing advanced, but it does the work ;-)

function Get-DomainUser {

    PARAM($DisplayName)

    $Search = [adsisearcher]"(&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=User)(displayname=$DisplayName))"

    foreach ($user in $($Search.FindAll())){

        New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property @{

            "DisplayName" = $user.properties.displayname

            "UserName"    = $user.properties.samaccountname

            "Description" = $user.properties.description}

    }

}

Result

PS C:\> Get-DomainUser -DisplayName "jonathan*" | Format-List

UserName    : {JonathanD}
Description : {Account of Jonathan Delpiero}
DisplayName : {Jonathan Delpiero}

UserName    : {DumoulinJ}
Description : {Account of Jonathan Dumoulin}
DisplayName : {Jonathan Dumoulin}

PowerShell - Monitor and Report Active Directory Group Membership Change

UPDATE 2016/05/03: The most recent update is available on Github

See also the related blogpost: http://www.lazywinadmin.com/2013/11/update-powershell-monitor-and-report.html

Today I will update a post that I published at the beginning of last year : Monitor Active Directory Membership changes. I updated the script to add some of the things I learned during the Scripting Games 2013 back in April/May. The script will also create a nice html report and send it via Email.

Basically, the script will monitor the Active Directory groups that you specify and notify you if a change occurred since the last time it checked.

PowerShell Studio 2012 - WinForms - GUI ToolMaking

In my previous post I showed how to create a quick PowerShell GUI to append some colored text in a RichTextBox control using Sapien PowerShell Studio 2012.

Today I will go a bit further and show you how to create a tool to query some information from a remote computer. I will first send the Output to Out-GridView cmdlet and then show you how to send it to a DataGridView control inside the GUI.

The tool will query Services, Processes and Shares from a Remote Computer.
You will need to specify the ComputerName and the Credential required to perform those actions. The goal is to show how to create something very simple so I did not write any Error Handling or any conditional code in this version.

One cool thing to mention when using PowerShell Studio 2012 is, if you add some controls like a DataGridView, a Listview or a ListBox, PowerShell Studio 2012 will add some functions to help you Load/Add/Refresh those controls. I will show you below in the part "Replacing the Out-Gridview by a DataGridView Control"

Blogger - Adding PowerShell code in your blog post

From time to time you might be interested to have your code syntax highlighted or presented with a neat format in your blog posts.

Plain text is boring and it can really mess up the layout of your post. Also It can be very hard to understand some code without some sort of syntax highlighting.





Here are a few methods that I found useful for Blogger: (those can probably be applied to Wordpress and other platforms)

• Method 1: Using Syntax Highlighter from Alex Gorbatchev
• Method 2: Using an Editor to copy the code as HTML language
• Method 3: HTML CSS Rectangle (PowerShell console look a like)
• Method 4: Embedded code using Gist (GitHub)

PowerShell Studio 2012 - WinForms - Creating a basic GUI (Video)

The following post will demo how to create a basic Graphical User Interface with SAPIEN PowerShell Studio 2012.

Update: See also the second part of this post: PowerShell Studio 2012 - WinForms - GUI ToolMaking

Last year I released a PowerShell script called LazyWinAdmin 0.4 which is a script that generate a Graphical User Interface. I used SAPIEN PowerShell Studio 2012 to create this Interface and write my PowerShell code.

LazyWinAdmin script allows SysAdmins/IT Pros to Query Information on their Workstation / Servers and to Perform some actions like :

• List Shares (with local path), Processes, Services, ...
• Test the Connection, Permission, PowerShell Remoting, RDP availability ...
• Reboot/Shutdown
• Query and Kill any RDP Session opened
• Etc...

Since then, I got a lot of emails asking me questions about PowerShell and how to make GUIs using PowerShell Studio 2012. So here is a quick demo..