Just a day after AD cmdlets got mentioned in the PowerShell blog Quest’s site got updated with version 1.0.1 (actually 1.0.1.155) of AD cmdlets. If you were too early to the site and got version 1.0 don’t go – run to the site and get 1.0.1 instead.
Actually when I was blogging about AD cmdlets before (AD cmdlets overview, MMS Hands-On Labs, Domain Statistics) I was often using this version because I was lucky enough to get access to the earlier builds and loved them much more than1.0.
Here’s a quick description of the cmdlets and what they do:
User management:
New-QADUser – create new AD user.
Get-QADUser – get an AD user or a collection of users (based on any properties, wildcards, etc.)
Set-QADUser – change user properties.
Group management:
Get-QADGroup – find a group (or a collection of groups) from Active Directory based on any criteria and see their members.
New-QADGroup – create a new AD group.
Group membership:
Get-QADGroupMember – get a list of members for a group or group membership for a user.
Add-QADGroupMember – add user (users) to a group.
Remove-QADGroupMember – remove user (users) from a group.
Computer management:
Not much here at the moment- just Get-QADComputer – to get a list of computers and their properties.
(Check out the Computers pack at PowerGUI.org for more functionality on actual computer management: various properties such as patch level, and actions such as remote shutdown and restart. Just go to http://PowerGUI.org, go to Library, find Computers (from current domain), and add it to your PowerGUI console.)
AD connection:
Connect-QADService – specify a specific DC or credentials for the PowerShell session. (If you own Quest’s commercial AD management tool – ActiveRoles Server – this cmdlets can also be used to make all your policies and approval workflows apply to your scripts.)
Disconnect-QADService – reset the AD connection.
Miscelaneous:
Get-QADObject
Set-QADObject
New-QADObject
These Get/Set/New cmdlets let you manage the objects not yet covered by other cmdlets – you will just have to supply the parameter names, type, etc. – a stop gap solution still more handy than ADSI.
I will later post more on using these cmdlets later. The team is promising to get new releases now almost bi-weekly with more and more cmdlets coming. Feel free to leave your comments as to what they should address first.
Dmitry
P.S. The download is free but requires registration. If you don’t want Quest to keep your registration info you can send an email to an alias mentioned in the privacy statement and have your records removed.
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I asked it before in PowerGUI forum, and I’ll ask it again – Why is my Gmail address good for PowerGUI, but not for Quest software? What does it mean “valid business address” anyway?
It’s a very valid question. I am involved with PowerGUI (and PowerGUI.org) but not as much with AD cmdlets. So I can definitely answer the first half of the question why is gmail good for PowerGUI and can only share my suspicion on the Quest’s registration for cmdlets.
PowerGUI although sponsored by Quest is luckily quite independent. You can actually download the tool and any of the PowerPacks from the library, as well as get access to anything posted in discussion forums, etc. with no registration at all. We don’t want to collect any information and just want it to be an active community promoting PowerShell.
If you want to subscribe to email notification or post anything we have to ask for your email address but we don’t care which address it is – an email address of your employer or a free one gmail/hotmail/yahoo/etc. We just ask for registration to protect our forums and library from spam.
AD cmdlets are hosted on Quest’s site. The main reason I guess being that AD cmdlets come in 2 flavors: free and as a part of Quest ActiveRoles Server (commercial application). These are the same cmdlets but free version does not give you support and policies/approvals/etc. which ActiveRoles provides.
Quest is set up to ask for “business” email addresses. Meaning that this should be your work address and not belong to a free domain. The main reason being that Quest’s products are enterprise-oriented (not consumer-oriented) and thus the system considers you as a representative of an enterprise rather than an individual having a mailbox wherever you want.
If you are afraid that providing your business address will make Quest start sending your emails trying to upsell something you don’t need just read their privacy policy available at the registration page, find the clause about removing yourself from their DB (you need to email some alias) and follow the instruction right after you download the stuff.
Sorry for the inconvenience. I know that guys from the AD cmdlets team are also reading the blog so hopefully they take your comment as a piece of feedback to consider.
PowerGUI.org will be happy to take you unregistered at all or registered under any email address you choose to supply!
Thank you for answering my questions. I’m not allowed to use my business email address to download free (beta) stuff and Quest software doesn’t like my Gmail (or MSN) address, so I’ll try to find another way. Bob Bobel promised few weeks ago to post AD cmdlets to PowerGUI.org. Any chance to see them there in the near future?
I hope they do that. I’ll shoot an email to Bob with a link to this thread. I personally hope that they make the cmdlets as freely available as possible. The more people can manage AD with PowerShell the better!
Aleksandar,
Could you send me an email at DSotnikovGmailCom? I’ll try to help you out with the cmdlets.
Dmitry