Dmitry Sotnikov’s view on PowerShell, PowerGUI and everything he sees around
“What’s All This Talk about PowerShell Anyway?” which Kirk and I presented at the virtual tradeshow last week was recorded and is available here till January 22, 2010.
So, if you missed the session last week, check it out now (or send the link to anyone you wanted to get introduced to PowerShell.)
Tomorrow (Oct 21) morning Kirk and I will be doing a webcast on PowerShell within the Quest Connect virtual tradeshow:
What’s All This Talk about PowerShell Anyway?
10:00 am BST/5:00 am EDT/2:00 am PDT
Add this Webcast to my CalendarDmitry Sotnikov, PowerShell MVP and Kirk Munro, PowerShell MVP – Quest Software
So what exactly is PowerShell? How does it make life as an Admin easier? Join this session conducted by Quest’s PowerShell MVPs, Dmitry Sotnikov and Kirk Munro, to learn more about PowerShell and see some real life examples of how PowerShell and Quest PowerGUI make managing your Microsoft infrastructure (Active Directory, Exchange, Hyper-V and more) easier!
We will really start with basic overview of what PowerShell is, then compare it to other alternatives such as VBScript, then Kirk will dive into a step-by-step example of automating tasks such as provisioning in Active Directory, and then will answer any questions you might have.
Besides this session the agenda is packed with a lot of useful material on Windows Server 2008 R2, AD, Identity Management, Exchange 2010, Virtualization, Cloud Computing, SharePoint, SQL, Oracle – see full agenda here.
This online show is a great learning alternative if you cannot make it to TechEd Europe this year. It is co-sponsored by Quest, Microsoft, Dell, NetApp, Vizioncore, Scriptlogic, Techrepublic, Oracle Magazine, Redmond Magazine, and The Code Project. The speaker line up is also pretty good. The show last year was a success – see some feedback here – so hopefully this year it will be even better.
Register for the event here and don’t forget to attend our PowerShell session! 
Virtually see you tomorrow!
How do you capture and analyze what your (or other administrators’) PowerShell scripts are doing to your Active Directory?
This was the question I lately got from one of our customers so I thought I would also blog my answer for everyone’s benefit.
If this kind of auditing is something that you need – you can fairly easily achieve it by making AD cmdlets access Active Directory via Quest ActiveRoles Server.
Basically, AD cmdlets have a mode (which you can for example switch on in your PowerShell profile) to apply all changes to AD via ActiveRoles proxy, which would then apply all you policies, approvals, and auditing to all changes – no matter where they originate from: UI, command-line, or scripts:
So for example, if I change phone number for all users from Portland:
ActiveRoles will start showing this change in the change history for each of these accounts (including old value, new value, date, time, who made the change and so on):
The same information gets also output to Windows event log:
It also becomes available in SQL Reporting Services reports – so you can sort, filter, export to various formats and so on:
Note that unlike QAD cmdlets this is actually a commercial product so there is cost involved. You can get a trial license from the product page. If you are a Microsoft MVP you can also get a free NFR license by applying here.
Tags: AD, AD cmdlets, Active Directory, ActiveRoles Server, PowerShell, Quest Software, Reporting
Want to roll back any Active Directory change with a PowerShell one-liner? We’ve just published an online reference to the cmdlets shipped with Quest Recovery manager for Active Directory.
These cmdlets use backups so they are not limited to tombstone reanimation (as regular cmdlets).
For example, if you restore a user you get all the attributes including group membership and so on.
So to restore a deleted object you simply call Restore-RMDeletedActiveDirectoryObject and have the tool handle everything.
However, what makes it way more cool is that you have full power to restore any attributes of any users. So you are not limited to just undeleting stuff. Let’s say you had some kind of script/tool go wild and corrupt an attribute or two across all user accounts. Good luck restoring just these 2 attributes manually or with any kind of UI tool.
With these cmdlets it is as easy as:
# Select the backup you want - e.g. the latest
$b = (Get-RMBackup –Domain dom1.local | Sort-Object –Property Date)[-1]
# For every user in AD restore extensionattribute1
Get-QADUser | foreach {
Restore-RMActiveDirectoryObject –Backup $b.Path –Object $_.DN –Attribute extensionattribute1
}
Is it cool or what?
Here’s the full list of cmdlets linked to the help info for each of them:
Note that unlike AD cmdlets these are actually a part of commercial product so there is cost involved. You can get a trial license from the product page. If you are a Microsoft MVP you can also get a free NFR license by applying here.
(Get-RMDeletedActiveDirectoryObject dc1.dom1.lab.local) | Where-Object { $_.Properties["objectclass"] –contains "user" }
C:\PS>foreach ($u in $users) { Restore-RMDeletedActiveDirectoryObject –Name $u.Properties["name"] –DirectoryHost dc1.dom1.lab.local }
Tags: AD, Active Directory, Examples, PowerShell, Quest Software, cmdlets, one-liner, MVP
Guys from PowerScripting Podcast have just published the episode they did with Bob Bobel – Quest’s Product Manager for AD cmdlets, ActiveRoles Server and a few other products.
Bob managed to see the potential behind the idea of PowerShell-enabling his commercial products and releasing free AD cmdlets to the community back in 2006 (which seems a loooong time ago!) – so in a sense myself and others were having a lot of fun at his expense.
Learn that and much more from this podcast.
Tags: AD, AD cmdlets, ARS, Active Directory, ActiveRoles Server, PowerShell, Quest Software, cmdlets, podcast
The PowerGUI chat marathon has just started so I thought I would post the instructions for those interested.
We are re-using the last year’s Quest Connect conference space so don’t be surprised with everything marked 2008, plenty of recorded sessions (some might be worth checking out), and required registration.
Anyways, here are the steps so you don’t get lost:
1. Go to the Quest Connect site.
2. Register if you have not yet done that or log in if you have.
3. If you want to watch the AD cmdlets & PowerGUI session Darin and I did back in the fall go to Main Hall / Conference Hall / Do not fear the command line…
4. If you want to chat with me (starting in 30 minutes), Kirk (start at 7:30 EST) and Darin (starting 7:30 PST), go to Main Hall / Exhibition Hall / Active Directory, and then click the Booth Chat button:
See you there!
Tags: AD cmdlets, Conferences, PowerGUI, PowerShell, Quest Software
The Quest Connect event is starting and the PowerShell session will go live in about an hour.
The cool thing (which I was told just yesterday) is that once the webcast goes live it will also become available as a recording. See the first paragraph from the session page:
All webcasts will be on demand two hours after the live presentation, so you won’t miss any of the content. Please see the full schedule below.
Do Not Fear the Command Line: PowerShell Made Easy
5:00 a.m. EDT (GMT-4)
10:00 a.m. British Summer Time (GMT+1)Speakers:
Dmitry Sotnikov – Manager, New Product Research, Quest Software
Darin Pendergraft – Senior Product Manager, Quest SoftwarePowerShell, the command line interface for Microsoft’s technology platforms, is here. Are you ready? During this session, PowerShell MVP Dmitry Sotnikov will discuss PowerShell and its implications on the future of IT. In addition, Darin Pendergraft will demonstrate PowerGUI, Quest’s free graphical user interface (and command line-hiding interface) for PowerShell.
The session and the recording will be in the Active Directory area.
There will also be an AD virtual booth/chat room in which I will try to hang out as much as I can to answer any PowerShell-related questions. See you there!
Here’s full list of sessions (borrowed from detailed agenda):
The event is starting so go to the registration page and join us.
Tags: AD cmdlets, PowerGUI, PowerShell, Quest Software, Webcast
On October 22 and 23 Quest, Microsoft, Redmond Magazine, and a bunch of other companies are holding a two-day online event on basically all key platforms and technologies in the Microsoft world (with a little bit of Quest bias )
You can find the full agenda here. The event is free (even involves some giveaways) but requires registration.
I will be there to do a PowerShell session (“Do Not Fear the Command Line: PowerShell Made Easy“) and answer any questions you might have. Welcome!
Tags: AD cmdlets, PowerGUI, PowerShell, Quest Software
Quest Software (my employer) has just acquired NetPro Computing. Quest and NetPro have been two undisputed leaders in Active Directory management so I guess the acquisition makes sense, but let’s just look at the PowerShell aspect of the merger.
Quest is pretty well-known in the PowerShell part of the Universe for the PowerGUI admin console/IDE and AD cmdlets. It is also PowerShell-enabling its commercial apps (e.g. Recovery Managers for AD and Exchange) and providing enterprise capabilities (workflows, auditing, rules, roles, etc.) for PowerShell-based AD management.
NetPro has also got into PowerShell recently. They have announced a free software tool extending Active Directory Users & Computers (ADUC) snapin with PowerShell scripts and a community site by Don Jones to provide free repository of such scripts for AD management (see press release here).
And of course NetPro is the host of the Directory Experts Conference (DEC) – now called The Experts Conference – which is the conference to attend if you are into AD, ILM, ADFS or any other Microsoft-centric Identity Management technology. DEC 2007 by the way was one of the first places where AD cmdlets were demonstrated (by Richard in his session on PowerShell and AD). Actually my first reaction to the official announcement was the same as Jackson’s: here’s a chance to get a speaking slot at DEC!
Tags: AD cmdlets, Active Directory, PowerShell, Quest Software
This is something I wanted to see for a long time – a commercial application shipping with PowerShell support and a PowerGUI pack on top of it!
Quest File Migrator for SharePoint seems to be one of the first products that did that. The product is basically a solution to migrate your existing file servers to SharePoint (WSS or MOSS) sites. As your migration project grows in scale you might want to get a solution to bulk-manage your migration agents and jobs.
Ayman’s SharePoint File Migration PowerPack allows you to do that: deploy, remove, manage migration agents; start, stop, create, remove, schedule migration jobs, and so on. All that obviously uses PowerGUI sorting, filtering and reporting capabilities and shows you the PowerShell code behind.
The pack is freely available from PowerGUI library. The core file to SharePoint migration tool (with a free trial download) can be found here.
Full disclosure: this is obviously a product by Quest Software – the company for which I work and in which I am doing my best to PowerShell- and PowerGUI-enable all products. However, PowerGUI and PowerGUI.org are open to any other software company in the world, and you can freely use it to make your product better. Anyone can post any PowerPack to the PowerGUI library.
Tags: PowerGUI, PowerPack, PowerShell, Quest Software, SharePoint
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