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Category Archives: PowerShell

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Getting a Bird’s Eye View of Your Group Memberships with PowerShell

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Getting a Bird’s Eye View of Your Group Memberships with PowerShell

Site migrations suck! And right now, I am stuck in the middle of one. This week, I was tasked with migrating applications and settings for 1,000 computers. Because our applications and settings are controlled through Group Policy (and scoped with security groups), we have a lot of groups that need to be matched and migrated.

Wanting to get a bird’s eye view of my group layout, I put together this script. It is still very much a work in progress but I hope it will help you in your own Active Directory/Group Policy cleanups or migrations.

 

Grabbing Our Data

This script starts by prompting you for a computer name. It will then use the Quest AD Cmdlets and find the OU that this machine is a member of. Next, it will grab every computer that is in that same OU.

Clear-Variable Groups -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

$SearchComputers = read-host "What is the computer name?"

$Computers = Get-QADComputer *$SearchComputers* | Select-Object ParentContainer
$Computers = Get-QADComputer -SearchRoot $Computers.ParentContainer | Sort-Object Name

$SearchComputers = Get-QADComputer *$SearchComputers* | Select-Object ParentContainer
$SearchComputers = $SearchComputers.ParentContainer

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Getting to ZTI – Importing Computers into the MDT Database with PowerShell

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Zero Touch Installation (ZTI) is the pinnacle of OS deployment! Once a machine is imaged, ZTI means never visiting the machine again for re-imaging. Think for a second how much time is wasted by having to physically visit each machine when re-imaing! Most organizations believe it is only possible to reach ZTI with solutions like System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). In fact, Microsoft clearly states that SCCM is a requirement to get to ZTI. I am here to tell you that ZTI is possible without SCCM! Start by importing computers into the MDT Database with PowerShell:


What is the MDT Database?

This guide will assume you already have MDT configured and that you have the MDT database setup (though not populated). If you aren’t at the step yet, you can keep reading but you might want to check out these two resources:

When MDT is completely configured, you should have a full CustomSettings.ini that pre-populates most of your deployment settings. You will be left with a few options that have to be manually filled out though. The big two that have to be selected is the computer name and the Task Sequence. This is where the MDT database comes in.

Importing Computers into the MDT Database
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Finding and Deleting Unlinked GPOs with PowerShell

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It is time to get rid of the Group Policy clutter! For anyone that has attempted a Group Policy cleanup, you will know how daunting that clutter can be. Today, we are going to tackle the first step in that process. We are going to quickly find all unlinked GPOs in our domain and delete any that aren’t needed!

01

These old GPOs have to go!

And just to make sure we don’t shoot ourselves in the foot, we are going to script a backup for every GPO that we delete. All of this with just a 6 line script! Continue reading →

PowerShell Rename-Computer: The One Cmdlet to Rename Them All

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Renaming computers suck! Sure, there are worse things in life like famine, natural disasters, etc. Regardless though, the process is way more tedious than it should be. You have to remote in and kick off any logged on user. Even if you use Concurrent RDP, it is still a time consuming process. At least it was until PowerShell came along.

PowerShell 3.0 introduced the Rename-Computer cmdlet and made this task so much easier! Just to show you how easy, we are going to tackle three common tasks with this one cmdlet. We will:

  • Remotely rename a single online computer
  • Remotely rename multiple online computers
  • Schedule renames for multiple computers (offline and online)

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What does $_. Mean in PowerShell?

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Contrary to common belief, PowerShell doesn’t just make up variables whenever it feels like it. Just a few years ago, I would have swore it did though. Take this script as example:

Get-ChildItem \\SERVER\SHARE\ -recurse -file | get-acl | Where-Object {$_.Owner -match "Joseph" }

We start by recursively listing every file on our share. These files are piped (|) to the get-acl command. Finally, we filter the results with the where-object command. Out of nowhere, we throw in $_.Owner variable! Now I have two questions – where did the $_ come from and how did the .Owner get added to it?

 

What Does $_. Mean in PowerShell?

As a simplified explanation, $_ symbolizes This. In the example above, you can think about the Where-Object segment like this:  Where-Object {$THISFILE.Owner -match “Joseph” }. To quote this TechNet article,

 $_ got its name because the underscore character resembles a pipeline character (|) lying on its side, implying that it contains whatever was piped in.

In essence, $_ is a dynamic variable storing the current information being piped to it! In the example above, $_ is the file. That clears things up a bit but…

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