03 Aug 2013
I’ve been working with Exchange 2003 a bit recently, as part of a migration to Office 365. Most of the work has been around getting permission data, mailbox sizes and some other related data.
As part of that, I’ve written a couple of PowerShell scripts to grab some information we needed for the migration. The first is a script to get data from Exchange and AD in a 2003 domain using WMI. The second is a script to parse and output permission data from a PFDAVAdmin export in a more usable format.
I’ve put the two scripts on GitHub in my miscellaneous repository, under the PowerShell folder. Hopefully they come in useful to anyone else needing to make more sense of PFDAVAdmin exports, or pull mailbox data from Exchange 2003.
05 Jul 2013
I’m making more of an effort to post useful snippets of PowerShell and other stuff, like custom ADMX templates to either my GitHub Gists, or to a GitHub repository I’ve set up for miscellaneous bits and bobs.
As I’ve improved with PowerShell, it’s become easier to write generalised scripts, rather than highly targeted ones, so that I can solve similar problems, or share pieces of scripts around more easily.
If you’d like to learn more about Windows PowerShell check out PowerShell.org and the PowerScripting Podcast, they are nice friendly places that are easy to navigate and full to the brim with good content.
24 Jun 2013
If you’re just getting into Windows Server 2012, or you’re doing a lot of work with it, but want to go a bit deeper into the system, here’s a few links that should get you well on the way.
It’s also handy if, like me, you’ve started on the new MCSA/MCSE tracks and want some more resources to read so you can brush up and round out your knowledge.
I’ll add links as I remember them, come across them again, or just find new ones. Check back occasionally for updates.
Note
If you’re getting ready to take the 70-410 Exam: Installing and Configuring Windows Server 2012, there’s a nice little practice test I found that might help you on your way.
24 May 2013
I’ve uploaded another little Powershell script to GitHub, as a module this time!
It’s called backupDhcpLogs and it tries to do what it says on the tin. Of course, if you couldn’t read the tin, it’s a module to back up DHCP logs.
Currently it backs up the previous days of logs to a destination you specify and will also remove logs from the destination that are older than a number of days you specify. There is also the option to back up the DHCP server configuration if you so wish.
However, I’ve got some more work to do on it. I’d like to offer an option to back up all the logs that exist, while managing them in the same way. Additionally, I would also like to offer a slightly more modern backup method using ‘Export-DhcpServer’ or ‘Backup-DhcpServer’, and not ‘netsh’.
I also had to remove a check for the DHCP Server Windows feature from the module, as it was stopping it from running when using the ‘Run whether the user is logged in or not’ option in the task scheduler. It’s something I’ll figure out eventually, then put the functionality back in.
24 Apr 2013
Here are two podcasts I have absolutely no reservations in recommending to anyone interested in how the world works or the magic of discovery. Their websites will do a better job of explaining it than I can, so here they are!
RadioLab
Caustic Soda
I’ve got some upcoming content on System Center 2012, focussing mostly on Service Manager, as there isn’t too much content out there. It’s almost like the black sheep of the System Center 2012 family, although that might change when/if either Sharepoint 2010 gets updated to support Server 2012, or Service Manager gets updated to support Sharepoint 2013.
There will also be some little bits on Operations Manager and maybe some things that apply to any System Center product, or SQL Server.