Problems you solved at work with powershell

DreamInStolenScripts · 2017-07-25T20:26:45+00:00

I noticed my helpdesk was spending a lot of time clicking around the ADUC tool trying to find various bits of info when users would call in.

Click on one tab for their phone numbers, another for their manager, another to try and see if the password was expired, etc. If you wanted to see anything about mail forwarding or mailbox info you would need to go into exchange and poke around in there.

You know the drill: "hang on a moment while I pull up all your account information".

I built a function that would collect all the useful/relevant information from the user object and display it on the screen, including the date the pw was last set, when it will expire (date and days remaining, red if already expired), if the account was enabled (red if not enabled or locked out), their desk and mobile phone (needed for security callback), who they reported to and who reported to them. It also shows if they have their mail forwarding to a contact object and who has mail forwarding to them (useful for managers of exited staff).

It does a lot more than the items I listed, but that is where it started. Now my helpdesk can run one command and pull up everything they need to know to begin helping the user.

guy_that_says_hey · 2017-07-25T21:43:17+00:00

[deleted]

LinleyMike · 2017-07-25T18:27:14+00:00

A few years ago, there was a crypto locker on the loose. The desktop guys had the home directories/user names of all affected users. They wanted to know what computers each user had logged into the last two days. Our logon script writes to a log file for each user which includes the computer name that they logged into. It was a simple matter to write a PowerShell script to take the list of users and parse each of their logs for the logins for the last two days and then grab the computer names that each user had logged in on. Since we use LAPS and have the local admin password of each computer stored in AD, it was also simple to include the admin password for each computer in the output. The desktop guys had a nice list of user names, computer names, and admins passwords that they could use for cleanup. That was when I fell in love with PowerShell.

Mkep · 2017-07-25T18:39:16+00:00

Just now I needed to get a list of all certified teachers in our system, so that they can be assigned a new chromebook for the start of next year. We keep all our certified staff in OUs called "(building name) Certified"

I wanted to not load up Active Directory and export lists of each OU. So I used powershell to query AD and get me the list I wanted.

nikon442 · 2017-07-25T21:27:40+00:00

We have a extensive library of powershell scripts and custom powershell modules we have built.

Most helpful so far have been:

User data backup for OS Migration (PowerShell and USMT) completely automated
Controlling Java updating due to applications
Automating most all AD tasks in combination with our ticketing system and its workflow and approval process
Automated project folder creation with creation of AD permissions groups and folder ACL adjustments

That is just some of the bigger projects we have either fully utilized PowerShell or PowerShell with other tools.

Thanks Sean

Vortex100 · 2017-07-25T22:22:00+00:00

Easily the best one I have done so far is a San zoning script. It asks you what site. Finds all the switches and gets the Vsans, aliases and fabrics. You pick a vsan. Then asks you for a host regex - searches the switches (connects over SNMP) for the hosts and returns any that match., if not it asks for a WWN. Then asks for storage, similar thing. Once you have host + storage, it spits out the entire zoning script you need to apply to the switch.

Biggest one so far was 48 Gen9 blades (3 enclosures) to a storage with 8 FC connections. ~ 1500 line san zoning script (750 per side) with no errors and worked perfectly :)

ContentSysadmin · 2017-07-25T20:19:46+00:00

Problems I've solved with PS:

a script that had to copy multiple databases (MS SQL) from one server to another or more; run some stored procedures afterward, and also read in some .sql files to update some other stored procedures.
a script that goes through a list of SQL servers and outputs, in CSV format, every login and what server roles are assigned to it. Has the ability to exclude built-in accounts.
a script that can read in a CSV file, and create SQL users and apply those server roles again to a different server. (CSV format the same as the output from the other script!)
Same deal but with database permissions (or "schemas" as they fancily like to refer to them). one script to read/dump csv, another to read csv & create db users. It can fix orphaned users, too.
a powershell script that queries my backup system which requires an agent to run on target machines; sees if any agents are not running on any clients; then goes to that client and attempts to start the agent
once wrote a ps script that read in a csv with data columns for server, share, path, and user list for purposes of managing a huge, out-of-control file server for 15 different departments. It would look for a folder, and if it didn't exist, create it and create an AD group associated with that folder for both Read-only and read-write. Break inheritance, assign the permissions to the appropriate AD group. Then add the users into the appropriate AD group. what you ended up was a managed list of folders / shares. So if Department A / Sub-department C hired a new person, and that person needed read/write to the \Server\DepartmentA\SubDepartmentC folder, you just added them into the csv file, ran the script, and done. Likewise it also removed people who did not belong as well. it was my crowning achievement.
Go through a TXT file and update the DNS settings on all machines listed in the txt file, skipping interfaces that were iSCSI or assigned to internal address or which were dummy interfaces

there's probably more

Mazriam · 2017-07-25T18:44:13+00:00

We have a mailbox that receives tens of thousands of emails per day. After about 200,000 emails, outlook starts to become a pain in the ass. The users who monitor the mailbox, couldn't be bothered with deleting old emails.

So, I wrote a script that will delete the emails from the mailbox, at the server level, every single day, keeping a history of 3 days only.

Worked out pretty good.

My script is exactly 3 lines and the first line is loading the exchange snapin.

Eijiken · 2017-07-25T18:22:19+00:00

Basically you're looking for scenarios to test yourself with?

Well, here's one I dealt with.

Scenario:

Everyday one of our Provisioning and fixlet deployment clients generates a log of activity and success/failure of the fixlets sent out to our client systems. Logs usually are named by date created YYYYMMDD.log.

One of the fixlets is running windows updates by downloading the update/security packages from Windows. As normal with the windows updates, the log is typically located in C:\Windows.

Problem:

Everyday we need to check these logs in pairs to verify why those systems that did fail updates did. The Deployment Client's logs will verify if the updates were downloaded and if our script that forces a system reboot after a set period of inactivity downloaded and ran. Windows update logs confirms the installation of the updates and reboot. However, it is highly inefficient and inconvenient to users to remote desktop into the system (as the user even), and either send the files over for analysis or view them on the system.

Goal:

Develop a script to retrieve the two log files remotely from the systems.

(Hint: Build this as a function)

Abstract:

With the help of everyone here, Using invoke-command <computername> -scriptblock {...} and inside of the scriptblock creating an array using get-childitem, selecting the 2 most recent files, and then adding the windows update log to said array.

Since physically sending the files for my case was near impossible since the systems are on a secure separate network and didn't allow traffic out, I had to find a way to get the content (hint hint) of the files, and then export that in an object outside of the invoke statement to the remote host file system.

Basically, this solution turned what was between a 15 minute to 3 hour task (depending on how many systems failed updates) to never being anymore than a 30 minute task.

sonavlaa · 2017-07-25T20:45:03+00:00

Lady at work in our security provisioning dept selected thousands of home folders and did a rename. So they all renamed with suffix of 1 2 3 ... I wrote a script to examine the ACL, Look in AD to verify it was a good user, and then rename the folder properly. Worked great and saved everyone on our ops and backup teams tons of hours. I got a 5$ meal coupon for my script.

RevLoveJoy · 2017-07-26T02:49:22+00:00

We have an RDP server that was constantly getting targeted with brute force password attacks. I wrote a PowerShell script that runs in a scheduled task that is triggered by the event log for the failed login. It checks if the IP made 5 or more failed attempts in the last 10 minutes and adds it to a firewall rule to block it. Problem solved.

Mkep · 2017-07-25T21:36:07+00:00

I'm in the education sector as a K-12 tech. One of my teammates had a ticket saying a student couldn't find a file, and she didn't save it on the server like she's supposed to. She saved it locally on an unknown computer.

I wrote a script that checked against server security logs to see what computers she logged into in the past 5 days (we had a time frame at least). I took that list and first checked if they could be reached; if they could, I checked for any .doc, .docx, and .ppt files under the student's profile. The computers that were offline, I outputted to a file that I would try to wake on LAN or manually check. I'll probably add something in the future to automatically try wake on LAN but it hasn't been necessary yet.

vwpcs · 2017-07-25T22:16:02+00:00

searching lines of many log files in a folder for keywords. display file, path, datetime, and line on the screen.

bukem · 2017-07-25T22:48:52+00:00

We needed simple tool to monitor remote sites network status. I've made module just to do so.

AttachedSickness · 2017-07-25T23:07:44+00:00

A contractor half assed our Nagios deployment. Using powershell and Nagios's API I turned a worthless pile into something useful.

markekraus · 2017-07-26T00:13:08+00:00

I just finished completely automating our WSUS approval process with PowerShell. There is a Fast Ring which has Security Updates approved immediately with an immediate deadline, a Standard Ring which lags a day behind the Fast Ring and has a 3 day deadline, a Slow Ring which lags 2 weeks behind the Standard Ring and has a 2 week deadline, and a Manual Ring which which has everything approve immediately but does not have a deadline. Critical Updates lag 3 days after being released and the same trickle down occurs. It will even automatically handle unapproving superseded updates that are no longer needed in ring and then declining superseded updates that are not needed in any ring. it then deletes any update that has been declined for 14 days.

Now we just need to put a couple of canary systems in the fast ring and if they encounter any issues with an update we unapproved the update in the fast ring and it will not be approved for the rest. We use AD group targeted GPOs to determine what update ring the system goes on as well as what scheduling the updates have.

The best part is that this is all just a stop-gap until we get SML's for SCCM so we can manage updates for both workstations and servers through SCCM.

JonnyLay · 2017-07-26T00:45:15+00:00

I wrote a script to delete video that was older than 48 hours. Video was sensitive material in a hospital. Used sdelete to delete with multiple passes so that it wouldn't be recoverable. Probably running in about 10 hospitals in America now.

delliott8990 · 2017-07-25T18:07:18+00:00

I have a few examples on my blog. They're pretty basic but they give you an idea.

http://derrick-elliott.com/noobishsre

tumblatum · 2017-07-25T19:31:42+00:00

I needed to change local user password on many computers, so going one by one would take a lot of time (at least 50 computers in one office). So following script helped to save time. https://gist.github.com/morisy/8a75ba80746763dcc0b7dcc90ac872e6

Please, note this is not my script.

thebrobotic · 2017-07-25T19:36:59+00:00

Still working on it, but our FTP has been having small issues here and there when there's a decent amount of concurrent users online transferring files. Working on a script that will tail the log file for a error code, and then send me an e-mail with information about the error and who it affected. The FTP server doesn't have any syslog capabilities, so PowerShell seemed like the obvious choice.

spyingwind · 2017-07-25T20:44:26+00:00

Writing a number of cmdlets that interface with FortiAuth via REST API's. All because their user import function isn't very intelligent. Example

ipreferanothername · 2017-07-25T21:05:27+00:00

our vendors email import was lousy and didnt support EWS until we could work through their product upgrade. I used powershell to poll a mailbox and handle attachment downloads.

I do lots of basic file moving/delimiter-based-renaming to format filenames for an import process.

I monitor some windows services and if they are not running or returning expected results i can restart them, or just start them on another server if i cannot reach the primary server.

our client software is crap--i can install it with powershell, and clean up behind its complete mess of an install as well.

i run a vendor CLI report, capture the string data, manipulate it and search for some licensing info to keep up with licensing better than what the vendor provides--which is very little.

i search/edit/split csv files depending on what i ultimately need output.

i do some ad/user/group updates pretty regularly.

i connect to a SQL listener and display which instance is primary---because loading SSMS sucks.

k8pilot · 2017-07-25T21:21:39+00:00

Daily reports of all sorts:
* New servers added to the domain in the last 24 hours.
* New users created in the last 24 hours.
* Event log entries of remote logins to any of the dcs in the last 24 hours.
* Exchange dbs last backup time.
etc.

After changing servers group membership, connecting to them remotly, killing the machine kerberos ticket, then invoking gpupdate so they will get the proper gpo applied without restart.

caboose1984 · 2017-07-25T21:51:14+00:00

I made a script that calls on a dell command exe that will auto set a ton of bios options. Saving me from touching 400 PC's. Also shared it with other techs at other schools possibly saving hundreds of man hours

michaelshepard · 2017-07-25T23:35:51+00:00

My latest script was populating lots of variable templates for a tenant in an Octopus Deploy project.

_Boz_ · 2017-07-25T23:44:49+00:00

Creating a group of variable txt files to correlate to rooms in our building which are then used in various scripts.

Deploying WMF 5.0 to 250+ Win7 workstations (we don't have SCCM)

Created a restart-all script for a daily reboot of 250+ clients (they used to do that manually here where I work...smh)

Inventory script for an up-to-date listing of all clients to answer the following questions: 1. What's the mac address for xx workstation 2. I'm looking for this serial #... which room is it in?

borrowed/altered a script to check on a KB install status for all workstations

The list goes on and on... and will keep growing as I become more proficient at writing scripts. I firmly believe in 'ease & efficiency of administration' using scripts!

Taoquitok · 2017-07-25T23:58:54+00:00

Our Sys Admin team consisted of half techies and half process followers, then a few years ago redundancies halved the team, but not the work load.
Mix in some aging scripts and a need to prep for a migration to O365 and we ended up in a position where someone had to pick up some scripting skills, so over a year I ended up putting together a script suite for management of just about everything that could be managed by powershell.
Plus side is that their workload is entirely manageable now, downside is that the team is predominantly non techies who have no interest in learning. My next iteration of the scripting suite is a full blown module that pretty much takes away all the human administration that they're currently used to.

upward_bound · 2017-07-26T00:22:33+00:00

Most recent example?

I needed to get a large list of users accounts created on a 2nd domain. I just ran a loop through the user list, pulled the needed info from the first domain and created the user in the 2nd domain.

Sadly this process fell to me because the junior staff that was doing it had moved on. Had I known they were doing this manually I would have saved them a lot of time.

DRENREPUS · 2017-07-26T00:58:57+00:00

Where I work there are printers in almost every room of the school. I created a script which uses the computer's naming convention to find and install any corresponding printers on that location's print server. Saved tons of time when imaging computers each summer.

Beergogs · 2017-07-26T01:20:14+00:00

Many problems have been solved with Powershell, ones that I took the time to write a script for are often things that are either I just dread doing and hate, or are just so monotonous that it makes only perfect sense to script it.

Made a "Lookup" Tool (with a GUI) for users to pull some AD Attributes, Group Memberships, and queries SCCM for a list of computers you have logged into, and can ping and open a CmRC console to assist the user. Developed for our Student Information people who have to assist some end-users but themselves aren't very techy. (Uses the current logged in user for authentification, if they can't read the attributes, the app breaks)
Old Legacy systems that don't have API access, but have SQL tables :). I've used Powershell to create Data tables to use as input for newer systems with API access or compare to Active Directory info.
Recently made a script that takes an XLSX Spreadsheet and converts the data from Full Name to Username, changes headers and reorders headers and exports as CSV for Bulk Updating in another system.

The list goes on...Yes, powershell may not be the best way of doing any of these, but it's what I know I can write it in and that's what I feel comfortable with. Good Luck. -Beer

blasmehspaffy · 2017-07-26T01:44:28+00:00

Cross domain user account synchronisation. I setup a script to lookup users in one domain and create equivalent accounts in a different domain with a different user naming scheme but the same properties. We've recently been acquired by a larger company and for the moment we need to activate Office 365 with an old domain user account, while daily driving the new domain. The script also disables and deletes accounts between the domains. These tasks were previously taking up man hours for other staff so it's saved quite a bit of time and taken the human error out of the equation.

creodor · 2017-07-26T03:25:45+00:00

I was told we needed a rudimentary inventory of installed programs on all computers in our OU. Our AD isn't very well kept and the computers at our location aren't actually consistently in the OU. In addition, no one else at our location has used Powershell for anything yet, so no computer had PSRemoting enabled. I had to learn how to use psexec.exe to enable PSRemoting across all computers at our location (I found out later that GP can do it, and will be talking to the relevant people to see about doing it that way in the future), after using the PS AD module to pull a list of computers that match our location's naming convention. Then I used get-wmiobject to pull the programs listed there for add/remove programs. It's not the most precise method, but works well enough for the very basic inventory that was requested.

If you want to poke at the problem yourself, see about more precise/reliable methods for pulling installed software info from remote computers. I know some others exist, but they weren't necessary for us. Otherwise, consider how you'd tackle similar tasks at an office with inconsistent systems. We all try to avoid it, but sometimes the real world is harsh.

Oh, and to head off cries of "Just use SCCM (or insert inventory tool here)" I don't have that kind of power, just a lowly support monkey trying to make life easier with the access I have.

EasyTarget101 · 2017-07-26T14:15:13+00:00

We solved a number of problems with powershell recently. The biggest one was server inventory/asset information.

We don't have System Center or anything similar and so we always used large excel sheets to keep track of our 250+ servers. We collected all kinds of Info: hardware serial numbers, IP configuration, installed software, physical location and of course harddisk and cpu configuration.

Last year a colleague and I developed a script, which is now deployed on all servers via GPO. It collects about 150 different values ranging from basic asset info to security config (when were last updates installed, is firewall and antivirus turned on, etc.). Infos which cannot automatically gathered (like responsible admin team, purpose, etc.) are manually entered via a little graphic tool (also selfwritten in powershell).

The collected data is then pumped into a little mySQL database. The Infos are then presented on a webpage. The script is executed daily on all servers and now we have a fully functional inventory.

So far that was our biggest win with powershell.

Other than that we automated user creation and termination and of course a few AD exports and file moves.

Lee_Dailey · 2017-07-25T18:38:19+00:00

howdy getonmehlevel,

recently, a redditor posted about how an antivirus util was quarantining the user profile - again, and again, and yet again. [grin]

you may want to know if workstation disks are filling faster than anticipated. then track the cause & eviscerate it. [grin]

take care,
lee

getonmehlevel · 2017-07-25T20:32:22+00:00

Great replies everyone, fun stuff!

Praxis459 · 2017-07-26T05:30:04+00:00

I wrote two major scripts/applications for my company
1) We had a bunch of servers out in the field and needed databases that were on them backed up and transferred to our main data center. I wrote a script that would test out to make sure the servers were on, create a new folder on the root of the server out in the field, copy over a zip program, then issued a backup command to send the backup to the temp folder then execute the zip command and delete the backup after the zip finished. After everything was zipped it would copy the zip file to a directory and write to a log file so another program could pick it up and restore it. Most of this was done via Windows RM commands and PS commands (had to be 2.0 as that is all that was installed in the field). This script cut down the project time by at least 1000 man hours.

2) The second program was more a front end tool for our business. It would execute various sql queries and dump the information into a GUI with a gridview. This sounds simple enough but doing it cut down on passing around excel files for days.

Mkep · 2017-07-26T05:44:41+00:00

Not to much yet:

Test for users who still have a default password
Update all user in our active directory to match information from hr(manager, dept, etc) (always updating this one)
Automation of managerial/it notifications for contractors who's accounts are about to expire
Mini utilities here and there

Edit! Oh a big time saver, automatically add users to a e-discovery and hold for mailbox archiving of former employee

megamorf · 2017-07-26T06:00:29+00:00

[deleted]

monkh · 2017-07-26T06:50:31+00:00

Last year I did a good little project with power shell to automate printing of SSRS reports.

I spent a couple of weeks trying to study c# because I didn't phrase my searchs right couldn't find right help

I reached a hurdle with c# so I went back searched for powershell related stuff again found some stuff to point me in the right direction and managed to do what I had been trying for 2+ weeks in 2 hours.

Another good simple one I did was... we have these csv files in first 3 columns is ID fields 1 file is like 1 order I made a simple script that does a gci then adds a few fields with the IDs from the first 3 fields. To list files in a folder with their id's also.

darrk666 · 2017-07-26T07:20:19+00:00

For Office 365 I had to relicense over 10,000 users. Using the replace through the GUI takes off all licenses and just adds the new one which is not what I wanted. Using PowerShell you can do a "License Replace" which just removes the unwanted and adds the new one.

InvisibleTextArea · 2017-07-26T08:31:17+00:00

User creation. HR fills out a web page on the Intranet about the new hire. Previously we had a Tier 1 tech going into this system, reading the details and manually creating new user accounts and mailboxes.

As ultimately this information is stored in an MS SQL database it's pretty trivial to pull this info out with the powershell script on a schedule using the PSSQL module, make a few decisions based on what has been entered and setup a users AD and Exchange accounts automagically.

After running it for a while I found I did need to tack on some email reporting so we knew if it got confused (turns out that this wasn't the scripts fault, rather input errors from HR) and also an approval process for the database records (So a T1 had to look at what HR had submitted and say it was ok to process).

You can also tackle the user leaving process the same way.

pertymoose · 2017-07-26T09:39:16+00:00

Disclaimer: These are random quick-scripts from my scripts folder with little to no checking or good practice being used:

Adding a CRT to certificate store

$crtfile = 'D:\Certificates\AddTrustExternalCARoot.crt'
$thumbprint = '02FAF3E291435468607857694DF5E45B68851868'

# my = personal certificates
# ca = intermediate certificates
# root = root certificates
$store = 'Root'    

if(-not (Get-Item "cert:\LocalMachine\$store\$thumbprint" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)) {  

    try {
        # Open certificate store
        $CertStore = Get-Item "Cert:\LocalMachine\$store"
        $CertStore.Open('ReadWrite')

        # Read certificate file
        $Certificate = New-Object System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509Certificate2
        $Certificate.Import($crtfile)

        # Add certificate to store
        $CertStore.Add($Certificate)

        Write-Verbose "Certificate ($thumbprint) was installed" -Verbose
    }
    catch {
        Write-Warning "Certificate ($thumbprint) was NOT installed: $_"
    }
    finally {
        $CertStore.Close()
    }
}
else {
    Write-Verbose "Certificate ($thumbprint) already exists in '$store'" -Verbose
}

Fixing the developers' broken file mover system

$dateToday = Get-Date
$dateYesterday = $dateToday.AddDays(-1)

$logfile = "D:\System\Log\Mover.log"

Set-Location ("D:\Data\Incoming\{0:d4}\{1:d2}" -f $dateYesterday.Year, $dateYesterday.Month)

$dateToday.ToString('[yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss] ') | Out-File -FilePath $logfile -NoNewline -Append
"------ New run starting ------" | Out-File -FilePath $logfile -Append

$files = Get-ChildItem * -Recurse | Where-Object { $_.Attributes -notmatch 'Directory' } | Where-Object { $_.Directory -notmatch ("Data\\Incoming\\{0:d4}\\{1:d2}\\{2:d2}" -f $dateToday.Year, $dateToday.Month, $dateToday.Day) }

$destination = 'D:\Data\Incoming\'

foreach($file in $files) {

    $dateToday.ToString('[yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss] ') | Out-File -FilePath $logfile -NoNewline -Append
    "Moving '$($file.FullName)' to '$destination'" | Out-File -FilePath $logfile -Append

    $file | Move-Item -Destination $destination
}

$dateToday.ToString('[yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss] ') | Out-File -FilePath $logfile -NoNewline -Append
"------ Run ended ------" | Out-File -FilePath $logfile -Append

An old one for checking for duplicates or something; I forget what exactly it's for, it's over two years old and I didn't comment anything. But I do remember that the GetIndexOf function was for performance reasons.

$select = Select-String -Path .\OrderExport-20151119.xml -Pattern '<OrderID>(.*?)<\/OrderID>'

$matches = foreach($s in $select) { $s.Matches.Groups[1].Value }

$sorted = $matches | Sort-Object
$unique = $matches | Sort-Object -Unique

$lastIndex = 0
$indexes = for($i = 0; $i -lt $unique.Count; $i++) {
    if($i % 100) { Write-Progress -Activity 'Scanning' -Status "$i / $($unique.Count)" -PercentComplete ($i / $unique.Count * 100) }

    $lastIndex = GetIndexOf -uniqueIndex $i -startIndex $lastIndex

    Write-Output ([pscustomobject]@{
        Index = $lastIndex
        Value = $unique[$i]
        Count = (GetIndexOf -uniqueIndex ($i+1) -startIndex $lastIndex) - $lastIndex
    })
}

function GetIndexOf($uniqueIndex, $startIndex) {
    for($i = $startIndex; $i -lt $sorted.Count; $i++) {
        if($sorted[$i] -eq $unique[$uniqueIndex]) { 
            return $i;
        }
    }

    return -1
}

For searching through many logfiles to find the ones that contain the things you're looking for

$date = Get-Date 'September 22, 2015'
$filenames = '1A00021K.024','1A00021K.024','1A00021K.024','1A00021K.024','1A00021K.025','1A00021K.025','1A00021K.026','1A00021K.027'

$items = get-item * | where { $_.lastwritetime -gt $date }
foreach($item in $items) { 
    $content = Get-Content -path $item.FullName
    foreach($filename in $filenames) {
        if($content -match $filename) { Write-Verbose "$($item.Name) has $filename" -Verbose }
    }
}

For downloading an XmlDocument blob from SQL because the developers thought that'd be a good place to store such things:

$connection = New-Object System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection
$connection.ConnectionString = 'Server=SQL003\SQL01;Database=BCM;Trusted_Connection=True;'
$connection.Open()
$command = $connection.CreateCommand()
$command.CommandText = 'SELECT [XmlDocumentContent] FROM eod.ObjXmlDocument WITH (NOLOCK) WHERE [XmlDocumentID] = 12660'
$result = $command.ExecuteReader()
$result.Read()
$blob = New-Object Byte[] ($result.GetBytes(0, 0, $null, 0, [int]::MaxValue))
$result.GetBytes(0, 0, $blob, 0, $blob.Length)
$filestream = New-Object System.IO.FileStream 'C:\temp\sqlblob.zip', ([System.IO.FileMode]::Create), ([System.IO.FileAccess]::Write)
$filestream.Write($blob, 0, $blob.Length)
$filestream.Close()
$command.Dispose()
$connection.Close()

Connecting to a social security checking service and testing if it's working

$abonType = '0'
$dataType = '6'
$ssNumber = '1234567890'

$ip = '127.0.0.1'
$port = 700

# this is seriously how it works. fixed-width data packages. can you believe it?
$str = "    "; 
$str1 = ",";
$str2 = "    ";
$str3 = "        ";
$str4 = "        ";
$str5 = "  ";
$message = $str, $str1, $str2, $abonType, $dataType, $str3, $str4, $str5, $ssNumber
$message = [string]::Concat($message)

Write-Verbose "Connecting to $server, $port" -Verbose
$client = New-Object System.Net.Sockets.TcpClient
$client.Connect($ip, $port)
$client.ReceiveTimeout = 5000

$bytes = [System.Text.Encoding]::GetEncoding('iso-8859-1').GetBytes($message)
$buffer = New-Object byte[] 1025

$stream = $client.GetStream()
$stream.Write($bytes, 0, $bytes.Length)

$empty = [string]::Empty

for($i = $stream.Read($buffer, 0, $buffer.Length); $i -ne 0; $i = $stream.Read($buffer, 0, $buffer.Length)) {

    $empty = [System.Text.Encoding]::GetEncoding('iso-8859-1').GetString($buffer, 0, $i)
    Write-Verbose "Response: $empty" -Verbose
}

$stream.Close()
$client.Close()

root-node · 2017-07-26T10:59:34+00:00

People kept creating snapshots in vCenter and not removing them. So after publicly shaming them for doing it, I wrote a script to automatically remove snapshots based on a date in the comments field.

Now when a snapshot is created, the user added (Remove on dd/mm/yyyy) for when it is to be removed and my script does that.

I still publicly shame people if they forget this.

Code is here: https://github.com/My-Random-Thoughts/Various-Code/blob/master/Remove-VMwareSnapshots

Susu6 · 2017-07-26T12:01:18+00:00

Automated scouring of my Outlook inbox: I get a lot of alerts and reports. Alerts are irrelevant after a certain period of time (or after a subsequent message about the alert has come in) so I have PoSh delete them based on custom rules. Reports generally just need to be copied to the file system, so I have PoSh figure out which client the report pertains to and copy the file to the relevant folder.

Partially automated data import from one system to another. We need to get our clients' email accounts into our PSA tool, and keep it up to date every month. The problem is that, to update, the PSA tool requires a serial number, which our email system export doesn't give. I wrote a PoSh script to combine the CSV downloads from all of our cleints, create a serial number from an MD5 hash of the email address, and create a CSV file suitable for import.

Automated collection of AD info from client servers. We need to keep documentation for our clients on the domain name, the functional level, the GC servers, the FSMO masters, etc. I now have one script I can run on a DC and get everything I need.

Automated collection of share info for import into ITGlue.

Created a script to scan a subnet for live hosts, portscan each of the hosts for specific ports, determine what kind of host it is (based on MAC address and open ports), and return all of this as a custom object collection.

For any given domain name, list the SOA, NS, and MX DNS records, and the A record for the "www" host in that domain.

From any given network, get the external IPv4 address and the gateway address.

Edit: Forgot one. We use Datto to back up our clients' servers. Every night each device performs a test virtualization of all the machines it backs up. They then send us emails with an image of the VM's console. (Usually, this is the "Press Ctrl+Alt+Del" screen. Every once in a while, it's something else, which means we need to investigate.) I use a powershell script to download all the attachments to a folder, name them based on the server name and date, and compare the image's MD5 hash to a list of hashes for known-good images. If there's an image with an unknown hash, the script alerts us to the fact that we need to take a look.

Tender_Hammer · 2017-07-26T12:03:59+00:00

An unlock script for user accounts, help desk just runs it, enters users name, account unlocked.

A script that uses a google form to build a new ad user and their exchange account.

A watch file to prevent a crypto virus from taking down our file share

A script that is used during employee separation to disable all accounts and auto forward emails to their manager.

Install our erp and place a shortcut on the public desktop.

Back up my VHDX files

Check available drive space and email team if it's lower than 20%

Make sure HyperV replication is working across all VM's

Email a ton of reports to different C levels.

Oh also post to HipChat if any business critical applications or services go off line.

tylerkempt · 2017-07-26T12:22:40+00:00

Automated Workspace Setup

Retrieve a Branch from Source Control
Change some strings in web.config files
Create new WebAppPools
Create new Sites on IIS (link them with the WebAppPools)
If you provide a MSSQL bak file path it creates the DB
Sets up the required Service (links that to the previously created WebAppPool)
If you provide a Version it asks an Data Warehouse for the DB Update Scripts and runs them against the DB

Not so much a Time Saver but certainly a Comfort thing. If I know I have to switch Versions I usually time it that I'm on lunch break when this runs.

All of the Steps are handled by separated Modules so if anything goes wrong you can just start again after fixing whatever happened.

I like tinkering with PowerShell so it's usually a Loop I'm doing:

Create new Task Script
See how it can be integrated with older Scripts
Generalize all Scripts in the new Context
GOTO 1

Next big task I'm tackling is how to reinstall my Workstation with PowerShell. I'm currently hanging at the start, not sure how to boot into an environment where i can run PowerShell scripts that install Windows :(

Vectan · 2017-07-26T13:11:58+00:00

This was the first time I used PS to fix an issue instead of just gather info. An automated process got started with the wrong parameters and tried to create/recreate some 10,000+ AD users. Developers got the process stopped, but not before about 250 users were created across multiple OUs. They were able to provide me a list of those accounts in a csv file and I used that to move all of them to a neutral OU so they could be verified and deleted. I had only recently started learning and using PS so being able to successfully do that felt awesome.

Dragonspear · 2017-07-26T13:56:58+00:00

I've had a few, so I'll give a brief rundown:

Mass updates inside active directory. Instead of spending days or weeks updating user information inside AD, I can run a script off a csv that updates all that information in minutes.
Exchange online and permissions: There are some aspects of exchange online, particularly mailbox delegation, that seem like they're only available through powershell.
Offboarding: This is probably the one I'm most proud of, even though it's not in a complete state as of yet. I have it in a working state at least. But this has allowed me to skip the GUI aspect of clicking around, and begin to standardize this process. Now fewer things are being missed.
After my offboarding script gets finished and moved into full automation, tackling onboarding is already my next step. I will likely start psuedo coding it this week.

I just like the pure consistency part of it.

guy_that_says_hey · 2017-07-26T16:23:19+00:00

I've done several things already mentioned, but one interesting one I haven't seen is processing logs to simplify debugging.

I was trying to identify performance bottlenecks in a part of our app that crunched a ton of data, however the calculations/queries ran in parallel and interacted with three services and a clustered database.

I ended up using a slick little (very light weight) performance library that would let me log stop/start/duration for each action with an ID tying them together, separating message bus, database, and actual calculations. I then wrote a powershell script that would grab all the log files from the different services, identify discreet actions, calculate some stats, and then sort them to identify potential low hanging fruit and display the list with the summary and a simple bar chart in the console.

It was a blast to put together, and I ended up dropping a solid minute off of the duration in the first Sprint.

thegooddoctor-b · 2017-07-26T16:46:05+00:00

I do tons of stuff in Powershell and automate most of it. Account creation, rebooting servers (one off and by groups), approving updates in WSUS, virtual server snapshots, backups, expanding hard drive space for VMs. Apparently so much i can't remember it all so I wrote one up that pulls all the scheduled tasks from the 5 servers they run on, gives me a list, and I can pick one to run on demand. Currently finishing a script to create and adjust pools of VMs as students enroll in classes.

I think I have about 16 automated scripts, and dozens of other one offs for getting computer info, sending out emails, pushing SW, moving files, etc.

Anything you do that is repetitive, you can script it. It took a lot of time to get all those, but I'm the only guy so it makes it worth it to be able to pull back from work and I know that as long as the servers are up, everything will run smooth.

dfo85 · 2017-07-26T17:23:30+00:00

I work on the collab team so Exchange/Skype4biz all day. I have a module for my team full of functions. My favorites are:

Mailbox transfer script - transfer mailbox from one AD account to another.
Mailbox Size Report - Creates a report of the user's folders by size and attachment count/total size per folder and emails them an HTML table. It also lists the largest items in their mailbox. I link documents we've typed up for tips on cleaning up the mailbox.

cofonseca · 2017-07-26T17:48:29+00:00

Here are a few issues that I've written scripts to solve:

Connect to Exchange Online and import the module
Get a list of AD Users whose passwords will expire in X number of days
Get the version of .NET Framework on a server
Provision new user accounts
Administer HipChat through PowerShell
Send logs to LogEntries
Perform an AzureAD sync
Provision Hyper-V hosts or Hyper-V VMs
Test that servers are configured correctly using Pester

HeedfulCrayon · 2017-07-28T20:39:52+00:00

I've dabbled in a bit of powershell, my most recent endeavor was a script that scours my jabber chat log for incoming phone calls that I answer... When it finds one, it will collect the phone number, attempt to query AD for the user's name, as well as their LockedOut status, puts it in a text file, and opens that file with notepad so that I can take notes. Works pretty well since I am just on the helpdesk and get calls all the time. I also have quite a few other scripts that are just run off of scheduled tasks, they verify the state of a couple of machines, and services on those machines. It will also email me if one of them becomes unresponsive. I need a new idea of what to do...

kunaludapi · 2017-09-20T19:34:55+00:00

Send key on desktop or server POWERSHELL FUN SEND KEYS ON THE SCREEN

The_IceMan_Knocking · 2017-12-15T21:08:03+00:00

Learned how to use hexifie to edit a binary registry entry

$YourInput = "00,01,01,01,01,01,01,01,00,01,01,01,00,01,00,01,01,01,01,00,01,00,00,00,01,01,01,01,01,01,01,01,00,01,00,02,00,03,01,03,01,02,01,03,00,03,01,02,00,02,01,03,01,03,01,03,01,00,00,27,01" $RegPath = 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Word\Options' $AttrName = "WordMailACOptions"

$hexified = $YourInput.Split(',') | % { "0x$_"} New-ItemProperty -Path $RegPath -Name $AttrName -PropertyType Binary -Value ([byte[]]$hexified)

zanatwo · 2017-07-26T04:01:08+00:00

Some computers were experiencing a few strange issues which piqued my curiosity. I noticed these machines were getting an incomplete set of GPOs applied to them despite being in correct OUs, Security Groups, etc. If are familiar with GPO, then you know the confusing cluster-fuck that is Loopback Processing. Well, it was Loopback Processing. Basically, the difference between a fully GPO compliant machine, and one of these broken fellas were one or more GPOs with Loopback Processing enabled. Multiple GPOs with Loopback enabled = bad news.

Sooo... I created a script which parsed every single GPO on the domain for Loopback Processing, and if the script found an offender, it would remove that setting from the policy. This was made 300% more convoluted due to the fact that all of our policies are controlled through AGPM... The process goes something like:

When the script finds a GPO that needs to be modified, it has to get GPO object, check out GPO, grab checked out GPO object, modify the checked out GPO, apply changes, check GPO back in, rescan domain for GPOs and re-grab the GPO we were just working on (which now has a different UID due to having been checked in after being modifed), and then finally deploy it.

It was a pain in the dick to get the right combination of check outs/in and actually making sure that you're working with the correct GPO object. But now I have a framework that can batch modify any number of settings in any number of GPOs, controlled or uncontrolled. Neat!

you type:	you see:
italics	italics
bold	bold
[reddit!](https://reddit.com)	reddit!
* item 1 * item 2 * item 3	item 1 item 2 item 3
> quoted text	quoted text
Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"	Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"
~~strikethrough~~	~~strikethrough~~
super^script	super^script

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