Exchange 2010/2013: Database Leveling Script

It is common to randomly choose mailbox databases when creating or migrating user mailboxes in Exchange. I actually recommend this practice unless you are setting up a tiered user/storage environment. Unfortunately this may result in an unequal distribution of data which, in turn, can result in an environment where mailbox databases are wildly different in size. In this post I will discuss an approach to leveling the databases so they are equal in size by moving mailboxes between them.

Gather (and Diagram) Installed Roles and Features With Powershell

Use this powershell script to gather installed features and roles from remote systems. This uses two wmi classes in an attempt to gather as much information as possible. Win32_ServerFeature will contain roles and their dependencies on systems running Windows 2008 and above. For these systems we can use this hierarchy to also produce pretty diagrams using graphviz and techniques I’ve exhibited in some of my other scripts (I added this last part in cause it is easy to do, not really certain how useful it is other than maybe exploring the dependencies between windows roles/features).

Gather Remote Event Logs With Powershell

About

Gather the remote event log information for one or more systems using wmi, alternate credentials, and multiple runspaces. Function supports custom timeout parameters in case of wmi problems and returns Event Log information for the specified number of past hours. You can view verbose information on each runspace thread in realtime with the -Verbose option.

Version History

1.0.0 – 10/16/2013

• Initial release

Notes

By default 24 hours is what we filter against for the results. I’m retroactively releasing this function individually from the new-assetreport project I’ve released a little while ago.

Visualize Active Directory Site Connections

In this post I use powershell with graphviz to create an Active Directory diagram of all site connections between servers. Additionally, I’ve included some code which displays site connection options. You may be able to use this to find isolated DCs or just to see a pretty diagram.

Find Disabled Users With Lync Enabled Without Lync Cmdlts

Here is a quick tip which applies to more than just Lync. I use powershell with .NET ADSI to gather a list of all users which are disabled but still have Lync sip addresses assigned. There are numerous reasons to disable lync on such accounts. One reason would be to make certain that users whom are no longer with the organization get removed from the Lync address list. Another is so these same users can no longer access Lync! (Yes, a disabled AD account may still be authorized to access Lync).