Here are a few cmdlets/options which you can use to find out the version of PowerShell:
$psversiontable
$host.version
get-host|Select-Object version
You can also look at a following registry value:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PowerShell\1\PowerShellEngine\PowerShellVersion
You may have noticed that the Windows Live Writer keeps prompting for user name and password when you try to update Twitter. This is because of the recent change in the authentication type. Twitter has changed the authentication mechanism to OAuth (Open Authorization). You can read more info here: http://blog.twitter.com/2010/08/twitter-applications-and-oauth.html
So you need to get an updated version of Twitter Notify plug-in from the following location to resolve this issue:
http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=6b2b5ffe-936a-4cb3-869c-c01de29de176&bt=9&pl=8
As you know, you can evaluate the Windows Server 2008 without activating the product for 60 days. You can verify the status of evaluation period by using the following command:
Slmrg /dlv
After the initial 60 days, you can reset (rearm)the evaluation period 3 times (180 days). That means you can evaluate the Windows Server 2008 product for 240 days (180 + 60). You can reset the evaluation period using the following command:
Slmgr -rearm
The Exchange team has released Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Exchange Server 2010.
Download:
The Exchange Server 2010 SP1 Beta Help file is available for download. This download contains a standalone version of Help file. You can download it from the following location:
This script searches user accounts from an input file (input.csv). If the user does not exist in the Active Directory Domain, it will be added to the output file (UserOutput.csv).
Download: http://www.sivarajan.com/scripts/SearchAD-1.txt
More Scripts:
The Forefront Identity Manager (FIM) 2010 Capacity Planning Guide is available for download.
This document provides advice and considerations for organizations that are planning deployments of FIM 2010. The first part of the document describes multiple factors to consider as you begin to plan your FIM 2010 deployment. Topic subjects include FIM 2010 topology, hardware, policy configuration objects, scale, and load. The latter part of this document describes measurements and observations that were made during the initial deployment test scenarios. The main goal of this guide is to help you set up a test lab environment that will help you in preparing the deployment of FIM 2010 to a production environment.
Download:
This script can be used to list group membership in Active Directory.
As you can see on the following screenshot, this script uses an input file called Glist.csv which contains all group names.
You will see the output on the screen as well as in the GroupDetails.csv file.
You can download the script from the following location. Rename the file to .PS1
This download comes as a pre-configured VHD. This download enables you evaluate Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 for 60 days.
Download this fully configured virtual machine of the latest release of Exchange Server 2010. Evaluate the new capabilities of Exchange Server 2010, which helps you achieve new levels of reliability and performance by delivering features that help to simplify your administration, protect your communications, and delight your users by meeting their demands for greater business mobility.
Download
This Tool is a collection of PowerShell scripts which will help provision and configure a Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Server core installation.
You can download the latest version from the following location:
The Active Directory Certificate Services Monitoring Management Pack monitors service availability for System Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1 or R2. The Active Directory Certificate Services Monitoring Management Pack monitors service availability for Certification Authority (CA) servers running on a Windows Server 2008 SP2 or Windows Server 2008 R2 managed machines, including server core installations, and provides alerts for critical events.
You can download the Management Pack (MP) from the following location:
Another Data Protection Manager 2010 guide from the DPM team.
This guide provides step-by-step instructions for installing, upgrading, and configuring DPM 2010, and includes an introduction to the DPM user interface, DPM Administrator Console. This guide also provides step-by-step instructions for troubleshooting, repairing, and uninstalling a DPM 2010 installation.
Download:
Other DPM Guides and Whitepapers:
http://portal.sivarajan.com/2010/08/new-dpm-2010-whitepapers-and-datasheets.html
Issue
In a windows 2008 mixed Active Directory environment, the DCDIAG reports the following error:
Starting test: NCSecDesc
Error NT AUTHORITY\ENTERPRISE DOMAIN CONTROLLERS doesn't have
Replicating Directory Changes In Filtered Set
access rights for the naming context:
DC=ForestDnsZones,DC=santhosh,DC=lab
Cause/Resolution
You will see this error message when you promote a Windows Server 2008 domain controller in a Windows Server 2003 domain without preparing the AD Schema for RODC (read-only domain controller) using adprep /rodcprep command. If you do not plan to add an RODC to the forest, you can safely ignore this error message. Otherwise, run adprep /rodcprep to update the AD schema.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754463(WS.10).aspx
New DPM 2010 whitepaper and datasheets are available now.
Whitepaper - How to protect Exchange with DPM 2010 – Why and how to protect Exchange data with DPM 2010
Whitepaper - How to protect SQL Server with DPM 2010 – Why and how to protect SQL Server data with DPM 2010
Whitepaper - How to protect SharePoint with DPM 2010 – Why and how to protect SharePoint data with DPM 2010
Datasheet - How to protect Hyper-V with DPM 2010 – How to protect Hyper-V with DPM 2010
Datasheet - How to protect Windows Clients with DPM 2010 – Overview of capabilities for protecting Windows desktops and laptops (running Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7) with DPM 2010
The Microsoft Forefront Protection Server Script Kit provides multi-server management for Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server and Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint. This script kit includes a set of integrated Microsoft Windows PowerShell scripts that enable you to manage from one console multiple Forefront Protection servers deployed across your environment.
You download these PowerShell scripts from the following location:
The DPM team has released a new whitepaper on “How to protect Exchange with Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2010”
You can download this whitepaper from the following location:
This major update to TCPView, a TCP/UDP endpoint viewing utility, adds endpoint send and receive statistics by leveraging ETW when TCPView is run with administrative rights. It also breaks ports and addresses into separate columns
TCPView is a Windows program that will show you detailed listings of all TCP and UDP endpoints on your system, including the local and remote addresses and state of TCP connections. On Windows Server 2008, Vista, and XP, TCPView also reports the name of the process that owns the endpoint. TCPView provides a more informative and conveniently presented subset of the Netstat program that ships with Windows. The TCPView download includes Tcpvcon, a command-line version with the same functionality.
Download: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897437.aspx
This script searches 2 Active Directory domains using a common matching attribute value (employeeID) and creates an out file with Source SamAccountName, Target SamAccountName and Name. You can use this script if you are performing user migrations and merging user accounts during the migration.
Input file – Empid.csv – contains all employee IDs.
Output file – UserInfo.txt - The script generates a TAB delimited file output which contains Source SamAccountName, Target SamAccountName and Name files.
In this script I am using employeeID as the common attribute to search user account in the source (ss-infra.lab) and target (santhosh.lab) domains.
Download:
http://www.sivarajan.com/scripts/Search_Multiple_Domains_Using_EmpID.txt
An updated version of Active Directory Explorer (1.42) is available for download now.
Active Directory Explorer (AD Explorer) is an advanced Active Directory (AD) viewer and editor. You can use AD Explorer to easily navigate an AD database, define favorite locations, view object properties and attributes without having to open dialog boxes, edit permissions, view an object's schema, and execute sophisticated searches that you can save and re-execute.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963907.aspx
You can see my “Active Directory Snapshot Creation and Comparison Using AD Explorer” blog on the following link:
http://portal.sivarajan.com/2010/03/active-directory-snapshot-creation-and.html
The following links shows the list of software updates and hotfixes for Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 and Windows 2008 R2:
Windows 2008: http://technet.microsoft.com/hi-in/library/dd430893(en-us,WS.10).aspx
Windows 2008 R2: http://technet.microsoft.com/hi-in/library/ff394763(en-us,WS.10).aspx
Here is utility which you can use to configure FBA in SharePoint 2010. This tool can be used to update to the web.config files, central admin, and the STS virtual directory to support FBA web application.
You can download this tool from the following location:
I have updated the Stop/Start or Enable/Disable Service script with Get-Credential command which will prompt you to enter a user name password rather than using the default logged in credential for the remote connection.
You can download the updated script from the following location:
Digicert is a certificate management tool which can be used to manage, troubleshoot, and fix the SSL certificates. This utility provides the following features:
You can download this utility from Digicert’s site for free: https://www.digicert.com/util/
This script can be used to generate a list of Active Directory users and computes.
This script generates 2 output files ADUserInfo.csv and ADCompInfo.csv which contains user and computer information respectively.
Note: By default, an Active Directory search returns only 1000 items; if your domain contains more than 1000 users or computers, you need to set the $objSearch.PageSize value in the script ($objSearch.PageSize = 5000).
You can download the script from the following location:
You can download a fully configured System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2 VHD from the Microsoft site. This download enables you evaluate Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2.
Download:
