How to extract Active Directory users with Get-ADGroup and Get-ADGroupMember

Question: I have a large list of Active Directory Groups and would like to extract the users from these Active Directory Groups. How can I script to iterate through a large list of Active Directory Group and list users using Powershell? Answer: Powershell has a very effective set of Active Directory modules. Within the set of AD modules , it is possible to achieve listing AD group members , group per group , combining Powershell Get-ADGroup and Get-ADGroupMember The basic flow is to extract the AD groups - place them into a DataTable and then iterate through the DataTable rows... Read more →

How to get all Domain Controllers in Active Directory Forest with Powershell

Question: I need to configure some applications to use some Domain Controllers . To establish the address - I need to list the Domain Controllers within the Active Directory Forest. Is there a method in Powershell to create a list of Domain Controllers ? Answer: Powershell has a flexible group of Powershell cmdlets to get information about the Active Directory . Combining Get-ADForest and Get-ADDomainController will create a recordset Here is a sample code snippet : (Get-ADForest).Domains | % { Get-ADDomainController -Discover -DomainName $_ } | % { Get-ADDomainController -server $_.Name -filter * } | Select Name, Domain, Forest, IPv4Address,... Read more →

How to find Active Directory users with Get-ADUser search filter

Question: How can I find a list of Active Directory users with a specific search filter on the name column using Powershell? In this case I want to find all Active Directory users in the default OU group with a search string. Answer: Assuming you are in the current Domain group \ OU group , find below an example of the Powershell cmdlet Get-ADUser which will filter on the search string "dba". In this example seaech - the GetADUser cmdlet iterates through the user list looking for any user with the string "dba" in any part of the name. Get-ADUser... Read more →

How to check if SQL Server Agent is running using t-sql

Question: I want to check if SQL Server Agent is running using t-sql. I know I can check through the services.msc or other methods such as Powershell scripts to report on the SQL Server Agent status , but the requirement is to extract this information via t-sql. Do you have a script using t-sql to get the SQL Server Agent Status? Answer: If you check the SQL generic Refresher program in the sysprocesses list , it is possible to establish the SQL Server Agent status through t-sql. The SQL Generic Refresher is an app program. When the SQL Server Agent... Read more →

How to check if Puppet is reboots a windows server with Powershell

If you want a Powershell script to quickly check if Puppet has initiated a reboot on a Windows server , use this script . It uses the Powershell cmdlet -Get-WinEvent. Typically - a Puppet maintenance window is set per server. If a reboot is required , due to a pending patching change - than the reboot will occur during the designated window. A server owner may experience an unexpected outage - and will want to investigate the root cause. Part of the root cause may include analysing the Event viewer logs for clues. The Windows Event Logs stores loads of... Read more →