PowerShell Tips & Tricks for Exchange

PowerShell Tips & Tricks
for Exchange
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POWERSHELL TIPS & TRICKS FOR EXCHANGE
Agenda
• Introduction
• Exchange & PowerShell
• Tips & Tricks
– PowerShell scripting
– Cmdlet Extension Agents
• Demo
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• Jaap Wesselius
• Independent Consultant
• Exchange MVP (8yrs)
• jaap@wesselius.info
• @jaapwess
• www.jaapwesselius.com
• Michel de Rooij
• Consultant @ Conclusion FIT
• Exchange MVP
• michel@eightwone.com
• @mderooij
• www.eightwone.com
• TheUCArchitects.com
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Introduction
• Who attended Sigi Jagott’s session?
• PowerShell is a command-line environment
• First introduced for Windows 2003
– Codename ‘Monad’
• Exchange Management Shell is add-on for
PowerShell
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Exchange & PowerShell
• On-Premises
– PowerShell 1.0 (EX2007)
• Exchange Online
– PowerShell 4.0
• Which version am I running?
– $PSVersionTable
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PowerShell basics
• Verbs and Nouns
– Get-, Set-, New-, Enable-, Remove-
– Mailbox, DistributionGroup, ExchangeServer etc.
• Works with objects which are loaded in memory
• Processed/Manipulated in Memory
– This can be very inefficient when not properly executed!
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Connecting with PowerShell
• Implicit Remoting
$ExchSession= New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange
-ConnectionUri http://exchange.contoso.com/PowerShell
-Authentication Kerberos
Import-PSSession $ExchSession
• EXO: Uri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell/, Basic auth &
AllowRedirection
• Use -Prefix to import cmdlets as Verb-PrefixNoun, e.g. Get-CloudMailbox
• Watch for serialization issues (everything's returned as a string)
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How not to connect ..
Add-PSSnapin
Microsoft.Exchange.Management.PowerShell.E2010
 Unsupported
 Bypasses RBAC
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Objects and Properties
• Select returns (Exchange) properties
Get-Mailbox | Select Name
• To read (multivalue) properties
Get-Mailbox | Select Name, EmailAddresses
Get-Mailbox | Select Name –ExpandProperty EmailAddresses
Get-Mailbox | Select Name, @{n='EmailAddresses';
e={$_.EmailAddresses –join ","}}
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Filtering
• Get-Mailbox | Where {..}
– Where command processes result set = inefficient
• Get-Mailbox –Filter { .. }
– Filter early when possible (depends on cmdlet)
– Less data through pipe = efficient
– AD admins 
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Change multivalue properties
• To change a multivalue property
$addr= (Get-Mailbox User ).EmailAddresses
$addr+= 'new@contoso.com'
Set-Mailbox User - EmailAddresses $addr
• This is more efficient:
Set-Mailbox User –EmailAddresses
@{Add='new@contoso.com';Remove='old@contoso.com'}
• Only certain cmdlets, e.g. not Connector's IPranges
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Fan Out improves efficiency
• Fan Out distributes PowerShell commands
Get-TransportServer | Get-MessageTrackingLog
versus
Get-TransportServer | ForEach {
Invoke-Command -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange
-ConnectionUri http://$($_.Name)/PowerShell
-ScriptBlock { Get-MessageTrackingLog }
–Authentication Kerberos}
• Complex or interactive ? => jobs / runspaces
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Check Permissions
• How to check permissions on Mailboxes
Get-Mailbox | Get-MailboxPermission
Get-Mailbox | Get-RecipientPermission
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Check Permissions
• Get more in detail
Get-Mailbox | Get-MailboxPermission
| Where { !$_.IsInherited –and
$_.User –notlike 'NT AUTHORITYSELF' –and
$_.AccessRights –eq 'FullAccess' }
Get-RecipientPermission | Where {
@('NT AUTHORITYSELF','NULL SID') -notcontains $_.Trustee}
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Date Math
• Get-Date
• (Get-Culture).DateTimeFormat
• Calculations
(Get-Date).AddDays(-7)
Get-Date (Get-Date).AddMonths(-1).ToString("yyyy/MM/01")
(Get-Date (Get-Date).ToString(“yyyy/MM/01”)).AddDays(-1)
• Use this for reporting, troubleshooting or scripting
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Message Tracking
• How does this come together?
Get-MessageTrackingLog -Start (Get-Date).AddDays(-7)
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Message Tracking
-EventId Send | Where { $_.Sender –like '*@contoso.com'}
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Message Tracking
-EventId Send | Where { $_.Sender –like '*@contoso.com'} |
Group Sender
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Message Tracking
Group Sender | Select Name,@{n='Total';e={ ($_.Group |
Measure TotalBytes -Sum).Sum }}
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Message Tracking
Measure TotalBytes -Sum).Sum }} | Sort Total –Desc
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Message Tracking
Measure TotalBytes -Sum).Sum }} | Sort Total –Desc |
Select –First 10
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POWERSHELL SCRIPTING
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Who uses scripting now?
• Batchfiles
• Windows Scripting Host
• Kixtart
• PowerShell
• Other ..
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• Arrays: , @()
• Quotes: "$var" –ne '$var'
• Escaping (`), e.g. "[`"n`"]"
• "$(expression)", e.g. "$($_.Property)"
• Aliases (? % gcm dir where ..)
• $Profile (~ *nix .profile)
• ResultSize 1000
• Out-GridView
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Regular Expressions
• Pattern matching / replacing
• -match & -replace
– Default case-insensitive
– Use explicit operator: -cmatch, -imatch, ..
– Returns $matches
• More control?
– [regexp]::match / [regexp]::replace
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Examples
$ip –match "d.d.d.d"
$ip –match "d{1,3}.d{1,3}.d{1,3}.d{1,3}"
$ip –match "(d{1,3}.){3}d{1,3}"
$email –match "[a-z0-9._%+-]+@[a-z0-9.-]+.[a-z]+"
"first last" -ireplace "([a-z]+)s([a-z]+)",'$2 $1'
• Library: http://www.regexlib.com
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Error Handling
• Terminating / Non-Terminating
– Control: -ErrorAction / $ErrorActionPreference
• Try {} Catch {} Finalize {}
Try {
Set-Mailbox Dave –MaxMessageSize 100MB –EA Stop
}
Catch {
Write-Error "Error: $($_.Exception.Message)"
}
Finally {
Write-Output "We're done".
}
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Cmdlet Extension Agents
• Since Ex2010 (N/A @ Edge)
Get-CmdletExtensionAgent | ft Name,Priority,Enabled
• Scripting Agent
Extend, modify or replace non-Get cmdlet functionality
Enable-CmdletExtensionAgent 'Scripting Agent'
• ScriptingAgentConfig.xml
Distribute @ All Exchange servers (script PushScriptingAgentConfig)
Safeguard (code injection)
Correct XML (case-sensitive tags, &=& <=< >=> )
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PushScriptingAgentConfig.ps1

Scripting Agent ApiCalls
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Provision
Default
Properties
•Default properties
•Not overwrite
values set by higher
prio agent
Update
Affected
IConfigurable
•Pre-validation
values
Validate
•Property Validation
•Return $null = OK
OnComplete
•Post-Processing

Anatomy
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Configuration version="1.0">
<Feature Name="MbxPostCfg" Cmdlets="New-Mailbox">
<ApiCall Name="OnComplete">
if($succeeded) {
$Name = $provisioningHandler.UserSpecifiedParameters[“Name"]
Set-CASMailbox –Identity $Name -ActiveSyncEnabled $false
}
</ApiCall>
</Feature>
</Configuration>
Label
Cmdlet(s)
When
Scriptblock

Take aways
• Don't assume
– .. everything works / is available / etc.
– .. PowerShell is consistent
• Filter early to improve efficiency
• Test
– incl. stuff you d/l & copy/paste one-liners
– Use the WhatIf switch 
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Links
• Cmdlet Extension Agents
– http://wp.me/pIJRx-vZ
– http://bit.ly/PushScriptingAgentConfig
• Extending ISE
– http://wp.me/pIJRx-Kr
• Fan-Out using jobs / runspaces
– http://bit.ly/ExRunspace
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