Determine the source site of Outlook clients on Exchange server

We have been toying with the idea of centralising our Exchange environment for a while now, and as part of this project, we needed to audit our Outlook clients, to determine which source site they were connecting from.

I was tasked with this, and was able to quickly gather this information, from both the Exchange 2003 and the 2007 environment, without too much hassle.

For Exchange 2007 simply use get-logonstatistics and select the information that you need. I added some additional spice, which exports each server to a separate CSV file.

foreach ($server in get-mailboxserver){
write-host "Current server: " $server
$filename = ".\" + $server + ".csv"
Get-LogonStatistics -server $server | select UserName, ClientIPAddress | sort UserName -Unique | Export-Csv $filename
}

Exchange 2003 is very similar, but as you can probably guess by now, you need to use WMI.

foreach ($server in (Get-ExchangeServer | Where {$_.IsExchange2007OrLater -eq $false})){
write-host "Current server: " $server
$filename = ".\" + $server + ".csv"
Get-Wmiobject -namespace root\MicrosoftExchangeV2 -class Exchange_Logon -Computer $server | select MailboxDisplayName, ClientIP | sort MailboxDisplayName -Unique | Export-Csv $filename
}

My job done, I sent the CSV files of the project managers, only to find out that they thought it would be nice, to see exactly which site each IP address belonged to.

This proved to be a little more tricky, but after a few minutes of probing the Interwebs, I found a post where Shay uses nltest to get the site information for a computer.

I assimilated this into my script with a little DNS lookup to find the host name and came up with a function which will retrieve the site information for each IP address on the fly and add that to the CSV file.

function Get-ComputerSite ($ip){
Write-Host "Current IP:" $ip
$site = $null
$computer = [System.Net.Dns]::gethostentry($ip) 
$site = nltest /server:$($computer.hostname) /dsgetsite
Return $site[0]
}

$ADSiteWMI = @{Name="ADSite";expression={Get-ComputerSite $($_.ClientIP)}}
$ADSite = @{Name="ADSite";expression={Get-ComputerSite $($_.ClientIPAddress)}}

foreach ($server in get-mailboxserver){
write-host "Current server: " $server
$filename = ".\" + $server + ".csv"
$LogonStats = Get-LogonStatistics -server $server | sort UserName -Unique 
$LogonStats | select UserName, ClientIPAddress, $ADSite | Export-Csv $filename 
}

foreach ($server in (Get-ExchangeServer | Where {$_.IsExchange2007OrLater -eq $false})){
write-host "Current server: " $server
$filename = ".\" + $server + ".csv"
$LogonStats = Get-Wmiobject -namespace root\MicrosoftExchangeV2 -class Exchange_Logon -Computer $server | sort MailboxDisplayName -Unique
$LogonStats | select MailboxDisplayName, ClientIP, $ADSiteWMI | Export-Csv $filename

This does take some time to complete on servers with many connections, but it gets the results required. I have already noticed a few issues, and the script can do with a little more refinement.

I will post these updates as soon as I get round to adding them. For now, I hope this script can help someone else with a similar problem.

The complete script can be downloaded from here:

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Exchange 2007 Audit Script - Version 3

I have updated the Exchange 2007 audit script yet again!

Included in this update are two MAJOR changes, firstly, the script uses and publishes information using the new HTML format, as created by Virtu-Al.

This script, and the functions which create its HTML output are far more efficient and literally cut the number of lines in the script down by half. Not only is the code leaner, but it is also infinitely more legible, and adding new tests to the current script is a breeze. This version of the HTML output is also compatible with multiple browsers, including Mozilla and Chrome.

Secondly, the script will now detect pipeline input. You can still use a server list as a parameter to the script, but now, you can also pipe content to the script. This content can include your server list, or output from Exchange commands such as get-transportserver or get-mailboxserver etc. Be careful though, because commands like get-exchangeserver could include Exchange 2003 servers.

If no server list is specified or piped, the script will still get all Exchange 2007 servers.

As another minor addition, I have added an additional test (Test-OutlookWebServices) to the CAS servers.

As always, your comments and feedback is always welcome.

The script can be downloaded from here:

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Exchange summary reports

Taking a cue from a post on the Windows Powershell Blog, by James Brundage, I decided to create a few notifications for my Exchange environment.

These little “scriptlets” will pop off a notification message in HTML format with a summary of information gathered by each.

The information is not server specific, as I tried to limit the number of instances required. And the content is very basic, but it gets the job done.

You can refer to James’ post above for more information on how to automatically schedule these to run.

You can copy the scripts by hovering over the code block and selecting “view source”

Mailbox database summary:

#//Mailbox Database Reports
$messageParameters = @{
    Subject = "Exchange 2007 Database Report - $((Get-Date).ToShortDateString())"
    Body =  Get-MailboxDatabase -status | 
   Select-Object Server, Name, Mounted, LastFullBackup | 
   Sort-Object Server, Name |
         ConvertTo-Html |
         Out-String
    From = "exrept@domain.com"
    To = "you@domain.com"
    SmtpServer = "10.10.10.10"
}
Send-MailMessage @messageParameters -BodyAsHtml

Exchange 2007 queue summary:

#//Exchange 2007 Queue Report
$messageParameters = @{
    Subject = "Exchange 2007 Queue Report - $((Get-Date).ToShortDateString())"
    Body =  Get-TransportServer |
   ForEach-Object { Get-Queue -Server $_ | 
   Select-Object NextHopDomain, MessageCount, Status} | 
   Sort-Object NextHopDomain |
         ConvertTo-Html |
         Out-String
    From = "exrept@domain.com"
    To = "you@domain.com"
    SmtpServer = "10.10.10.10"
}
Send-MailMessage @messageParameters -BodyAsHtml

Exchange 2003 queue summary:

#//Exchange 2003 Queue Report
$messageParameters = @{
    Subject = "Exchange 2003 Queue Report - $((Get-Date).ToShortDateString())"
    Body =  Get-ExchangeServer | 
   Where-Object {$_.IsExchange2007OrLater -eq $False} |
   ForEach-Object {
   Get-WmiObject -class exchange_smtpqueue -namespace ROOT\MicrosoftExchangev2 -computername $_ | 
   Where-Object -FilterScript {$_.MessageCount -gt 0} |  
   Select-Object VirtualMachine, QueueName, MessageCount, Size} |
   Sort-Object VirtualMachine |
         ConvertTo-Html |
         Out-String
    From = "exrept@domain.com"
    To = "you@domain.com"
    SmtpServer = "10.10.10.10"
}
Send-MailMessage @messageParameters -BodyAsHtml

Exchange 2007 MAPI connectivity summary:

#//MAPI Connectivity Report
$messageParameters = @{
    Subject = "MAPI Connectivity Report - $((Get-Date).ToShortDateString())"
    Body =  Get-MailboxServer |
   Where-Object {(get-mailboxdatabase -Server $_ ).count -gt '0'} |
   ForEach-Object { Test-MAPIConnectivity -Server $_ |
   Select-Object Server, Database, Result, @{Name="Latency(MS)";expression={(([TimeSpan] $_.Latency).TotalMilliSeconds)}}, Error} |
   Sort-Object Server, Database |
         ConvertTo-Html |
         Out-String
    From = "exrept@domain.com"
    To = "you@domain.com"
    SmtpServer = "10.10.10.10"
}
Send-MailMessage @messageParameters -BodyAsHtml

Exchange server disk summary:

#//Disk Space Reports
$messageParameters = @{
    Subject = "Exchange Disk Space Report - $((Get-Date).ToShortDateString())"
    Body =  Get-ExchangeServer |
   ForEach-Object { Get-WmiObject -computer $_ Win32_LogicalDisk} | 
   Where-Object {$_.DriveType -eq 3} |
   Select-Object SystemName, DeviceID, VolumeName, @{Name="Size(GB)";expression={[math]::round(($_.Size / 1073741824))}}, @{Name="Free(GB)";expression={[math]::round(($_.FreeSpace / 1073741824))}}, @{Name="Free(%)";expression={[math]::round(((($_.FreeSpace / 1073741824)/($_.Size / 1073741824)) * 100),0)}} | 
   Sort-Object SystemName, DeviceID |
         ConvertTo-Html |
         Out-String
    From = "exrept@domain.com"
    To = "you@domain.com"
    SmtpServer = "10.10.10.10"
}
Send-MailMessage @messageParameters -BodyAsHtml

Exhcange services summary:

#//Exchange Services Report
$messageParameters = @{
    Subject = "Exchange Services Report - $((Get-Date).ToShortDateString())"
    Body =  Get-ExchangeServer | 
   ForEach-Object {
   Get-WmiObject -computername $_ -query "select * from win32_service where Name like 'MSExchange%' or Name like 'IIS%' or Name like 'SMTP%' or Name like 'POP%' or Name like 'W3SVC%'" | 
   Select-Object SystemName, DisplayName, StartMode, State} |
   Sort-Object SystemName, DisplayName |
         ConvertTo-Html |
         Out-String
    From = "exrept@domain.com"
    To = "you@domain.com"
    SmtpServer = "10.10.10.10"
}
Send-MailMessage @messageParameters -BodyAsHtml

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Bulk export calendars from Exchange mailboxes

I have never really had the need for a script like this, so when our catering manager at the office logged a support call, requesting an export of all calendars for all of our meeting rooms, I had to investigate the possibilities. He basically needed this information in order to determine how busy the individual meeting rooms were during the last year.

Following a quick, unsuccessful, Internet probing for tools or scripts that could do this, my initial feeling was to say “No sorry, can’t be done, or if we do it, it was going to be a manual task.”

A manual task, which involves, granting access to the room mailbox, logging onto the mailbox using Outlook, and exporting the calendar data to Excel. Sounds easy, but doing that a hundred times is very unproductive and torturous to say the least.

I decided to attempt to script it, and the result is something I am both proud of and ashamed of at the same time, as I am convinced there must be a better way.

It’s a very rough method, which involves the following process: 

• Get a list of rooms from a text file (as it was emailed to me). You could use get-mailbox instead.
• Add-mailbox permission to the current user  
• Create an Outlook profile 
• Logon to the profile 
• Export the Calendar to CSV 
• Remove-MailboxPermission

I could automate most of the above, but creating new profiles on demand is something I’ve never had to do, and frankly, I had no idea how to get around this problem. After speaking to some of the developers at work, who promised me some dotnet code which could do it (which I am still waiting for might I add :)), I decided to use PRF files.

I have used PRF files very successfully in the past, on Terminal server deployments to automatically setup Outlook profiles. I downloaded the ORK and created a PRF which I used as a template for the script. The blank PRF is attached to this post to save you the time and effort of using ORK.

The script finds and replaces the UserName and HomeServer in the PRF, although any Exchange server should resolve you to your mailbox server. It then creates a PRF and starts Outlook with the /importPRF switch. Some extra information, for anyone wanting to actually deploy or use the PRF file; the %HomeServer% variable in the PRF does not work the same way %UserName% works, if you want use the PRF, you need to specify one of your mailbox servers instead.

While Outlook is open on that profile, the script attaches to Outlook using a COM object and downloads the calendar for the specified date.

The calendar fields can be customised to suit your needs. In my case we simply needed the Start and End date, the duration, and the Organizer.

The export data is saved and the PRF is removed, sadly the swarm of profiles will remain, and you have to manually remove them. You could remove them from HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles but I have not added that to the script.

I hope this can help you, if you ever get a freaky request like this.

The script and the PRF template can be downloaded from here:

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Collecting Exchange database white space from the event log using .NET

A recent comment from a reader, prompted me to do some updates and bug fixes to my Exchange 2007 audit script. As a part of this process, I decided to add the white space count into the mailbox store check.

I discovered an extremely helpful post, as usual, from Shay Levy, which pointed me in the right direction.

Although this function does get exactly what I needed, I did however want to search for the white space by mailbox store name, in order to get the value, as each mailbox store was passed during the script processing.

I changed my script to use .NET instead of WMI for event logs so I decided to continue using this method for the white space as well.

The basic script to collect the white space sizes from the event log using .NET is as follows:

$now = Get-Date
$colMailboxStores = Get-MailboxDatabase -Server SERVER -Status | Sort-Object Name
$spaceLog=[System.Diagnostics.EventLog]::GetEventLogs('SERVER') | where {($_.LogDisplayName -eq "Application")}
   
foreach ($objMailboxStore in $colMailboxStores)
  {
    Write-Host "..Getting database white space for" $objMailboxStore.Name
    $store = @{Name="store";Expression={$_.ReplacementStrings[1]}}
    $freeMB = @{Name="freeMB";Expression={[int]$_.ReplacementStrings[0]}}
    $whiteSpace = @()
    $whiteSpace += $spaceLog.entries | where {($_.TimeWritten -ge $now.AddDays(-1))} | where {($_.EventID -eq "1221")} | where {($_.ReplacementStrings[1] -match $objMailboxStore.Name)} | select $store,$freeMB -last 1
    $whiteSpace.freeMB
  }

This method is very slow, as it has to dredge through the entire event log for every database. It’s really not a problem if you have a small number of databases, but in a large environment like ours, with multiple mailbox servers, this could take ages to complete.

It was was painful during testing to wait for the above script to complete and I really felt that the speed of this process should be increased, so instead I came up with the following solution:

$now = Get-Date
$spaceLog=[System.Diagnostics.EventLog]::GetEventLogs('SERVER') | where {($_.LogDisplayName -eq "Application")}
$db = @{Name="database";Expression={$_.ReplacementStrings[1]}}
$freeMB = @{Name="MB";Expression={[int]$_.ReplacementStrings[0]}}
$whiteSpace = $spaceLog.entries | where {($_.TimeWritten -ge $now.AddDays(-1))} | where {($_.EventID -eq "1221")} | select $db,$freeMB

($whitespace | where {$_.database -match $objMailboxStore.Name} | select -last 1).mb

The code above will collect all of the Event ID 1221’s for the last day and store them in a variable with the customised place holders from the expressions.

This happens once per server only and any subsequent searches can be performed against the variable instead.

The select statement at the end, also selects the last item in the list to ensure that you also look at the latest event for each database. This literally reduces the runtime of the script by a factor equal to the amount of databases on your server.

I will be posting an update to the Exchange 2007 audit script soon, so stay tuned.

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Measure the SMTP roundtrip time to an external email address

In an attempt to be more proactive about Internet email delays, whether caused by our systems, or those of our ISP, I have written a script which tests the roundtrip time on SMTP mail.

The basic idea behind the script is to send a message with a GUID, and wait for the return of that specific message. When that message returns, it measures the roundtrip time, and logs the result to disk. If the message is not returned within 30 mins, it will send you a warning message informing you of the problem.

Finally, the script creates a nice JPG with the results up to the last run.

Setting up and using this script is a little more complex than usual as it combines different technologies and resources to achieve its goal, which is to measure the roundtrip time on an actual SMTP message.

To start off, the script sends a message using a standard .NET relay. On Powershell V2 you could use send-mailmessage instead. At this point, the message is time stamped in the subject, with the current date and time. The message is also marked with a distinguishable word “SMTPPing”  for the reply rule, and a random GUID, which aids in recognising the message when it returns.

I use Gmail, as my “auto-reply” robot, as I am fairly certain that their infrastructure is robust and pretty stable. If you choose to use Gmail, you will need to setup a filter, which automatically forwards all mail with the word “SMTPPing” back to your email address, and then deletes it from Gmail.

Once you are sure that the auto reply is working, you can configure the script with your SMTP email addresses and relay host.

The return messages are collected from an Outlook mailbox using MAPI. You need to customise the script for the Outlook profile it needs to logon to. More details regarding this can be found as comments inside the script.

Outlook does not like strangers poking around in your stuff, so it will constantly warn you about this. To get around this problem, and also be a little selective about what you allow, you can download an awesome free tool from MapiLab called Advanced Outlook Security. 

Lastly, the script needs Excel installed, in order for the chart creation and export to JPG.

I am not sure why, but I am having problems currently closing Excel. Although I issue the command to close the application, it sometimes remains running, so lookout for excel.exe in process monitor.

As usual, your comments and suggestions are always welcome.

The script can be downloaded from here:

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Updated basic Exchange queue monitor

As an update to the queue monitor script, I have added a little tweak.

When the script has completed its run, it will now import the log file into Excel and create a chart displaying the message flow for the current log.

The Excel chart export seems to have a problem with the current folder. I tried using “.\” or even get-location and set location in variables, but it only works if I hard code the path.

This image can be used on a web page to display the queue information in more friendly and accessible format.Excel is set to overwrite the existing image and spreadsheet everytime the script runs.

An awesome source of Excel related information can be located at the Excel Cookbook. This information saved me a lot of time an effort while working with Excel.

Information regarding Excel chart types and styles can be found here.

The complete script with the Excel chart export section can be downloaded from here:

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A very basic queue monitor

At my office we recently needed a method to quickly know if the queues on any of the Exchange servers were building up. We have monitoring in place, but these guys can sometimes miss a build-up which leaves us with the problem.

As a very rudimentary solution, I compiled the following script.

In a nutshell, it enumerates the message count of all the queues on all Exchange servers in the Org. This includes Exchange 2003 and 2007. The script then measures the sum total of all messages. If it exceeds a predetermined amount, 1000 in my case, it will send a notification message to the administrators.

This is really a catch 22, if the server with the queue build-up is also your relay host, or happens to be the server with the problem. As a workaround for this you could probably do a NET SEND message or use 2 SMTP servers to relay the message through. An alternative is to send an SMS to administrators if you have the facility.

Initially the script waited with a while loop and polled the queues every 5 minutes. I have opted to change that, and launch the script with Task Scheduler instead, which means I don’t have to actually be logged onto the console for the script to run.

The script writes out the date and message count to a log. This log cycles daily.

I know this is very basic, but it gets the job done in terms of what we needed as an interim solution.

You can download the script here:

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Updated: Exchange Mailbox Cleaner

 I am ready to call this the final version of my Exchange Mailbox Cleaner script.

I have successfully used it in production and it saved us the effort of having to find and remove these mailboxes manually.

The GUI also makes it easy to hand this function over to the administrators for future cleanup tasks.

I have added one more search query button, the “Last Logon” button. This button will look for users on the selected server where the LastLogon is equal to $null.  This finds accounts which have essentially never logged on. There is a small bug though, if the user name is not unique, it seems that the last logon is unreadable and the account will also show up in the list.

This will however report an ERROR to the shell screen. Mailboxes which have not logged on will report the following warning to the shell:

WARNING: There is no data to return for the specified mailbox 'Bunny, Bugs', because it has not been logged on to.

For now, this is a manual method of verifying that the correct mailboxes will be removed. I am however looking for a way to avoid this and will post an update as soon as I have time to find the solution.

I have also permanently removed the Add-ADPermission from the Export-Mailbox section, as full mailbox access permissions are enough to export the mailbox.

I may build in a check later to see if the permissions are required before adding them.

#Add-ADPermission -Identity $actionItem -User $currentUser -Extendedrights "Send As" -whatif 
#Add-ADPermission -Identity $actionItem -User $currentUser -Extendedrights "Receive As" -whatif 

As always, any comments / suggestions with regards to the script are always welcome.

A little disclaimer / warning: This is a dangerous utility, and can wreck your Exchange system if you are not careful. Please test this in your test environment first, and adhere to your change control procedures before using this utility in the live environment. I take absolutely no responsibility for any damage caused by using this tool.

The utility requires the Exchange Management shell, and if launched from a Vista / Windows 7 needs to be “Run as Administrator”

This script was tested under Windows 7 Powershell v2 The script can be downloaded from here:

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Maximize My SendSize

Someone asked me the other day, “How could I go about using Security Groups, to control users’ send size limits?” He basically had a limit of 2mb for all users, and wanted to allow users in a specific Security Group to send up to 50mb messages. Here is a basic breakdown of the process I suggested: Firstly, you need to confirm that the global transport limit is raised to 50mb.

You can view and set these limits using get-transportconfig and set-transportconfig respectively:

Get-TransportConfig | select MaxSendSize  

The next step would involve setting the send connector to allow 50mb messages. You can use get-sendconnector to get a list of all send connectors, and their respective limits.

Get-SendConnector | Select Name, MaxMessageSize   

And then use set-sendconnector to set the MaxSendSize Set-SendConnector “Connector Name” –MaxSendSize 50mb Finally, you need to control the individual users’ send limits. If you have to control it via groups, you can use the following command to first enumerate the users in the group, and then pipe that to the set-mailbox command. Replace testsizegroup with the group you need to control the size limits for.

((get-group "testsizegroup").members) | foreach {set-mailbox -identity $_.Name -maxsendsize 52428800}

This will set the MaxSendSize for all users in that group to 50 mb. This command will have to be rerun every time to add users to the group, so it would be advisable to schedule this command to run hourly / daily etc.

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Legacy mailboxes on Exchange 2007

One of our users had a problem logging onto OWA today, and I noticed that the icon for his mailbox in the GUI displayed as a legacy mailbox, although he was located on an Exchange 2007 mailbox server.

After countless searches, I came across this article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941146. It explains that the msExchVersion property on the AD object is not set correctly, and that using set-mailbox –ApplyMandatoryProperties would resolve the problem. Looking at the help information on set-mailbox this could also be caused by users being created on Exchange 2007 server using the Exchange 2003 tools, although these users were migrated from Exchange 2003.

So, how to correct this? First get a list of all mailboxes on the Exchange 2007 server with the incorrect version. Using get-mailbox, the incorrect Exchange version displays as 0.0 (6.5.6500.0) The following command returns a list of these mailboxes by server (where SERVER1 is your Exchange 2007 server):

get-mailbox -server SERVER1 -resultsize unlimited | where {$_.ExchangeVersion -like "*0.0*"} | select Name, ExchangeVersion

Once you verify the list, pipe them to set-mailbox.

get-mailbox -server SERVER1 -resultsize unlimited | where {$_.ExchangeVersion -like "*0.0*"} | Set-Mailbox –ApplyMandatoryProperties  

This resolved the problem for me, easily, on multiple Exchange mailboxes. Running the get-mailbox command again, returned no results after applying set-mailbox to the problematic mailboxes.

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Updated: Exchange Mailbox Cleaner

I have really been busy lately and have not had much time to spend on scripting. I did however find a litlle time to update this utility. Here is a list of changes:

 - After completing a query, the utility will now show you the total amount of data used by the mailboxes. (this obviously ignores single instance storage etc.)
 - You can now use the utility to move selected mailboxes to another store (This was a request from Aaron)
 - I have force removed the mandatory “confirm” on the Exchange verbs (move, disabled and delete) 

WARNING: This is a dangerous utility, and can wreck your Exchange system if you are not careful. Please test this in your test environment first, and adhere to your change control procedures before using this utility in the live environment. I take absolutely no responsibility for any damage caused by using this tool. The utility requires the Exchange Management shell, and if launched from a Vista / Windows 7 needs to be “Run as Administrator” The script can be downloaded from here: 

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Cleanup unused Exchange 2007 mailboxes

I often use my orphaned home directory cleanup script at work, to recover unused space from our file and print clusters. So my manager recently suggested that I do something similar for Exchange. Knowing that the orphan folder cleanup utility is still my responsibility as the administrators are not too comfortable with running scripts, I decided to give this utility a nice GUI.

To generate the code for the forms, I used SAPIEN PrimalForms. What beautiful tool. Very short learning curve, and very, very powerful. When the form loads, it will get a list of all the Exchange mailbox servers using get-mailboxserver.

This excludes Exchange 2003 servers as get-mailboxstatistics does not work with legacy mailboxes. I may develop a solution for that later. The three query buttons (Disabled, Hidden, Stale) will perform the following actions respectively: Disabled – Find mailboxes linked to disabled AD accounts Hidden – Find mailboxes hidden from the address book.  Stale – Find mailboxes linked to accounts which have not logged on in the last 3 months.

This search may take a little time to complete and this button is not supported against Exchange 2003 servers. These queries will populate the listbox with the names of the mailboxes. Besides the “Export List” button, the Action buttons at the bottom will action only selected items.

You can select items using SHIFT or CTRL. Export List will create a text file containing your search results. Export PST will grant the current user Full Mailbox with Send As and Receive As permission, and then export the mailbox to the path specified. Rename will change the display name based on the query performed. For mailboxes found with the “Disabled” button the display name will be prefixed with “DISABLED-MBXCleaner-“, for “Hidden” with “HIDDEN-MBXCleaner-“ and so forth. Users previously renamed will be excluded from subsequent searches. The “Disable” action will remove Exchange Attributes without deleting the AD account. The mailbox will be removed when the retention time expires. Delete will remove the mailbox and AD account completely.

I have not had a chance to test the Delete button as I would need to submit a change control request before using the utility in our live environment. All of the Action buttons are set to –whatif mode by default. The “Go Hot” checkbox will activate the heavy hitters (Export PST; Rename; Disable and Delete) so you can safely test each button first before taking any action. The “Reserved” button, currently, does nothing. I plan to allow this button to read or build a custom search for users, either by Name or other criteria.

 

WARNING: This is a dangerous utility, and can wreck your Exchange system if you are not careful. Please test this in your test environment first, and adhere to your change control procedures before using this utility in the live environment. I take absolutely no responsibility for any damage caused by using this tool. The utility requires the Exchange Management shell, and if launched from a Vista / Windows 7 needs to be “Run as Administrator” The script can be downloaded from here:

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Update: Exchange 2007 audit script

In an attempt to resolve some issues with regards to the event logs, I have made a few updates to the Exchange 2007 audit script:

* I now use [System.Diagnostics.EventLog]::GetEventLogs() to collect the remote event logs and entries instead of WMI
* The output to the host displays exactly which event log it is busy reading.
* The date range seems more accurate now when the event log contains a large amount of data.
* The physical memory on the basic server information is now displayed as GB and is neatly rounded.
* The Mailbox stores are sorted in alphabetical order by Store Name.
* Added more verbose output to the console while the script runs, to give a better indication of what the script is busy with.

I hope this resolves most of the problems for now, comments / suggestions are always welcome. The script can be downloaded from here:

This script has been replaced by a later version, please check the following link, or download the updated version below:

http://powershellneedfulthings.blogspot.com/2009/11/exchange-2007-audit-script-version-3.html

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Exchange 2007 Audit Report

I had some extra time this week to complete the Exchange 2007 version of the Audit script, as I am going on leave for a week, and needed to have the process automated while I am gone.

This version of the script still uses WMI for some of the items on the report, but uses the Exchange 2007 commandlets for most of the Exchange related information.

The one tricky bit of information to retrieve was the installed Exchange rollups. These are not available via WMI or any other method I could find. I did find a very effective solution on flaphead.com. This little piece of magic, locates the installed patches in the remote registry, and loops through the keys to find and list the installed rollups.

Unlike Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007 servers are installed with specific roles. This plays a part, when checking things like queues and mailbox stores. For instance, there is no point in checking a pure Hub Transport server for mailbox stores etc. I initially built in a check which would check the ServerRole property of the server to match a specific role, forgetting that one server could have multiple roles. I now do a match for the role anywhere in the property string with this if statement: if ($exServer.ServerRole -notlike "*Mailbox*") This will skip the mailbox related check if the word “Mailbox” cannot be located anywhere in the string.

To automate the running of the checks on a daily basis I setup a scheduled task on one of my Exchange 2007 servers as the script requires the commandlets.

I really had no idea how to get the scheduled task to run in the Exchange management shell so, as a test I basically used the following command: C:\WINDOWS\system32\windowspowershell\v1.0\powershell.exe -PSConsoleFile "D:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\bin\exshell.psc1" c:\scripts\ExchangeAudit2k7.ps1 .\servers.txt

This did the trick and the entire check process now runs and completes before I even get to work. My version of the script, also creates an HTML menu and moves the reports to our departmental web server for my managers’ viewing pleasure. The mailbox stores now also indicate the last backup time, as we have had issues before where the backups aren't completed, and we don’t find out until it’s too late.

I am busy working on a little piece of code, which will connect to the OWA site and simply test if the site is available, but that will have to wait until I am back from leave.

This script has been replaced by a later version, please check the following link, or download the updated version below:



http://powershellneedfulthings.blogspot.com/2009/11/exchange-2007-audit-script-version-3.html

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Exchange WMI Audit

I recently needed to automate my Exchange 2003 server daily checks. I have done some basic work on this before, but I really needed to automate the process and write the results to HTML to make it more “manager friendly”.

While searching the web for something I could use as a basic start up script, I came across an awesome script on Virtual-Al. This script uses WMI to audit a list of remote computers, and reports in a very neat HTML format. It was exactly the platform I needed, and it meant not having to re-invent the wheel.

I did however have some trouble with WMI and the mailbox stores, and finding a method for reporting the number of users and whether the store is mounted or not. I managed to find a workaround for the number of users, but it seems that checking the store status would have to be done with CDOEXM. This felt like a little too much effort as we are in the middle of our migration to Exchange 2007.

Speaking of Exchange 2007. The script cannot be used against Exchange 2007 servers, as Exchange 2007 does not include any WMI providers.
I am however working on an Exchange 2007 version or an Exchange version check process for this script. All credit for the HTML template and the original script should go to Alan Renouf, I merely took a great script and adapted it for use with Exchange.

The script will show only Exchange related information on the report, this includes Hotfixes, Services and Event Log entries. The version of the script which I use myself, creates an HTML menu, with a list of all of the servers processed and links to their individual reports. It also moves the files to a web server, which makes it much more automated. Comments and suggestions are always welcome.

This script is not displayed in a code window, but can be downloaded from here:

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