November 2016 – Mohammed Wasay

Remove disabled users from Distribution Lists & Security Groups in Active Directory

November 10, 2016

One of my clients had several disabled users showing up in distribution lists and security groups and this was creating unnecessary noise in email, alerts, etc. I highly encourage all administrators to keep their AD neat and tidy. The following PowerShell script searches for disabled users in Groups and Distribution Groups and removes them:

# This script removes all disabled users from all security and distribution groups in the specified "searchOU"

Import-Module ActiveDirectory

$searchOU = "OU=Groups,DC=domain,DC=local"

$adgroup = Get-ADGroup -Filter 'GroupCategory -eq "Security" -or GroupCategory -eq "Distribution"' -SearchBase $searchOU
$adgroup | ForEach-Object{ $group = $_
	Get-ADGroupMember -Identity $group -Recursive | %{Get-ADUser -Identity $_.distinguishedName -Properties Enabled | ?{$_.Enabled -eq $false}} | ForEach-Object{ $user = $_
		$uname = $user.Name
		$gname = $group.Name
		Write-Host "Removing $uname from $gname" -Foreground Yellow
		Remove-ADGroupMember -Identity $group -Member $user -Confirm:$false
	}
}

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# This script removes all disabled users from all security and distribution groups in the specified "searchOU"

Import-Module ActiveDirectory

$searchOU = "OU=Groups,DC=domain,DC=local"

$adgroup = Get-ADGroup -Filter 'GroupCategory -eq "Security" -or GroupCategory -eq "Distribution"' -SearchBase $searchOU

$adgroup | ForEach-Object{ $group = $_

Get-ADGroupMember -Identity $group -Recursive | %{Get-ADUser -Identity $_.distinguishedName -Properties Enabled | ?{$_.Enabled -eq $false}} | ForEach-Object{ $user = $_

$uname = $user.Name

$gname = $group.Name

Write-Host "Removing $uname from $gname" -Foreground Yellow

Remove-ADGroupMember -Identity $group -Member $user -Confirm:$false

}

…

Configure SNMP on an ESXi Host or multiple Hosts

November 9, 2016November 9, 2016

Recently I needed to configure all of our 40 or so ESXi hosts to forward SNMP traps to our corporate monitoring solution. This meant enabling and configuring SNMP on each of the hosts. Naturally, I wrote a script for this as 40 hosts is way too many to do manually. This article shows you how…

Convert resource mailbox to a user mailbox

November 3, 2016

Based on my audit for a client I found that a user mailbox was at sometime converted to a resource mailbox. There is no convert button/ link to switch it back. I still don’t know how, or why this would have happened. Anyways, for someone who may come across this weird issue, here is the…

Find out ‘in cloud’ Distribution Groups

November 3, 2016November 3, 2016

Microsoft Teams was announced yesterday and many want to jump right in. I noticed when users wanted to create teams, new distribution groups started getting added. I wanted to find out my ‘In cloud’ distribution groups and was surprised there was no property for the item. I was able to find out the groups…

Migrate Office365 Photos to AD

November 2, 2016

Many of my customers have Office365 and have been using Skype for Business for sometime now. It is likely that your organization users have uploaded their profile picture. Now only if there was a way to sync those pictures back to your AD – so it looks neat & nice. There is a way!

#MigrateOffice365PhotosToAD.ps1

function Get-Office365Photo($EmailAddress,$Credential) {
    $wc = New-Object System.Net.WebClient
    $wc.credentials = $Credential
    # Build the URL that'll return the jpeg of the user's photo
    $url = "https://outlook.office365.com/ews/exchange.asmx/s/GetUserPhoto?email=$EmailAddress&size=HR96x96"
    # Build a path to export it to (.\kim.akers@contoso.com.jpg)
    $outPath = "$pwd\$EmailAddress.jpg"
    try { 
        # Download the image and save it to the current directory
        $wc.DownloadFile($url,$outPath)
        return $outPath
    } catch { throw $_ }
}

function Upload-ADPhoto($Username,$FilePath) {
    # Import the photo into a variable as a byte array
    $photo = [byte[]](Get-Content $FilePath -Encoding byte)
    # Replace the current value of thumbnailPhoto with the byte array from above
    Set-ADUser $Username -Replace @{ThumbnailPhoto=$photo}
}

# Get the credential to allow us to download the images
$Cred = Get-Credential -Message "Please enter your Office 365 Credentials"

# Get every mail-enabled AD user
$users = Get-ADUser -ldapfilter '(mail=*)' -properties mail

# For each of the mail-enabled users...
foreach ($user in $users) {
    try {
        # Download the photo
        $photoPath = Get-Office365Photo -EmailAddress $user.mail -Credential $Cred
        # Upload the photo
        Upload-ADPhoto -Username $user -FilePath $photoPath
    } catch {
        Write-Warning "Unable to update image for $($user.mail)"
    }
}

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#MigrateOffice365PhotosToAD.ps1

function Get-Office365Photo($EmailAddress,$Credential) {

$wc = New-Object System.Net.WebClient

$wc.credentials = $Credential

# Build the URL that'll return the jpeg of the user's photo

$url = "https://outlook.office365.com/ews/exchange.asmx/s/GetUserPhoto?email=$EmailAddress&size=HR96x96"

# Build a path to export it to (.\[email protected])

$outPath = "$pwd\$EmailAddress.jpg"

try {

# Download the image and save it to the current directory

$wc.DownloadFile($url,$outPath)

return $outPath

} catch { throw $_ }

}

function Upload-ADPhoto($Username,$FilePath) {

# Import the photo into a variable as a byte array

$photo = [byte[]](Get-Content $FilePath -Encoding byte)

# Replace the current value of thumbnailPhoto with the byte array from above

Set-ADUser $Username -Replace @{ThumbnailPhoto=$photo}

}

# Get the credential to allow us to download the images

$Cred = Get-Credential -Message "Please enter your Office 365 Credentials"

# Get every mail-enabled AD user

$users = Get-ADUser -ldapfilter '(mail=*)' -properties mail

# For each of the mail-enabled users...

foreach ($user in $users) {

try {

# Download the photo

$photoPath = Get-Office365Photo -EmailAddress $user.mail -Credential $Cred

# Upload the photo

Upload-ADPhoto -Username $user -FilePath $photoPath

} catch {

Write-Warning "Unable to update image for $($user.mail)"

}

…

Create a Virtual Machine with 2 NICs in Azure Classic

November 1, 2016

Unfortunately, in Azure you cannot create a Virtual Machine in the GUI with 2 Network Cards. You cannot even add a 2nd NIC to a VM once it has been created. The only way to create a VM with 2, is to specify the additional NICâ€™s at the time of creation and ONLY via powershell….