Mohammed Wasay

Tag: clean

  • Creating Security Groups for File Shares in Bulk using PowerShell

    Creating Security Groups for File Shares in Bulk using PowerShell

    Security Groups are great for managing large groups for permissions.  A client requested that they needed to have Read-Only, Read-Write, and Ready-Modify (allow for deleting) for all their file shares for better management.

    Getting the Share Names

    In order for me to create the groups I needed the share names. PowerShell to the rescue!

    Type the following on the File Server/ Cluster to list all the shares and capture the output in a text file:

    WmiObject -class Win32_Share -computer <yourfileserver.fqdn) | Out-File c:\scripts\shares.txt

    [su_note note_color=”#fafae8″]On your file-server you may have a lot of share but for example purposes I am showing just one.[/su_note]

    Output should be similar to:

    Cleaning up the Share Names

    Now that we have the Share names we need to do a bit of cleanup to avoid having duplicates.

    • We need to remove all entries for hidden shares “$”
    • We need to remove duplicates
    • We need to change the case of the share names to lower case. ( I prefer lowercase but you can decide to do what best fits your needs)

    Follow my guide to removing duplicates in a text file using NotePad++

    Once the sharenames are clean save it to a text file.

    Client Requirement for the Security Groups:

    For each file share there are three security groups needed:

    • <Sharename>_RO : Read-Only
    • <Sharename>_RW : Read & Write
    • <Sharename>_RM : Read & Modify

    For PowerShell to do this I needed to create a .CSV file with all the security group entries.  Now, there are many ways this can be done. I will share what I have been doing.

    Open up Microsoft Excel and copy the share on a column to the right (lets say K2)

    Now on Cell A2 your value should be =CONCATENATE(K2,”_RW”) and drag it down.

    It should look something like this:

    Do the same for RO & RM. Now you have all the security groups names you need to create.

    Create a file called FileShares_Groups.csv  using the following format.

    Create the file Create Security Groups for File Shares.ps1

    .NOTES
	File Name:
	Author: Mohammed Wasay
	Contact Info:
		Website:www.mowasay.com
		Twitter:@wasay
	Requires:
	Tested:
.PARAMETER
    None

.EXAMPLE
    .\Create Security Groups for File Shares.ps1
#>
#Import Active Directory Module
Import-Module ActiveDirectory

$csv = Import-Csv -Path "c:\scripts\FileShares_Groups.csv"

ForEach ($item In $csv)
    {
        $create_group = New-ADGroup -Name $item.GroupName -GroupCategory $item.GroupCategory -groupScope $item.GroupScope -Path $item.OU
        Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green "Group $($item.GroupName) created!"
    }

    Copy the two files: FileShares_Groups.csv & Create Security Groups for File Shares.ps1  into a folder called C:\scripts  on the Domain Controller.

    Run the PowerShell script and see the security groups get created.