Bob's Identity Management Blog » PowerShell

Quest Software, Kirk, PowerGUI, PowerShell

Bob — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 18:02:45 +0000

Dmitry Sotnikov had a good post on Kirk Monroe leaving Quest’s PowerGUI team. Kirk will be missed.

http://dmitrysotnikov.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/quest-software-kirk-powergui-powershell/

AD CMDLETS Version 1.4 (Early look)

Bob — Tue, 18 May 2010 13:23:30 +0000

In late June or early July, a new version of the Active Directory PowerShell CMDLETS will be released. I wanted to give everyone a teaser about the new features to be added.

Here you go!

-        Certificate management
-        Support for cross-domain group membership
-        inactive accounts enumeration
-        single command to search in multiple containers
-        progress indication
-        proxy addresses management

Stay tuned and I will blog with more details around each feature over the next several weeks.

Microsoft Azure addes PowerShell Management

Bob — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:00:36 +0000

Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform got a small update last week when they added PowerShell commands allowing users to manage services hosted on the platform. Ryan Dunn of Microsoft said on his blog that the pack called the Windows Azure Service Management cmdlets (WASM) were built to give people working with Azure an API to automate basic service managment tasks. http://dunnry.com/blog/WASMCmdletsUpdated.aspx

ActiveRoles Server 6.5 goes GOLD!

Bob — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:18:48 +0000

A little earlier today I recieved the GOLD code for ActiveRoles Server 6.5, the next release in our wildly popular provisioning and administration platform. The public release is still a little way off, but it won’t be long now and the GOLD code will be used to perpare all the teams in Quest for unleashing this new fabulous version. I want to congratulate my development team for the extra hard work they put in to get this release done for today; Ilya great job. I would also like to add a personal thanks to Andrei his analitics group fo5 rr constantly providing research and assistance that helps keep all our moving parts moving. For a peek at what hot new features are in this release read my previous blog entry here.

(Note to self, never set an RTM for Friday the 13th.)

Free PKI & Certificate Management Console

Bob — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:29:20 +0000

Dmitry Sotnikov recently blogged that PowerShell MVP Vadims Podāns has posted a CA Management Console that can be downloaded here.

The solution based on PowerShell and runs in the PowerGUI console provides the following:

Certificate Authorities management:
- CRL Distribution Points (CDP)
- Authority Information Access (AIA) settings
- Review CRLs
- Publish new CRLs
- Change CRL publishing periods including overlap settings
- Revoked Certificates
- Issued Certificates
- Pending requests
- Failed requests
- Issued certificate templates
- Revoke/unrevoke certificates
- Issue or deny pending requests for certificates
- Add/remove certificate templates to issue
- Change CRL/CRT/OCSP URL priorities
Local certificate store management:
- Import/Export certificates using various certificate types (such CER/pkcs12/pkcs7/SST)
- Copy/move certificates between stores
- Delete certificate from store
- Validate certificates passing them through certificate chaining engine
- Sign files
Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) Responders management
- Review and change OCSP Responder settings
- Change OCSP URL priorities

AD CMDLETS 1.3 BETA

Bob — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 04:54:20 +0000

While I’ve been here in Berlin at the Quest TEC conference, I have received several questions about when the next version of the Quest AD CMDLETS will be available. Version 1.3 is in the works and we should have a public preview version in the next month or so – so stay tuned.

European ActiveRoles User Group meeting

Bob — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:39:10 +0000

In the morning tomorrow I depart for Berlin Germany to attend the Quest European TEC conference. While there we are holding our first ever EMEA ActiveRoles Server User Group meeting where we will be talking about the next release and some future product directions.

The User Group will be held at the tail end of the TEC conference and participants don’t need to sign up for TEC to attend. There is still room if you are going to be in Berlin next week and would like to attend. For details see my previous post User Group TEC Berlin.

Want to find your largeest AD groups?

Bob — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 21:11:35 +0000

Dmitry Sotnikov wrote a great article on how to locate large groups in Active Directory using PowerShell. In the example script he shows how you can use the free ActiveRoles AD CMDLETS to locate the largest groups in Active Directory.

Read Dmitry’s Blog Here

4 PowerShell CMDLETS to Simplify ActiveRoles Approval

Bob — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:01:58 +0000

Versions 6.0.x and 6.1 of ActiveRoles Server are approval aware, but working with approval tasks can be tricky. One of the most frequent requests was to perform custom reporting or automation of approval workflow; unfortunately this did not ship with ActiveRoles itself.

In June we released an updated version of the ActiveRoles Management Shell for Active Directory (a.k.a. The PowerShell AD CMDLETS). In that release we also included several new commands that can be used with ActiveRoles Server to help manage and automate the ActiveRoles approval workflow. The following four PowerShell CMDLETS require a connection to the ActiveRoles Server Administration Service, so the Proxy parameter must be used to establish a connection.

Get-QARSOperation – Retrieve operation records from ActiveRoles Server. Each operation record represents a certain change request, whether pending or completed, in ActiveRoles Server.
Get-QARSApprovalTask – Retrieve approval task records from ActiveRoles Server. Each approval task record represents a task, whether pending or completed, to approve or reject a certain change request in ActiveRoles Server.
Approve-QARSApprovalTask – Apply the Approve resolution on approval tasks for which you are assigned to the Approver role in ActiveRoles Server.
Reject-QARSApprovalTask – Apply the Reject resolution ActiveRoles Server.

To download the latest version of these CMDLETS go to the ActiveRoles download page located at http://www.quest.com/common/registration.aspx?requestdefid=7910.

Auditing the PowerShell AD CMDLETS!

Bob — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:07:24 +0000

Dmitry Sotnikov’s blog has a great entry on how you can use ActiveRoles Server to audit changes made to Active Directory that are being done with PowerShell.

http://dmitrysotnikov.wordpress.com/2009/08/03/audit-powershell-changes-in-ad/

Wondering when AD CMDLETS 1.2.2 will ship?

Bob — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:56:38 +0000

We are getting very-very close to shipping version 1.2.2 of the Active Directory CMDLETS. This release will improve compatiblity with Quest’s PowerGUI graphical interface for PowerShell. Check back between now and friday for an announcment about our release.

Want Intensive PowerShell Training?

Bob — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:16:40 +0000

Jeffery Hicks, author of Managing Active Directory with Windows PowerShell, is going to be in Columbus Ohio delivering a week of intensive training on this very subject. Jeffery’s Boot camp style course is broken into two parts, 3 days intensive PowerShell training followed by another 2 optional days of super advanced topics.

For more information visit Jeffery’s announcement at http://blog.sapien.com/index.php/2009/05/20/powershell-special-forces-invades-columbus-ohio/

My Interview on the PowerScripting PodCast

Bob — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:13:44 +0000

I had the great opportunity last week to participate in the PowerScripting pod cast. Jonathan Walz & Hal Rottenberg host the show and made talking about the projects I have been involved with at Quest and outside of Quest – both easy an fun. Primarily I was on the show to talk about the ActiveRoles Management Shell for Active Directory (A.K.A The PowerShell AD CMDLETS) but we also talked about a number of other subjects. If you want to know more about PowerShell or if you want to learn how PowerShell is being used in the IT industry these pod casts are certainly a great place to start. In any case check it out…

http://powerscripting.wordpress.com/2009/04/20/episode-67-bob-bobel-from-quest-software/

AD CMDLETS 1.2 now available

Bob — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:35:32 +0000

I am delighted to announce that as of 1pm EST, ActiveRoles Management Shell for Active Directory version 1.2 will be available for download in either 32 or 64 bit editions.

Download the latest version here:
http://www.quest.com/powershell/activeroles-server.aspx

I am especially excited about the Restore-QADDeletedObject command that undelete objects in Active Directory by restoring tombstones back into normal objects. This cmdlet requires an Active Directory domain controller running Windows Server 2003 or later but will certainly be a useful tool to solve some of the basic woops, or oh-no scenarios. Even cooler is that you can now use Get-QADObject to see those tombstoned objects and pipe that to the restore cmdlet so bringing back objects is really simple.

For ActiveRoles customers the new *-QARSApprovalTask will allow you to approve or reject operations where a approval is required right from within PowerShell.

Enjoy!

AD CMDLETS version 1.2 went gold Friday

Bob — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 13:50:09 +0000

On Friday I had a nice little gift from my development team in my inbox; the RTM bits for version 1.2 of our PowerShell AD CMDLETS. Don’t get too excited it will take a little while for us to make them generally available, but you won’t have to long to wait. BTW, if you happen to be going to TEC (The Expert’s Conference) this week and you say the words “Pirate Chicken” to me, I’ll see that you get a copy sooner.

Here is a sneak peak at the cmdlets we added in 1.2:

• Get-QADMemberOf - Retrieve group memberships of a particular object in Active Directory. Supported are both Active
Directory Domain Services (AD DS) and Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS).

• Get-QADPasswordSettingsObjectAppliesTo - Retrieve Password Settings objects that match the specified conditions. Active Directory version of Windows Server 2008 or later is required.

• Restore-QADDeletedObject – Undelete objects in Active Directory by restoring tombstones back into normal objects. This cmdlet requires an Active Directory domain controller running Windows Server 2003 or later.

• Get-QARSOperation – Retrieve operation records from ActiveRoles Server. Each operation record represents a certain change request, whether pending or completed, in ActiveRoles Server.

• Get-QARSApprovalTask – Retrieve approval task records from ActiveRoles Server. Each approval task record represents a task,whether pending or completed, to approve or reject a certain change request in ActiveRoles Server.

• Approve-QARSApprovalTask – Apply the Approve resolution on approval tasks for which you are assigned to the Approver role in
ActiveRoles Server.

• Reject-QARSApprovalTask – Apply the Reject resolution on approval tasks for which you are assigned to the Approver role in ActiveRoles Server.