Best PowerShell Scripts for Active Directory . Active Directory is a service that is used by many IT departments and organizations. It can be difficult to manage without the right scripts, especially if you are not an advanced user of PowerShell. This article will introduce best practices for managing Active Directory through PowerShell scripting.
We will start with definitions and explanations of what active directory is, who uses it, and how it can help us accomplish common tasks or maintenance that would otherwise take hours or days to complete manually. We will also talk about some of the best ways to use PowerShell to get things done faster – even if you’re not an expert on this powerful tool!
Active Directory is a powerful service that can be used by IT departments to manage user accounts, permissions and more. Managing Active Directory through the native tools can be difficult if you don’t know how to use PowerShell.
There are various communities that have developed some great scripts for managing AD with PowerShell, but finding them all in one place isn’t easy. We’ve compiled this list of best practices for managing your directory with PowerShell so you don’t have to go searching for each script individually.
Table of Contents
- Common PowerShell Scripts for Managing Active Directory
- 1. Export all users in Active Directory to a CSV file
- 2. List the computers that have not logged into the domain for more than 30 days
- 3. Find out which user accounts are disabled and by whom
- 4. Create a new user account with various attributes
- 5. Check how many mailboxes exist on Exchange Server 2003 and 2007
- 6. Find out who has permissions to create an organizational unit in Active Directory Domain Services
- 7. Create a new AD user
- 8. Delete an AD user
- 9. Change the password for an existing user
- 10. Add or remove a group from a user’s membership list
- 11. Enable or disable an Active Directory account
- 12. Set the expiration date for an Active Directory account to be deleted after it is inactive
- Useful PowerShell Resources
- Reddit » PowerShell
- PowerShell.org Forums
- IIS Forum » PowerShell
- Spiceworks » PowerShell
- Ironman Software Forums » PowerShell Tools
- Conclusion
This guide will walk you through the most common tasks when working with Active Directory using PowerShell scripts from the community.
Disclaimer: We will not be held responsible for any scripts or commands that you try from this article. Everything here is provided ‘as is’ and has not been tested in a live environment. Use entirely at your own risk.
Common PowerShell Scripts for Managing Active Directory
Using a graphical interface is fine for occasional AD use, but for scaling up your work you really need to start automating. In Windows environments, PowerShell is the king of all scripting languages because it has been developed especially for administrative tasks.
It is available for every modern Windows operating system, and because it uses the same scripting language, scripts can be easily transferred between them without too much hassle.
PowerShell is more than just an admin tool though, and it can be argued (successfully) that it is in fact a programming language in its own right. You can use it to build applications, scripts and services to perform just about anything you can think of, and we love it! Here is an excellent book to get you started if you are new to PowerShell! If you use our link, we get a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you.
We have compiled a list of common PowerShell commands that will help you to manage Active Directory with ease:
1. Export all users in Active Directory to a CSV file
2. List the computers that have not logged into the domain for more than 30 days
3. Find out which user accounts are disabled and by whom
4. Create a new user account with various attributes
5. Check how many mailboxes exist on Exchange Server 2003 and 2007
6. Find out who has permissions to create an organizational unit in Active Directory Domain Services
7. Create a new AD user
8. Delete an AD user
9. Change the password for an existing user
10. Add or remove a group from a user’s membership list
11. Enable or disable an Active Directory account
12. Set the expiration date for an Active Directory account to be deleted after it is inactive
Useful PowerShell Resources
We have put together a list of some of the most responsive and helpful PowerShell communities available to help you with your scripting needs.
Reddit » PowerShell
PowerShell.org Forums
IIS Forum » PowerShell
Spiceworks » PowerShell
Ironman Software Forums » PowerShell Tools
Conclusion
We hope that you have found this information about some of the best active directory scripts on the internet helpful. If you have any questions, please feel free to post them to us on Twitter @itblogpros and we will get back to you as soon as possible. We hope that this article was informative for you!
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