Powershell and Certificate Requests

I recently became involved in a project to get SCCM working on all our endpoints in various DMZ’s. These servers are all in workgroups in DMZ’s so can’t use the standard method of using the Certificate MMC Snap-in to enroll in certificates (needed to encrypt the SCCM communication).

In case you aren’t aware, to do a Computer-based certificate request you need to do the following:

  • create an INF file that includes all the information for your certificate template
  • create the .cer request based off of the INF
  • submit it to your PKI server
  • download the completed cert and complete the request
  • export the request to a pfx file

In the case of our scenario where your DMZ box needs a certificate issued by your internal PKI you need to create and submit the request from a domain joined machine by an account with access to enroll in the certificate. Then you have to export the certificate and import it into the DMZ server directly. You also have to import your certificate chain into the DMZ machine, but that’s relatively easy and I’m not going to cover it in this article.

Here’s the script, and ‘ll explain it below


param(
$MYCERTNAME
)

$Path = "d:\scripts\certreqs"

$BuildINF = $null
$BuildINF = "[NewRequest]"
$BuildINF += "`r`n"
$BuildINF += "Subject = ""CN=$MyCertName""`r`n"
$BuildINF += "MachineKeySet = TRUE`r`n"
$BuildINF += "Exportable = TRUE`r`n"
$BuildINF += "KeyLength = 2048`r`n"
$BuildINF += "[Extensions]`r`n"
$BuildINF += "2.5.29.17 = ""{text}""`r`n"
$BuildINF += "_continue_ = ""dns=$MYCERTNAME""`r`n"
$BuildINF += "[RequestAttributes]`r`n"
$BuildINF += "CertificateTemplate = ConfigMgrClientCertificate`r`n"
$BuildINF += "SAN = ""DNS=$MYCERTNAME""`r`n"

$BuildINF | out-file -filepath $path\$MyCertName.inf

sleep 4
certreq -new $path\$MYCERTNAME.inf $path\$MYCERTNAME.req
certreq -submit -config "omacsgipkis01.csgicorp.com\PKI Server" $path\$MYCERTNAME.req $path\$MYCERTNAME.cer
certreq -accept $path\$MYCERTNAME.cer
certutil -exportpfx -p "Welcome123" MY $MYCERTNAME $path\clientcerts\$MYCERTNAME.pfx

remove-item -path $path\$MYCERTNAME.req -force
remove-item -path $path\$MYCERTNAME.inf -force
remove-item -path $path\$MYCERTNAME.cer -force

So let’s say our DMZ machine has a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of testserver1.testdomain.com

We call the script with .\cert.ps1 testserver1.testdomain.com

The first thing the script does is build the INF file that we need:


[NewRequest]

Subject = "CN=testdomain1.testdomain.com"
MachineKeySet = TRUE
Exportable = TRUE
KeyLength = 2048
[Extensions]
2.5.29.17 = "{text}"
_continue_ = "dns=testdomain1.testdomain.com"
[RequestAttributes]
CertificateTemplate = ConfigMgrClientCertificate
SAN = "DNS=testdomain1.testdomain.com"

The rest of the commands are pretty obvious how to read from the code, but essentially it throws out a bunch of certreq commands to create and submit the certificate request and then export it to the pfx we need to ultimately copy to the new DMZ box. And then it cleans up after itself and deletes the working files.

To import our trusted root certificates into the DMZ box, run the following commands:


Certutil –addstore –f “ROOT” “d:\certs\rootca.cer”

Certutil –addstore –f “ROOT” “d:\certs\subca.cer”

After we import the root certificates into the trusted root store, we need to import the PFX file we created with the powershell script above.


Certutil –p Welcome123 –importpfx “d:\<pfx file name>.pfx”

And that’s it. You’ve now created your pfx certificate and imported it into the DMZ machine.

Lync DHCP options

I’ve had to do this just often enough that every time I do it I have to google how. Hence this post!

In this case I needed to add the Lync DHCP options to a new 2012 R2 DHCP server from a new Lync 2013 server. I had just enough problems with it that I thought others could benefit from the experience.

So, to do this:

  1. Copy dhcputil.exe and dhcpconfigscript.bat from c:\program files\common files\Microsft Lync Server 2013 (or 2010)\ to c:\windows\system32 on your DHCP server
  2. While you’re here go ahead and copy msvcr110.dll and msvcp110.dll to c:\windows\system32 on  your DHCP server. I found no instructions online that said to do this, but I couldn’t get it to run otherwise.
  3. Install the VC++ x64 2008 redistributable on  your DHCP server. Can be found here VC2008 or on your Lync media
  4. Go to a command prompt and run: dhcputil.exe -sipserver <sip FQDN> – webserver <web server FQDN>
  5. Make sure this command is successful. NOTE that you have not yet actually done anything. To configure DHCP run it with the switch -runconfiscript
  6. Full command with example: dhcputil.exe -siperserver lyncfepool.web.com -webserver webint.web.com -runconfigscript
  7. If you now go over to DHCP and hit refresh on your options you’ll get an error. You’re not done
  8. Restart the DHCP server service.
  9. NOW hit refresh.
  10. There you go!

File Share Woes

As sys admins, we all eventually hit the problem of inheriting file shares that were set up by years and years worth of SA’s who all felt their way was the best way to do it. I have a firm belief that any way you do it is fine, as long as you do it that way consistently. Eventually, you will find a file share where someone gave users Full Control to a file share or thru NTFS and those users modified the ownership of the files and took admins away. Then those people left and now you nor anyone else can access those files

Or, even worse, you got hit by a virus that stripped all the permissions away.

As with everything, there’s a lot of ways to fix this. You’ll first have to take ownership of the files and then reset the permissions back to default inheritance. You NEVER want to manage permissions on subfolders if you don’t have to.

The easy way is to use takeown and icacls:

takeown /f * /a /r
icacls * /inheritance:e /t

That works great, until it doesn’t. Takeown has some limitations which you’ll eventually run into. You’ll likely start getting random memory or caching errors. To fix, that use SubInAcl

Be very careful with subinacl. It’s a very powerful too and you could cause yourself a world of hurt with it.

subinacl /file "PATH" /setowner=Administrators <-- to claim ownership of the root
subinacl /subdirectories "PATH\*.*"  /setowner=Administrators <-- to claim ownership of everything else

icacls * /inheritance:e /t

That’s it!

Get a list of workstations in Active Directory

There’s really not a lot to this script, but with what I was trying to do I thought this was actually kind of a cool trick.

What I was trying to do was a get a list of all computers in AD with desktop operating systems. Yes, this is part of the migration series we’ve been doing because as it turns out random people have random other desktops sitting under their desk. 🙂

In addition to just pulling the computer objects I also wanted a list of the OS installed and the IP address they had registered in DNS. As you know, AD does not store the IP by itself, so since I wanted this all saved to just one array it required a little bit of trickery.

The first thing we want to do is the actual get-qdcomputer from AD, which is fairly straightforward. Then we want to pipe that to a where clause and filter on the operating system we want. Then save that to an array

$b=get-qadcomputer -includedproperties operatingsystem,lastlogontimestamp|where-object {$_.operatingsystem -notlike '*Server*' -and $_.operatingsystem -notlike $Null -and $_.operatingsystem -notlike '*ontap*'}

This next line is where the actual “trick” comes in. I was tickled pink by the ease of doing this after all the issues I was having with adding IP to the results above. The key was to set a new array (or the same one) and just select the attributes I want. In this case, name, operatingsystem, and lastlogontimestamp. I wanted the timestamp so that I could see the last time the machine had booted on the network. Then the real key is I also told it to select the attribute ipaddress. This attribute doesn’t actually exist in the above array, but because I’m selecting it here, it actually creates that row in the new array.

$b=$b|select name,operatingsystem,lastlogontimestamp,ipaddress

Then in the next section I’m executing a flushdns at the OS level and creating a new array. The new array just keeps track of the machines that we can’t ping. For the purposes of this script it’s really not used. So then we go thru each item in $b, reset some variables, then do a wmi call out to DNS to do an nslookup on the computer name. If it gets a results it adds that IP address back into the original array. Then we just output the array.

& ipconfig /flushdns
$NoPing=@()

foreach ($item in $b){
	$c=$item.name
	$a=$null
	$a=[System.Net.Dns]::GetHostAddresses($c)
	if (!$a){$NoPing+=$c}
	else {
		$item.ipaddress=$a
	}
}

And here it is all together. You can do whatever you want with the results.

$erroractionpreference="silentlycontinue"
$b=get-qadcomputer -includedproperties operatingsystem,lastlogontimestamp|where-object {$_.operatingsystem -notlike '*Server*' -and $_.operatingsystem -notlike $Null -and $_.operatingsystem -notlike '*ontap*'}

$b=$b|select name,operatingsystem,lastlogontimestamp,ipaddress

& ipconfig /flushdns
$NoPing=@()

foreach ($item in $b){
	$c=$item.name
	$a=$null
	$a=[System.Net.Dns]::GetHostAddresses($c)
	if (!$a){$NoPing+=$c}
	else {
		$item.ipaddress=$a
	}
}

$b|ft name, operatingsystem,lastlogontimestamp,ipaddress

Active Directory Migrations: New Hire Process

In our scenario we had to keep creating new hires in the legacy domain so that we could get sidHistory, until we can say that we’re done and all things have been migrated.

I did it all in one script, but it’s a little big. I like it cause I did some new (to me) stuff like menus and consolidation. It’s what I wanted to do with the rest of the migration scripts, but just didn’t quite work right. If you’re migrating 100 people at once, you want to verify that everything in step 1 has worked correctly before going on to step 2.

Below is the script. I’ll try to explain as we go, but most of it is just re-doing of things we’ve done before.

This script also assumes that you still have your daily sync scripts going from source to target domain and that you’re waiting at least a day between new hire creation in legacy and migration to target. If not, you’ll need to run the prepare-mailboxmove script manually to create the MEU

$warningpreference='silentlycontinue'

## Function to look in the source directory for all CSV files. Sort by most recent date and return the last 10.
## This way we can manipulate that file and use it for the rest of the script

function SourceFileMenu()

{
$sourceFiles = Get-ChildItem $sourcefolder\*.csv | Sort LastWriteTime -Descending | select name, lastwritetime -first 10
Write-Host ("=" * 80)
Write-Host "Available migration source files"
Write-Host ("-" * 80)

[int]$optionPrefix = 1

# Create menu list
foreach ($option in $sourceFiles)
{
if ($displayProperty -eq $null)
{
Write-Host ("{0,3}: {1,-40} {2}" -f $optionPrefix,$option.Name,$option.lastWriteTime)
}
else
{
Write-Host ("{0,3}: {1}" -f $optionPrefix,$option.$displayProperty)
}
$optionPrefix++
}

$maxOptions = $optionPrefix - 1

Write-Host ("-" * 80)
$response = 0
while($response -lt 1 -or $response -gt $sourcefiles.count)
{
[int]$response = Read-Host "Select a source file [1 - $maxOptions]"
}

$val = $null

if ($response -gt 0 -and $response -le $sourceFiles.Count)
{
$val = $sourceFiles[$response-1]
}

$pattern = [regex] "(.*)\.csv"

##save our selection into a variable and return it to the caller
$sourcename = $pattern.matches($val.Name) | foreach {$_.groups[1].value}

return $sourcename
}

##Pause function. Mainly so that the script will still work if you're using the ISE
Function Pause ($Message = "Press any key to continue . . . ") {
If ($psISE) {
# The "ReadKey" functionality is not supported in Windows PowerShell ISE.

$Shell = New-Object -ComObject "WScript.Shell"
$Button = $Shell.Popup("Click OK to continue.", 0, "Script Paused", 0)

Return
}
##ISE related stuff
Write-Host -NoNewline $Message

$Ignore =
16, # Shift (left or right)
17, # Ctrl (left or right)
18, # Alt (left or right)
20, # Caps lock
91, # Windows key (left)
92, # Windows key (right)
93, # Menu key
144, # Num lock
145, # Scroll lock
166, # Back
167, # Forward
168, # Refresh
169, # Stop
170, # Search
171, # Favorites
172, # Start/Home
173, # Mute
174, # Volume Down
175, # Volume Up
176, # Next Track
177, # Previous Track
178, # Stop Media
179, # Play
180, # Mail
181, # Select Media
182, # Application 1
183 # Application 2

While ($KeyInfo.VirtualKeyCode -Eq $Null -Or $Ignore -Contains $KeyInfo.VirtualKeyCode) {
$KeyInfo = $Host.UI.RawUI.ReadKey("NoEcho, IncludeKeyDown")
}

Write-Host
}

##Function for moving the objects to the correct OU
function CheckSite ($Site){
## Base OU where you have your users. This assumes you separate everything by region.
$BaseUserOU="domain.com/Users OU/"
switch ($Site){
"Site1 {
$OU="/CO"
$UserOU=$BaseUserOU + $OU
}
"Site2" {
$OU="/NC"
$UserOU=$BaseUserOU + $OU
}
"Site3 {
$ou="/MA"
$UserOU=$BaseUserOU + $OU
}

}

## Return the OU to the caller
return $userOU
}

## MainMenu builder
function mainMenu() {

Clear-Host;
#… Present the Menu Options
Write-Host “`n`New Hire Migration Process `n” -ForegroundColor Magenta
Write-Host “`t`tThese steps are in the order they need to be run.” -Fore Cyan
Write-Host “`t`tPlease run them sequentially and ensure each step finishes successfully” -Fore Cyan
Write-Host “`t`tbefore continuing on.`n” -Fore Cyan
Write-Host “`t`t`t1. Generate Include Files” -Fore Cyan
Write-Host “`t`t`t2. Enter Passwords” -Fore Cyan
write-host "`t`t`t3. Check for MEU" -fore cyan
Write-Host “`t`t`t4. ADMT” -Fore Cyan
Write-Host “`t`t`t5. Mailbox Move” -Fore Cyan
Write-Host "`t`t`t6. Set migrated attribute" -ForegroundColor Cyan
write-host "`t`t`t7. Set UPN and Displayname" -ForegroundColor Cyan
Write-Host "`t`t`t8. Disable Lync in source" -ForegroundColor Cyan
Write-Host "`t`t`t9. Enable Lync in target" -ForegroundColor Cyan
Write-Host "`t`t`t10. Set SIP in source -ForegroundColor Cyan
Write-Host "`t`t`t11. Move User to correct OU" -ForegroundColor Cyan
write-host "`t`t`t12. Clean up Files" -fore cyan
Write-Host “`t`t`tQ. for Quit`n” -Fore Cyan

}

##Variables. Add our snapin, decare paths, etc.
Add-PSSnapin Quest.ActiveRoles.ADManagement -erroraction SilentlyContinue
$Path="D:\newhire\includes"
$currfolder = Split-Path -parent $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Definition
$sourceFolder = $currfolder + "/Includes"

##Present the menu as a do/while, thus ensuring we only exit when we want
do {
## Call menu and store the keystroke into a var
mainMenu;
write-host "You last chose number " $input

$input = Read-Host "Enter a number for an option"

##Perform necessary option based on input
switch ($input) {
"1" { ## GEnerate include files for various scripts. renames the include file chosen to userincludes.csv and prepares the admt include
$IncludeFile=SourceFileMenu
$IFile=$includeFile + ".csv"
copy-item $sourcefolder\$IFile -destination $sourcefolder"\UserIncludes.csv"
$output=@()
import-csv $path\Userincludes.csv| ForEach-Object {
$obj = New-Object PSObject | Select-Object SourceName, TargetRDN, TargetUPN
$obj.SourceName = $_.sourceName
$obj.TargetRDN = $_.TargetRDN
$obj.TargetUPN = $_.TargetUPN
$output += $obj
}
write-host "...Generating Files..." -foregroundcolor red

$output|export-csv $path\"ADMTUserInclude.csv" -notypeinformation
Pause
}
"2" { ## Loads the parameter input. Prompts for credentials
write-host "Input target Creds" -backgroundcolor red -foregroundcolor white
$LocalCredentials=get-credential

write-host "Input source creds" -backgroundcolor red -foregroundcolor white
$RemoteCredentials=get-credential

$ImportFile="D:\newhire\includes\UserIncludes.csv"
$SourceDc="sourcedc1.sourcedomain.com"
$TargetDC="targetdc1.targetdomain.com"
$TargetDeliveryDomain="targetdomain.com"

$ExchURI="http://targetex1.targetdomain.com/powershell"
$LyncURI="https://registrarpool.targetdomain.com/ocspowershell"
$LyncFEURI="https://targetfe.targetdomain.com/ocspowershell"
$LyncFESourceURI="https://sourcefe.sourcedomain.com/ocspowershell"
$LyncURISource="https://sourcelyncdir.sourcedomain.com/ocspowershell"
$SourceDomain="sourcedomain.com"
$TargetDomain="targetdomain.com"
$RegistrarPool="registrarpool.targetdomain.com"
$TargetOU="Target/OU"
$import=import-csv $ImportFile

##Create Lync sessions for source and target
$LyncSessionSource=New-PSSession -connectionuri $LyncURISource -credential $RemoteCredentials
$LyncSession=New-PSSession -connectionuri $LyncURI -credential $LocalCredentials

write-host "Variables Loaded"
Pause
}
"3" { ##Check for existence of MEU. We can't do a migration if meu doesn't exist
foreach ($item in $Import){
write-host "Checking if user is enabled for UM in source " $item.smtp -foregroundcolor yellow

##check user attributes to see if they're enabled for UM. They shouldn't be, but just in case
$CheckUM=get-qaduser -service $SourceDC -identity $item.sourcename -includedProperties msExchUMRecipientDialPlanLink
$CheckDial=$checkUM.msExchUMRecipientDialPlanLink
if ($CheckDial){
write-host $item.smtp "is enabled for Unified Messaging. Please go disable and come back and rerun script" -fore yellow
$input="Q"
}
}
##Create Sessions
## Exchange sessions throw an error if it takes too long to get back to them, so we have to create and delete them as we go
$ExchSession=New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -connectionuri $ExchURI -credential $LocalCredentials

import-pssession $ExchSession|out-null

## Check if there's an MEU in target domain. If not, exit
foreach ($item in $import){
$aUser=get-mailuser $item.smtp
if (!$aUser){write-host "No MEU exists for " $item.smtp "please exit and run the Prepare script manually" -fore yellow
$input="Q"
}
if ($aUser){
##We've had some weird issues where the email address policy isn't applying immediately, so just in case let's go ahead and turn it off and back on for the users.
## We wait 30 seconds because otherwise the script goes too fast.
write-host "MEU Exists for " $item.smtp
write-host "Disabling EaP"
start-sleep -s 30
set-mailuser -identity $item.smtp -emailAddressPolicyenabled $false
write-host "enabling EAP"
start-sleep -s 30
set-mailuser -identity $item.smtp -emailaddresspolicyenabled $true
}
}
remove-pssession $Exchsession
pause
}
"4" { ## ADMT
## Can't be done via script because ADMT won't migrate the sid unless we have it installed on a DC or launch the GUI. Since that's the whole point we launch the GUI to do the ADMT
& C:\Windows\ADMT\migrator.msc
Pause
}
"5" { ## Mailbox Move
##Create Sessions
$ExchSession=New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -connectionuri $ExchURI -credential $LocalCredentials

import-pssession $ExchSession|out-null

foreach ($User in $import){
New-MoveRequest -Identity $user.smtp -domaincontroller $TargetDC -RemoteLegacy -RemoteGlobalCatalog $SourceDC -RemoteCredential $RemoteCredentials -TargetDeliveryDomain $TargetDeliveryDomain -baditemlimit 50 -warningaction silentlycontinue
}

## Rather than go check manually in exchange for move status, let's just do it all here. Wait 30 seconds between tries.
## Even with no data in the mailbox it still takes about 5 minutes to do the process
foreach ($User in $import){

do {
start-sleep -s 30
$a=get-moverequeststatistics -identity $user.smtp
clear-host
write-host "Getting move request statistics for " $user.smtp -fore yellow
write-host "`t`t`t " $a.status -fore cyan
}
until ($a.status -eq "Completed")
}
remove-pssession $ExchSession

Pause
}
"6" { ## Set attribute for reporting
foreach ($item in $Import){
write-host "Attribute being set for " $item.sourcename -foregroundcolor yellow
set-qaduser -service $SourceDC -identity $item.sourcename -objectAttributes @{"extensionattribute4"="MigratedToCorp"}
}
Pause
}
"7" { ## Set UPN and displayname, enable AS
$ExchSession=New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -connectionuri $ExchURI -credential $LocalCredentials

import-pssession $ExchSession|out-null
foreach ($item in $Import){
$UPN=$item.newupn+"@csgicorp.com"
$AS=$item.ActiveSync.ToUpper()
write-host "Setting UPN and AS for " $item.displayname -foregroundcolor yellow
set-user -identity $item.displayname -displayname $item.displayname -userprincipalname $UPN
if ($AS -eq "YES"){set-casmailbox -identity $item.smtp -activesyncenabled $true}
}
remove-pssession $ExchSession
Pause
}
"8" { ## Disable Lync in source
import-pssession $LyncSessionSource
foreach ($item in $import){
write-host "Disabling Lync for " $item.olddisplayname -foregroundcolor yellow
disable-csuser -identity $item.olddisplayname
}

remove-pssession $LyncSessionSource
## We add a delay otherwise it goes too fast
start-sleep 60
Pause
}
"9" { ## enable lync in target
import-pssession $LyncSession

foreach ($item in $import){
enable-csuser -identity $item.displayname -registrarpool $registrarpool -sipaddresstype EmailAddress
write-host "Enabling Lync for: " $item.displayname -foregroundcolor yellow
}
remove-pssession $LyncSession
pause
}
"10" { ##Set sip attribute in source
ForEach ($item in $import){
write-host "Adding source SIP for " $item.sourcename -foregroundcolor yellow
$NewSIP="sip:" + $item.smtp
set-qaduser -service $SourceDC -identity $item.sourcename -objectAttributes @{"msRTCSIP-PrimaryUserAddress"=$newsip}
}
pause
}
"11" { ##Move to OU
$date=get-date -format "yyyyMMdd"
foreach ($item in $import){
$return=CheckSite $item.sitecode
get-qaduser -service $targetDC -identity $item.displayname|move-qadobject -service $targetDC -identity {$_} -newparentcontainer $return
}
pause
}
"12" { ##Cleanup created files and move them to a completed dir
$date=get-date -format "yyyyMMdd"
move-item "$sourcefolder\ADMTUserInclude.csv" "$sourcefolder\Completed" -force
move-item "$sourcefolder\UserIncludes.csv" "$sourcefolder\Completed" -force
$ANewName=$date+"ADMTUserInclude.csv"
$UNewName=$date+"UserIncludes.csv"

if (!($(test-path "$sourcefolder\completed\$anewname"))){
rename-item "$sourcefolder\Completed\ADMTUserInclude.csv" $ANewName -force
rename-item "$sourcefolder\Completed\UserIncludes.csv" $UNewName -force
}
else {
remove-item "$sourcefolder\completed\$anewname"
remove-item "$sourcefolder\completed\$Unewname"
rename-item "$sourceFolder\Completed\ADMTUserInclude.csv" $ANewName -force
rename-item "$sourcefolder\Completed\UserIncludes.csv" $UNewName -force

}

pause
}

"Q" { ## quit and clean up our sessions if we missed any
get-pssession|remove-pssession
}
default {
Clear-Host;
Write-Host "Invalid input. Please enter a valid option. Press any key to continue.";
Pause
}
}

} until ($input.ToUpper() -eq "Q");
get-pssession|remove-pssession
Clear-Host;

Active Directory Migrations: Final Thoughts

I’ve now given you all my scripts I used for my AD migrations. They represent a huge amount of work on my part for writing, testing, compiling and refining them. Please use them wisely and if they help you out feel free to write a comment and let me know. I like to know I’m not just writing for myself.

Also keep in mind that you are not done. Not remotely. Now you have to go back and fix everything else you didn’t touch: DNS zones, DHCP, file share permissions, file servers, applications servers, applications, GPO’s, contacts, Sharepoint, etc, etc. Try to think of everything a user does on a daily basis and figure out if and how it needs to be migrated. You probably band-aided everything to get it working in the interim, but you still need to go back and FIX it.

To that end, what about your new hires? Hopefully you enfolded them in the migration process or at the end you’ll find out you have another 20-100 people who still need to be migrated. All because you didn’t define that process in the beginning. I know, because we ran out of time to do it on ours and had to do them all over again.

What about your remote users? Are you making them come into the office, mail their equipment in and be offline for days, or what? We did some hodge-podge process of creating a new local user account on remote PC’s and handholding them thru logging in with that, VPN in, and then migrate their computer and have them do it all over again so we could get the IP and finish the process. By the end it worked great, but 1 person could really only handle a couple of these remote users at a time.

And what are you going to do until all of the above is done? Do new hires need to be onboarded into their legacy domain or can they go directly into the new domain? Likely you’ve still got applications tied to the old domain that require sidHistory, group access or whatever, so your new users will need to come into the old and then be migrated into the new before they even start. Hopefully your onboarding process has that flexibility. (I’ll cover that powershell script in another post.)

Hopefully I’ve been of some help to you.

Active Directory Migrations: Mailbox Moves 2.0

If you’ve been following along with the process you’ll know I already covered mailbox moves. So you’re probably wondering what this post is about.

“Well, Jason,” you’re probably saying, “your process is nice enough and really saved me from having to write a lot of code, but what do I do for this users with huge mailboxes? Like, I have a few execs with 10GB mailboxes. I know I was never supposed to allow that, but, you know, they’re execs. And I have a tiny migration window.”

I’m glad you asked.

I found a nifty little switch on the mailbox move called “suspendwhenreadytocomplete”. Essentially what it does is kick off a mailbox move of a user into a temporary staging area (i.e you still have mailflow” and then when it gets to 95% it just stops. You could conceivably leave it there forever. Or days. Either one. The idea here is that that last 5% is the remaining mail items (and the changes) and then it flips the switch from MEU to mailbox and puts the mail attributes on the account in the target domain. Since I saw an average of about 20 minutes per 1GB of a mailbox during moves, I could work backward to see how much time it would take to move that mailbox and was able to kick it off early.

A couple huge caveats with this:

1. Only works from Exchange 2007 or 2010 to Exchange 2010.
2. You canNOT have Unified Messaging turned on for the user in the source domain when you start. Same as for a mailbox move. What this means is that the users won’t have voicemail until they’re actually migrated. There are ways around this using alternate names on your UM policy, but that didn’t work for us based on how we were changing things up.

Here’s the script. This helped me tremendously for my migrations:


##since this is a oneoff, specify the email address we're doing this to.
Param(
 [string]$smtp
)
##call include file

. .\params.ps1

##Create Sessions
$ExchSession=New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -connectionuri $ExchURI -credential $LocalCredentials
##import the session
import-pssession $ExchSession|out-null
## Do a move request for each mailbox
##note the last option -suspendwhenreadytocomplete

New-MoveRequest -Identity $smtp -domaincontroller $TargetDC -RemoteLegacy -RemoteGlobalCatalog $SourceDC -RemoteCredential $RemoteCredentials -TargetDeliveryDomain $TargetDeliveryDomain -baditemlimit 50 -suspendwhenreadytocomplete

##clean uup
remove-pssession $ExchSession

That’s it. Then when you’re ready to go on with your migration just go into the Exchange console to the move requests section and right-click and select “Complete Move Request”

Active Directory Migrations: A few little odds and ends

We had to do a few random clean up items to get machines to work correctly post-migration. Set a few registry keys, copy some files, enable Bitlocker keys, etc.

This first one copies a couple BAT files over to the client machine and then sets an auto run registry key. Since we were completely changing out the Lync environment and using a whole new SIP we had to force the client to re-do autodiscovery


##call include file
. .\params.ps1

##this was our list of relevant computer names.
$import=$computerlist

ForEach ($item in $import){
 $computer=$item.computer
 write-host "Setting Reg Key on " $Computer
##let's copy the bat files over. We use 2 just in case the first one misses it. Lync likes to start up as soon as you login, but must be closed for this setting to take effect
 copy-item d:\migration\scripts\nightof\lyncreset.bat -destination \\$computer\c$
 copy-item d:\migration\scripts\nightof\lyncreset2.bat -destination \\$computer\c$
##registry magic
 $HKLM = 2147483650
 $key = "Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Runonce"
 $reg = [wmiclass]"\\$computer\root\default:StdRegprov"
 $value="c:\Lyncreset.bat"
 $reg.SetStringValue($HKLM, $key, $name, $value)
}

Lyncreset.bat


@echo off

rem Kill Lync
taskkill /IM communicator.exe /f

rem Delete the autodiscovery settings
reg delete HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Shared\UcClient /va /f

rem Delete the OAB's and the nickname cache for older clients
rmdir "%userprofile%\appdata\local\microsoft\outlook\offline address books" /s /q

rmdir "%userprofile%\local settings\application data\microsoft\outlook\offline address books" /s /q
ren "%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook\*.nk2" *.nk2old

rem add another runonce so that we can do this all over again the next time we boot.
reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Runonce /ve /d "C:\LyncReset2.bat" /f

LyncReset2.bat


rem Check if the empty file exists. we don't want to turn this into a loop.
if not exist %temp%\EmptyFile.txt (
 taskkill /IM communicator.exe /f
 reg delete HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Shared\UcClient /va /f
 rmdir "%userprofile%\local settings\application data\microsoft\outlook\offline address books" /s /q
 rmdir "%userprofile%\appdata\local\microsoft\outlook\offline address books" /s /q
)

rem create the empty file
echo. 2>%temp%\EmptyFile.txt

Bitlocker was a fun one. No easy Powershell way to do this, so had to run some commands, scrape the output, then run some other commands.


#setting a variable so we don't get prompted for creds in our params file. None of these need credentials.
$Creds="NO"

#setting the variables for bitlocker. I tried to build a script to poll the client for actual HDD's but it didn't work consistently without enabling WinRM on all the machines, so had to hardcode these in there. Made the script a mess, but ran out of time for a clean way to do it.
$app="manage-bde.exe"
$DriveLetters = @("C","D","E")
##call include file
. .\params.ps1

##set up an array
$bad=@()

$import=import-csv "d:\migration\admtincludes\bitlockercompincludes1.csv"

## go thru each item in the import file, then go thru each drive in the drive array

foreach ($item in $import){

$computer=$item.computer
 foreach ($drive in $driveletters){
#set up our variables. Re-null out some and configure drives
$a=$null
 $b=$null
 $c=$null
 $key=$null
 $getparams=$null
 $putparams=$null
 $share=$drive+"$"
 $Bdrive=$drive+":"

## test the drive to see if it's good. most computers only have C$. If they have D$ or E$ this will run the commands against those drives
if ($(Test-path "\\$computer\$share")){
## Set up our param list for the manage-bde command
## i.e. manage-bde.exe -cn MYcomp -protectors -delete C: -type recoverypassword
## deletes the protectors on mycomp's c:
$Parameters =@("-cn","$computer","-protectors","-delete","$Bdrive","-type","recoverypassword")

## Run the command. Since we'red doing an executable we must do it this way
 & $App $Parameters

##basically the same as above, but we now want to add the recovery key back into the new AD
## i.e. manage-bde.exe -cn mycomp -protectors -add C: -recoverypassword
 $Parameters = @("-cn","$computer","-protectors","-add","$Bdrive","-recoverypassword")
 & $App $Parameters

##sometimes the above command doesn't work, so as a backup we want to tell it backup the recovery key to AD
##this requires getting the current key first
##i.e. manage-bde.exe -cn mycomp -protectors -get C:

$GetParams=@("-cn",$Computer,"-protectors","-get",$Bdrive)
##store the results into a variable
 $Result=& $app $GetParams

##browse the results for the line we're looking for
##We'll get a couple lines back one is the DRA and one is the actual ID for the drive that we need
 $a=$result|foreach-object {if($_ -match "ID") {$_}}
 if ($a){
##let's manipulate the data
##get the last line in the data that has ID in it
 $b=$a[-1].trim()
##convert it to a string and then split each space, creating an array of the results. I.e. "ID:" is [0] and the GUID is the [1]. "Password" is [2] and the password is [3]
 $c=$b.ToString().split(' ')

##set the key to the last item (i.e. the password)
 $Key=$c[-1]

##rewrite the params so that we can backup the key
##ie. manage-bde.exe -cn mycomp -protectors -adbackup C: -ID 11111-1111-....
 $PutParams=@("-cn",$Computer,"-protectors","-adbackup",$Bdrive,"-ID",$key)
 & $app $putparams
}
 }
##write out computers we couldn't connect to
ELSE {$BAD+=$Computer}
 }
}

$bad|sort|unique|out-file "d:\migration\admtincludes\BLOutput.txt"