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Active Directory with PowerShell
Active Directory with PowerShell

Active Directory with PowerShell: Learn to configure and manage Active Directory using PowerShell in an efficient and smart way

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Profile Icon YELLAPRAGADA U PADMAVATHI Profile Icon Pamarthi Venkata Sitaram
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€36.99
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4 (9 Ratings)
Paperback Jan 2015 230 pages 1st Edition
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Profile Icon YELLAPRAGADA U PADMAVATHI Profile Icon Pamarthi Venkata Sitaram
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€36.99
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4 (9 Ratings)
Paperback Jan 2015 230 pages 1st Edition
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Active Directory with PowerShell

Chapter 2. Managing User and Computer Objects

In the previous chapter, we got familiarized with a list of tools required for managing Active Directory using PowerShell. Now, let's get started with actual management tasks and feel the real power of automation. This chapter enables you to learn automation of a few user and computer account-related operations.

This chapter mainly focuses on accomplishing the following tasks using PowerShell:

  • Creating new user and computer accounts
  • Modifying user and computer objects
  • Enabling or disabling user and computer accounts
  • Moving user and computer accounts
  • Deleting user and computer accounts

Managing user accounts

Active Directory is all about users and computers. Each user in the organization will have at least one account. There will be scenarios where a single user can have multiple accounts. This is very true in the case of IT users where one account is used for regular activities such as checking emails, browsing, and so on, whereas, the other privileged account is used for managing the infrastructure. Apart from this, there are service accounts that are designed to run a particular service. This shows how rapidly user accounts can grow in the Active Directory environment along with the necessity to manage them in a much more efficient way.

The following sections will explain how to perform user object operations using PowerShell.

Creating user accounts

Managing user accounts is one of the day-to-day jobs as a Windows administrator. New users join companies on a frequent basis and sometimes the volume might go high. In such cases, creating user accounts using conventional...

Modifying user properties

In the previous section, we have seen how to create user accounts using Active Directory PowerShell module. The task of the system administrator will not end by just creating user objects in Active Directory; he/she will also be responsible for modifying and managing them. This section will help you understand the process involved in modifying user accounts using PowerShell.

Since modifying user accounts has a very big scope, we will discuss a few example cases where a bulk user modification is required. These examples will help you understand the modification process. You can leverage these examples to modify any other attributes in Active Directory:

  • Updating the description of a user object
  • Updating the telephone number of multiple users
  • Enabling or disabling user accounts in bulk
  • Moving user accounts to another OU

Before jumping on to modifying user properties, let's brush up on the basics basics. To update the description of a user account, you will typically...

Deleting user accounts

The Active Directory PowerShell module has a cmdlet called Remove-ADUser to delete user accounts from Active Directory. Alternatively, the Remove-ADObject cmdlet can be used. The Remove-ADUser cmdlet is designed to deal with user accounts removal. We will use this cmdlet throughout the examples in this section.

The requests for removal of user accounts increase as the attrition rate increases in your organization. You get requests from HR to delete user accounts on a frequent basis either when an employee leaves the organization or he/she turns down the offer just before joining.

Tip

Most organizations won't delete user accounts when an employee leaves the organization. Instead, they will hide these from the Global Address List/Book (GAL), remove them from all groups, disable the mailbox, and keep the ID in a disabled state. Such accounts can be enabled if the employee rejoins the company later.

Removing a user account from Active Directory is a straightforward...

Managing computer accounts

In previous sections, we have seen several operational tasks that can be performed on user accounts in Active Directory using PowerShell. This section focuses on performing similar operations on computer objects.

Managing computer objects is not much different from managing user objects. All you need to do is to use the correct cmdlets and the rest of the process remains the same.

The following topics are covered as a part of managing computer accounts using PowerShell. Let's go through these one by one and understand how we can accomplish them:

  • Creating computer accounts
  • Modifying computer properties
  • Enabling or disabling computer accounts
  • Deleting computer accounts

Creating computer accounts

Most system administrators do not create computer accounts manually in Active Directory. Instead, they join computers to the domain and the account gets created automatically. After automatic object creation, the administrator moves the computer accounts from the default container...

Deleting computer accounts

As discussed in the previous section, as a system administrator one must adhere to the security policies of the organization and keep their Active Directory database clean and tidy. As part of this process, you might want to delete stale/offline computer objects from Active Directory.

Use the following simple command to delete a computer account:

Remove-ADComputer -Identity COMP1

The most common use case is searching for computers older than x days and removing them. You can achieve this using the following command:

$Computers = Get-ADComputer -Filter * -Properties LastLogonDate | ?  {$_.LastLogonDate -lt (get-date).Adddays(-10) }
$Computers | Remove-ADComputer

Tip

You need to be very careful while performing the delete operation. Any mistake in the filters can result in your production computers being deleted. So, I prefer storing the Get-ADComputer cmdlet results in a variable ($computer in this example), reviewing the list, and then passing it to the Remove-ADComputer...

Managing user accounts


Active Directory is all about users and computers. Each user in the organization will have at least one account. There will be scenarios where a single user can have multiple accounts. This is very true in the case of IT users where one account is used for regular activities such as checking emails, browsing, and so on, whereas, the other privileged account is used for managing the infrastructure. Apart from this, there are service accounts that are designed to run a particular service. This shows how rapidly user accounts can grow in the Active Directory environment along with the necessity to manage them in a much more efficient way.

The following sections will explain how to perform user object operations using PowerShell.

Creating user accounts

Managing user accounts is one of the day-to-day jobs as a Windows administrator. New users join companies on a frequent basis and sometimes the volume might go high. In such cases, creating user accounts using conventional...

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Description

If you are looking to automate repetitive tasks in Active Directory management using the PowerShell module, then this book is for you. Any experience in PowerShell would be an added advantage.

Who is this book for?

If you are looking to automate repetitive tasks in Active Directory management using the PowerShell module, then this book is for you. Any experience in PowerShell would be an added advantage.

What you will learn

  • Manage user and computer accounts using PowerShell
  • Automate group membership additions, removals, and bulk operations using PowerShell
  • Perform various query operations against Active Directory to fetch user, computer, and group details in an efficient and faster way
  • Understand how sites, subnets, and domains are managed
  • Perform advanced operations such as Domain Controller promotion/demotion
  • Discover how to automate replication checks, fine grained password policy creation, and FSMO roles transfer/seize using PowerShell
  • Get to know more about DNS server management, record creation/modification/ deletion, and DNS client management with PowerShell
  • Find out ways to automate DFSN and DFSR installation and configuration using PowerShell
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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Jan 23, 2015
Length: 230 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781782175995
Vendor :
Microsoft
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Publication date : Jan 23, 2015
Length: 230 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781782175995
Vendor :
Microsoft
Concepts :
Tools :

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Table of Contents

10 Chapters
1. Let's Get Started Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Managing User and Computer Objects Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Working with Active Directory Groups and Memberships Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Configuring Group Policies Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Managing Domains, Organizational Units, Sites, and Subnets Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Advanced AD Operations Using PowerShell Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Managing DFS-N and DFS-R Using PowerShell Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
8. Managing Active Directory DNS Using PowerShell Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
9. Miscellaneous Scripts and Resources for Further Learning Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

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Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
(9 Ratings)
5 star 33.3%
4 star 55.6%
3 star 0%
2 star 0%
1 star 11.1%
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Michael May 05, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Really liked this book and the samples.In Case i am working with Active Directory since 15 Years and PowerShell since Version 1, still learned something out of this book.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
steve alexandris Aug 22, 2017
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Probably the most useful book a Windows Sysadmin can buy. It does not go into the deep, otherwise useless, theoretical aspects of powershell and powershell programming. It tells you how to do what you need to do, you pick up the rest by making sense of the patterns in syntax.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
D b Jun 09, 2016
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Very In depth.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
rpm507 Jun 08, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
This book does provide insight into AD that helps to resolve problems. Some of the examples worked by inserting local information and others repeated what we were already doing that didn't work. I found the book to be worth the money I paid. I can recommend it to you as long as you can accept those limitations.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Paul G. May 15, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
Active Directory with PowerShell held on to PACK Publishing standards - easy to use, readable and understand. Book covers maybe not all the Active Directory aspects but it's worth to take a deeper look. It's not focusing on how PS works and all that but it goes straight to the point - Active Directory managing. Examples and topic gives AD administrators great foundations for everyday tasks just like in cookbook straightforward recipes :). As mentioned before not every topics are covered so lack of AD RMS / DHCP / CA/PKI and others but I hope it will be extended within next release. My Active Directory library gets bigger :)
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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