LDC – LoPo dot com

#PowerShell Quickie: Get-Nicbinding.ps1

By John Barsodi, on February 22nd, 2012

I’m working on a PowerShell script to perform a Health and Config check for Exchange Server 2010 installs. One of those checks is to verify the NIC binding order, which took me down the path of this script. I traditionally write new scripts that run multiple processes in a modular format, just so I know that my logic is solid, and then I integrate them together.

There are a few ways to extract the NIC info, but for my usage I needed to correlate data from the Registry and from WMI. I essentially needed to see a list of binding order similar to what you see in the GUI, the name of the NIC, and it’s current state. Many times we have NIC’s that aren’t used for one reason or another on physical boxes and those NIC’s are placed in a disabled state. I like to make sure they are disabled.

Note: This script has had very limited testing, I have tested on a hand full of lab machines and physical boxes. If you find results aren’t accurate, post up a comment and let me know and I will try to address.

#Author: John Barsodi
#Get-NICBinding

$Binding = (Get-Itemproperty "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\Tcpip\Linkage").bind
$NICs = Get-WmiObject -Class win32_networkadapter | where {$_.Netconnectionid -ne $null} | select NetCOnnectionID,GUID,NetEnabled
$i = 1
$NICOut = @()
foreach ($obj in $Binding) {
 $GUID = $obj.trimstart("\Device\")
 $Data = ($NICs | where {$_.GUID -eq $GUID})
 If ($Data.NetConnectionID -eq $null){
 Continue
 }
 $NICInfo= New-Object PSObject
 $NICInfo | Add-member NoteProperty Binding $i
 $NICInfo | Add-member NoteProperty Name $Data.NetConnectionID
 $NICInfo | Add-member NoteProperty "NIC Enabled" $Data.NetEnabled
 $NICInfo | Add-member NoteProperty GUID $Data.GUID
 $NICOut += $NICInfo
$i++
}
$NICOut | select Binding,Name,"NIC Enabled"

Here’s what the output looks like:

The next evolution of this script is to enable the user to fix anything not up to standard. For now, I will be adding an option to open Ncpa.cpl and use the GUI(ugh) to address.
You can download the script in text format here:
Get-NICBinding

TechMentor Conference Giveaway from myITforum.com

By John Barsodi, on September 8th, 2011

The TechMentor conference is kicking off in Las Vegas on Oct 10th and they are giving away a 5-day pass to one lucky person. Hopefully I can be that lucky person. I’d love to sit through Don Jones’ PowerShell sessions and Mark Minasi’s Windows Server and Active Directory sessions among many of the other speakers that’ll be there. I thought I’d up my chances by posting on my Blog.

You can find more information about the giveaway from myITforum.com here:

http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/rtrent/archive/2011/09/06/myitforum-giving-away-a-5-day-conference-pass-to-techmentor-in-vegas.aspx

The TechMentor event homepage can be found here:

http://techmentorevents.com/events/las-vegas-2011/home.aspx

#Exchange 2010 & 2007 – Control POP3 Enablement per Mailbox

By John Barsodi, on July 28th, 2011

Last year I wrote a basic control script to manage Exchange 2007 Active Sync enablement. Recently, I had a need to write an extremely simple POP3 control enablement script. The main difference is this just set to run in an Exchange 2010 environment utilizing 2010 PowerShell Snapin. Functionally and logically it’s all the same. The script is designed to run via a Scheduled Task or interactively(yes I kept the dreaded Write-host lines).

UPDATE: I’ve included a 2007 version below the 2010 version.

The same prerequisites exist from the EAS script.

Prerequisites:

Create a Universal security group
From the EMS, get the GUID for the newly created group
```
Get-group 'Group Name' | Select GUID
```
I wanted to use the GUID to prevent the script from breaking in the event someone changed the group name.

You will need to populate the $grpguid variable with the GUID you obtain from Prerequisite #2. Once complete, schedule to run on a machine that has the Exchange cmdlets and you will be off and running. Once you want to control who is enabled, simply populate the group that you created in Prerequisite #1 with users who’ve been approved to utilize POP3.

Exchange 2010 Version:

##########################################################################
# ScriptName: Set-POP3.ps1
# Author:     John Barsodi
# Date:       07/24/11
# Version:    .1
# Desc:       Disables the POP3 feature to False if not member of
# Desc:       the AD group <Enter Your Group Name>
# Tags:       Group POP Exchange 2010
##########################################################################
Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Exchange.Management.PowerShell.E2010
Set-ADServerSettings -ViewEntireForest $true
$grpGuid  = "YourGroupGUIDHere"
$grpdn = (Get-group $grpGuid).DistinguishedName
$grpBind = [ADSI]"LDAP://$grpdn"
$members = $grpBind.Member
$EnabledPOP = (Get-CasMailbox -resultsize unlimited | where {$_.POPEnabled -eq "True"})
Foreach ($obj in $EnabledPOP){
	$UserDN = $obj.DistinguishedName
	$UserDisplayName = $obj.Name
  		If($members -contains $UserDN){
    		Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green "$UserDisplayName found in Group"
   		}
  		Else{
   			Set-CasMailbox $UserDisplayName -POPEnabled $false
   			Write-Host -ForegroundColor Red "$UserDisplayName not found in Group, POP Disabled."
  		}
}

Exchange 2007 Verison:

##########################################################################
# ScriptName: Set-POP3.ps1
# Author:     John Barsodi
# Date:       07/24/11
# Version:    .1
# Desc:       Disables the POP3 feature to False if not member of
# Desc:       the AD group <Enter Your Group Name>
# Tags:       Group POP Exchange 2007
##########################################################################
Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Exchange.Management.PowerShell.Admin
$AdminSessionADSettings.ViewEntireForest = $True
$grpGuid  = "YourGroupGUIDHere"
$grpdn = (Get-group $grpGuid).DistinguishedName
$grpBind = [ADSI]"LDAP://$grpdn"
$members = $grpBind.Member
$EnabledPOP = (Get-CasMailbox -resultsize unlimited | where {$_.POPEnabled -eq "True"})
Foreach ($obj in $EnabledPOP){
	$UserDN = $obj.DistinguishedName
	$UserDisplayName = $obj.Name
  		If($members -contains $UserDN){
    		Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green "$UserDisplayName found in Group"
   		}
  		Else{
   			Set-CasMailbox $UserDisplayName -POPEnabled $false
   			Write-Host -ForegroundColor Red "$UserDisplayName not found in Group, POP Disabled."
  		}
}

What Is The Best SmartPhone On My Carrier?

By John Barsodi, on July 27th, 2011

I routinely get asked by friends and family which SmartPhone they should pick up. This is always a difficult discussion as the Smart Phone industry of today, similar to the PC industry of the early 2000′s, is changing rapidly almost daily. I’ve decided to start a post that I will maintain – though I’m unsure of update frequency at this point – that provides some basic information on which phones are the absolute best on the four major US carriers. I’m not going to look at mid-range, free phones, etc. If you’re still interested, read on.

Few assumptions: You know what platform you are interested in, with the exception of the iPhone, you should be well aware of what you are getting yourself into. If you’re not, you’ll be finding yourself dealing with returns and exchanges at the often crowded Wireless stores(except Sprint’s).

AT&T Wireless

iPhone. No further discussion required until they release multiple models. The iPhone 4 is the current model and will be replaced in September with a 4S/5 model. This is usually my first recommendation to people who aren’t technically savvy or don’t want to tinker with their phone.
NOTE: Jail-breaking your iPhone and running apps from Cyndia doesn’t mean you are technically savvy. A 2nd grader with Google can figure that out.

Winner: iPhone 4, the 3GS is cheap, but why buy Ford Festiva when you really want the Ford Raptor.

Android. AT&T offers a handful of current top-of-the-line Android handsets. You are essentially left deciding which User Interface(UI) you want to deal with for the next two years of your life. The three phones are the HTC Inspire 4G, MOTOROLA ATRIX 4G, and Samsung Infuse 4G. None of these handsets are truly 4G but that’s another post someday. Of the three, I would recommend the overall ‘best’ selection to the ATRIX. It has the right size mated with excellent hardware. I would rate the UI 2nd to the HTC Inpire. Most power users don’t care about the UI though because they are installing custom ROMS anyways.

Winner: MOTO ATRIX(Don’t waste your money on the laptop dock, no really don’t). If you can sacrifice a bit of hardware performance, the Nexus S which was made available yesterday, July 26th, is a strong choice.

Windows Phone. Samsung Focus, HTC Surround, LG Quantum, and HTC HD7S. All devices are essentially running 1+ year old hardware. Thumbs up to Samsung for having the best screen of the bunch.

Winner: Samsung Focus for being the best of the worst.

BlackBerry. Not sure why I would include this platform, but hey someone might care. Ah BlackBerry you used to be so good and AT&T was/is one of the best partners. A whole slew of device refreshes – read: small hardware changes are coming down in the next 6 months.

Winner: BlackBerry Torch 9800. If sliders aren’t for you as they aren’t for many, the two year old Bold 9700 should catch your eye until the previously mentioned refresh occurs.

Sprint

iPhone. Not available, sorry.

Winner: Not Sprint Customers – yet.

Android. Sprint likes Android, unfortunately not enough to maintain a large high-end selection of Phones. You have a mashup of last year’s hardware with gimmicky 3D cameras.

Winner: Nexus S 4G. If you want a fancy UI, the HTC EVO 3D would be a runner up.

Windows Phone. Not much to say here, they have one HTC Arrive.

Winner: HTC Arrive, winner by disqualification.

BlackBerry. RIM has yet to embrace 4G tech such as Sprint’s WiMAX so the CDMA compatible BlackBerry family is severally slim. Sprint has a handful of low-end BlackBerry devices and a single “high-end BlackBerry” device in their line-up.

Winner: BlackBerry Bold 9650. I’m bored.

T-Mobile

iPhone. Not available, well until AT&T completes their purposed acquisition next year. You can get your iPhone working with T-Mobile’s EDGE(2.5G) service but it won’t work with their 3G network or their 3G network marketed as “4G” network

Winner: Slow performing data iPhones.

Android. T-Mobile was the first carrier to launch an Android phone with the awkward G1. Today they have the largest Android selection, albeit more mid-range focused. Recently TMo has been launching higher end phones, namely the recently launched HTC Senation 4G which packs some of the fastest hardware on current Android phones across any carrier.

Winner: HTC Sensation 4G.

Windows Phone. Not much to say here, they have one HTC HD7.

Winner: HTC HD7, winner by disqualification.

BlackBerry. TMo has a very limited BlackBerry offering, two models in fact.

Winner: BlackBerry Bold 9870. I’m really bored.

Verizon Wireless

iPhone. iPhone 4, just get it.

Winner: iPhone 4, the one and only Verizon iPhone.

Android. Verizon has the largest selection of higher end Android phones. Verizon went bawls to the wall in November of 2009 with Android and their launch of the original Motorla DROID. A hugely successful phone. This spawned the Verizon DROID product family. It’s funny because their marketing worked so well, you often hear people refer to their T-Mobile Samsung Android phone as a ‘DROID”. Since 4G is all the rage these days and Verizon has launched the largest actual 4G network, I’ll focus my recommendation there.

Winner: DROID CHARGE by Samsung. Will be displaced in two weeks by the DROID BIONIC.

Windows Phone. Not much to say here, they have one, the HTC Trophy. Probably one of the better Windows Phone 7 devices out there.

Winner: HTCTrophy, winner by disqualification.

BlackBerry. Verizon has the 2nd best BlackBerry offering.

Winner: BlackBerry Bold 9650. I’m asleep.

#PowerShell and WMI to Determine OS Architecture for Automation

By John Barsodi, on April 12th, 2011

I’m in the process of writing some of the more complicated PowerShell code I’ve ever written to automate some laborious tasks at my new job. The process I generally like to take when writing something like this is to modularize parts/steps of the automation as standalone components to be reused and consumed elsewhere.

Part of what I’m automating requires running installation of software. This software comes in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors, so picking the correct install bits is very important. In searching for “the best” way to determine installed OS Architecture, it became very apparent that Admins out there were relying on, what I would characterize as, error prone methods. I needed something that would work on Windows Server 2003, 2008, 2008 R2. Yes I’m aware that 2008 R2 is x64 only, that makes things easier, but I need to have a streamlined and solid method of checking, regardless of what system is running the install task.

Starting with the Vista/Server 2008 , a new property was introduced to the win32_OperatingSystem class, called OSArchitecture which makes this relatively trivial. However, I want something that will work on 2003 if needed.

I started looking at other WMI classes to find a reliable way to determine, without having to rely on parsing text strings of a Caption property or other various methods. I ended up finding the win32_Processor class and found a quick and easy solution – the AddressWidth and/or Architecture properties. The Architecture property would be ideal if looking for Architectures other than 32/64-bit.

Below is the extremely simple snippet to perform this check against the first and sometimes *only* CPU installed. I know I had very limited reliable information out there on this, so I hope this helps someone in the future.

#region OS detection
$proc = get-wmiobject win32_processor | where {$_.deviceID -eq "CPU0"}
	If ($proc.addresswidth -eq '64')
		{
		$OSArch = '64-Bit'
		}
	ElseIf ($proc.addresswidth -eq '32')
		{
		$OSArch = '32-Bit'
		}
#endregion OS detection

So I Resigned From My Pretty Awesome Job.

By John Barsodi, on March 14th, 2011

On Friday 3/4, I resigned from my current job as IT Systems Architect/Team Lead for our Systems and Messaging group. It was one of the more difficult decisions I’ve made in my ~12 year IT career. It’s hard to leave a company who has treated you well. In 4.5 years with them, I’ve been promoted twice, given additional responsibilities, and selected for unique and challenging projects. Weighing this decision literally took a physical toll on me while I hashed it out and waited to provide my resignation. I’ve accomplished a lot and have much to be proud of and hope to continue that success on my future projects. Looking forward…. I’m heading to a Cloud! Service provider and will be on their Exchange Team, implementing and supporting both shared and dedicated platforms including their mobility offerings. This in itself is exciting as I’ve been working with MS Mail/Exchange since I started in IT. I also hope to help this company productize Lync Server 2010 as well. I’m excited as this new role will force me to obtain those certifications I wanted to pursue in 2011. Oh yeah, my new job is 100% work from home. I’m pretty excited about that too.

I get to meet my new team in a next week.

My Initial Motorola XOOM with Android Honeycomb Impressions

By John Barsodi, on February 24th, 2011

You may have heard about a big launch today if you’re a Google Android fan… namely the Android Honeycomb powered Motorola XOOM. I was able to spend some uninterrupted hands-on time with the XOOM and got some fuzzy questions answered.

I’m not going to review the device in the traditional sense, but rather as a long time user of Mobility technology and daily user of the iPad for almost a year.

If you want unboxing reviews, check out the following:

Here’s the jist: Honeycomb OS, in it’s current state, isn’t for the new-to-tablet technology user. If you’re a power user of an Android Phone, you’ll find yourself right at home. If you’re an iPad user that has made any investment into Apps, go iPad2. It’s pretty simple, Honeycomb and it’s hardware requirements bring a lot to the table that the current iPad doesn’t. The iPad2 will obviously bring, and most likely exceed, some of those shortcomings.

Feel

One of my biggest concerns was the shape of the device, this isn’t a 4:3 screen size like the iPad, it’s 16:9 screen ratio. What this means is that the screen is significantly wider than it is tall. This is great for HD video but not for other more routine tasks, such as typing. I spent a great deal of my time typing using it’s native orientation and rotated 90 degrees. Typing in it’s native orientation caused some hand cramping as I was struggling to extend my fingers to reach the center keys of the on screen QWERTY and hold onto the device. I cannot see typing for any length of time like this. Rotating the device 90 degrees caused the keyboard to feel extremely cramped. However, with any new technology, it’s something most people will get used to.

The XOOM definitely felt heavier than the iPad and it is by almost a 50grams/0.11lbs. Couple the weight increase with the wide screen form factor and the device feels like it’ll be difficult to ‘toss around’. I use that phrase loosely

. I state this because the iPad is easy to tote around and one hand.

Android Honeycomb

I noticed a couple differentiators of how Honeycomb handles Apps written for phones vs. how iOS handles this on the iPad. There were 12 “Tablet Apps” in the Android Market when I browsed through the Honeycomb Market App. This means, early adopters will be required to the Phone version of their favorite apps on Honeycomb. I tested to see how it compared to it’s iOS counterpart. I first installed Angry Birds, followed by Words with Friends, and Facebook. Angry Birds rendered across the entire screen, no emulation, no borders, nothing – full screen goodness. Words with Friends offered what was most surprising and attractive functionality. First you must understand how iOS on the iPad handles this, iPhone specific apps are rendered in an emulation window, that is, essentially an on screen iPhone display. Honeycomb handles this differently, in my limited testing. Words with Friends opened and I assumed it would run in the rotated resolution, similar to the iPad. I immediately rotated the device, only to find it rendered in the native position and rotated properly as you rotated the XOOM. I LOVED this. You aren’t forced to hold the device a certain way to utilize legacy apps.

I gave the Camera/Video recording App a run through and recorded a short video to edit in the new Movie Studio App. Ironically, upon trying to add the clip to the Movie project timeline, Movie Studio force stopped on me. Re-opening and going through the same steps yielded the expected result of fluid video editting.

Next up I fired up the Chrome browser and ran through a number of websites to see how it handled rendering full web content. Engagdet pointed out in their review, that the many webpages rendered their mobile version. While this issue existed when the iPad originally launch, I don’t see this as a ‘major issue’ as most mobile sites have a link to their “Full Site Version” / “Desktop Version”. Oddly enough, neither Twitter or Facebook sent the XOOM to their mobile and touch sites.

1st party Google Apps, as you’d expect, are top notch and beautiful. No further explanation required here. If you’re a heavy Google Services user, this alone could make the decision for you.

Questions Answered

A couple of rumors and questions that were on my mind.

Q. WiFi only version, where the heck is it?

A. It’ll be released ‘soon’, however will not be sold through Verizon and will not be Verizon branded. That’s obvious.

Q. 4G upgrade, do I really have to send it somewhere?

A. 4G upgrade is free, however requires you to send in your XOOM and be without it for a minimum of a week, “could be longer depending on demand”. So I have to be without my tablet, which I use daily, for a minimum of 7 days?

Overall Impressions

I think I can sum it up by saying it this way; I was less excited after I left than I was when I walked in the door.

The XOOM and specifically Android Honeycomb up the ante as an iPad competitor, but with the iPad2 announcement next week on March 2nd, I can’t see a silver bullet to say get the XOOM now as the iPad2 will likely offer competitve hardware specs and hopefully a new revision of iOS that will bring some new features and changes to multitasking. Apple does have an advantage of releasing their 2nd generation tablet, while worthy competitors such as the XOOM, G-Slate, and other Honeycomb tablets are just now launching. I do see a major advantage that Apple has: iTunes. Not from a music or app store perspective, but from a device management perspective. The ability to backup/restore and manipulate the device from your PC or Mac is a feature that needs to come to Honeycomb. Without it, users requiring device replacement, etc will be out of luck when their data disappears along the way.

I speculate that Apple will be enhancing and potentially rebranding their MobileMe offering to compete with the Cloud services coming with HP’s TouchPad. We’ll see next week.

One reason why #Cisco UCS rules…in a picture.

By John Barsodi, on January 14th, 2011

Cable management and Airflow…..

Legacy Blade Systems…..

Cisco UCS Chassis…..

#Exchange 2007ActiveSync: Control Which Users Are Enabled…Automagically

By John Barsodi, on January 10th, 2011

Last year when we launched support for Windows Mobile 6.x devices via Exchange ActiveSync, I had a challenge of making sure only approved users were enabled for ActiveSync support. By default in Exchange(all versions), all mailboxes are enabled for ActiveSync, and specifically with Exchange 2007 when the CAS role is installed into the Organization. I decided to write this quick script to fix this ‘feature’ and would allow me to run interactively or via the task scheduler.

Prerequisites:

Create a Universal security group
From the EMS, get the GUID for the newly created group
```
Get-group 'Group Name' | Select GUID
```
I wanted to use the GUID to prevent the script from breaking in the event someone changed the group name.

###############################################
# ScriptName: Set-EAS.ps1
# Author:     John Barsodi
# Date:       1/12/10
# Version:    .1
# Desc:       Sets the EAS Mailbox feature to False if not member of
# Desc:       the AD group <Enter Your Group Name>
# Tags:       Group EAS
###############################################
Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Exchange.Management.PowerShell.Admin
$AdminSessionADSettings.ViewEntireForest = $True
$grpGuid  = "YourGroupGUIDHere"
$grpdn = (Get-group $grpGuid).DistinguishedName
$grpBind = [ADSI]"LDAP://$grpdn"
$members = $grpBind.Member
$EnabledEAS = (Get-CasMailbox -resultsize unlimited | where {$_.ActiveSyncEnabled -eq "True"})
Foreach ($obj in $EnabledEAS){
	$UserDN = $obj.DistinguishedName
	$UserDisplayName = $obj.Name
  		If($members -contains $UserDN){
    		Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green "$UserDisplayName found in Group"
   		}
  		Else{
   			Set-CasMailbox $UserDisplayName -ActiveSyncEnabled $false
   			Write-Host -ForegroundColor Red "$UserDisplayName not found in Group"
  		}
}

You can download the script here: set-eas.txt

Feel free to leave any questions in the comments.

2010 Review – Top 5: What didn’t happen to me….

By John Barsodi, on December 31st, 2010

This time of the year we see an overplay of “My Year in Review” type of articles and TV segments. I, instead of looking at what DID happen, want to look at what DIDN’T happen for me this year.

Winning the lottery.

Nope. Perhaps next year… though it would help if I worked on playing more often right? I did win $9 on one of the 6 tickets I did buy. Even better though, my wife gave birth to our beautiful baby girl.

Getting into a car accident.

Ooops, that DID happen. Thanks ice + snow bank and the guy behind me who wasn’t paying attention and T-boned the rear passenger quarter panel/Tire of my Jeep.

Breaking/slowing my Starbucks habit.

I’m working on this currently. Keurig FTW. Hopefully my top 5 list for 2011 will not include this one.

Taking a trip to Sydney, Australia.

I want to get to Sydney someday. I instead made it to Tokyo, Japan. Amazing, amazing city/country. Definitely need to get back there.

Die.

Nope, still alive and ticking, for today at least. One thing that did die was my Gall Bladder and had that dude removed.

Welp those are some of the things that DIDN’T happen in 2010 to me.