A Technical Journey » Powershell

PowerShell – Clean Up Script – Files older than X number of days

Paul McSharry — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:43:41 +0000

I have been working with development teams for many years. One of the most common requests, especially with development and test servers is to automate the deleting of old log or temp file folders. Most of the time these files contain debug information, and do not need archiving, but tend to fill the drives to capacity if not maintained.

To Solve this issue, the following clean up powershell script is useful;

#powershell clean up script based on file write time

gci “e:\temp\*.*”|? {$_.lastwritetime -lt (get-date).adddays(-1)} |

remove-item

To run this script, set the powershell execution policy to RemoteSigned (run the command set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned ) and save the powershell script in a .ps1 file.

To configure the script, change the directory path (e:\temp\*.* in this example) and the number of days required (-1).

To test the script add –whatif after the “remote-item” cmdlet. This will show the files that would be deleted and no data will be lost if errors exist.

Once tested, to schedule it create a batch file with the following (change the powershell file location).

powershell -command “& ‘c:\delete.ps1′ “

You can now schedule the script with the Windows task scheduler (point to the batchfile).

Check Exchange 2007 Server Edition Level

Paul McSharry — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:34:42 +0000

To confirm the Exchange 2007 server edition (ie standard or enterprise), run the following powershell one-liner from the Exchange Management shell

Get-ExchangeServer | fl name,edition,admindisplayversion

As the example output shows below, each exchange server in the organisation will be listed with name, edition, and build/patch level.

Name : Mail1

Edition : Enterprise

AdminDisplayVersion : Version 6.5 (Build 7638.2: Service Pack 2)

Name : Mail2

Edition : Enterprise

AdminDisplayVersion : Version 8.1 (Build 240.6)

Name : Mail3

Edition : Enterprise

AdminDisplayVersion : Version 8.1 (Build 240.6)

Name : Mail4

Edition : Enterprise

AdminDisplayVersion : Version 8.1 (Build 240.6)

Requesting a new exchange 2007 SSL certificate in powershell.

Paul McSharry — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:53:30 +0000

For Exchange Server 2007 functions such as autodiscovery, and client access roles ( OWA & Outlook anywhere) a SSL certificate is required to secure data transfer between the exchange server and client.

It is best practice to ensure that all external access is secured using a certificate issued from a public certificate authority.

This is normally installed on the exchange client access server role , or an ISA server if the solution is being secured using that firewall solution.

To generate a certificate request file for the certificate authority the following powershell command can be used on the exchange server;

New-ExchangeCertificate –generaterequest –subjectname “O=, OU=, C=, S=, L=, CN=” –privatekeyexportable:1 -keysize 1024 –path c:\certifcaterequest.txt

Key

O – Organisation Name (legal name of company)
OU – Organisational Unit (i.e. Department)
CN – Common Name (i.e. domain.com)
C- Country
ST – State
L – Location

This command will request a new certificate and save the contents in a text file – certifcaterequest.txt

This file can then be provided to the certificate provider to issue the appropriate certificate.

Note: For exchange 2007, a multi-site certificate is required to fully utilise functionality, this covers the internal and external server references and the auto discover address, ie.

email.domain.com
autodiscovery.domain.com
exchangesvr.domain.local

Once the certificate authority provides the certificate, it can be imported using the following powershell command

Import-ExchangeCertificate -Path “C:\Certificate.cer”

NB: It is is possible to use self-signed certificates within exchange 2007, this maybe acceptable for internal use, however public facing access should always be secured using a 3rd party signed certificate.