Active Directory – Telephone Number PowerShell Script

I was recently working on a Lync Server 2013 deployment for a customer whereby they neededed to add E.164 formatted numbers to the Telephone Number field of each Enterprise Voice users Active Directory account. This is a standard process as a part of the installation, however in this customers case no telephone numbers had been populated and manually adding these numbers for over 400 users would be a time consuming task. Using their existing telephone extension list and a CSVDE export of SamAccount names from Active Directory, I created a short PowerShell script to automate the process. The below script needs to be saved as a .PS1 file and needs to be executed from a domain controller or a workstations with the ADDS tools installed. To do this, perform the following steps:

1. Copy the below script into notepad and save the file as script.ps1 for example.

Import-Module ActiveDirectory
$inputFile = Import-CSV c:\test.csv
$log = “.\Error-Log.txt”
$date = Get-Date
Write-Host “Active Directory – Telephone Number Change Script”
Start-Sleep 2
Write-Host “The change process is now commencing, please wait…”
Start-Sleep 2
Function ChangeTelephoneNumber
{
“Change Process Started On: ” + $date + “) :” | Out-File $log -Append
“————————————————-” | Out-File $log -Append
foreach($line in $inputFile)
{
$sam = $line.SamAccountName
$officephone = $line.OfficePhone
Set-ADUser -Identity $sam -OfficePhone $officephone
Write-Host “Completed Telephone Number Change For: $sam”
“Completed Telephone Number Change For: $sam” | Out-File $log -Append
}
Start-Sleep 2
Write-Host “The process is now complete, please review the log file for any errors.”
}
ChangeTelephoneNumber

2. In Microsoft Excel, for example, in a new sheet use two columns and in the first cell of each column enter SamAccountName and OfficePhone. These are the value names the script looks for when it attempts to update a users telephone number. Your spread sheet should look similar to the following:

3. Once you have completed the spread sheet save it as a CSV file and copy it to the C:\ drive of the server or workstation that you are executing the script front. If the C:\ drive if not suitable, you can change the location the scripts searches for the CSV by editing the “$inputFile = Import-CSV c:\test.csv” field.

4. That’s it, you can now execute the script from a domain controller and the telephone number should update, I would recommend running this against a single user initially in order to test the functionality.

VMware View – Adding & Removing Pool Entitlements Via Scheduled Tasks

I recently had a requirement for a customer to automatically add and remove user entitlements on VMware View 5.0 virtual desktop pools. While this can be achieved through View PowerCLI, the customer needed to query Active Directory to obtain a security group and then apply or remove this group from a pool. The issue with View PowerCLI in 5.0 is that the PowerShell aspect is a snap-in and not a module. Due this, a simple script calling both the Active Directory and View PowerCLI modules is not possible. To work around the limitation I have written the following scripts to add and remove pool entitlements using Active Directory groups.

Add Entitlement PowerShell Script: Download

Remove Entitlement PowerShell Script: Download

There are a two environment specific variables that need changing in each of the .PS1 files, these are the following:

 Get-ADGroup“Users” | Add-PoolEntitlement -pool_id “Test”

 Get-ADGroup“Users” | Remove-PoolEntitlement -pool_id “Test”

Where “Users” is the name of the Active Directory security group you wish to add or remove from a pool, and where “Test” is the name of the pool in which you want to apply or remove an entitlement. To run the scripts as scheduled tasks, place each script on one of your VMware View Connection Servers, in a directory such as C:\ViewScripts. Proceed and create a new basic task in the Windows Task Scheduler and specify the required bat file as available for download below.

Add Entitlement Bat File: Download

Remove Entitlement Bat File: Download

The created bat files essentially call powershell.exe and then execute the required .PS1 file. A specific “-File” parameter in the bat file needs amending for your environment, as detailed below.

C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -file “C:\ViewScripts\AddEntitlement.ps1”

The process is now complete.

Veeam Backup & Replication – Exchange 2010 DAG Issue

I recently experienced an issue with a Microsoft Exchange 2010 Database Availability Group (DAG) failing over during a Veeam Backup & Replication job. The issue was occurring due to the snapshot committal process in VMware, which causes a brief pause in virtual machine I/O. This pause was causing the DAG member to lose sight of the file share witness, which in this case was housed on the customer CAS server, and subsequently fail over.

The resolution to this issue was to increase the CrossSubnetThreshold and CrossSubnetDelay of the cluster. The CrossSubnetThreshold specifies how many heartbeats can be skipped before the cluster fails over and the CrossSubnetDelay specifies the heartbeat interval. The threshold you set for both of these properties can depend on many factors, for example the speed of your underlying storage array or the size of the virtual machine that be being snapshot. In my case I needed to set both values to their maximum. This can be performed by carrying out the following:

1. Navigate to Start -> Administrative Tools and launch Windows PowerShell Modules

2. When the Powershell Window opens please enter the following command:
 
$cluster = Get-Cluster; $cluster.CrossSubnetThreshold = 10; $cluster.CrossSubnetDelay = 4000
 
3. Once the command has completed please run the following and ensure that the CrossSubnetDelay and CrossSubnetThreshold are set to 4000 and 10.
 
Get-Cluster | fl *

4. Re-run your Veeam backup job and see if the cluster fails over. If the backup completes correctly you can they reduce the CrossSubnetDelay and CrossSubnetThreshold to find the optimum values.

That’s it, your done.