There are some things in Exchange that you just need to use PowerShell for. If you use Exchange Online or Office 365, the web portal exposes a lot of the admin functionality that you might need, but there are certain actions that require PowerShell. Accessing the Exchange PowerShell cmdlets on a local server is one thing, but accessing those cmdlets in a hosted environment can be a little trickier. After I had to type these a half-dozen times, my brain wasn’t getting it quite yet, so I build a little script that covers what you need to need to establish a connection to the remote Exchange environment.

I needed a quick and dirty method to add database copies to other servers in an Exchange 2010 Database Availability Group (DAG).  I had three servers, each with 10 databases.  Each one of those databases should have a copy on the other two servers.  Now, this is painful if you have to use the GUI to do it – not that it takes a lot, but it’s time consuming.  The Add-MailboxDatabaseCopy cmdlet is very helpful in PowerShell, but still I wanted to automate it since my naming conventions were pretty standard. So, I wrote a PowerShell script to automate this process.  Essentially, the script has a few variables and I dome some loop magic to drop everything into place.  $servers = "E2K10MBX01", "E2K10MBX02", "E2K10MBX03" $databases = "DB1", "DB2", "DB3", "DB4", "DB5", "DB6", "DB7", "DB8", "DB9", "DB10"   foreach($database in $databases) { foreach($server in $servers) { foreach($copyserver in $servers) { "Adding…

A couple of months back I wrote a post on how to automatically install pre-requisites for Exchange 2010 on a Windows 2008 (including R2) server. I specifically talked about a method for doing this with ServerManagerCmd.exe, which is included with Windows Server 2008.  However, in Windows Server 2008 R2, ServerManagerCmd is deprecated and the recommended method is to use PowerShell (as pointed out by my buddy, Josh).  The Add-WindowsFeature cmdlet in PowerShell provides the capability to add individual Windows features directly from a script.  You can use Get-WindowsFeature to obtain a detailed list of available features, ones that are installed, and their “official” name if you wish to install them via PowerShell. To install the required pre-reqs for Exchange 2010, from a PowerShell prompt, be sure to add the Server Manager module so the Add-WindowsFeature and Get-WindowsFeature cmdlets are available. Import-Module ServerManager Once you have imported the module, then you…

I’ve been doing lots of work in the lab lately with Exchange 2010 to understand all the new changes and how it works with the Compellent Storage Center. With Exchange 2010, the concept of Storage Groups no longer exists.  Databases are the sole object and are a peer to the server now.  Database names must be unique, but can be moved from server to server as necessary. In the past, I’ve shared some scripts on how to provision storage for an Exchange 2007 environment.  I’ve slightly reworked this script to account for no longer needing storage groups, but to also automatically create the mailbox database on the Exchange Server and mount it when completed. # NAME: Exchange2010LabCreate.ps1 # DESC: PowerShell script to create and map volumes for Exchange 2010 Lab # BY : Justin Braun, Compellent Technologies, Inc. # DATE: November 24, 2009 # VER : 1.0 # # THIS…

This can be a bit tricky … and you can either get enough exposure by doing it so many times that you just know what needs to be installed before you start, or you can get through a bunch of steps in the setup before it stops to tell you that the right things aren’t installed and can’t continue. Exchange 2010 requires Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2.  You can use Server Manager to install the Web Server (IIS) role, however, there are many, many pieces to IIS that are broken out into individual components in 2008.  Which ones are required to get you the prerequisites you need to get through the Exchange 2010 installation? Instead, consider using ServerManagerCmd.exe, which is built-in in Windows 2008 to automate the role installation for you.  This command is very useful in installing new components and making sure that you have the…