2015 ~ LazyExchangeAdmin

IMCEAEX to X500 Converter Tool

June Castillote11:17 AM.NET, Exchange 2010, Exchange 2013, Exchange 2016, Tools 1 comment

Tool to convert IMCEAEX String (from NDR) to valid X500 String.

Link: DOWNLOAD

Screenshot:

Office 365 Service Health Check [.NET]

June Castillote10:42 PM.NET, Exchange Online, Office 365, powershell, Scripts, Tools No comments

Tool Overview

The AlertO365 Tool provides a mechanism to check the Office 365 Service Status and Events programmatically eliminating the need to logon to the Office 365 Portal manually. This tool utilize the “Office 365 Service Communications API” as provided by Microsoft.

Reference: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/dn776043.aspx

The Package

Files and Folders

Name	Type	Description
AlertO365.exe	File	Main executable (no parameter required)
AlertO365.exe.config	File	Contain configuration values used by the tool (XML format)
microsoft.exchange.servicestatus.tenantcommunications.data.dll	File	Office 365 Communications API
report	Folder	First Sub-Folder Contains the HTML reports
images	Folder	Sub-Folder of the Report Folder
Logo1.png	File	First Logo in the report
Logo2.png	File	Second Logo in the report

Install and Configure

Installation

To use this tool, no special install utility is needed. Just extract/copy the package to any location on the computer/server.

In this example, the tool is extracted and placed under the C:\ drive

Image 1. Folder Structure

Configuration

The configuration file is AlertO365.exe.config, this is in XML format and can be edited using a normal text editor like Notepad.

Image 2. AlertO365.exe.config contents

Fields and Values

ServiceURL – No need to change this. This is a constant value provided by Microsoft in their API documentation

DomainNames – The Tenant Domain to be checked (enter only one domain)

UserName – Username used to authenticate to the Tenant Domain

Password – Password for the Tenant Domain credential

IsAOBO – No need to change this. The function related to this value is not (yet) implemented.

PastDays – Number of days with which the tool would query events for (i.e 1 for the past 1 day)

SenderAddress – Sender address of the email report

RecipientAddress – Recipient addresses of the email report. Separate with comma (,) for multiple recipients

SMTPServer – IP address or resolvable name of the SMTP relay used for sending the email report

MailSubject – The String to be used as Message Subject and Report Title

Company – The company or domain name that will appear in the report

SendViaEmail – Yes or No indicates whether the HTML output will be sent via email or not.

Other Configuration Items

The package contains two images namely Logo1.png and Logo2.png. These images are located under “\report\images” folder. Upon creation of the report, these images will be embedded in the email representing the Client/Company we managed and HP. Before putting the tool in production use, make sure to replace the Logo1.png file with the appropriate logo image for the client/company being managed.

Sample Report

Image 3. Sample HTML Report via Email

How to Use

This is a console-only application which is best executed using the command shell (or can also be double-click in explorer – not recommended).

Can also be executed by Scheduled Task if preferred to run at certain interval (Daily, Hourly, Monthly..)

Image 4. Sample Tool Execution

Download and Source Code

AlertO365 1.2 - https://github.com/junecastillote/AlertO365

Note: Download contains source code. If you want to just get the binary output and associated files listed in "Files and Folders" section above, just go to the "bin/Release" folder.

Backup All Distribution Groups and Members using PowerShell

June Castillote1:47 AMBackup, Exchange 2010, Exchange 2013, Exchange 2016, powershell, Scripts, Tools No comments

Someone in the group – either an admin or service desk, may commit a mistake at some point and delete a distribution group or empty out the members' list. When that happens usually the recovery action is to restore a backup of the active directory. This script can be used to create brick-level backup of distribution groups, so that they can be restored individually.

Download

https://github.com/junecastillote/Export-GroupsAndMembers

Variables

Modify the variables as needed

Sample Output

Running the script

Backup File

Sample Data

Exchange Server 2010/2013 Health Check PowerShell Script (v5.4)

June Castillote10:16 PMExchange 2010, Exchange 2013, powershell, Scripts 1 comment

A re-work of my previous ExDac utility for Exchange Server 2010 which was written in .NET

Now, this is written in PowerShell instead of VB.net, and as a result, the entire script runs for half the time than the previous tool.

What the script does?

The script performs several checks on your Exchange Servers like the ones below:

Server Health (Up Time, Server Roles Services, Mail flow,...)
Mailbox Database Status (Mounted, Backup, Size, and Space, Mailbox Count, Paths,...)
Public Folder Database Status (Mount, Backup, Size, and Space,...)
Database Copy Status
Database Replication Status
Mail Queue
Disk Space
Server Components (for Exchange 2013/2016)

Then an HTML report will be generated and can be sent via email if enabled in the configuration file.

I have not tested this for Exchange 2016 but in theory, this should work just as well (let me know if it doesn't).

Sample Output

HTML page sample

Parameters

-configFile, to specify the XML file that contain the configuration for the script.
-enableDebug, optional switch to start a transcript output to debugLog.txt

Configuration File

The configuration file is an XML file containing the options, thresholds, mail settings, exclusion that will be used by the script. The snapshot of the configuration file is seen below:

reportOptions

This section can be toggled by changing values with "true" or "false"

RunServerHealthReport - Run test and report the Server Health status
RunMdbReport - Mailbox Database test and report
RunComponentReport - Server Components check (Exchange 2013/2016)
RunPdbReport - For checking the Public Folder database(s)
RunDAGReplicationReport - Check and test replication status
RunQueueReport - Inspect mail queue count
RunDiskReport - Disk space report for each server
RunDBCopyReport - Checking the status of the Database Copies
SendReportViaEmail - Option to send the HTML report via email
ReportFile - File path and name of the HTML Report

thresholds

This section defines at which levels the script will report a problem for each check item

LastFullBackup - age of full backup in days. Setting this to zero (0) will cause the script to ignore this threshold
LastIncrementalBackup - age of incremental backup in days. Setting this to zero (0) will cause the script to ignore this threshold.
DiskSpaceFree - percent (%) of free disk space left
MailQueueCount - Mail transport queue threshold
CopyQueueLenght - CopyQueueLenght threshold for the DAG replication
ReplayQueueLenght - ReplayQueueLenght threshold
cpuUsage – CPU usage threshold %
ramUsage – Memory usage threshold %

mailAndReportParameters

This section specifies the mail parameters

CompanyName - the name of the organization or company that you want to appear in the banner of the report
MailSubject - Subject of the email report
MailServer - The SMTP Relay server
MailSender - Mail sender address
MailTo - Recipient address. For multiple recipients, separate the addresses with a semi-colon (;)

exclusions

This section is where the exclusion can be defined.

IgnoreServer - List of servers to be ignored by the script. Separate with a comma (,) with no spaces.
IgnoreDatabase - List of Mailbox Database to be ignored by the script. Separate with a comma (,) with no spaces.
IgnorePFDatabase - List of Public Folder Database to be ignored by the script. Separate with a comma (,) with no spaces.

How to Use

Run manually using Exchange Management Shell

[PS] C:\scripts>.\Get-ExchangeHealth.ps1 -configFile .\config.xml -enableDebug

Note: This must be run within the Exchange Management Shell session. Avoid using this inside the normal PowerShell session, with the Exchange 2010 PSSnapin loaded especially for Exchange 2013 servers.

Task Scheduler

Create a task in Task Scheduler with this action:

Program/script: powershell.exe

Add arguments: -Command ".'C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Bin\RemoteExchange.ps1'; Connect-ExchangeServer -auto; C:\scripts\Get-ExchangeHealth.ps1 -configFile C:\scripts\Get-\config.xml"