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Managing Active Directory at the command line

Ex-Directory

Article from ADMIN 00/2010

By Rolf Masuch

Professionally manage Active Directory users, groups, and other AD objects with Windows PowerShell Version 2.0.

The introduction of PowerShell [3] sees Microsoft finally implement long overdue changes to Windows scripting. Unfortunately, PowerShell Version 1 was no big help for Active Directory (AD) administrators, but then Microsoft added PowerShell support to its "Common Engineering Criteria" (CEC), making it mandatory for all Redmond products to support it. This means Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 now have PowerShell Version 2 hard-wired.

Revamped PowerShell for Active Directory

Microsoft developers have enhanced Active Directory support with a PowerShell provider and 76 additional cmdlets (say "commandlets"). The provider lets you change to an AD like changing a drive by typing cd ad: . The cmdlets are an additional, optional instruction set that you can use to manipulate individual Active Directory objects.

Although a script-based approach is possibly overkill for occasional work with individual objects, it becomes essential if you need to handle several dozen or even thousands of objects. The PowerShell is a .Net implementation and thus object oriented throughout; objects can be processed in a structured manner through the use of pipes, removing the need to search text-based output for specific content.

Administrators can manipulate the object properties and methods directly. The introduction of this powerful scripting language is an important milestone for the management of Windows systems, whether clients or servers, and the applications installed on them.

Requirements

Not every Active Directory will support the use of PowerShell. At least one of the domain controllers (DCs) in the AD has to run Windows Server 2008 R2. For "legacy" systems based on Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, and Windows Server 2008,

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