Exchange 2007 Power Shell

[BliarOut]

EMC and it's amazing changing button text

Go into EMC and manage send as permissions. You don't get a "Next" button now, you get a "Manage" button. I just keep coming across little gems that were definitely coded by people who's primary language isn't English.

[buggalugs]

The benefits of making the powershell available are great, but leaving important functionality out of the GUI sucks when you're like me and this is something you dip into a couple of times a month, as & when required. You end up just having to google any unmemorable commands required.

And let's not even get started on the backup situation, or the massive flakiness of import-pst.

[Prak]

BliarOut said:

I want to set a couple of additional AD properties when I create the user. Is that task quicker or slower with 2007?

It's not that I can't accomplish the tasks, but the documentation varies between poor and non-existent.

I haven't received an answer to the business benefits questions yet

You're only looking at this at the small scale, I think. Yes life might not be as easy for people who have single users arriving occasionally and therefore don't automate their processes, but it's massively improved for those who need to completely script the arrival of a new user.

Think of Exchange in the context of Microsoft's new hosted offerings. Do you think you ring up Microsoft, ask them to create a user, and they sit there with their ADUC or EMC and manually create a user? No, it'll go into a database and a scripted process will sit there and spark that user into life.

As far as why you can't create a user in ADUC is concerned - I always thought that was a bit crap. I think you should use the right tool for any given job, and have that tool as specialised as possible - so, creating a *user* in ADUC, and managing mailbox attributes using Exchange seems quite reasonable to me and does away with all sorts of nastiness like trying to account for Exchange-setting stuff being in ADUC or not according to whether you have Exchange.

[BliarOut]

Pfft, I was actually bulk creating users when AD was first introduced using ADSIEdit, Cacls, DSMod, csvde, ldifde and a bit of cunning Excel pasting using concatenate... We set their home directory, SAMAccount name, profile path, whether the account was active or not, their e-mail, every property that was exposed in AD was fair game. Oh, and for good measure I used to throw a few variables at Novells Filer while I was at it

All the tasks that 2K7 can do now could be done yonks ago yet when 2K3 came out the GUI was complete.

And you still can't do that lot even now using the 2K7 cmdlets....

[Prak]

maybe not ... Yet

But you've just illustrated quite well how fragmented all this stuff has been historically, and how many different interfaces you needed to know. Exposing as much as possible in one scripting language as possible must surely help.

Ironic that one thing that nix admins have sniggered about for years - lack of cli interface - is finally being addressed and all people can do is moan.

Btw the company I work for is looking to take on another Exchange engineer (must not hate powershell ). If anyone is interested drop me a pm.

[BliarOut]

Prak said:

maybe not ... Yet .

And that's a large part of my beef. Yes, it would be ace if everything was exposed and worked but as usual it doesn't. IMO 2K7 was rushed to market well before it was production ready. I've not seen 2010 yet but if it's anything like 2K3 was during it's development it'll probably be what 2K7 should have been from the offset. Exchange 2000 anyone?

[BliarOut]

Create a new distribution group using the console...


Next > Next > New! WTF? Whatever happened to the words Create or Finish? You don't start with something new half way through the task

[theboss]

BliarOut said:

Pfft, I was actually bulk creating users when AD was first introduced using ADSIEdit, Cacls, DSMod, csvde, ldifde and a bit of cunning Excel pasting using concatenate... We set their home directory, SAMAccount name, profile path, whether the account was active or not, their e-mail, every property that was exposed in AD was fair game.

I can understand an SBS-level guy struggling to get to grips with some Exchange 2007/2010 processes, but if you've genuinely and happily used all of the above mentioned scripting interfaces and command/script driven tools then you should surely consider Powershell to be the stuff of very many wet dreams? Thats the way it seems to have been embraced by all of the seasoned admins I work with...

Of course you're entitled to a jolly good rant if you're just frustrated as we all get from time to time... but I have to put my hand up and say I think Ex2010 is ten times the product 2003 was

Edited by theboss on Friday 6th August 15:49

[BliarOut]

theboss said:

BliarOut said:

Pfft, I was actually bulk creating users when AD was first introduced using ADSIEdit, Cacls, DSMod, csvde, ldifde and a bit of cunning Excel pasting using concatenate... We set their home directory, SAMAccount name, profile path, whether the account was active or not, their e-mail, every property that was exposed in AD was fair game.

I can understand an SBS-level guy struggling to get to grips with some Exchange 2007/2010 processes, but if you've genuinely and happily used all of the above mentioned scripting interfaces and command/script driven tools then you should surely consider Powershell to be the stuff of very many wet dreams? Thats the way it seems to have been embraced by all of the seasoned admins I work with...

Of course you're entitled to a jolly good rant if you're just frustrated as we all get from time to time... but I have to put my hand up and say I think Ex2010 is ten times the product 2003 was

Edited by theboss on Friday 6th August 15:49

Oh so can I... But as a CNE I can also look at products objectively which some MS fanboys seem to be unable to

[TurricanII]

As an MCSE and MS support pro for 15 years doing email setups and migrations the move back to command line for Exchange 2007/2010 has pissed me off no end. Every time MS force me to learn another load of st I put some effort into finding a supportable Windows/Exchange replacement.

I don't need to learn a whole new language, it's a waste of my life. I deal with small business with one or two servers. I seem to recall that small businesses <100 users make up the majority of business in the UK - not big companies, so weight should be given to simplifying.

MS like to reinvent the wheel to keep the $$ coming in.