Provision Users for Exchange with FIM/MIM 2016 using the Granfeldt PowerShell MA, avoiding the AD MA (no-start-ma) error

27th of January, 2016 / / 6 Comments

Forefront / Microsoft Identity Manager provides Exchange Mailbox provisioning out of the box on the Active Directory Management Agent. I’ve used it in many many implementations over the years. However, in my first MIM 2016 implementation in late 2015 I ran into issues with something I’d done successfully many times before.

I was getting “no-start-ma” on the AD MA on export to AD. The point at which the MA sets up its connection to the Exchange environment.… [Keep reading] “Provision Users for Exchange with FIM/MIM 2016 using the Granfeldt PowerShell MA, avoiding the AD MA (no-start-ma) error”

Easy Debugging of PowerShell DSC for Azure Virtual Machines

11th of January, 2016 / / 6 Comments

Many of the Kloud team have recently been buried deep in the world of Azure Resource Manager (ARM) as it becomes the preferred way to create and manage Azure resources.

One extension point offered via ARM for Virtual Machine automation is the use of PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) to control the Windows OS (and now Linux too!) and application software setup on a VM post creation.

I hadn’t touched PowerShell DSC much prior to the last year and have found that it’s not that hard to pick up, especially if you come from a programming, scripting or Linux sysadmin background.… [Keep reading] “Easy Debugging of PowerShell DSC for Azure Virtual Machines”

Resource Manager Cmdlets in Azure PowerShell 1.0

24th of November, 2015 / / 5 Comments

Azure recently launched the 1.0 version of PowerShell cmdlets. The changes are huge, including new Azure Resource Manager (ARM), which resulted in deprecating Azure-SwitchMode between ASM and ARM. In this post, we only have a brief look at how new PowerShell cmdlets for ARM have been introduced, especially for managing resource groups and templates.

Installation

In order to get the newest Azure PowerShell, using MS Web Platform Installer is the quickest and easiest way.

Note: At the moment of writing, the released date of Azure PowerShell is Nov.

… [Keep reading] “Resource Manager Cmdlets in Azure PowerShell 1.0”

Programmatically interacting with Yammer via PowerShell – Part 2

14th of August, 2015 / / 15 Comments

In my last post I foolishly said that part 2 would be ‘coming in the next few days’. This of course didn’t happen, but I guess it’s better late than never!

In part 1 which is available here, I wrote how it was possible to post to a Yammer group via a *.ps1 using a ‘Yammer Verified Admin’ account. While this worked a treat, it soon became apparent that this approach had limited productivity rewards.… [Keep reading] “Programmatically interacting with Yammer via PowerShell – Part 2”

FIM 2010 R2 and the Missing Log File

16th of June, 2015 / / No Comments

Anyone who has had anything to do with FIM will probably have experienced moments where you question what is taking place and ask yourself if you really understand what FIM is doing at a specific point in time. This is partly due to FIM’s extraordinarily unpredictable error handling and logging.

While working on a long running FIM 2010 R2 project where we chose to make heavy use of PowerShell within action and authorisation workflows. We chose to make use of some of the PowerShell extensions for FIM 2010 R2 at Codplex.… [Keep reading] “FIM 2010 R2 and the Missing Log File”

Hands Free VM Management with Azure Automation and Resource Manager – Part 2

17th of March, 2015 / / 3 Comments

In this two part series, I am looking at how we can leverage Azure Automation and Azure Resource Manager to schedule the shutting down of tagged Virtual Machines in Microsoft Azure.

  • In Part 1 we walked through tagging resources using the Azure Resource Manager PowerShell module
  • In Part 2 we will setup Azure Automation to schedule a runbook to execute nightly and shutdown tagged resources.

Azure Automation Runbook

At the time of writing, the tooling support around Azure Automation can be politely described as a hybrid one.… [Keep reading] “Hands Free VM Management with Azure Automation and Resource Manager – Part 2”

Hands Free VM Management with Azure Automation and Resource Manager – Part 1

9th of March, 2015 / / 4 Comments

Over the past six months, Microsoft have launched a number of features in Azure to enable you to better manage your resources hosted there.

In this two part series, I will show how we can leverage two of these new features – Azure Automation and Azure Resource Manager – to schedule the shutting down of tagged Virtual Machines in Microsoft Azure.

  • In Part 1 we will walk through tagging resources using the Azure Resource Manager features and
  • In Part 2 we will setup Azure Automation to schedule a runbook to execute nightly and shutdown tagged VM resources.
… [Keep reading] “Hands Free VM Management with Azure Automation and Resource Manager – Part 1”

Sending SMS Through PowerShell with Telstra’s New API

12th of February, 2015 / / 5 Comments

The code detailed in this post won’t work anymore. If you’re looking for updated PowerShell to use with Telstra’s APIs, please check out this updated post. 

Recently, Telstra released their first public API, which in true telco fashion leverages an existing product in their stable; SMS. The service allows anyone with a Telstra t.dev account (get one here) to get an API key which will allow you to send up to 100 messages per day, 1000 per month to Australian mobiles.… [Keep reading] “Sending SMS Through PowerShell with Telstra’s New API”

Migrating Azure Virtual Machines to another Region

16th of November, 2014 / / 11 Comments

I have a number of DEV/TEST Virtual Machines (VMs) deployed to Azure Regions in Southeast Asia (Singapore) and West US as these were the closet to those of us living in Australia. Now that the new Azure Regions in Australia have been launched, it’s time to start migrating those VMs closer to home. Manually moving VMs between Regions is pretty straight forward and a number of articles already exist outlining the manual steps.

To migrate an Azure VM to another Region

  1. Shutdown the VM in the source Region
  2. Copy the underlying VHDs to storage accounts in the new Region
  3. Create OS and Data disks in the new Region
  4. Re-create the VM in the new Region.
… [Keep reading] “Migrating Azure Virtual Machines to another Region”

Get Azure Virtual Networks with PowerShell

11th of November, 2014 / / 6 Comments

I needed to make my life easier the other day as a colleague and I worked through setting up a Azure IaaS network topology to connect to an enterprise production network. One of our clients requirements meant that whilst we created the network sites, subnets and segments we needed to report on what we had created to verify it was correct. This simple task of viewing network names and associated subnets is currently missing from the Azure cmdlets, so we have pieced together this quick bit of re-usable code.… [Keep reading] “Get Azure Virtual Networks with PowerShell”