Exchange post-reboot emailed status confirmation script

10/13/2017: If you've got a lot of servers to keep track of - whether doing maintenance (patching), or experiencing the inevitable random reboots/unscheduled-virtualization-burps/what-have-you - you want to know the full status of the system, as quickly as possible IMMEDIATELY after it comes back online. To that purpose, this script is the current rev of a series I've been using for the niche since 2007 or before.

In this case, it's the Exchange-specific version. I generally configure it as a Scheduled Task triggered by the OnBoot event (with a fire-delay for Win2012R2+). The script logs a transcripted file & emails an html-format report, covering the following tests & status:

Exchange Hub Top Queued Domains (Powershell Snippets)

9/22/2017: Here's a couple of quick code snippets for Exchange Server: I use this when I see external delivery domains piling up (in my running get-HtQueuesMonitor.ps1) , to quickly pull out the details on the problem child external domains.

What's your revision, Exchange?

11/29/2016: More quick-shared code: This is a tweaked variant of Bhargav Shukla's script that polls all Exchange 2007/2010/2013 boxes in the org, and reports on current Exch patch revision.
Changes I made were pretty minimal: adding pshelp, reformatting layout a tad, adding progress echo's, and renaming the output to a timestamped csv file, named for the script itself (easier to track changes over time, than the default 'results.csv' in your script directory). 

Powershell Script - Remote Drivespace (Mountpoints) Emailed Report

10/09/2013: Today's post will outline a remote drivespace reporting script that I routinely use to monitor and report on the available Transaction Log space on my Exchange servers. The script leverages WMI to remotely query for the current freespace & volume size metrics (on either specified drive letters, or all Volume Mount Points on the target system), calculates the space in terms of gigabytes and percentage-free, outputs a report file, and emails the results to an admin mailbox.

I'd generally design this type of script to leverage Exchange Management Shell and dynamically query all servers in the appropriate site in the mailbox role (to automatically accommodate server adds and removals over time). But in this case I wanted this script to be 'blind' to Exchange version differences and also avoid a dependency on Exchange Management Shell. A specific goal in this case was to provide a tool to enable junior admins to evaluate the drive status after backup failure alerts, without the need to run the queries from a machine with a specific version of the Exchange Management Tools installed. So I instead use semicolon-delmited string variables to statically store arrays of server names for processing within the script itself.

Powershell Script - Hub Queue Live Monitoring Script (Exch2007/Exch2010)

10/09/2013: Here's a script I've used in various forms since around 2007: A basic rolling Exchange Hubtransport Queue Depth monitor.

I've found over time, that regardless of SCOM or other active monitoring in place for your Exchange infrastructure, you can often see problems show up early and first in queuing behavior on your HubTransport servers:

• Experiencing mail server storage latency issues? You'll probably see increasing patterns of queuing in the MapiDelivery queues to the problem stores, as you move into peak business primetime hours and increasing mail load delivers into the hubs, but can't be delivered into the mailbox server transaction logs and stores, fast enough to keep pace with the mail flow.
• Experiencing cpu-saturation, or other capacity issues on your hubs, or Hub-CAS hybrid systems? You'll probably see the footprint on the CPU-dependant AV-scanning processes (you ARE running antivirus scanning on your hubs, correct? :D), which will lead to mail queuing in the Submissions queues.
  --in my case, I most recently saw this as a product of CAS Exchange Web Services load -- from Lync -- soaking up more CPU than the systems had been provisioned for, in 2007, well before the Lync infrastructure had been tacked onto the Exchange infrastructure -- looong story behind that one, that predated my arrival at the firm. :P))

So in a nutshell, I've found it a pretty good backup-monitoring option, to run a self-refreshing console display on the current queue status of all hubs in a given Exchange revision.

Powershell Script - Using EMS Get-MessageTrackingLog + LogParser to Retrieve Top-Traffic Metrics for the Hubs in a Site

10/02/2013:All mail admins will occasionally see "odd" Exchange HubTransport queuing behavior for "unknown" reasons (I'll generally notice these type of events in response to monitoring alerts or via a looping get-queue monitoring script I run 24/7).

In most cases these little 'surges' come and go in a matter of minutes with no material impact or footprint. But on other occasions, you see something about the queuing that warrants further investigation into exactly what occurred:

• Possibly your interest is piqued due to the amount of mail that queued up (say a sudden spike into hundreds if not thousands of messages in normal delivery queues)
• Or possibly you want to check further due to mail rapidly piling up in queues where you traditionally should see little to no traffic (e.g. in the Unreachable queue).

Powershell Snippet - Copy/Distribute a File to Every Exchange Server, With Preference Order as to Which Target Drive

10/02/2013: Here's another handy Powershell script snippet: This time, a chunk of code I use for quickly distributing a new or updated file to all or a subset of Exchange servers using Powershell+Exchange Management Shell. 

Pretty simple process going on below:

1. I store a list of drive letters to be tested into an array (in preference order)
2. Then utilize the EMS get-exchangeserver cmdlet to collect a filtered set of all exchange servers (in this case, using
   get-exchangeserver | where{$_.isHubTransportServer -eq $true} to return only HubTransports anywhere in the Org)
3. I then loop the exchange servers list against the drives array, testing for a functional path (which indicates a suitable target drive), and using the {break} command to drop out of the loop at the first matching drive in the list. 
4. Whereuopon the designated file is copied to the matching UNC path

Copy/Distribute file to every exchange server, with preference order  as to which target drive: (1-line below; the command skips tests and copies to the first match)

Powershell Script - More Logparsing Multiple Servers

9/20/2013: I've been putting in a fair amount of time recently repetitively Logparsing the IIS logs on several regions of CAS servers

-- I'm attempting to guage MS Lync 'Exchange Web Services' load and demand on our production CAS's, ahead of new Lync capacity rollouts overseas --

So here's another quicky code chunk that I routinely grab and put to use for Logparsing multiple CAS servers of IIS logs.

Powershell Script - Tip: Delimited String "Contants" & Multi-server Logparser scripts

9/19/2013: This is a useful tip that I get some solid routine mileage out of: Using a delimited string variable, to function as an Array Constant. Primary usage is when I want to loop through a set of variant values, and execute the same commands against each value.

Powershell - The Big All-in-One All Exchange 2010 DAG Mailboxes in a Site Query

9/18/2013: Here's a one-line Exchange Management Shell Powershell command that will retrieve useful attributes on all Exchange 2010 DAG-hosted mailboxes in the specified site.

Describing the process used by the command:

1. Retrieve all exchange servers, that are Mailbox Servers, in the designated AD Site,with Exchange version 14 (Exchange 2010)
2. Then retrieve all databases on those servers, where the ReplicationType attribute is 'Remote' (e.g. DAG replicated)
3. Then retrieve all mailboxes in those databases, 
4. And return a list of specific attributes of the mailbox, including a custom field that encapulates a semi-colon-delimited joined string created from all EmailAddresses of the mailbox. 
5. And finally, export that collection of data to a csv file.

Powershell - Test a file list of mailboxes for Outlook Latency

9/18/2013: Another quicky broad troubleshooting script. This one is aimed at quickly answering those, "Users are reporting slow Outlook Response. Is there an issue?", helpdesk escalations.

Run Test-MAPIConnectivity against a list of mailboxes and report access latency

Powershell - Test all mailboxes in a store

9/18/2013: This is another item I wrote a few years ago to tackle testing of Content Indexing and Exchange Search function, on an Exchange 2007 CCR cluster that was experiencing drive I/O issues, leading to sporadic problems with the update speed and function of the Content Indexing processes:

Powershell - Draw a random mailbox for testing

9/18/2013: Here's something I make use of for quick-evaluating mailbox server health, immediately after a switchover/failover or returning a system to online status after a maintenance outage:

Powershell - Report on Distribution Groups with AcceptMessageOnlyFrom set

9/18/2013: My day job is as a Messaging & Collaboration admin, running 33,000 mailboxes for Hexaware/Unisys. And because I spend most of my day working with Exchange 2010 & 2007, I make a ton of routine use of Powershell, to automate routine tasks, multitask, and generally get more done in less time. The way I look at it, anything I need to do more than once or twice, can probably benefit from taking a little time to code it out and automate it Powershell.

And since I've gotten tons of useful tips and scripting examples from folks like Paul Cunningham  and Shay Levy, I've decided to give back some tips & code-bits to help other folks quickly tackle their own admin needs with Powershell & Exchange Management Shell.