When an employee leaves the organization, our standard procedure  is as followed:

1. Disable User Object
2. Move to separate OU (IE AD://internal.msd/disabled/users)
3. Update Description field with something like: Disabled by [username] on [date]
4. Retain user object for x amount of days, then tombstone it.

Best laid plans of mice and men… yada yada…

I was able to go through all of these user objects that didn’t get their description updated with the one liner below. I’ll explain this beginning with script line 3 below:

• (Line 3) Find all users in the OU: ‘OU=Users,OU=Disabled,DC=internal,DC=msd’ – customize this to your environment
• (Line 4) Exclude objects where the description does not contain the word “disabled”.
• (Lines 5-7) Loop through each object that remains and update the description with the same object’s last login date.

FYI – this script requires the Quest ActiveRoles Powershell Toolkit (http://www.quest.com/powershell/activeroles-server.aspx)

#This script requires Quest AD Tools
add-pssnapin Quest.ActiveRoles.ADManagement

#Everything below this is on one line
get-QADUser -searchroot 'OU=Users,OU=Disabled,DC=internal,DC=msd'
| Where-Object { $_.Description -notlike "*disabled*" }
| ForEach-Object { set-qaduser -identity
(get-qaduser $_.samaccountname) -description
("Last Login: " + (get-qaduser $_.samaccountname).lastlogon})

I’m sure there’s a more elegant way to handle this, but in 30 minutes I created this one liner, and updated a lot of user objects.

Cheers!

The post Use PowerShell to Update Specific AD User’s Description Field with Last Login Time appeared first on VirtJunkie.

To isolate the exact error and resolve the issue, I ran the following commands:

[text]
snap list [volume name]
backup status
[/text]

Line one below shows all of the snapshots for the particular volume. In my case, the

ntap> backup status

ntap> snap list volume

(I edited the volume name)

To resolve this, run the following commands. They disable NDMP, and kill all active NDMP threads. As long as you’re not running any NDMP backups, this will not affect anything else on your filer.

[text]
ndmpd off
ndmpd killall
ndmpd on
[/text]

The post NetApp – Unable To Delete Snapshots (Dependency: busy, backup[n], dump) appeared first on VirtJunkie.

Since my last post, I was able to find a document that gives a bit more… official insight into what Solarwinds expects in terms of Powershell script output. I’ve attached the PDF to the bottom of this post.

A big change from the last script, is that this one utilizes the “Message” field within solarwinds, whereas the old post only references the “Statistic” post.  This allows us to give more information as to why an issue might be occurring.

For example, let’s say a SnapMirror relationship is considered to be in  “critical” status if it has not been replicated in 480 minutes (or 4 hours), but you would like to know why this failure is occurring, without connecting to the CLI on your filer or NetApp System Manager (NSM). You can configure your Powershell to output important information in case of a failure. This script does just that. See an example screenshot below:

Important things to note about this script:

1. The filer that you will be connecting to is determined by how you have the Application Template / Component config.
2. The Snapmirror relationship you insert in the “script argument” field should appear just like the output of the source field output of a Get-NaSnapmirror command run directly from powershell.

Configuring_and_Integrating_PowerShell (Alternate link)

The script is below:

param (
    [string]$Location = $( Read-Host "The source location or destination \
    location of the SnapMirror pair" )
)
#***
# The Variable $location is filled in by Solarwinds. It accepts wildcards.
#***

############################ BEGIN GetVolumeAlert.ps1 ####################
# SnapMirror Alert Generator ~ v1.0 - Jon Howe
# REQUIRES NETAPP POWERSHELL TOOLKIT / PowerShell 2.0 recommended!
#
# Ensure that the variable ($profile) for the executing user contains the
# following line:
# import-module dataontap
##########################################################################

#Set the credentials for your filer.
$filerpassword = "[Enter Your Password Here]"

#The value ${IP} will be replaced by the server selected in Solarwinds
$Filername = '${IP}'

##########################################################################
# DO NOT EDIT BELOW THIS LINE
###########################################################################
Import-module DataONTAP
$password = ConvertTo-SecureString $filerpassword -AsPlainText –Force
$cred = New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential \
 -ArgumentList "root",$password
$connection =  Connect-NaController $Filername -Credential $cred

$SM_List = Get-NaSnapmirror -Location $Location

Foreach ($SM in $SM_List)
{
	$smError = $SM.CurrentTransferError
	$status = $SM.Status

	$rawSrc = $SM.Source
	# Apparently solarwinds freaks out when there's a colon in the
	$srcSplit = $rawSrc.Split(":")
	$srcFiler = $srcSplit[0]
	$srcVolume = $srcSplit[1]
	$src = "$srcVolume@$srcFiler"

	Write-Host "Statistic.$srcVolume :" $lag
	if ($smError)
	{
		Write-Host "Message.$srcVolume :" $status "-" $smError
	}
	Else
	{
		Write-Host "Message.$srcVolume :" $status
	}
}

exit(0)

As usual, if you have any questions about this, let me know!

The post Monitor NetApp SnapMirror via Solarwinds Server and Application Monitor appeared first on VirtJunkie.

You’ll need to download the toolkit and install it on your SAM machine as a prerequisite for this to work.

Additionally, I needed to modify the powershell profile of the user that will execute the script.  The location of the Powershell profile is stored in the variable $profile.  Just make sure that file contains the line

import-module dataontap

After you get your environment all set, you’ll need to configure a new Application Template within SAM.

To do this, navigate to Admin -> Settings -> SAM Settings -> Create a New Template

The important Fields to fill in are:

Template Name: I recommend giving this a name that identifies the particular filer you’re connecting to

Then Add a component monitor:

Select the Windows PowerShell Monitor

Paste the script below into the script body, and put the name of the volume in the “Script Arguments” field. As a bonus, you can use a wildcard in the Script Arguments field in order to monitor multiple volumes at the same time.

If you like, you can modify line 28 below to better fit your needs. For example, I have different component that has the line below in place. This allows me more flexibility than what I get by using the script arguments field.

$VolArray = get-navol | Where-Object {$_.Name -eq "CIFS0" -or $_.Name \
-eq "CIFS1" -or $_.Name -eq "CIFS2"  -or $_.Name -eq "CIFS3" -or \
$_.Name -eq "CIFS4"}

param (
[string]$Volume = $( Read-Host "Enter the volume name, please" )
)
############################ BEGIN GetVolumeAlert.ps1 ####################
# Volume Alert Generator ~ v1.0 - Jon Howe
# REQUIRES NETAPP POWERSHELL TOOLKIT / PowerShell 2.0 recommended!
#
# Ensure that the variable ($profile) for the executing user contains the
# following line:
# import-module dataontap
##########################################################################

#Set the credentials for your filer.
$filerpassword = "Enter Your Password Here"

#The value ${IP} will be replaced by the server selected in Solarwinds
$Filername = '${IP}'

##########################################################################
# DO NOT EDIT BELOW THIS LINE
###########################################################################
Import-module DataONTAP
$password = ConvertTo-SecureString $filerpassword -AsPlainText –Force
$cred = New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential \
 -ArgumentList "root",$password
$connection = Connect-NaController $Filername -Credential $cred

$VolArray = get-navol -Name $Volume

foreach ($vol in $VolArray)
{
 $name = $vol.Name
 $percent = $vol.Used

 # This is important - Solarwinds requires a "Unique identifier" for
 # each value returned by a script. The line below creates an
 # identifier for each result returned.
 Write-Host "Statistic.$name :" $percent
}

#Solarwinds requires that this be included in a PowerShell script.
exit(0)

I’m using this right now to monitor a production environment with a lot of success. If you want to see a different setup, let me know!

The post Monitor NetApp SAN via Solarwinds Server and Application Monitor appeared first on VirtJunkie.

Opening AD Users and Computers is something that I open on a pretty regular basis, but I use this method on several different utilities.

In order to do this, you’ll have to modify the target field in the shortcut of your program to include the runas command.

Example: Active Directory Users and Computers:

Original:    %SystemRoot%\system32\dsa.msc

Different User:    C:\Windows\System32\runas.exe /user:[domain]\user “mmc %windir%\system32\dsa.msc”

The post Run As Different User (All the time, without holding shift!) appeared first on VirtJunkie.

If you’re like me, you use putty to connect to servers via SSH frequently. Now, I know that you can use key based authentication using puttygen, but in the scenario that you don’t want to go that route, you can use the method below to create windows shortcuts to automatically log into a host using putty.

In my scenario, I have a few VMware ESXi hosts that I connect to pretty frequently, and logging in over and over gets annoying.

This solution is really quite simple. All you need to do is create a shortcut to this Example Batch File. Make sure you edit the file to include your username and password.  Disclaimer – hard coding your password in plain text is generally considered bad security practice. Only do this if you know what you’re doing.

Modify the properties of each shortcut, and change the “Target” field of each one.  Here’s what one of mine looks like:

“C:\VMware Shortcuts\auto-ssh.bat” corp-esx-01

Here’s the breakdown of the batch file:

( -ssh ) – connect to the host using SSH

( -l [USERNAME] ) – configures putty to use a username

( -pw [PASSWORD] ) – configures putty to use a password

( %1) – since this is a batch file, %1 is will be replaced with the first parameter provided when the script is run.  Adding the name of your server onto the end of a windows shortcut will achieve this goal.

In order to make the shortcut a little bit more visually appealing, I created an ICO file to give the shortcut. I’ve provided it below.

The post SSH Auto Login Using Putty appeared first on VirtJunkie.