Why am I using too much disk space with this code? - powershell

Question

I'm trying to extract some readable variables from AD, the following works.
$user = get-aduser "username" -Properties memberof, emailAddress, extensionattribute2, manager, physicalDeliveryOfficeName, url
$groups = ForEach ($group in $user.memberof){(Get-ADGroup $group).Name}
$groupStr = $groups -join "; " #Change "; " to "`r`n" for line break seperator
$user | Select-Object `
#{N="firstName";E={$_.GivenName}}, `
#{N="lastName";E={$_.Surname}}, `
#{N="email";E={$_.EmailAddress}}, `
#{N="businessArea";E={$_.extensionattribute2}}, `
#{N="accountName";E={$_.SamAccountName}}, `
#{N="manager";E={$_.Manager -replace '^CN=|,.*$'}}, `
#{N="office";E={$_.physicalDeliveryOfficeName}}, `
#{N="standardProfile";E={$_.url}}, `
#{n='Groups'; e={$groupStr}} | Export-CSV -NoTypeInformation "c:\out.csv"
However when I swap Get-aduser "username" to: Get-aduser -Filter {Enabled -eq $true} -SearchBase “ou=redacted,ou=UserAccounts,dc=redacted,dc=com”
It runs for a fairly long time and fills up the last 40gb on the disk and errors out as it's run out of space.
I know in the past I've wildcarded -Properties and run into similar issues (obvious now I understand) but I'm not sure what's causing the issue this time round.
{Enabled -eq $true} & -SearchBaselimit it to about 4 thousand users which I wouldn't think would take this long to run, and I've no idea what's using up the disk space.
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

A slight augment in your code can achieve the results you want:
$users = get-aduser -filter "Enabled -eq '$true'" -Properties memberof, emailAddress, extensionattribute2, manager, physicalDeliveryOfficeName, url
$users | Foreach-Object {
$groups = ForEach ($group in $_.memberof) {
(Get-ADGroup $group).Name
}
$groupStr = $groups -join "; " #Change "; " to "`r`n" for line break separator
$_ | Select-Object #{N="firstName";E={$_.GivenName}},
#{N="lastName";E={$_.Surname}},
#{N="email";E={$_.EmailAddress}},
#{N="businessArea";E={$_.extensionattribute2}},
#{N="accountName";E={$_.SamAccountName}},
#{N="manager";E={$_.Manager -replace '^CN=|,.*$'}},
#{N="office";E={$_.physicalDeliveryOfficeName}},
#{N="standardProfile";E={$_.url}},
#{n='Groups'; e={$groupStr}}
} | Export-CSV -NoTypeInformation "c:\out.csv"
In your original code, $groups contains all of the groups for all enabled AD Users if you don't pick a specific user object for get-aduser. This is because $user.memberof will return all groups for every user in the $user array. Imagine 10 groups per user at 5000 users. You would have 50000 groups per user in your CSV.
-Properties adds attributes to return from the objects you are querying. It does not impact the number of objects you return only the size of the returned result. -Properties * vs. -Properties Attribute1,Attribute2 will likely use more memory but won't impact your CSV since you are selecting (Select-Object) the attributes you want to output. If you run Get-ADUser username, it will return a default list of attributes, which does not include mail for example. If you want to see the mail value along with the default attributes, then you must run Get-ADUser username -Properties Mail.