Verifying system partition alignment via scripting - powershell

I'm trying to verify that the file system partitions within each of the servers I'm working on are aligned correctly. I've got the following script that when I've tried running will either claim that all virtual servers are aligned or not aligned based on which if statement I use (one is commented out):
$myArr = #()
$vms = get-vm | where {$_.PowerState -eq "PoweredOn" -and $_.Guest.OSFullName -match "Microsoft Windows*" } | sort name
foreach($vm in $vms){
$wmi = get-wmiobject -class "win32_DiskPartition" -namespace "root\CIMV2" -ComputerName $vm
foreach ($partition in $wmi){
$Details = "" | Select-Object VMName, Partition, Status
#if (($partition.startingoffset % 65536) -isnot [decimal]){
if ($partition.startingoffSet -eq "65536"){
$Details.VMName = $partition.SystemName
$Details.Partition = $partition.Name
$Details.Status = "Partition aligned"
}
else{
$Details.VMName = $partition.SystemName
$Details.Partition = $partition.Name
$Details.Status = "Partition not aligned"
}
$myArr += $Details
}
}
$myArr | Export-CSV -NoTypeInformation "C:\users\a411882\Documents\Scripts\PartitionAlignment.csv"
Would anyone know what is wrong with my code? I'm still learning about partitions so I'm not sure how I need to check the starting off-set number to verify alignment.

You're passing a virtual machine object instead of a string to get-wmiObject -ComputerName. When I do that, get-wmiObject throws an RPC error. You might try -computerName $vm.guest.Hostname instead of -computerName $vm.
In the commented line, your use of % should return a remainder, which will always be a whole number or zero. Maybe you were expecting a quotient instead, and wanted to evaluate if it's an integer?
PS C:\temp> (1 / 2) -isnot [int]
True
PS C:\temp> (2 / 1) -isnot [int]
False
Recent Windows OS align their partitions automatically, so there's that. Here's a good post about alignment generally on VMware, including a link to a more detailed discussion of guest partitions.

Related

PowerShell Test-Connection -efficient Method

One Bronze medal = Newbi 😊, have scoured this site for years, so a million belated thanks, once again!
Just finished up a few different PowerShell ver 5.1 scripts that perform a test-connection on the same 2000 devices regularly.
Out to a csv file
And they are all slow, some minor speed improvements when tweaking it down to the bare bones.
I’ve scaled the script to the minimal, IPADDRESS and NAME only
I’ve run a few comparison tests against a batch file (ping 123.456.789.001 >> PingTest.txt ) and these tests APPEAR to run quicker than my PS script (will run a full apple to apples test tomorrow), but confident something is amiss in the PS code.
Am looking at arrays, and how piping works, but am afraid I’m putting the cart in front of the horse, or there is something going on with how PS handles the csv format and/or ping list in its memory
My most efficient current script below,
Is the following link pointing me in the right direction,? Specifically the asJob switch
PowerShell Mass Test-Connection
$info = "" | Select IPaddress,Name
$OutputFile = new-item -itemType File -path C:\Temp\Results.csv -force -value "IPaddress,Name`r`n" | out-null
Import-csv C:\Temp\GetList.csv | ForEach-Object {
if ($_.IPaddress) {
if (-Not (Test-Connection -ComputerName $_.IPaddress -Quiet -Count 2 -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)) {
$info.IPaddress = $_.IPaddress
$info.Name = $_.Name
add-content -value "$($info.IPaddress),$($info.Name)" -path C:\Temp\Results.CSV
}
}
}
The export-csv is faster, thank you. I'm not sure if I have it in the right place, but it works, will run some tests on it tomorrow. I may have to include the passes tests though , still getting my head around the get-job cmdlet.
$info = "" | Select IPaddress,Name,Status
Import-csv c:\Temp\GetList.csv | ForEach-Object {
if($_.Ipaddress) {
if (-Not(Test-Connection -ComputerName $_.IPaddress -Quiet -Count 2 -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)) {
$info.IPaddress = $_.IPaddress
$info.Name = $_.Name
$info.Status = "Failed"
$info | export-csv C:\Temp\Results1.csv -Force -Notypeinformation -Append
}
}
}
$list = Import-Csv C:\Temp\GetList.csv
ForEach ($item In $list) {
Start-Job -ScriptBlock {
param($item)
if (Test-Connection -Computername $item.IPaddress -Quiet -Count 1) {
Add-Content -value "$($item.IPaddress),$($item.Name),$($item.Stauts)" -Path C:\Temp\xlistlist.csv
$list | Export-csv c:\Temp\xCSvreults.csv -Force -NoTypeInformation -Append
}
} -argumentlist $list
}
Thanks Santiago, I did some exploring here, just ran out of time for the day. THANK YOU you for the code examples they cleared a few things up for me :-) –
Have Computer
Dec 2 at 3:59
Would you mind adding some inline comments so I can follow along? Just trynna understand multi-threading (using runspaces) a bit better. –
Abraham Zinala
Dec 2 at 4:58
1
#AbrahamZinala is there a specific part you're struggling to understand? i'm not an expert on this and wouldn't like to give false information. Might be better to pick up all the parts you don't understand and ask a new question –
Santiago Squarzon
Dec 2 at 12:19
Nah man, sorry, I figured it out lol –
Abraham Zinala
Dec 2 at 13:43
1
#AbrahamZinala the only hard part to understand is the [powershell] instance part imo, and you can think of it as a Start-Job but much faster and less memory consuming, you add your scriptblock with .AddScript({...}) and then the parameters with .AddParameters([hashtablehere]). It's important to save the PSInstance in a variable so that we can get the output out of it and it's handler (Status = $psinstance.BeginInvoke()) to know when the instance has completed. The rest is just pure blueprint, once you have one you can copy paste it :P –
Santiago Squarzon
Dec 2 at 13:50
#HaveComputer I have no idea what your comment means. –
Santiago Squarzon
Dec 5 at 1:10
the 2 solutions presented work much faster, my code however is lacking. –
Have Computer
Dec 5 at 1:16
#HaveComputer I know that, this can perform 50x faster or even more depending on hardware and bandwidth. –
Santiago Squarzon
This is a good place where you can use runspaces, I would love to test if Test-Connection -AsJob performs better than this but for some reason it is not available on PS Core on Linux.
Code below took around 10 seconds to scan 254 IPs using my private network IP range. There is a lot of tweaking that can be done, i.e. you can poke around the $Threshold variable, it's currently running 100 runspaces at a time, Count and TimeoutSeconds for Test-Connection have been set to 2 you can tweak that too.
$results variable can be exported using Export-Csv.
# Change this value for tweaking
$Threshold = 100
$RunspacePool = [runspacefactory]::CreateRunspacePool(1, $Threshold)
$RunspacePool.Open()
# This is for testing, use your CSV here instead
# => $list = Import-Csv C:\Temp\GetList.csv
$list = 1..254 | ForEach-Object {
[pscustomobject]#{
IPAddress = "192.168.1.$_"
Hostname = "ExampleHost$_"
}
}
$scriptBlock = {
param($ip, $hostname)
$params = #{
Quiet = $true
Count = 2
TimeoutSeconds = 2
ComputerName = $ip
}
$status = Test-Connection #params
[pscustomobject]#{
Hostname = $hostname
IPAddress = $ip
Status = ('Failed','Success')[[int]$status]
}
}
$runspaces = foreach($line in $list)
{
$params = #{
ip = $line.IPAddress
hostname = $line.Hostname
}
$psinstance = [powershell]::Create().AddScript($scriptBlock).AddParameters($params)
$psinstance.RunspacePool = $RunspacePool
[pscustomobject]#{
Instance = $psinstance
Status = $psinstance.BeginInvoke()
}
}
while($runspaces.Status.IsCompleted -contains $false)
{
Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 500
}
$results = $runspaces.ForEach({ $_.Instance.EndInvoke($_.Status) })
$RunspacePool.Dispose()
$results Sample:
Hostname IPAddress Status
-------- --------- ------
ExampleHost1 192.168.1.1 Success
ExampleHost2 192.168.1.2 Failed
ExampleHost3 192.168.1.3 Success
ExampleHost4 192.168.1.4 Failed
ExampleHost5 192.168.1.5 Success
ExampleHost6 192.168.1.6 Failed
ExampleHost7 192.168.1.7 Failed
ExampleHost8 192.168.1.8 Failed
ExampleHost9 192.168.1.9 Failed
ExampleHost10 192.168.1.10 Failed
...
...
Start-Job -ScriptBlock { Test-Connection -computername (Get-Content -Path “C:\Temp\GetList.csv”) }
Its lacking the fundamentals, works, DE fast.

Property has a value but cannot select it

I have a function that checks the registry for an uninstall key called Get-InstalledApps
Function Get-InstalledApps {
param (
[Parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$true)]
[string[]]$ComputerName = $env:COMPUTERNAME,
[string]$NameRegex = ''
)
foreach ($comp in $ComputerName) {
$keys = '','\Wow6432Node'
foreach ($key in $keys) {
try {
$reg = [Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey]::OpenRemoteBaseKey('LocalMachine', $comp)
$apps = $reg.OpenSubKey("SOFTWARE$key\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall").GetSubKeyNames()
} catch {
continue
}
foreach ($app in $apps) {
$program = $reg.OpenSubKey("SOFTWARE$key\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\$app")
$name = $program.GetValue('DisplayName')
if ($name -and $name -match $NameRegex) {
[pscustomobject]#{
ComputerName = $comp
DisplayName = $name
DisplayVersion = $program.GetValue('DisplayVersion')
Publisher = $program.GetValue('Publisher')
InstallDate = $program.GetValue('InstallDate')
UninstallString = $program.GetValue('UninstallString')
Bits = $(if ($key -eq '\Wow6432Node') {'64'} else {'32'})
Path = $program.name
}
}
}
}
}
}
and then I grab the DisplayName/Version for what I need. My current problem is that it only seems to work on certain machines. Example:
Get-InstalledApps | Where-Object {$_.Displayname -like "*Citrix Receiver*"}
Name Value
---- -----
InstallDate
ComputerName Computer
DisplayName Citrix Receiver 4.7
Bits 64
UninstallString C:\ProgramData\Citrix\Citrix Receiver 4.7\TrolleyExpress.exe /uninstall /cleanup
Path HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\CitrixOnlinePluginPackWeb
Publisher Citrix Systems, Inc.
DisplayVersion 14.7.0.13011
So this is great, I get what I want. Now I normally just pipe in | Select-Object Displayname -ExpandProperty Displayname and it would return "Citrix Receiver 4.7" just like I want. My problem is that on certain machines I'm getting this:
Get-InstalledApps | Where-Object {$_.Displayname -like "*Citrix Receiver*"} | Select-Object DisplayName
DisplayName
-----------
And that's it. Why is there no value listed? If I try to expandproperty I get an error because it says nothing is there, but clearly there is something there or the Where-Object would not have found it in my search. Again, in a lot cases this code works just fine and I get the value I want but on a lot of machines I'm getting what you see above.
Edited in from comments:
I run this on a user's machine and I get the results I posted. If I run it on my machine I'll get the value "Citrix Receiver 4.7" every time. Also, on my machine I don't get the Name and Value columns. Only about 1/4 of the machines I ran this code on actually gave me the value I expected. Windows 7 vs Windows 10 thing?
It looks to me like your function returns a [hashtable], but you're using it like it's an object with properties.
That happens to work fine with Where-Object because the .Member syntax works for accessing [hashtable] values, but it's not going to work with Select-Object because it's operating on actual properties.
So what can you do?
If you want to keep it as a [hashtable], and insist on doing it in a pipeline, you can use ForEach-Object:
Get-InstalledApps |
Where-Object {$_.Displayname -like "*Citrix Receiver*"} |
ForEach-Object -Process { $_.DisplayName }
or
Get-InstalledApps |
Where-Object {$_.Displayname -like "*Citrix Receiver*"} |
ForEach-Object -MemberName Item -ArgumentList DisplayName
Another thing you can do is change your function to return an object.
This is really easy to do with a [hashtable]; so say your function is about to return $hash, instead return:
New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property $hash
Now you can use the normal suite of cmdlets and have them work as expected.
Edit: after seeing your code, it looks like you are converting your hashtable to an object already, but your output says otherwise. It wouldn't display as Name and Value columns if that were the case, so I still think something is wrong and the output is a [hashtable].
Edit 2: with info from comments about the platform differences, this seems to be happening because the object conversion is being done with the [pscustomobject] type accelerator which was added in PowerShell v3. Since the problematic machine is running Windows 7, it may be running v2 (which is what Win 7 shipped with).
Recommendations:
Get rid of Windows 7.
If you can't do that, upgrade PowerShell (Windows Management Framework) on that machine.
Either way, use New-Object as posted above.

Duplicates in Workflow VM audit

I'm implementing a VM audit of several vcenters (around 5 of them) where the report is simply a csv of each VM along with a few properties. Although this script would run overnight, I found that it took around 5-6 hours to complete and wanted to increase its efficiency. I learned about workflows and figured it would be faster to audit each vcenter at the same time instead of one by one. It was slower than I expected finishing after about 4 hours. I noticed that there were many duplicates in the data and I can't figure out why that would be; maybe my ideas about how workflow works is flawed. I'm also looking for any tips on raising efficiency in my code. Thanks in advance.
The workflow:
workflow test {
param([string[]]$vcenters, [string]$session, [string]$username, [string]$password)
foreach -parallel($vcenter in $vcenters){
$main = InlineScript{
Add-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core
Connect-VIServer -Server $Using:vcenter -User $Using:username -Password $Using:password
$vms = Get-View -ViewType VirtualMachine -Property Name, Summary.Config.GuestFullName, Runtime.Powerstate, Config.Hardware.MemoryMB, Config.Hardware.NumCPU
ForEach($machine in $vms){
$vm = Get-VM -Server $Using:vcenter -Name $machine.Name -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
$object = New-Object -Type PSObject -Property ([ordered]#{
Name = $machine.Name
GuestOS = $machine.Summary.Config.GuestFullName
PowerState = $machine.Runtime.PowerState
MemoryGB = ($machine.Config.Hardware.MemoryMB / 1024)
CPU = $machine.Config.Hardware.NumCPU
VLAN=(Get-NetworkAdapter -VM $vm |Sort-Object NetworkName |Select -Unique -Expand NetworkName) -join '; '
})
$object| Export-Csv -Append “C:\TestReports\$($vcenter)_TestReport.csv” -NoTypeInformation
}
Disconnect-VIServer - $Using:vcenter -Confirm:$false
}
}
}
With the below changes, maybe it runs quickly enough that you no longer need parallelism or workflow. Not sure if those elements are a cause of the duplication problem. If not, you might need to share more details from your environment for help with that piece.
Get-VM is slow. You're calling it once for each VM, and I don't think you need it at all. Try adding this line after connecting to vCenter
$networks = Get-View -ViewType Network
Replacing your VLAN= line with
VLAN= $networks | ? {$_.VM.Value -contains $machine.MoRef.value} | select -exp Name
And dropping your $vm = Get-VM... line entirely.

Powershell - how to replace OS Version number with String

I am querying remote servers for their operating system. I know that I can return the Version, but I want to replace these values with the friendly name. The code I have so far is:
$Computer = (gc c:\servers.txt)
$BuildVersion = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_OperatingSystem -Property Version, CSName -ComputerName $Computer -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
$Build=$BuildVersion.version
If ({$BuildVersion.Version -match "5.2.3790"})
{$Build="2003"}
Elseif ({$BuildVersion.Version -match "6.1.7601"})
{$Build="2008"}
Elseif ({$BuildVersion.Version -like "6.3.9600"})
{$Build="2012"}
But this doesn't seem to work and only returns "2003" regardless. Please help, I'm fairly new to PS and coding.
thanks
The problem is your if statements. Putting the Boolean expression inside squiggly brackets makes it a script block, and that's going to get cast as a string before being cast as a Boolean. Strings cast to Booleans always evaluate to true unless they're empty.
PS C:\> {$BuildVersion.Version -match "5.2.3790"}
$BuildVersion.Version -match "5.2.3790"
PS C:\> ({$BuildVersion.Version -match "5.2.3790"}) -as [bool]
True
PS C:\> $BuildVersion.Version -match "5.2.3790"
False
PS C:\> ($BuildVersion.Version -match "5.2.3790") -as [bool]
False
So what you're running is essentially:
if ([bool]'$BuildVersion.Version -match "5.2.3790"') [...]
And that's always going to be true.
Try:
$Computer = (gc c:\servers.txt)
$BuildVersion = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_OperatingSystem -Property Version, CSName -ComputerName $Computer -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
$Build=$BuildVersion.version
If ($BuildVersion.Version -match "5.2.3790")
{
$Build = "2003"
}
Elseif ($BuildVersion.Version -match "6.1.7601")
{
$Build = "2008"
}
Elseif ($BuildVersion.Version -like "6.3.9600")
{
$Build = "2012"
}
Bottom line is that squiggly brackets are not parentheses and you can't use them like they are.
However, there's also a major logic error here. You're potentially fetching an array for $BuildVersion because you're reading from a file, but then you treat it like a single value. You never loop through $BuildVersion. However, I do not have enough information about what you're actually trying to do with your script (like what you do with $Build) to be able to fix that.
I originally said this, but I've since changed my mind
The reason this is only returning 2003 is that you're only running your If code on a single entry in the list.
Wrong
As TessellatingHeckler says, the reason your if wasn't working is that you had too many curly braces, so PowerShell wasn't actually evaluating your logic.
However, you still need to step through each of the computers to do what you're trying to do. We'll do that by adding in a ForEach loop. I also went ahead and replaced your If {} logic with a Switch statement, which I think is easier to understand for a scenario like this with multiple clauses. If's just get way too verbose.
Finally, I'm assuming you want to output the results too, so I added a custom object here, which is just a way of choosing which properties we want to display.
$Computer = (gc c:\servers.txt)
ForEach ($system in $computer){
$BuildVersion = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_OperatingSystem -Property Version, CSName -ComputerName $system -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
$Build=$BuildVersion.version
switch ($build){
"5.2.3790" {$Build="2003"}
"6.1.7601" {$Build="2008"}
"6.3.9600" {$Build="2012"}
}
#output results
[pscustomobject]#{Server=$system;OSVersion=$build;CSName=$buildVersion.CSname}
}#EndOfForEach
Output
>Server OSVersion CSName
------ --------- ------
dc2012 2012 DC2012
sccm1511 2012 SCCM1511
You can use this:
Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_OperatingSystem | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Caption
Additionally you can see everything this WMI object holds like this:
Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_OperatingSystem | fl *
Edit: if you want to remove some text from the string, you can use -replace:
(Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_OperatingSystem |
Select-Object -ExpandProperty Caption) -replace "Microsoft Windows Server ",""

Display test-connection successes and failures in Out-Gridview

I am trying to get a list of servers and the last time they rebooted to show in a table. However, if it doesn't respond to a ping, I just need it to show in the list. I can't seem to figure out how to get it to add to the table after else.
Import-CSV $Downtime | % {
if(Test-Connection $_.server -Quiet -count 1){
Get-WmiObject Win32_OperatingSystem -ComputerName $_.server |
select #{LABEL="Name"; EXPRESSION = {$_.PSComputerName}}, #{LABEL="Last Bootup"; EXPRESSION = {$_.convertToDateTime($_.LastBootupTime)}}
}
else{#{LABEL="Name"; EXPRESSION = {$_.server}}
}
} | Out-GridView
I can always save the else results in a text file but this would be more convenient.
You need to make the same object, with the same properties!, in both cases so that PowerShell will understand the association between the two. The follwing example builds a custom hashtable using the if/else and outputs the object for each loop pass.
Import-CSV $Downtime | ForEach-Object {
$props = #{}
$server = $_.server
if(Test-Connection $server -Quiet -count 1){
$wmi= Get-WmiObject Win32_OperatingSystem -ComputerName $server
$props.Name = $wmi.PSComputerName
$props."Last Bootup" = $wmi.convertToDateTime($wmi.LastBootupTime)
}else{
$props.Name = $server
$props."Last Bootup" = "Could not contact"
}
New-Object -TypeName psobject -Property $props
} | Out-GridView
I used $server as the $_ changes context a couple of time so we wanted to be able to refer to the current row in the CSV we are processing.
I don't know what your PowerShell version is so I will assume 2.0 and create objects that support that.
In both cases an object is created with a Name and Last Bootup property which is populated based on the success of the ping.
As an aside I had a similar question a while ago about created similar object based output.