Man was it good. The flow of information was outstanding. There were a ton of sessions I wanted to attend, but I couldn’t do everything so I basically split my time between the Powershell PG and Directory Services PG.
Now… I know your all saying “While I am glad you had a good time… tell me the good stuff!” I appreciate that. I am currently am waiting for an email from the PG’s letting me know what I can and cannot discuss.
tshell :: Mar.06.2009 :: All :: 1 Comment »
Just got the mail. It looks like I am MVP for another year 
The orginal quote said “you like me, right now, you like me!”
tshell :: Oct.01.2008 :: All :: 3 Comments »
Well… Just got back from a week in Redmond. It was awesome!
First I want to thank MS for putting this all together. It was a testament to their commitment to the community and desire to see their products succeed.
While this was my first MVP summit, I did hear several others comment on how this was the best one yet.
I was VERY lucky to have a seasoned MVP vet (Dean Wells) show me the ropes and introduce me to some of the (IMO) smartest technical people on the planet. These guys/gals are not only incredibly smart… but they were an absolute blast to hang out with.
I doubt they subscribe to my blog but I wanted to do a shout out and link their blogs/Sites
Dean Wells: Absolute Great Trainer/Consultant http://www.msetechnology.com
joe Richards (joeware): http://blog.joeware.net/
Joe Kaplan : http://www.joekaplan.net/
Brian Desmond: http://briandesmond.com/blog/default.aspx
Laura Hunter: http://www.shutuplaura.com/
Mr Hunter (Mark Arnold) : http://markarnold.blogspot.com/
Gil Kirkpatrick (NetPro): http://www.gilsblog.com/
Ulf B. Simon-Weidner’s: http://msmvps.com/blogs/UlfBSimonWeidner/Default.aspx
Tony Murray (founder activedir.org): www.ActiveDir.org Blog: http://www.open-a-socket.com/
Little Jimmy: http://www.jimmytheswede.blogspot.com/
Darren Mar-Elia (SDMSoftware): http://www.sdmsoftware.com/blog/
Princess Jorge!: http://blogs.dirteam.com/blogs/jorge/
Brett Shirley: http://blogs.msdn.com/brettsh/
Eric Fleischman: http://blogs.technet.com/efleis/default.aspx (currently VERY slow to post)
I can not tell you (literally I am under NDA ) How much I learned this past week.
What I can say is that for Powershell… the future is VERY BRIGHT!
The time with the Powershell Dev team was great. Again… can’t say much, but they have great plans.
I spent about 5hrs with the Active Directory team discussing their plans. If the AD Team can pull off what they have planned… OMG it is awesome. AD administration will never be the same.
The next version of SCVMM looks great.
tshell :: Apr.19.2008 :: All, Powershell :: No Comments »
This script returns Citrix Application Objects.
- With no -AppName passed it will return All application Objects
- With -AppName it will return all apps that match (regex.)
tshell :: Apr.09.2008 :: All, Citrix, Powershell, Scripting :: No Comments »
Here is a useful little script. This Creates a MFCom Server Object and disables or Enables Logons for that Server.
if(!$Server -or $help){helpme;Write-Host;return}
Write-Host
Write-Host " Getting Server [$Server]"
$mfsrv = New-Object -ComObject MetaFrameCOM.MetaFrameServer
Write-Host " – Initializing Server"
$mfsrv.Initialize(6,$Server)
if($enable)
{
Write-Host " – Setting to EnableLogon = 1"
$mfSrv.WinServerObject.EnableLogon = 1
}
if($disable)
{
Write-Host " – Setting to EnableLogon = 0"
$mfSrv.WinServerObject.EnableLogon = 0
}
Write-Host " – Server [$($mfSrv.ServerName)] is set to [$($mfSrv.WinServerObject.EnableLogon)] for EnableLogon"
Write-Host
Another option would be to remove the Apps from the Server all together.
tshell :: Apr.09.2008 :: All, Citrix, Powershell, Scripting :: No Comments »
This is pretty simple script. It is actually just an adaption from my Get-CitrixApplication.ps1 script posted at the bottom. There is a moment in time when you start thinking in terms of objects and stop thinking in terms of text output you are looking for.
This will make a huge difference in productivity and take you from constantly writing scripts to interactively getting the information you are after, but until you make the transition I will continue to provide scripts that do both
Here is the script that I use to return an Application object.
Then from the commandline I would just do this
PS> Get-CitrixApplication.ps1 “Applications\MyApp1″ | %{$_.Servers} | %{$_.ServerName}
While this looks more complicated it is more versatile and easy to change. Lets say I want current User for this app instead.
PS> Get-CitrixApplication.ps1 “Applications\MyApp1″ | %{$_.Sessions} | %{$_.UserName}
tshell :: Apr.09.2008 :: All, Citrix, Powershell, Scripting :: 3 Comments »
This is another script that I can use quite often. It is a simple script that queries all the sessions and returns the ones where the User matches. I made the User a RegEx search so you could do multiple users.
Name: Find-CitrixUser.ps1
Purpose: Finds where the user(s) are and outputs session info
# Check for the Help or if
if($help){helpme;Write-Host;return}
# Code to Get the Farm and Initialize
$farm = New-Object -com "MetaframeCOM.MetaFrameFarm"
$farm.Initialize(1)
# Get the Sessions and Parse for Users who match
$farm.Sessions | ?{$_.UserName -match $user}
tshell :: Apr.07.2008 :: All, Citrix, Powershell, SQL, Scripting :: No Comments »
This script just collects the Printer Information from all the Servers in the Farm. It will output them to a file or you can pipe them and filter them.
Name: Get-CitrixPrinterInfo.ps1
Purpose: Gets Print Driver Info from all the Servers in the Farm and outputs to file or console
# Check for Help Flag
if($help){HelpMe;Write-Host;Return}
# Check for File
if($file)
{
if($server) # If -Server was passed we run check just against it and output to screen
{
$mfsrv = new-Object -com "MetaframeCOM.MetaframeServer"
$mfsrv.Initialize(6,$Server.ToUpper())
$mfsrv | foreach{"`n$($_.ServerName) `n$(‘-’*20)";$_.PrinterDrivers| Format-Table} | out-File $file -enc ASCII
}
else # We run the check against the whole farm and output results to file
{
$mfarm = new-Object -com "MetaframeCOM.MetaframeFarm"
$mfarm.Initialize(1)
$mfarm.Servers | foreach{"`n$($_.ServerName) `n$(‘-’*20)";$_.PrinterDrivers| Format-Table} | out-File $file -enc ASCII
}
}
else
{
if($server) # If -Server was passed we run check just against it and output to screen
{
$mfsrv = new-Object -com "MetaframeCOM.MetaframeServer"
$mfsrv.Initialize(6,$Server.ToUpper())
$mfsrv | foreach{"`n$($_.ServerName) `n$(‘-’*20)";$_.PrinterDrivers| Format-Table}
}
else # We run the check against the whole farm and output results to screen
{
$mfarm = new-Object -com "MetaframeCOM.MetaframeFarm"
$mfarm.Initialize(1)
$mfarm.Servers | foreach{"`n$($_.ServerName) `n$(‘-’*20)";$_.PrinterDrivers| Format-Table}
}
}
tshell :: Apr.07.2008 :: Citrix, Powershell, Scripting :: No Comments »
This is one of the more useful scripts (at least for me.) It will query the farm and tell you all the user who have exceeded the idle time specified. I also combined another script that logged off users.
Name: Find-CitrixIdleUser.ps1
Purpose: Finds users with idle time greater than value passed and logs them off if -logoff is passed
# Get Citrix Farm Object
Write-Verbose " – Creating MFFarm Object"
$farm = new-Object -com "MetaframeCOM.MetaframeFarm"
$farm.Initialize(1)
# Parse Sessions
Write-Verbose " – Parsing Sessions. Total of [$($farm.Sessions.count)] Sessions"
foreach($session in $farm.Sessions)
{
Write-Verbose " – Processing Session ID [$($Session.SessionId)]"
$shouldLogOff = $false
# Getting Citrix Session Idle Time and Convert to System.DateTime
Write-Verbose " – Getting LastInputTime"
$ctxDate = $session.LastInputTime(1)
Write-Verbose " – Checking if idle time is -gt 0"
if(($ctxDate.HighPart -ne 0) -and ($ctxDate.LowPart -ne 0))
{
$date = "{0,4}{1,2:00}{2,2:00}{3,2:00}{4,2:00}" -f $ctxDate.year,$ctxDate.Month,$ctxDate.Day,$ctxDate.Hour,$ctxDate.Minute
Write-Verbose " – Converted LastInputTime to [$date]"
$SessionIdleTime = [system.DateTime]::ParseExact($date,‘yyyyMMddHHmm’,$null)
# Get Current Time in System.DateTime
Write-Verbose " – Getting Current Date"
$now = Get-Date
Write-Verbose " – Current Date is [$now]"
# Find Difference
Write-Verbose " + Getting Time Difference"
$diff = $now – $SessionIdleTime
Write-Verbose " – Found Days [$($diff.TotalDays)] Hours [$($diff.Totalhours)] Minutes [$($diff.TotalMinutes)]"
# Output Sessions that match
if($day) { if($diff.TotalDays -gt $time) {$session;$shouldLogOff = $true} }
if($hour) { if($diff.Totalhours -gt $time) {$session;$shouldLogOff = $true} }
if($minute){ if($diff.TotalMinutes -gt $time) {$session;$shouldLogOff = $true} }
Write-Verbose " – Set `$shouldLogOff to [$shouldLogOff]"
# Logging Off User
if($logoff -and $shouldLogOff)
{
Write-Verbose " – Logging Off Session ID [$($Session.SessionId)]"
$session.Logoff($false)
}
}
else
{
Write-Verbose " – Session ID [$($Session.SessionId)] NOT Idle"
}
Write-Host
}
tshell :: Apr.07.2008 :: All, Citrix, Powershell, Scripting :: No Comments »
One of the script I was asked to convert was a script to output all the Users and the Client IP.
This is what I came up with
Name: Get-CitrixSessionUser.ps1
Purpose: List ClientAddress and UserName for each Session
$farm = new-Object -com "MetaframeCOM.MetaframeFarm"
$farm.Initialize(1)
$farm.Sessions | Format-Table UserName,ClientAddress
After I did this… I stopped and actually thought about what I was doing. What is the point? What would someone use this for? It seemed to me that a simpler script that was more flexible would not only meet the original goal, but expand it significantly. It comes back to the object nature of Powershell. I needed to stop thinking strings and start thinking objects. Using the following script not only accomplishes the same goal to get UserName and ClientAddress, but also expands it to add the following:
AAName
AAType
AccessSessionGuid
Applications
AppliedPolicy
AppName
AverageLatency
BandwidthCap
BytesRcvdPostExpansion
BytesRcvdPreExpansion
BytesSentPostCompression
BytesSentPreCompression
ClientAddress
ClientAddrFamily
ClientBuffers
ClientBuild
ClientCacheDisk
ClientCacheLowMem
ClientCacheTiny
ClientCacheXms
ClientColorDepth
ClientDimBitmapMin
ClientDimCacheSize
ClientDimVersion
ClientDirectory
ClientEncryption
ClientHardwareID
ClientHRes
ClientID
ClientLicense
ClientModemName
ClientModules
ClientName
ClientProductID
ClientProductIDValue
ClientVRes
DeviceID
ICABufLen
InputSpeed
LastLatency
LatencyDeviation
OutputSpeed
Processes
ProtocolType
ServerBuffers
ServerName
SessionID
SessionName
SessionState
SmartAccessFilters
UserName
VIPAddress
VirtualChannels
$farm = new-Object -com "MetaframeCOM.MetaframeFarm"
$farm.Initialize(1)
$farm.Sessions
tshell :: Apr.07.2008 :: All, Citrix, Powershell, Scripting :: No Comments »
