Listing Active Directory Users with Last Log On Time Stamp

In large Active Directory environments it is always a challenge for administrators to track down the users which have not logged on for while because they have either left the organization or were initially created twice due to some misunderstanding by Human Resource Department.

This thing impacts licensing cost as well as capacity planning.

In order to get a list of all users with their last log on time stamp, we can use combination of some commands and a script that will export the information in a ".CSV" file for our convenience.  

Environment:

Domain Name:   relic.org
Temporary Location on a DC:   C:\Scripts
Pre-Built Module Name:   "GetADUserLastLogonTime.psm1"   (Available Here)  Tech Net Gallery Link  

Step 1-

Create a new folder on one of your domain controllers on a suitable location.

I have used following example for this purpose

C:\Scripts 

Step 2- 

Log on to the domain controller and run following command

Get-ADUser -Filter * -SearchBase "DC=relic,DC=org" -ResultPageSize 0 | ft SamAccountName >>c:\Scripts\SamAccountNames.csv

This command will extract a list of user names to the desired destination in ".CSV" format

Step 3- 

Open this file and remove blank rows, blank spaces and any rows with dotted line (----)  from the list and save changes.

Here is an example of correct and incorrect file data for next steps

Step 4- 

A pre-built script is used to perform two actions

(A) Read the list of users we created in step 2
(B) Put the last logon time stamps against each user ID

So first we will import this module into domain controller server using this command

Import-Module C:\Scripts\GetADUserLastLogonTime.psm1

Step 5- 

Run the following command to

Get List of Users, Put last logon time stamps against each and Export to another new ".CSV" file which is going to be our final output file

Get-OSCLastLogonTime -CsvFilePath "C:\Scripts\SamAccountNames.csv" >>c:\Scripts\LogOnDetails.csv

The result might look like as shown in screen shot below

Please note that encircled SAM accounts are the one which have never logged on and that is why they are all showing the same unrealistic time stamp.

Adding Multiple Resource Records in a Microsoft Based DNS Server

It happens sometimes that you have to add multiple Host records in a Windows Server 2012 R2 based DNS server. Using Power Shell script can do the magic.

There are 3 main Phases,

      A-   Preparing DNS Server

In order to run DNS related commands we need “DNSShell” module to be extracted to DNS server. This module is not available by default and can be downloaded from this URL;

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/4308.popular-powershell-modules.aspx

-          Download and extract the “DNSShell” module in following location (considering C: is the home directory on your server)

C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules

      B-   Preparing the CSV File containing desired entries

-          You need at least two parameters

1-      Host Name

2-      IP Address

The entries should look like as shown in the screen shot

-          Save this file as .CSV, in this example I have used “newhosts.CSV” as file name.

 C- Execution of Script

-          Create a new Folder at this location

C:\DNS-Temp

-          Place the csv file in the folder “DNS-Temp”

Following script will be used to perform this job (I have done modifications in the script to fit in my example. These modifications can be seen as bold and italic)

Import-Module DNSShell

Import-CSV c:\DNS\newHosts.csv | %{

New-DNSRecord -Name $_."HostName" -RecordType A -ZoneName relic.org -IPAddress $_."IPAddr"

}  

-          The Power Shell the script must run without any error messages.

-          A comparison of Forward lookup zone before and after running the script can be seen in figures below.

Before:

           After: