Getting a list of servers can be a pretty valuable first task for working with large numbers of computers. Yesterday I had a reason to get a list of them all, and thankfully all of my servers are in the same OU tree in AD (/Machines/Servers). I also see SynJunkie did a similar thing this week, but I prefer not to use third-party cmdlets. 🙂

$blagh = [ADSI]”LDAP://ou=Servers,ou=Machines,dc=my,dc=domain,dc=com”
$objSearcher = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher
$objSearcher.SearchRoot = $blagh
$objSearcher.Filter = “(objectCategory=computer)”

$PropList = “name”,”cn”,”lastlogon”
foreach ($i in $PropList){$objSearcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add($i)}

$Results = $objSearcher.FindAll()

Write-Host “found $($Results.Count) servers”
$Results

What this does is look for all computer objects under Machines/Servers in my domain my.domain.com. For all computers that it finds, it pulls out the name, cn, and lastlogon properties.

To find a list of all the properies that can be pulled out, after that above script do this:

$Results[0].Properties

Based on the properties I pulled, it should be obvious I was looking for signs of dead computer accounts. This can easily be changed to look for user accounts, properties in them, and other OUs.