10 New PowerShell Commands of 2013

In Exchange 2013 alone, there are 187 new PowerShell cmdlets. If you plan on deploying Exchange
2013 in the near future, there are 10 you should pay attention to.

1. Get-ExchangeServerAccessLicense

The Get-ExchangeServerAccessLicense cmdlet reports Exchange licensing information. After

entering the cmdlet, you'll receive a report of Standard and Enterprise edition server and
CAL licenses for Exchange 2013.
Note: Licensing info for earlier versions of Exchange Server is not provided.

2. Get-HealthReport

The Get-HealthReport cmdlet reports the health of various Exchange Server 2013
components. For example, you can use the GetHealthReport to determine Outlook Web
App's health by entering the following command:

Get-HealthReport InputEntries OWA InputObject Maintenance

The cmdlet returns health information by reporting the object's state, whether online,
partially online, functional, unavailable or otherwise.

3. Redirect-Message

Message queues reside on mailbox servers in Exchange Server 2013. If a problem occurs
with a mailbox server, the Redirect-Message cmdlet can remove the messages from the
mailbox server's queue and add them to a queue on a healthy mailbox server.

All you have to do is specify the source and destination server names with the following
syntax:

Redirect-Message Server Target

4. Test-MigrationServerAvailability

Exchange Server is designed to work as a distributed application. An organization might have

on-premises mailboxes, cloud mailboxes and mailboxes that exist in external Active
Directory forests. In the past, migrating messaging data across these types of boundaries
was challenging.

The Test-MigrationServerAvailability cmdlet facilitates this process by verifying that

Exchange can communicate with external mail servers prior to attempting a migration.
5. Get-MobileDevice

Users have become increasingly mobile. Admins can use the Get-MobileDevice cmdlet to
view a list of all of the mobile devices that have been associated with a given mailbox. For
example, to see a list of the mobile devices that are linked to a mailbox named B rie n , use
the following command:

Get-MobileDevice Mailbox "Brien"

6. Get-MobileDeviceStatistics

The Get-MobileDeviceStatistics cmdlet is used to diagnose problems with Exchange

ActiveSync. You can use the cmdlet to retrieve a list of ActiveSync-related statistics on a per-
mailbox basis. You can also use the cmdlet to retrieve log files related to a mobile device and
send those log files to someone for analysis.

At its simplest, the cmdlet requires you to provide the identity of the mailbox that you want
to analyze. For example, if you wanted to see mobile device statistics for a mailbox named B
rie n , you would use the following command:

Get-MobileDeviceStatistics Identity Brien

7. Get-PartnerApplication

Exchange Server 2013 introduces the concept of partner applications. A partner application
is designed to work with Exchange to augment the overall end-user experience. SharePoint
2013 is probably the best example of a partner application.

Exchange requires administrators to designate an application as a partner application before

it is treated as such. Get-PartnerApplication returns a list of registered partner applications.

8. Get-ServerHealth

The Get-ServerHealth cmdlet is similar to Get-HealthReport, except that it helps you

determine the overall health of an Exchange 2013 server, rather than that of an individual
component. This PowerShell cmdlet requires you to provide the identity of the Exchange
server you want to diagnose, as well as the name of a domain controller. The command
syntax is as follows:

Get-ServerHealth Identity DomainController

9. Set-ServerMonitor

Exchange 2013 offers various components that may be used to monitor Exchange. The Set-
ServerMonitor cmdlet lets you enable individual server monitors by specifying the name of
the monitor and the name of the server.
 For example, if you wanted to enable the Maintenance monitor for a server named E X 1 ,
you'd use the following command:

Set-ServerMonitor Name Maintenance Server EX1

10. New-PublicFolderMigrationRequest

Microsoft has once again embraced public folders in Exchange 2013. In fact, public folders
can now be protected by a database availability group (DAG), in much the same way that
mailboxes are. Because of this and other new public folder-related features, Microsoft
recommends that public folders be migrated to Exchange 2013 mailbox servers.

A public-folder migration is a multistep process, but the primary cmdlet you should
familiarize yourself with is the NewPublicFolderMigrationRequest cmdlet. This cmdlet
requires you to specify the source database and a .csv file containing exported public folder
statistics (the .csv file is created by running the Export-PublicFolderStatistics.ps1 script).
Here's an example of how the command might be used:

New-PublicFolderMigrationRequest SourceDatabase PF1 CSVData (Get-Content

C:\Data\CSVData.csv Encoding Byte)