Powershell – EMS: Filter Get-Mailbox results to Database with ‘-like’ and wildcards

distribution-listsexchangepowershell

The end-game here is to create dynamic distribution groups based on similar Exchange databases. We have personnel mailboxes split into several databases by region and naming follows set conventions.

As a proof of concept I've been using the "Get-Mailbox" command with a -Filter and -or operators to list multiple databases and it works. The result is something like this:

Get-Mailbox -Filter {
(
(Database -eq 'CN=DBname01,CN=therestoftheDistinguishedName,DC=com') 
-or 
(Database -eq 'CN=DBname02,CN=therestoftheDistinguishedName,DC=com')
)
}

This works fine… I get a list of mailboxes in those databases. But isn't ideal if another database is added due to an increased user count.

MS documentation here says that the "homeMDB/Database property is compatible with wildcards…

So, this should then theoretically work and give the same result:

Get-Mailbox -Filter {(Database -like "CN=DBname*")}

But, this command returns no results…. no errors… nothing.

Is -like just not supported? Am I doing something wrong?

P.S. '-Filter' will be replaced with '-RecipientFilter" for the New-DynamicDistributionGroup command. Get-Mailbox is being used to verify that my filter is working correctly.

Best Answer

Try this command:

get-mailbox |where{$_.database -like 'DBname*'}|ft name,database

Related Solutions

Exchange 2010 OWA – a few questions about using multiple mailboxes

Thanks to everybody.

Finally, I've found a workaround for some of the described issues.

A few notes first. Opening multiple mailboxes in different browsers works, but that's inconvenient and not the way the users would like to go. Not many users have more than 1 browser installed. And in many cases there are corporate policies that restrict browsers that can be used.

We could open mailboxes in different tabs of one browser, but OWA doesn't permit us to do so (why?).

The simplest way I found is to use the bookmark panel. We bookmark OWA URLs of different mailboxes (e.g. https://server/owa for main page, https://server/owa/john@doe.com for other, etc). So now we have buttons over there that open different mailboxes in the same tab and with one click.

Not all the problems are solved, but that helped much though.

Powershell Exchange script returning inconsistent results – PS weirdness

I'm sort of thinking aloud here, but maybe this is related to this known issue with PowerShell 2.0 which has been resolved in PowerShell 3.0 CTP2. I know you don't explicitly call Add-Member, but the Select statement with a calculated field sort of accomplishes the same thing. It seems like they could be related. I ran some tests to compare PS 2.0 and 3.0 and 3.0CTP2 never once failed on your query. PowerShell 2.0 gave me different output every time.

If you can't install PS 3.0 yet, I've rewritten part of your script, but it doesn't have all of the columns that your original does. I'll let you tweak it to perfection. You'll just need to use Add-Member to add more properties.

Get-MailboxDatabase -IncludePre | foreach-object {add-member -inputobject $_ -membertype noteproperty -name mailboxdbsizeinGB -value ([math]::Round(([int64](get-wmiobject cim_datafile -computername $_.server -filter ('name=''' + $_.edbfilepath.pathname.replace("\","\\") + '''')).filesize / 1GB),2)) ; add-member -inputobject $_ -membertype noteproperty -name mailboxdbsizeinMB -value ([math]::Round(([int64](get-wmiobject cim_datafile -computername $_.server -filter ('name=''' + $_.edbfilepath.pathname.replace("\","\\") + '''')).filesize / 1MB),2)); add-member -inputobject $_ -membertype noteproperty -name numberofMailboxes -value (($_ | Get-Mailbox | Measure-Object).Count) -PassThru} | Sort-Object mailboxdbsizeinGB -Descending | format-table identity,mailboxdbsizeinGB,mailboxdbsizeinMB,numberofMailBoxes -Autosize

Keep in mind that if you install PS 3.0, you can still launch version 2.0 if you add the -version 2.0 parameter after the powershell.exe call.

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