Powershell return mailboxes created within 7 days and resides on specified server.

Question

I need to automate applying exchange 2010 retention policy on mailboxes that have been created within 7 days. But i also need to exclude any non-US based servers as these are managed by IT overseas.

This is the preface to my script that allows for connection to exchange without any human interaction. Tis way i can schedule this in windows.

If (Test-Path C:\temp\mycred.xml) {$UserCredential = Import-CliXML C:\temp\mycred.xml}
else{
Get-Credential | Export-CliXml C:\temp\mycred.xml
$UserCredential = Import-CliXML C:\temp\mycred.xml}

$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri http://munprdcasht04.exchange.com/PowerShell/ -Authentication Kerberos -Credential $UserCredential
import-PSSession $Session

This is my current code to return mailboxes created within 7 days

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited| Where-Object {
($_.WhenCreated –ge ((Get-Date).Adddays(-7)))} | 
ft -auto Name,WhenCreated,Retentionpolicy,servername

This works for me but when i add a operator to limit mailboxes on specific servers, the command completes but does not print any results so I'm assuming there are 0 matching records.

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited| Where-Object {
   ($_.WhenCreated –ge ((Get-Date).Adddays(-7))) -and
   ($_.ServerName -contains "munprdmbxa") |
   ft -auto Name,WhenCreated,Retentionpolicy,servername

I haven't yet looked into actually enabling the retention policy as i am just trying to return my target data prior to diving into that adventure. I appreciate any help.

Answer 1

-contains in powershell returns True only when a string is exact matched. It acts more like -eq on a single string but also has ability to determine if an element is contained in a set.

e.g

$test = "aaa"
$test -contains "aaa"

$test = "aaa","bbb","ccc"
$test -contains "aaa"

The two above would return True, however, it would not return true for a sub-string and wild card doesn't work with it.

$test = "aaa.domain.com"
$test -contains "aaa"

$test = "aaa.domain.com"
$test -contains "*aaa*"

would return False

Thus if the server name is FQDN with domain suffix etc, the string would not be an exact match. If you use -like operation instead, you can match a subset of string within the given string with wildcard:

e.g:

  $test = "aaa.domain.com"
  $test -like "*aa*"

  $test = "aaa.domain.com"
  $test -like "aa*.com"

Will both return True

Thus using -like operator would more likely to avoid false negative results.