Hello, PowerShell people! I’ve never posted on PowerShell.org before and so I feel as though I owe you a quick introduction before we dive into the tip I’d like to share with you.

My name is Thomas Rayner and I am a Microsoft MVP for Windows PowerShell. I’m also a systems administrator and degree program instructor. I volunteer a fair bit of time as the President of the Edmonton Microsoft User Group (EMUG). EMUG has a more in depth bio for me on their About Executive page in case you want to know more about the person behind the avatar. If you’re in the Edmonton area, I strongly recommend signing up for our mailing list so you can come attend the great events we put on.

I’m pretty active on Twitter at @MrThomasRayner and I post bi-weekly on my own blog, workingsysadmin.com.

Ok, tip time!

If you’re an IT pro of any kind, it would be difficult to not bump into Active Directory from time to time. If you’re a reader of PowerShell.org, you most likely administer Active Directory in some capacity. Inevitably, as an AD admin, you’re going to find yourself asking “Which server is holding which FSMO role right now?” and “Isn’t there a way to do this in PowerShell?”. _If you’re scratching your head right now wondering what a Flexible Single Master Operation (FSMO) role is, please check out this prerequisite reading: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/197132. _

Of course there’s a way to do this in PowerShell! Let’s work through a solution. Firstly, we need to import the Active Directory module. Stuck already?

Import-Module ActiveDirectory That was easy. Now, let’s get digging. There’s a cmdlet called Get-ADDomainController which seems like a good place to start since we know our FSMO roles are going to be on Domain Controllers (DC). Let’s take a look at what gets returned for each DC.

`Get-ADDomainController -Filter * | Select-Object -First 1 | Get-Member TypeName: Microsoft.ActiveDirectory.Management.ADDomainController Name MemberType Definition

Contains Method bool Contains(string propertyName) Equals Method bool Equals(System.Object obj) GetEnumerator Method System.Collections.IDictionaryEnumerator GetEnumerator() GetHashCode Method int GetHashCode() GetType Method type GetType() ToString Method string ToString() Item ParameterizedProperty Microsoft.ActiveDirectory.Management.ADPropertyValueCollection Item(string propertyName) {get;} ComputerObjectDN Property System.String ComputerObjectDN {get;} DefaultPartition Property System.String DefaultPartition {get;} Domain Property System.String Domain {get;set;} Enabled Property System.Boolean Enabled {get;} Forest Property System.String Forest {get;set;} HostName Property System.String HostName {get;} InvocationId Property System.Guid InvocationId {get;} IPv4Address Property System.String IPv4Address {get;set;} IPv6Address Property System.String IPv6Address {get;set;} IsGlobalCatalog Property System.Boolean IsGlobalCatalog {get;} IsReadOnly Property System.Boolean IsReadOnly {get;} LdapPort Property System.Int32 LdapPort {get;} Name Property System.String Name {get;set;} NTDSSettingsObjectDN Property System.String NTDSSettingsObjectDN {get;} OperatingSystem Property System.String OperatingSystem {get;} OperatingSystemHotfix Property System.String OperatingSystemHotfix {get;} OperatingSystemServicePack Property System.String OperatingSystemServicePack {get;} OperatingSystemVersion Property System.String OperatingSystemVersion {get;} OperationMasterRoles Property Microsoft.ActiveDirectory.Management.ADPropertyValueCollection OperationMasterRoles {get;} Partitions Property Microsoft.ActiveDirectory.Management.ADPropertyValueCollection Partitions {get;} ServerObjectDN Property System.String ServerObjectDN {get;} ServerObjectGuid Property System.Guid ServerObjectGuid {get;} Site Property System.String Site {get;set;} SslPort Property System.Int32 SslPort {get;} `That’s a lot of stuff. We can see if a DC is an RODC, which forest and domain it’s in, the OS, its site… and its OperationMasterRoles! Looks like we’re in business. The following code just about accomplishes our goal.

Get-ADDomainController -Filter * | Select-Object -Property Name, OperationMasterRoles The above script will get all the DCs in the environment and return the name of the DC and the FSMO roles held. That’s great, but, what if you have dozens of DCs and looking at a big list of DCs isn’t appealing? There must be a way to get _only _the DCs that actually have FSMO roles, right?

Get-ADDomainController -Filter "OperationMasterRoles -like '*'" | Select-Object -Property Name, OperationMasterRoles Of course there is! We don’t even need to pipe our output into another cmdlet like Where-Object because we can simply adjust our filter on which DCs we return in the first place. “OperationMasterRoles -like ‘*’” translates to “Domain Controllers whose OperationMasterRoles field have a value in them” which doesn’t include the DCs whose OperationMasterRoles field are null (because they’re not holding any FSMO roles).

That’s it!

Locating your Active Directory FSMO roles is just that easy.

Thank you, PowerShell.org for letting me post on your blog. I’ve got tremendous respect and admiration for the people who contribute to this website and the PowerShell community. PowerShell.org is an incredible resource for people of any experience level to improve their skills and learn new things. The world is a better place for having resources like this one.