Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Enterprise Wide PST Import -- Set-PSTImportQueue

This is Part 5 in a series of posts about my experience tackling the migration of PST files.
The first post in the series is here.
The next post in the series is here.

As we progressed with importing PST files and processing more and more users, we found we were having to Repair PST files or mark them to be skipped manually. Some users were saying - please wait, don't process me yet, wait for 2 days.
This was becoming a pain more than anything, so I sat down and decided to do something about it.

Right about this same time, I had decided we had too many little scripts scattered about everywhere and I wanted them all in one place easily accessible. And all of these scripts shared some functions. So I created a Module and started to migrate all the scripts there. Well it's not a real Module, but more like a repository for all the functions and scripts we used with the PST migrations.
Then I added two new functions: Set-PSTImportQueue and Remove-PSTImportQueue
(I've only used remove once, when a user decided to not have their PST imported.)

Set-PSTImportQueue is just a way for me to change settings on a Import Job without loading up Excel and making mistakes. Here are the options:

  • -DisplayName -- The person we are working on. This allows you to work on all the jobs associated with this name. You use it with the other options to change settings, like -JobStatus, etc.
  • -JobName -- Isolate this update to a particular job
  • -JobStatus -- Change the JobStatus -- reset back to New, etc. Sometimes it useful to change this status to something the script doesn't recognize, just to skip this job, or set of jobs.
  • -IP -- This is the computer Name, sometimes you may not have known it during the add, this is just a way to add the computername to the jobs. We use this entry later when moving PST files to the local PC
  • -OrgUNCName  -- There are cases where the user moved the file, and rather than doing a new discovery, just change the location.
  • -MRServer  -- In our 2 AD site world, having the wrong MR server setting can make the jobs just sit in the queue. We have dedicated CAS servers for this process, one in each site. If the Archive database is in Site 1 and an MRServer in site 2 get chosen by mistake, or the database moved, you need to reset the job status and change this to a MRServer in Site 1.
  • -SkipReason -- A Place to log why a PST file was skipped, "Age, Size, Backup, Sharepoint List, Corrupt, Missing, etc" This shows up on the Final Report.
  • -ClientVer -- A place to log the client version, mainly for records and reports.
  • -ClientVerOK -- The is true or false. By default Process-PSTImportQueue will not process jobs that have ClinetVerOK set to false. It just skips them. Sometimes setting this to false on all jobs for a user allows you to skip this user for now.
  • -ProcessFileOff -- As it sounds, changes the ProcessJob to $false -- skipped jobs are set to false. You might want to set the SkipReason at the same time.
  • -ProcessFileOn -- As it sounds, changes the ProcessJob to $true
  • -CompleteQueueFile -- The PSTCompleteQueue file needs maintenance from time to time, so this setting allows you to work on that file. The default is the PSTImportQueue
Remove-PSTImportQueue just takes two options:
  • -DisplayName -- This will remove all jobs with this users name.
  • -JobName -- This will remove this particular Job

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