Enterprise Wide PST Import - Get the script / Set up

This is a Part 11 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.

I put these scripts together over time and having to go back and look at all the moving parts makes me realize how much time went into this.

Get the module here.

So follow these few simple steps and you're ready to import PST files!

First you'll need the permissions:

Granting the permission to do PST file Import and Exports is explained here. Just assign yourself the role.

As for finding and copying PST files, well you might need a little more umph. I have an account that has Domain Admin privilages. That account is for Admin duties only. (I have separate 'normal' account I use for everything else.) My admin account also gives me access to all the computers where PST files may be hiding, since Domain Admins is in the Local Administrators group on each computer.

You could use a service account which has all these privilages and run these functions using that account. I tend to not like using service accounts because you lose accountability.

Create the Share:

Exchange PST file import and export cmdlets require a share. Find a server that can handle the amount of PST files you plan to import and create a share. Grant the "Exchange Trusted SubSystem" group full access to this share. We named our share "PSTImports."  It's why all the folder structuture begins there.

We were lucky enough to have a utility server lying around that has 1TB of space on one of the drives. We use the server for reporting and performance history. And there was plenty of free space to handle importing 800G of PST files in one pass. We never got that high, and we even added pieces into the script that examines the free space of our server to choke PST copies in case we ran short of space. You should adjust this setting for your server. It is $Script:FreeSpaceLimit and is set in MB.

You'll want to create some other directories within this share:

• ^Completed
• ZZSavedQueueLogs

Other directories are created during the import for each user being processed to hold their PST files. After the Import, the PST files are replaced with results of the Import in CSV, then moved to the ^Completed directory for historical reasons. It's named with the leading ^ for sorting purposes. It will always be at the top ;)

ZZSavedQueueLogs is just a backup queue files. A backup is made each time you run the functions. I can't tell you how many times having those backed up has saved me some extra work.
I check this directory -- when I think about it -- and kill any older stuff.

Add PSTUtils As A Module and Optionally add to profiles:

Log on the server with the account that has Local Administrator rights and create this directory:
C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules\PSTUtility
And copy the PSTUtility module there.

When you load up powershell then "get-module -listavailable", you should see the PSTUtility as a module you can import. Just use the command "import-module PSTUtility"

Add this to your $profile so you have it available each time you log in.
I use this command all the time: "notepad $profile" make my changes and then save. Restart powershell to load the new profile changes and you are ready to go.

Edit the Module: look over and change the $Script: level variables to suit your particular environment.

Configure Initial IP/Computer searches: (Optional)

When we get a request for a user's PST files to be imported, we usually just get a name. I'd love to have the computer name so I can determine if the Outlook Version on that computer will indeed support the Archive Mailbox feature. It's not always supplied. So we ask. "I don't know. He took his latop with him and he is gone for a few days." Let's just say, it's not always easy to get. Even if you ak the users and tell them how to find it, its a hit and miss proposition.

One can find a user's log in information in the RPC logs of your CAS servers. But theres a lot of information in those logs ... lots!  So I wrote a small utility that grabs what I call 'Connect Logs' - this is an subset of the RCP logs where OUTLOOK.EXE does a status of "Connect."  This entry holds the Version of Outlook connecting, legacyExchangeDN, the Mode (Cached or Classic), and the IP address. Looking thru this subset of logs vs the full logs is a time saver when looking up 50 people and trying to find the information on them.

Of course, users don't always 'connect' every day. They leave Outlook running for days and days. So their connect log may be there but it was last Thursday. I tried various combinations of how to search for this data and how far back to look etc.

I finaly just decided to get 30 days worth of these connect entries and use those for all my reporting and PST file imports. I have a script that runs every night at 2AM and gathers this subset of logs. It's "Get-CASConnectLogEntries" And you can copy that piece out, or add the 'import-module PSTUtils" to the profile of whatever is running the script. I have it running seperate in a batch file I have for overnight reports.

The directory location I keep these is in a different place where I keep all my reporting information. You can of course modify the variable and keep it where you like. I use these connect files for other reports too. There's lots of information in those logs.

I should add, running Get-CASConnectLogEntries at 2 AM is optional. If you know the computername each time you do Add-PSTImportQueue, you can bypass setting all this up. When you know the computer name, you can query the computer for all the information you need.

That's all there is to setting up everything.

Once you have these pieces in place, the hard part starts. Finding people to migrate to the Archive Mailbox.

Next, I'll be posting a list of all the Functions and how I use them.



Introduction: The Beginings
Part 1: Script Requirements
Part 2: Add-PSTImportQueue
Part 3: Process-PSTImportQueue
Part 4: Some Tools we added
Part 5: Set-PSTImportQueue
Part 6: About PST Capture
Part 7: More PST Import Tools
Part 8: Using RoboCopy
Part 9: Morning Status Report
Part 10: Using BITS Transfer
Part 11: Get the script / Set up
Part 12: The Functions