How do i search AD for names like the ones in the “Computers” OU and then move those computers over to their proper location?

Question

I would like to search Active Directory for a computer with a name like WEB2309 that is currently in "Computers" OU then move it to where other computers have like names.

This what i have currently:

Takes First member of Computers group

$strFirstMember = get-adgroupmember "Computers"

Cuts off the last number of the first member

$strFirstMember-1 = $strFirstMember.Substring(0,$strFirstMember.Length-1)

Searches for that on AD with a wildcard on the end to find like names

Get-ADObject -Filter { CN -like "$strFirstMember-1*" ObjectClass = "Computer"}

Now i need to move firstmember to the location that is found

Answer 1

The following will collect all your computer which match WEB230* and assign them to variable $c

$c =  Get-AdComputer -Filter { CN -like "WEB230*"}

Moves all found computers to target OU

$c | Move-ADObject -TargetPath "ou=YourOu,dc=domain,dc=com"

and this will move just the first one, I'm not sure if this is what you mean by "move firstmember.."

 $c[0] | Move-ADObject -TargetPath "ou=YourOu,dc=domain,dc=com"

Answer 2

I personally prefer Quest Active Directory Cmdlets for AD scripting in Powershell.

This would be the command I use for moves, from a collection of machines already built in a CSV file:

Import-Csv "C:\toMove.csv" |`
    ForEach-Object {
    Get-QADComputer $_.Name |`
        Move-QADObject -NewParentContainer "OU=Computers,OU=Locked Computers,DC=com"
    }

In one step, you should be able to do something like this too:

$comparrisonPC = get-qadComputer "computerToUse"

get-qadComputers -Name "nameStructure*" |`
Where-Object {$_.CN -not $comparrisonPC.ParentContainerDN} |`
Move-QADObject -NewParentContainer "$comparrissonPC.ParentContainerDN"

I don't have a test domain to test it on, but it should work...

Answer 3

Building off what you already have, we get the computer, we strip the last character off of it, and then we get a list of all computers with a similar name. Once we have that list I took a substring of it based off the DistinguishedName property, stripping the name out of it just leaving the OU path. Then I grouped that, sorted the groupings by count to find the OU with the most computers in it with that similar name, and selected the first one. Then I told it to move the computer to that OU.

$strFirstMember = get-adgroupmember "Computers"
$strFirstMember-1 = $strFirstMember.Substring(0,$strFirstMember.Length-1)
$Complist = Get-ADComputer -Filter { CN -like "$strFirstMember-1*" }
$NewOU = ($complist|%{$_.DistinguishedName.substring($_.DistinguishedName.indexof(",")+1,$_.DistinguishedName.length-$_.DistinguishedName.indexof(",")-1)}|group|sort count -Descending|select -first 1).name
Move-ADObject $strFirstMember -TargetPath $NewOU