How to reclaim space from deleted files on windows server deduplication volume

Windows server has great deduplication functionality allowing for increased usable capacity on non-operating system volumes, by performing block level deduplication to increase storage efficiency. This is particularly useful for storing data such as backups, which often involves minimal changing data, so a prime candidate for effective deduplication.

The problem often encountered with deduplication volumes is that when files are deleted, the space is not immediately reclaimed by the operating system. A "garbage collection" process needs to be run in order for the deduplication engine to reclaim this space.

Thankfully, this is incredibly easy to do and can be done from a powershell command prompt - here's the command you need to run;

start-dedupjob -type GarbageCollection -full -path e: -FastStart $true

Be sure to change the -path variable from E: to whatever drive you wish to run the garbage collection on. Also note that depending on the size of your volume, the garbage collection can take some time to initiate and complete, even with using the -FastStart switch.

You can check the progress of your deduplication jobs by running the command

get-dedupjob

Microsoft Teams - The term is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet..

If you get an error message like the one below when attempting to issue commands like "connect-microsoftteams" - it's because you haven't got the MS Teams cmdlets installed

Connect-MicrosoftTeams : The term 'Connect-MicrosoftTeams' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.

At line:1 char:1

To install the Microsoft Teams Powershell cmdlets, enter the command below. Make sure you run this from an elevated/administrator powershell prompt

install-module -name MicrosoftTeams -force

If you don't run it as administrator, you'll get a message like this;

install-module : Administrator rights are required to install modules in 'C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules'. Log on to the computer with an account that has Administrator rights, and then try again, or install 

'C:\Users\username\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules' by adding "-Scope CurrentUser" to your command. You can also try running the Windows PowerShell session with elevated rights (Run as Administrator).

The installation may take a minute or two to complete, you can confirm the module has been installed by running the following command

import-module "MicrosofTeams"

Then run the command

get-module

A list of available modules will be displayed which should include MicrosoftTeams like the screenshot below

get-module command output showing MicrosoftTeams module available

Microsoft Teams - Powershell Administration Commands

 Microsoft Teams has a powershell module available that allows you to perform just about all Teams management tasks using a script. This is very convenient for bulk operations, like creating lots of teams and keeping team memberships up to date - especially since the Teams web admin interface can be quite slow and cumbersome.

Here's a quick guide on some of the most common commands and uses

Install Microsoft Teams Powershell Module

Use the command below to install the Microsoft Teams powershell cmdlets

install-module -name MicrosoftTeams -force

Create a Team

I like to create new teams by using a variable ($newteam) - this makes additional tasks easier since you can reference the unique group ID for the new team directly from the $newteam variable.

$newteam = new-team -displayname "Test Team" -mailnickname "Test-Team" -owner "user@domain.com"

Update the properties for the display name, mailnickname (can't have spaces) and the team owner

Add a User/Member to a Team

If you've created the team like I have above and used a variable like $newteam, you can then use the properties for this variable for other tasks like this

add-teamuser -groupid $newteam.groupid -user "user@domain.com"

Add an additional Owner to a Team

add-teamuser -groupid $newteam.groupid -user "user@domain.com" -role owner

Remove User/Member from a Team

remove-teamuser -groupid $newteam.groupid -user "user@domain.com"

Querying Exchange Mailboxes with Powershell Pt 2

In my previous blog post, I outlined some methods to query Exchange mailboxes using the get-mailbox cmdlet. Whilst the information obtained using this cmdlet is very useful, it does not contain all the information that is available for an Exchange mailbox.

There is another cmdlet available called Get-MailboxStatistics. It is used/applied in the same way as the Get-Mailbox cmdlet, but contains different fields or properties, and therefore, different information relating to the mailbox.

If you run the command Get-MailboxStatistics -identity "MailboxName" | fl it will display the mailbox statistics for that particular mailbox.

This information includes;

• Associated item count (ie. number of items within the mailbox)
• Deleted item count
• Last logon/logoff time
• Total size of items
• Total size of deleted items

So, for a practical example that you could potentially use to query this information. Let's say you want to query all your mailboxes to identify those that have more than 20,000 items within them. You could run the following command;

Get-Mailboxstatistics | Where {$_.ItemCount -gt "20000"} | Select DisplayName

You could replace $_.ItemCount with any of the other properties that are contained within the Get-MailboxStatistics cmdlet.

If you want the query to return more than just the DisplayName field for objects that match your query, you can add them after DisplayName and separate them with a comma (,), or if you want to return all properties then remove | Select DisplayName altogether.

You can also add | Export-CSV-path "C:\Export.csv" -notype to the end to export your query results to a .csv file.