Recover deleted Active Directory objects with the AD Recycle Bin PowerPack

Last week Microsoft made the announcement that Windows Server 2008 R2 reached RTM. Among the many cool new features provided with that release (Hello? PowerShell v2? Need I say more?), Microsoft has now added a recycle bin feature to Active Directory. The management interface provided by Microsoft for this feature is the command line, or more specifically, PowerShell. That’s great if you’re like me and you love to manage your infrastructure using PowerShell, but what if you prefer a GUI? Fortunately there is a solution for you too.

As Jackson Shaw suggested on his blog about a week ago, PowerGUI provides an admin console that allows you to create your own management UI that is layered on top of PowerShell. This admin console can be extended with PowerPacks, which are essentially add-ins that provide additional user interface elements in PowerGUI that invoke PowerShell script when clicked. All you need to do is add the user interface elements you want and then provide the scripts to power those elements, managing the Active Directory Recycle Bin objects or anything else you need to manage. Or alternatively you can check to see if someone on the PowerGUI Community like myself has already created a PowerPack with the functionality you are looking for.

In the case of the Active Directory Recycle Bin, you’re in luck. I just finished creating the first release of a new PowerPack that is designed to allow you to manage any objects in your recycle bin. You can find the Active Directory Recycle Bin PowerPack by following the hyperlink here or by going directly to http://www.powergui.org and browsing into the Active Directory subcategory in the PowerPack Library. This PowerPack includes the following features:

View the contents of the recycle bin, including hierarchies
Restore individual items in the recycle bin (recursively or not) to their original location
Restore individual items in the recycle bin (recursively or not) to a specified location
Permanently delete objects in the recycle bin (recursively or not)
Empty the contents of the recycle bin
Modify the number of days that the recycle bin is configured to retain objects and the number of days that objects are to be kept in a tombstone state before permanent deletion

If you would like to see a demo of the Active Directory Recycle Bin PowerPack, watch this screencast:

If you prefer watching a high resolution version of the screencast, you can watch it in flash format here or on YouTube directly in HD format here.

This is the initial release of this PowerPack and it contains a good amount of new functionality. If you are experimenting with the Active Directory Recycle Bin feature, please take a look at this PowerPack and provide any feedback you have so that we can continue to provide improvements that are valuable to you and others in future releases.

Thanks for listening!

Kirk out.