Active Directory Forest/Domain Discovery Script

So, I was recently working with a customer on an AD DS migration to Windows Server 2016 and needed to get a bunch of information from their current forest/domain infrastructure to write the new design. Getting the information needed isn't necessarily the easiest thing to do.

The first thing I did, as any good consultant would, I hope, was to read their AD DS design document, which fortunately they had, although outdated. As we all know, or should know, what was designed isn't always what was deployed or what the state of the environment is several years later. In the end, the design document only gave me part of the story, but I needed more.

Next, I began 'interviewing' people who managed and maintained the infrastructure, and quickly discovered that the information received wasn't always accurate, for one reason or another. Being a 'trust and verify' kind of person, I started looking into things myself and found that it was taking too long to poke around with the AD tools...way too long.

Bring on PowerShell!!

I quickly put together a script that gathers some of the information I was looking for. I say 'some' of the information because I have other scripts that gets the rest of it, but those are for another day.

Disclaimer-- There may be 'better' or ‘more efficient’ or ‘cleaner’ or ‘whatever’ way to do what this script accomplishes. I know that, but this works and does what I needed it to do.

You can get the latest version of the script here.

Hope it helps someone, anyone.

T-