Exchange 2019 Built-In Scripts – Quick Blog Post

First, let me address why I haven’t written a blog post in a while. As of now I am still deep into producing quite a few Practical PowerShell books. I am the solo author on three books that I am aiming to get out by end of December. There is also a fourth book I am also working on, with a co-author (I am the co-author actually..), for April of next year. These books tend to take up gobs of my time. In the meantime, I am still producing my PowerShell Tips of the week to help those with PowerShell. So I was feeling a bit guilty about the time I was spending on those efforts and decided to put out a blog post today for my readers.
Built-In scripts for Exchange Servers are a topic I don’t usually cover as they have been around for quite some time with little to no change between versions. However, I was reviewing the content of some built-in scripts this week when I ran into some interesting observations on two of the scripts. One script should have worked in Exchange 2019 and one, to be honest, should not exist in Exchange 2019 anymore. So, I figured I could share my findings and see if anyone else had run into this and if not, then explain why these are an issue.

(1) Script – Export-ModernPublicFolderStatistics.ps1

This script does not work in Exchange 2019:

The problem revolves around these code blocks:

$script:Exchange15MajorVersion = 15;
$script:Exchange15MinorVersion = 0;
$script:Exchange15CUBuild = 1263;
$script:Exchange16MajorVersion = 15;
$script:Exchange16MinorVersion = 1;
$script:Exchange16CUBuild = 669;

And

$version = $server.AdminDisplayVersion;
$hasMinE15Version = (($version.Major -eq $script:Exchange15MajorVersion) -and
($version.Minor -eq $script:Exchange15MinorVersion) -and
($version.Build -ge $script:Exchange15CUBuild));
$hasMinE16Version = (($version.Major -eq $script:Exchange16MajorVersion) -and
($version.Minor -eq $script:Exchange16MinorVersion) -and
($version.Build -ge $script:Exchange16CUBuild));
if (!$hasMinE15Version -and !$hasMinE16Version)
{
$failedServers += $server.Fqdn;
}

So it seems the script was not updated for Exchange 2019 as the script was looking for valid Exchange 2013 and 2016 builds. This version check can be fixed with adjustments to allow for Exchange 2019 RTM and higher like so:

`
$script:Exchange15MajorVersion = 15;
$script:Exchange15MinorVersion = 0;
$script:Exchange15CUBuild = 1263;
$script:Exchange16MajorVersion = 15;
$script:Exchange16MinorVersion = 1;
$script:Exchange16CUBuild = 669;
$script:Exchange17MajorVersion = 15;
$script:Exchange17MinorVersion = 2;
$script:Exchange17CUBuild = 196;

And

`
$version = $server.AdminDisplayVersion;
$hasMinE15Version = (($version.Major -eq $script:Exchange15MajorVersion) -and
($version.Minor -eq $script:Exchange15MinorVersion) -and
($version.Build -ge $script:Exchange15CUBuild));
$hasMinE16Version = (($version.Major -eq $script:Exchange16MajorVersion) -and
($version.Minor -eq $script:Exchange16MinorVersion) -and
($version.Build -ge $script:Exchange16CUBuild));
$hasMinE17Version = (($version.Major -eq $script:Exchange17MajorVersion) -and
($version.Minor -eq $script:Exchange17MinorVersion) -and
($version.Build -ge $script:Exchange17CUBuild));
if (!$hasMinE15Version -and !$hasMinE16Version -and !$hasMinE17Version)
{
$failedServers += $server.Fqdn;
}

After those changes, the script works. When I did this, I saved the script as a new name so I knew it was one I modified. A caveat to this is that I do not know if this is supported, but I did get accurate results and experienced no PowerShell failures when running it. YMMV.

(2) DatabaseMaintSchedule.ps1

If I remember correctly, changing the maintenance schedule for a mailbox database has basically been ignored since Exchange 2013. This script is only really relevant to Exchange 2010. Since Exchange 2010 and 2019 cannot coexist, it seems pointless to have. I did notice that I could run the script and have it change the Database Maintenance Schedule and received no errors. Personally I think its time to retire or remove this script. The script has no warning or message to alert someone to this fact that this script is useless in Exchange 2019. At the very least, maybe a version check to prevent this from being run in Exchange 2019? What do you think?
Database Maintenance Schedule ignored:
Source – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/exchange/mailbox-databases-and-servers/Set-MailboxDatabase?redirectedfrom=MSDN&view=exchange-ps