Export Installed Updates in Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2

There is a quick command to export in a nice CSV format all installed updates in a Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2 system:

1. Open a command prompt

2. Type: wmic qfe get /format:csv >C:\updates.csv

What is the benefit of it? This is a way to build a Changelog to track the changes performed in the system. Each Month or Scheduled update 'day' export the changes, so you can see the history of applied patches.

Find the Shares from your DFS Namespace

DFS Namespace information can be easily exported to a nice XML file with the command:

dfsutil root export \\domain\namespacename C:\Export.xml

But now you have a XML file, which is not the best file type to work with and check important info. Basically what I will show you is a small script in Powershell that parses the XML and return the ONLINE targets sharename, but you can adapt to return the info you need.

# Parsing XML from Namespace
[xml]$dfs = Get-Content output.xml
$output = @()
foreach ($link in $dfs.Root.Link)
{
    if ($link.Name -match "DEEI\\Groups")
    {
        $user = $link.Name.Split("\")


        foreach ($target in $link.Target)
        {
            $shareName = $target.get_InnerXml()
            if ($target.state -eq "ONLINE")
            {       
                $output+=$sharename
            }
        }
    }
}       
$output | Out-File '.\OUTPUT-SHARE.TXT'

The small script above returns all shares which are ONLINE and output them to the OUTPUT-SHARE.TXT. It takes as input the file 'output.xml' which is the xml from the namespace.

Feel free to adapt it. Please let your comment.