Getting Started

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• PowerShell 5.1 (Windows Management Framework 5.0 or above) on every farm server. SPSWeather uses class-based reporting types that require WMF 5.0+.
• CredSSP configured (see below) so the script can remote into each farm server as the service account.
• Administrative privileges on the server that runs SPSWeather (required to create the SPSWeather Windows Event Log on first use and to call most SharePoint cmdlets).
• An SMTP server reachable from the run server (only needed with -EnableSmtp).
• A service account that can reach the farms; its credential is stored in Config\secrets.psd1 (see Configuration).

Configure CredSSP

Option 1: Manually configure CredSSP

You can configure CredSSP with the relevant PowerShell cmdlets (and, if needed, group policy for the allowed delegate computers).

Option 2: Configure CredSSP through a DSC resource

You can use the xCredSSP DSC resource and include it in your SharePoint server configurations:

xCredSSP CredSSPServer { Ensure = "Present"; Role = "Server" }
xCredSSP CredSSPClient { Ensure = "Present"; Role = "Client"; DelegateComputers = $CredSSPDelegates }

$CredSSPDelegates can be a wildcard (such as *.contoso.com) or a list of specific servers.

Installation

1. Download the latest release and unzip it to a directory on your SharePoint Server. The archive extracts straight to SPSWeather.ps1, Config\ and Modules\ (the SPSWeather.Common module ships inside Modules\).
2. Copy Config\CONTOSO-PROD.example.psd1 to your own config (e.g. Config\contoso-PROD.psd1) and edit it for your environment. See Configuration.
3. Register the scheduled task while signed in as the service account so the credential is encrypted under that account:

.\SPSWeather.ps1 -ConfigFile 'Config\contoso-PROD.psd1' -Install -InstallAccount (Get-Credential)

Important

Run the -Install step as the same account you pass to -InstallAccount. The credential is stored in Config\secrets.psd1 as a DPAPI SecureString that only that account, on that machine, can decrypt at run time.

First run

Trigger a one-off run (with email) to validate the setup:

.\SPSWeather.ps1 -ConfigFile 'Config\contoso-PROD.psd1' -EnableSmtp

The HTML report is written under Results\ and, with -EnableSmtp, emailed to the configured recipients. Lifecycle events are written to the SPSWeather Windows Event Log.

Next step

Continue with the Configuration page.

Change log

A full list of changes is in the change log.