Making sure your OUs have Deletion Protection

Deletion Protection is a feature that prevents an OU from being accidently deleted. This is a feature of Windows Server 2008. For those servers upgraded from Windows Server 2003, Deletion Protection is not turned on. Until now the only way to turn on the Deletion Protection is manually. Well, now you can use PowerShell V2 to take care of this for you.

Windows PowerShell V2 comes installed on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. For previous versions of Windows, you can download PowerShell V2 from here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968930

You will also need to make sure the Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell is installed. This can be found as a feature in the Remote Server Administrator Tools.

The First step is to launch the PowerShell environment. If you do not have an icon on the screen, you will find it is Start \ All Programs \ Accessories \ Windows PowerShell \ Windows PowerShell

Once the Shell loads, you need to add the Active Directory module by typing Import-Module ActiveDirectory and pressing Enter.

First off, look for OUs that do not have Deletion Protection turned on:

Get-ADOrganizationalUnit – Filter * -Properties ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion | Where {$_.ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion –eq $False} | FT DistinguishedName

If any OUs are listed, you may want to enable the Deletion Protection. To do this:

Get-ADOrganizationalUnit – Filter * -Properties ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion | Where {$_.ProtectedFromAccidentialDeletion –eq $False} | Set-ADOrganizationalUnit –ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion $True

Running the first command will verify that the protection is turned on.

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Jason Yoder, MCT

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