Retrieve all Windows Server roles with SysKit

Today we had an interesting use case that demonstrates how you can use our new SysKit PowerShell reports to create a usable and comprehensive server inventory. I wanted to get a list of all the servers in our production domain that have the Hyper-V Windows Server role installed.

Well, that’s easy peasy with SysKit, and in this blog post, I am going to show you how you can do just that. In SysKit 2016 R2, we have introduced a new feature called PowerShell reports, which allows you to create any kind of inventory from your servers in computers. Here is what I needed to do in order to gather data about my servers (or, even more simply, you can import the report definition):

1. Fire up SysKit UI and navigate to Inventory > PowerShell Reports
2. On the ribbon, click on the Create button. A new PowerShell report wizard dialog will show up.
3. Paste the following script:

   Import-Module ServerManager
   Get-WindowsFeature | Where {$_.Installed -eq $true -and $_.Depth -eq 1} | Select Name, DisplayName

   The script gets the main Windows features that are installed, along with their names and display names.

   

4. Validate the script on a server, preferably the local server where SysKit is installed.
5. The Script Results screen shows a preview of the results of your script.
   
6. On the next screen, the wizard allows you to choose the columns you want to display and the column you want to use as identity (Check “Name” column)
7. Select computers for which you want to execute this report. I am going to run the report against just the Servers group, but if you have a mixture of workstations and servers in your environment, you can easily configure groups in the Administration section of SysKit.
8. Once your report has been created, you just need to run the Inventory Snapshots Job. Once data is gathered, you will get a fancy-looking inventory report with your servers and installed Windows Server roles.

Our PowerShell reports are a really powerful and easy way of collecting information about your infrastructure.