Using PowerShell to Retrieve all Servers in a SharePoint Farm

I often have to perform maintenance or configuration activities on all servers members of a SharePoint farm suchs as archiving or parsing logs, recycling IIS application pools… While you could simply store all servers’ name in a plain text file, I always prefer a more dynamic way and as usual now, PowerShell will do the job.

Begin with loading the assembly…

[Void][System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SharePoint")

Then connect to the farm:

$spFarm = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPfarm]::Local

And finally populate an array with all servers:

$spServers = $spFarm.Servers|Select Farm,DisplayName,Address,Role

Now the problem with this array is that it also contains servers that are not real servers but rather “network names” such as the SMTP host for mail-out or the SQL database server name and instance. If you want to retrieve only server where SharePoint is installed and running, use this filter

$arrServers = $spFarm.Servers|Where {!($_.Role -eq 'Invalid' -and $_.Status -eq 'Online')}|Select Farm,DisplayName,Address,Role

Note: the Role will help you identifying a WFE from and application Server, for example. The address is the real host name used for network connectivity while the Display Name is, like its name suggests it, the text used for displaying the Central Admin.

And cut!

PS: Finally my “assistant director” Anthony (the Minghella of PowerShell, the Hopkins of automation or should I say, the Zuiker of scripting;)) has finally caught his digital pen to shoot ahem.. I mean write, his first post. Welcome online Antho!