PowerShell 2.0: One Cmdlet at a Time #11 Add-Computer

Continuing the series looking at new cmdlets available in PowerShell 2.0. This time we look at the Add-Computer cmdlet.

What can I do with it?

Join a local computer to a domain or workgroup

Example:

Join the current computer to the Test domain, place the computer account in the Servers OU and use the Restart-Computer cmdlet to reboot the computer to complete the process.

Add-Computer -domainname Test
-OUPath 'OU=Servers,DC=test,DC=local'; Restart-Computer

How could I have done this in PowerShell 1.0?

You could have used the Win32_ComputerSystem WMI Class and the JoinDomainOrWorkGroup method.

This script from the Poshcode script repository illustrates how you might use this method to join a computer to a domain.

function Set-Domain {
    param(    [switch]$help,
            [string]$domain=$(read-host "Please specify the domain to join"),
            [System.Management.Automation.PSCredential]$credential = $(Get-Credential)
            )

    $usage = "`$cred = get-credential `n"
    $usage += "Set-AvaDomain -domain corp.avanade.org -credential `$cred`n"
    if ($help) {Write-Host $usage;exit}

    $username = $credential.GetNetworkCredential().UserName
    $password = $credential.GetNetworkCredential().Password
    $computer = Get-WmiObject Win32_ComputerSystem
    $computer.JoinDomainOrWorkGroup($domain ,$password, $username, $null, 3)

    }

Alternatively you could use the command line tool netdom to join a computer to a domain:

NETDOM /Domain:Test /user:adminuser /password:apassword MEMBER
      Server01 /JOINDOMAIN

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