Help for Powershell Newbie!

PowerShell Help
1

Hi all,

Apologies if this sounds very dull but as a PowerShell newbie I am not sure how to search for answers on the web so thought i’d put it to the community here.

Basically, i have a script that i would like to run daily to check for backup results and output the results to the event log and to the PowerShell window.

I have it running presently and it gets the correct results and outputs them via ‘write-host’ correctly but when writing the data to the event log it will only read the first result and bypasses the others.

My code looks like the below…

New-EventLog -LogName Application -Source "VeeamResults" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue > $null

Add-PSSnapin VeeamPSSnapin

$VbrJobs = Get-VBRJob | Sort-Object typetostring, name

Foreach($Job in $VbrJobs)
{
$JobName = $Job.Name
$Result = $Job.GetLastResult()

write-host $Job.Name finished with $Job.GetLastResult()

if($Job.GetLastResult() = "Success"){
Write-EventLog -logname Application -Source "VeeamResults" -EntryType Information -EventId 7777 -Message "All Veeam Jobs Succeeded"
}elseif($Job.GetLastResult() = "Warning") {
Write-EventLog -logname Application -Source "VeeamResults" -EntryType Warning -EventId 6666 -Message "Veeam Warnings Detected"
}elseif($Job.GetLastResult() = "Failed") {
Write-EventLog -logname Application -Source "VeeamResults" -EntryType Error -EventId 5555 -Message "Veeam Failures Detected"
}
}

The write-host output looks like this…

Backup to NAS finished with Success
DC02 Replication to Host 3 finished with Success
Replication to Host 3 finished with Warning

Apologies if its a bit of a mess, this is my first attempt with scripting.

If anyone can help me achieve the write-eventlog commands to look at each of the jobs and output accordingly i would be very grateful.

If anymore more information is needed from please please don’t hesitate to give me a nudge

Thanks in advance

Huw

 

2

A couple things to consider:

  1. Using Write-Host does just that; the output is directed to the current host, nowhere else, even if you save the Write-Host output to a variable and call it, it will return nothing. To use the output anywhere, use Write-Output.
  2. In the if/elseif statements, PowerShell doesn't understand = as an 'equal to' comparison operator. You need to use -eq. Check out https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.core/about/about_comparison_operators?view=powershell-6 
...
if ($Job.GetLastResult() -eq 'Success') {
...
3

You could also use a switch statement instead of if/elseif to make things little cleaner:

switch ($Job.GetLastResult()) {
    Success {
        $entryType = 'Information'
        $eventId   = 7777
        $message   = 'All Veeam Jobs Succeeded'
    }
    Warning {
        $entryType = 'Warning'
        $eventId   = 6666
        $message   = 'Veeam Warnings Detected'
    }
    Error {
        $entryType = 'Error'
        $eventId   = 55555
        $message   = 'Veeam Failures Detected'
    }
}

try {
    Write-EventLog -Name Application -Source "Veeam Results" -EntryType $entryType -EventId $eventId -Message $message
}
catch {
    # do some error handling
}
4

Hi Aaron,

Thank you for taking the time to explain the areas i had not got right, it’s very much appreciated.

Using the correct comparison operator has worked a treat, it’s amazing how such a fundamental feature of PowerShell scripting had passed me by

Thank you again.

Huw