Configuration driven Active Directory management.
A Context is a container containing configuration settings, meta-information and custom logic that logically belong together. Contexts are then loaded - one Context alone or multiple ones together. Once loaded their combination makes up the desired state for the targeted dcs / domain / forest.
After loading is completed, you can use:
Test-AdmfDomain
Test-AdmfForest
Invoke-AdmfDomain
Invoke-AdmfForest
To either test an existing domain/forest or bring it into compliance with the desired state.
To create a new Context, run the following command:
New-AdmfContext -Name Contextname
This is the simple-most way to create a Context and will spawn the entire folder scaffold and some documentation to help getting started. To open the Context, run the following command:
Invoke-Item (Get-AdmfContext -Name Contextname).Path
You can then start inserting Components
When you then run:
Get-AdmfContext | Format-List
you can see that a Context has a variety of properties:
Version
Multiple versions of the same Context can exist at the same time.
When using Set-AdmfContext or using the UI Context prompt, only the latest version it can find is used.
Store
A Context Store is a path where the system knows to look for Contexts. For more details, see documentation for Context Stores.
Short form: A Context must be stored in one of those registered paths, in order for it to be used. You can add as many such paths as desired.
Path
The full path to the Context data.
Description
Documentation. Write something helpful to make sure users pick the right Context when it matters.
Weight
When loading multiple Contexts, they are processed in a specific order: The lower the number, the earlier they are loaded. In case of conflicting settings, the last Context to be loaded wins.
Author
Pure documentation.
Prerequisites
List of Contexts that must be loaded, in order for this Context to be allowed to load.
More details in Contexts (Advanced).
MutuallyExclusive
List of Contexts that cannot be chosen together with this Context.
More details in Contexts (Advanced).
Group
In the UI Context prompt, Contexts are grouped by this property.
There are three ways to load a context:
You could just start executing Test-* or Invoke-* commands against a domain.
If no Context has been selected for the target domain yet, it will automatically prompt you using a selection GUI.
After picking a set of Contexts once (using this or one of the other options), it will no longer prompt to select a Context anymore.
If you want to explicitly call the Context selection GUI (for example to reset the Context choice for a domain in a convenient manner), use the Set-AdmfContext command:
Set-AdmfContext -Interactive -Server contoso.com
This will override the current settings for contoso.com.
Sometimes precision matters, and sometimes user interactivity using the GUI is undesirable.
For that, you also use Set-AdmfContext, but explicitly state the Contexts to load:
Set-AdmfContext -Server contoso.com -Context Context1, Context2, Context3
Similar to using the GUI, this will also import the latest version of the specified Contexts.
If you want to explicitly control which version of a Context from which Store, you need to retrieve the Context-objects first using Get-AdmfContext, select the desired objects and specify them as input for the -Context parameter.
To delete a Context, simply remove its folder. There are no other related settings registered anywhere - once the folder is gone, the Context is gone.
You can follow up for more related details here: