Search DHCP for a MAC Address with Powershell

Many many moons ago, we had a way to trawl through DHCP scopes utilising the netsh tool to find devices on our networks that match a certain MAC address.

Instead of relying on such an outdated tool that isn’t on Microsoft’s radar to keep alive, I’ve cobbled together a function in Powershell aptly named Get-Mac to perform some duty which added functionality (and no required to log onto DHCP hosts).

The above function will by default, utilise the Get-DhcpServerInDC to return all your DHCP servers, obtain all their scopes with Get-DhcpServerv4Scope, look through each scopes lease with Get-DhcpServerv4Lease and finally match any lease with the MAC address provided. If you have a large enterprise network, comprises of multiple AD sites, then you can narrow the field down with the -DhcpSite together with the DNS name of your DHCP server in that site. Both the -Mac and the -DhcpSite switches work on wildcard matches so you won’t need the full address or full name of the DHCP server. Hopefully your AD sites have a naming convention which should assist narrowing it down.

Let me know if you found this one useful in your SysAdmin’ing day or think of improvements.