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Category: Powershell

Comparing Configuration of Two SQL Server Instances

Published 2024-07-25 by Kevin Feasel

Jana Sattainathan checks the labels on these bottles:

A lot of times, you have nearly identical database servers for an application running in Production, Test and Development but you may notice performance differences between them for the same data/queries that you could not attribute to any reason since CPU, Memory, Disk etc., may all be identical.

This is, strictly speaking, a comparison of configurations rather than data differences, indexing, and the like. Nonetheless, it’s useful to make this sort of comparison just to ensure that your instances have your desired state configuration.

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Using Powershell to Browse Azure Capabilities

Published 2024-07-22 by Kevin Feasel

Kay Sauter does some digging:

In a nutshell, Azure follows a structure called the Azure Resource Manager (ARM). Unfortunately, ARM is not human-readable, so you need to a tool to be efficient in using it. There are quite some tools available, and from Microsoft, there is Azure Bicep, Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell. Since I have done some DBA stuff in the past, and I am a fan of dbatools (created by the team here), I find PowerShell the most convenient tool to use and suspect that many will see it the same way if they are using dbatools.

Click through for the post. As of right now, the images are broken, but if you open them in new tabs and remove the extraneous “browsing-azure-with-powershell/” in the URL, you’ll be able to see those images.

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Measure-Object in Powershell

Published 2024-07-11 by Kevin Feasel

Patrick Gruenauer counts the ways:

The Measure-Object cmdlet counts objects. But it can do even more. We can calculate the sum, the average and much more. In this blog post I show a few examples with Measure-Object. Let’s dive in.

It’s a fairly straightforward cmdlet but it has a lot of use, being a combination of something like wc in Linux as well as collecting basic statistics on objects.

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Performing a Ping Sweep in Powershell

Published 2024-06-21 by Kevin Feasel

Vlad Drumea goes poking around:

This is a brief post containing a a piece of code that I use to do a ping sweep and resolve host names in PowerShell on a /24 subnet.

A /24 subnet refers to the last octet (segment of numbers) in an IP, and it ranges from 1 to 254.
This means that if you provide 100.100.100 to the $FirstThreeOctets variable, you’ll end up pinging every IP between 100.100.100.1 and 100.100.100.254.

This is where I say “Hey, go check out nmap.” I also say “Hey, don’t install nmap on your work machine unless you have explicit approval, so that you don’t get an unexpected visit from security.” Which is something I saw once and decided that wouldn’t be the life for me. But seriously, nmap is an extremely powerful network discovery tool.

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Automating SQL Server Installation via Powershell

Published 2024-06-19 by Kevin Feasel

Vlad Drumea performs an installation:

In this post I cover a script I’ve been using to automate SQL Server installation with PowerShell in my home lab.

As opposed to my previous blog post that demos the creation of a SQL Server Developer edition container, this installs a full-fledged SQL Server instance.

Read on for an overview of the script, from where you can download it, and how it works.

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Exporting Multiple Databases Concurrently via SqlPackage

Published 2024-06-18 by Kevin Feasel

Jose Manuel Jurado Diaz has a script for us:

This week, I’ve been working on a service request case where we need to export multiple databases using SqlPackage. Following, I would like to share my lesson learned to export  simultaneous several databases, saving the export files to the F:\sql folder and the logs of the operations to the F:\sql\log folder.

Few recommendations when performing these exports:

Click through for those recommendations and the script. The cynic in me would add a third tip: make sure your databases are small, or else SqlPackage won’t work so well.

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The CLEAN Block in Powershell

Published 2024-06-14 by Kevin Feasel

Mike Robbins takes us through some relatively new functionality:

PowerShell, a powerful scripting language and automation framework, provides features that enhance script development and execution. Among these features is the clean block, a lesser-known yet beneficial component in PowerShell functions. This article explores the clean block, its purpose, and how to use it effectively in PowerShell scripts.

Read on to learn more about the block and how it works.

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Exporting SQL Server Query Results to an HTML Table

Published 2024-06-11 by Kevin Feasel

Vlad Drumea builds a table:

In a previous post, I’ve covered how to import and query HTML table data in SQL Server, so I figured it makes sense to also show ho to export SQL Server query results to an HTML table using PowerShell and dbatools.

This is really similar to how the HTML report from PSBlitz is generated. The differences being that PSBlitz doesn’t rely on dbatools and there’s a bit more formatting and some JavaScript involved.

Click through for a piece-by-piece breakdown of the script and Vlad’s commentary.

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