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Category: Powershell

Setting Up a SQL Server Lab with AutomatedLab

Published 2020-03-04 by Kevin Feasel

Jess Pomfret looks at a very interesting Powershell module:

There is a fantastic PowerShell module called AutomatedLab that can enable you to easily build out a lab for the  specific scenario you need to test. Even better is the module comes with 70 sample scripts that you can start with and adapt to meet your needs.

The module gives you the option to work with Hyper-V or VMWare. I will say most of the examples are using Hyper-V, and that is what I’ll be using also.

For my lab I want a SQL Server 2019 instance joined to a domain, and a separate client machine that I can manage the SQL Server from. On the client I would need to be able to connect to the internet as I want to be able to download PowerShell modules from the gallery easily.

It’s about time for me to rebuild my lab, so I’ll need to check that out.

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Creating an Elastic Jobs Agent

Published 2020-02-27 by Kevin Feasel

Kate Smith continues a series on elastic jobs in Azure SQL Database:

Having laid the conceptual groundwork for Elastic Jobs in two previous postings (1, 2), I am now going to create an elastic job and associated credentials using PowerShell.  For this scenario, I have one or more databases with a table ‘T’ and statistics ‘tStats’. I want to enforce an update for these statistics every day. To do this, I need to check that my stats have been updated in the past day, and if not, update them. The T-SQL to update statistics on a table “T” with stats named “tStats” is simple:

Click through for the Powershell script.

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Searching for Functions in dbatools

Published 2020-02-26 by Kevin Feasel

Andy Levy wants to find a function in dbatools:

dbatools has a lot of functions. A lot. Over 550. There is a great command index on the website, and the documentation gets updated every time a new version is published. But sometimes, it feels like you can’t find what you need unless you already know the name of the thing you’re looking for. Other times, you might start writing your own wrapper around dbatools functions, or maybe start a new function from scratch, because it seems like the functionality you need isn’t there.

Read on to see how it works and a couple of examples.

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Displaying a Toast with Powershell

Published 2020-02-26 by Kevin Feasel

Jess Pomfret has some fun with dbatools and the BurntToast Powershell module:

I have just a quick tip for you today using the BurntToast module to notify us when a backup is complete. As DBAs there is always plenty to do, so we don’t want to have to sit and watch a long running script to catch the moment when it finishes.  Usually what happens to me is I kick off the script, move on to something else and then totally forget about it, perhaps until someone asks if it’s done yet. Oops. Well this tip will help avoid that.

Best used sparingly, but quite helpful when you’re working on a long-running task and need to get back to Spider Solitaire work.

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Finding Folder Sizes with Powershell

Published 2020-02-26 by Kevin Feasel

Jeffrey Hicks shows us a quick way to retrieve information on folder sizes:

It is simple enough to run Get-Childitem and pipe the results to Measure-Object.

But this can be often time consuming. The other drawbacks, besides typing is it takes extra work for format the results into something more user friendly. And if i want to include hidden files, I have to remember to use -Force with Get-ChildItem.

Cmdlets are nice and convenient. And I always recommend to beginner or even intermediate scripters, if there is a cmdlet to use over the .NET Framework, use the cmdlet. But there are always exceptions and as you grow in expertise, you’ll realize there are times when going directly to the .NET Framework is a better choice. Which is what I have done.

Click through for the solution.

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Using Pester with .NET Powershell Notebooks

Published 2020-02-24 by Kevin Feasel

Rob Sewell has Powershell in notebooks, so of course Rob is going to write tests:

Using Pester to validate that an environment is as you expect it is a good resource for incident resolution, potentially enabling you to quickly establish an area to concentrate on for the issue. However, if you try to run Pester in a .NET Notebook you will receive an error

Click through for the reason why this error appears and a workaround until it’s fixed for real.

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Reading Azure DevOps Results in Powershell

Published 2020-02-20 by Kevin Feasel

Mark Broadbent doesn’t let the lack of an official Powershell module get in the way:

In my post Using Azure CLI to query Azure DevOps I explained how you can use the Azure CLI to query Azure DevOps so you can obtain useful information on builds, releases, and other useful information. The solution required a certain level of skill with JMESPath to manipulate your result sets -which as explained can be a little confusing.

However once you have a bare bones result set, it is likely that you will want to consume these results in a more user-friendly environment such as PowerShell so that you can build upon these data sets. I thought this would be an easy thing to do, but as you will see below it was anything but.

Read on for some thoughts and a sample script.

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Working with Unicode in Powershell

Published 2020-02-20 by Kevin Feasel

Mark Wilkinson takes us through various problems when working with Unicode text in Powershell on Windows:

This post is inspired by an odd situation I ran into in a project I’m working on. I have the need to pull specific revisions of files out of a git repository, save those files, and then execute the contents. This all worked fine until it didn’t. I received some complaints that unicode characters in the files we getting mangled, and sure enough they were. But why? In this post I’ll explain what happened to me, and ways you can avoid it yourself.

Read on to learn how.

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Installing .NET Notebooks for Powershell

Published 2020-02-18 by Kevin Feasel

Max Trinidad shows us how to install .NET Interactive on Linux:

In Windows, just takes a few steps to set it up. For Linux, it takes a few extra steps but still is quick enough to get you started.

For Windows, follow the instructions found at the .NET Interactive page in Github.

For Linux, for Ubuntu 18.04, follow the blog post “Ubuntu 18.04 Package Manager – Install .NET Core“.

Basically, in either operating systems, you install:

– Install the .NET Core SDK
– Install the ASP.NET Core runtime
– Install the .NET Core runtime

Click through for the step-by-step instructions. Once you have it done, you get not only Powershell but also F# and C#.

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.NET and Powershell 7 Notebooks

Published 2020-02-10 by Kevin Feasel

Rob Sewell forwards on some exciting news:

A notebook experience for PowerShell 7 that sounds amazing. This will enable a true cross-platform PowerShell Notebook experience which is lacking from the Python version as it uses Windows PowerShell on Windows and PowerShell Core on other OS’s

The first thing I asked was – Will this come to Azure Data Studio. I got an immediate response from Sydney Smith PowerShell Program Manager saying it is on the roadmap

Two notes of importance. First, these are kernels for Jupyter Notebooks and not Azure Data Studio or VS Code (yet). Second, Rob buried the lede on the most important language in there: F#. You can also read the full announcement from Maria Naggaga, to which Rob linked.

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