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Category: Powershell

Database Integration Testing With Pester

Published 2019-02-01 by Kevin Feasel

Ust Oldfield shows us an example of how we can perform database integration testing using Pester:

In a previous post, I gave an overview to integration tests and documenting integration points. In this post, I will give a practical example of developing and performing integration tests with the Pester framework for PowerShell. With a data platform, especially one hosted in Azure, it’s important to test that the Azure resources in your environment have been deployed and configured correctly. After we’ve done this, we can test the integration points on the platform, confident that all the components have been deployed.

The code for performing integration tests is written in PowerShell using the Pester Framework. The tests are run through Azure DevOps pipelines and are designed to test documented integration points. The PowerShell scripts, which contain the mechanism for executing tests, rely upon receiving the actual test definitions from a metadata database.

Click through for the script.

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ASCII Block Text In Powershell

Published 2019-01-28 by Kevin Feasel

Roman Gelman shows how to use the Write-Ascii cmdlet to build ASCII art-style text in Powershell:

The ​​​Write-Ascii function from my PowerShell MS-Module module can draw custom text in the PowerShell console using ASCII fonts. This article’s cover was drawn by the Write-Ascii function too. The below code does the same, it writes end of line (EOL) character or emulates the Enter key.

Read on for examples and enjoy.

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Powershell Core On Ubuntu Using Docker

Published 2019-01-28 by Kevin Feasel

Max Trinidad has an Ubuntu VM running Powershell Core on Docker:

While learning about Docker Container, I notice that is much easier to installed on a Linux system. In Windows, Hyper-V is a requirement to install Docker, and specially if you want to use the “Windows Subsystem in Linux” WSL feature, there’s more setup to complete. So, I’m not using Hyper-V, I’m using VMware Workstation.  To keeping simple, I created an Ubuntu 18.04 VM using VMWare Workstation.

You can find the Docker CE installation instructions in the following link.

If you’re using Ubuntu 18.04. make sure to install Curl, as it isn’t included in the OS.

Click through for instructions on how to set this up and join the three layers club (which is not quite the three commas club but close).

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Automating Azure SQL Database Log Analytics

Published 2019-01-25 by Kevin Feasel

Joey D’Antoni shares a Powershell script which automates deployment of Log Analytics for Azure SQL Database:

However, I’m working with a customer who is building their own service based on Azure SQL Database, and I have fully automated their database deployment process. I wanted to take this a few steps further and add the SQL Analytics step as part of our deployment. This was harder than I expected it to be—the code samples in the books online post above weren’t working in my environment. And furthermore, once I got it working, I was having failures in my Azure Automation Runbook once I got the code running in the PowerShell ISE (I was having issues using VS Code on my Mac).

Joey takes us through the problems and provides a working script.

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Highlighting Words In Powershell

Published 2019-01-24 by Kevin Feasel

Roman Gelman has a function which lets you highlight words in Powershell text:

Despite of the Write-HostHighlight function intended to work with a text (it highlights a substring within a string), it can operate with objects too. Generally, it accepts any input from any cmdlet. The output is not always looks nice, but it works! Let see some examples.

This looks a bit like newer versions of grep which highlight matched patterns. I like it.

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Recreating Dropped Azure SQL Managed Instance DBs

Published 2019-01-22 by Kevin Feasel

Jovan Popovic has a script to re-create an Azure SQL Managed Instance database which you might accidentally have dropped:

Azure SQL Database – Managed Instance is fully-managed PaaS service that provides advanced disaster-recovery capabilities. Even if you accidentally drop the database or someone drops your database as part of security attack, Managed Instance will enable you to easily recover the dropped database.
Azure SQL Managed Instance performs automatic backups of you database every 5-10 minutes. If anything happens with your database and even if someone drops it, your data is not lost. Managed Instance enables you to easily re-create the dropped database from the automatic backups.

Click through for the Powershell script.

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Get Windows Failover Cluster Errors

Published 2019-01-21 by Kevin Feasel

John Morehouse walks us through the Get-ClusterLog cmdlet in Powershell:

Sometimes you know that a problem occurred, but the tools are not giving you the right information.  If you ever look at the Cluster Failover Manager for a Windows Cluster, sometimes that can happen.  The user interface won’t show you any errors, but you KNOW there was an issue.  This is when knowing how to use other tools to extract information from the cluster log becomes useful.
You can choose to use either Powershell or a command at the command prompt.  I tend to lean towards Powershell. I find it easier to utilize and gives me the most flexibility.

Click through for an example, including of a method which filters out everything but error messages.

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Non-Administrative Powershell Remoting And January 2019 LCU

Published 2019-01-17 by Kevin Feasel

Emin Atac tests out a security change made in the January 2019 Latest Cumulative Update for Windows:

My first concern was: if it’s a security vulnerability, what’s its CVE? The blog post answer is: CVE-2019-0543 discovered by James Forshaw of Google Project Zero

My second concern was twofold. Is the chapter about A Least Privilege Model Implementation Using Windows PowerShell published in the PowerShell Conference Book impacted by this change? Should I stop deploying Windows 10 at work because the LCU of January 2019 breaks my loopback scenario?

The answer is no and explained by the blog post Windows Security change affecting PowerShell
you would not be affected by this change, unless you explicitly set up loopback endpoints on your machine to allow non-Administrator account access

Read on for some testing and digging into what works when and why.

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Getting Reporting Services Installation Details With Powershell

Published 2019-01-10 by Kevin Feasel

Josh Smith wants to find every installation of SQL Server Reporting Services on a machine:

This is one of those posts so I never have to google this again (one hopes). Here is the PS code to pull back a set of details about every SSRS instance installed on a server including the SSRS instance name, & the first URL port it is running on, the service name and the name of the report server database etc.

Click through for the Powershell script.

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