Latest articles and updates from the dbatools community
Chrissy LeMaire
Nov 17, 2017
I have to wake up at 3am to go to the airport and start a solid two weeks of vacation, so I’ll keep this incredibly short. Tonight, we released picklerick. It has 323 super useful, tested commands but what’s especially great about this release is that now, we get along better with your SQL Servers. We no longer hang out longer than we’re supposed to and dbatools creates connections that are part of the SQL Connection Pool.
Read moreChrissy LeMaire
Oct 25, 2017
A few months back, dbatools wizard Fred created a prompt that was so awesome, I never had to use Measure-Command again. It was cool enough that a number of us ended up adopting it, so I figured I’d share. Performance is important to us so that’s what the prompt is all about. Nothing fancy, just the current working directory and how long the command took to run. As you can see in the screenshot above, the first time Get-DbaDatabase runs, it takes 740 ms.
Read moreChrissy LeMaire
Oct 18, 2017
Before Apple created the App Store and Microsoft created the Microsoft Store, Linux users basked in the glory of how easy it was to install programs or packages from centralized stores using Package Managers and remote repositories. For years, power users requested a PowerShell version of apt-get and in 2014 Microsoft delivered with the introduction of the PowerShell Gallery and an accompanying module that allowed users to just Install-Module to install new modules, PowerShell’s version of a package.
Read moreSimone Bizzotto
Oct 16, 2017
Yet another post from the dbatools team, I’m Simone Bizzotto. Hit me up on Slack, I’m @niphlod. The Problem Even the accidental DBA has to manage those pesky SQL Server Updates. Be it a bug fix, a security fix, a “new features” release, well… it needs to be installed. Put auditor in the mix: what build are you on ? Put your bosses’ boss in the mix: is the farm still officially supported by MS ?
Read moreChrissy LeMaire
Oct 8, 2017
We’ve been working on our precon and we’re super excited to share the agenda with you! In Case You Missed It dbatools teammates Constantine Kokkinos, Rob Sewell and I will be presenting a full-day session at PASS Summit in Seattle, WA, USA on Tuesday, October 31, 2017! Our precon will have a lab and we’re nearly at capacity — you’ll need to sign up now to ensure a spot. Major Contributors Shawn Melton, Sander Stad and Brandon Abshire will help proctor the docker-based SQL Server lab.
Read moreChrissy LeMaire
Sep 26, 2017
We’ve had a lot of people ask about the best way to schedule dbatools tasks in SQL Server Agent. I recently switched Agent from Task Scheduler and here’s what I learned. tl;dr for those of you who just want to skip the commentary of pros vs cons and head straight to the tutorial, click Scheduling PowerShell Tasks using Agent’s CmdExec. Task Scheduler Task Scheduler was decent but ultimately, not as cool as SQL Server Agent for a number of reasons:
Read moreChrissy LeMaire
Sep 13, 2017
Last month, I went through an audit that consumed every waking moment of my life. I would literally wake up, get ready for work, grab the three meals my wife made for me, go to work for 16-18 hours, come back, sleep then wake up, rinse, repeat. I tried to stay as healthy as possible by prioritizing sleep, taking vitamins, eating vegetarian meals that were easy to digest and drinking tea (and not energy drinks) as an energy source.
Read moreChrissy LeMaire
Sep 12, 2017
Not a Snoozefest You may be thinking “oh man, a post about testing. booooring!” I used to, too, but have since come around and now find that creating tests is actually a lot of fun 🎉. I even have a personal goal that that every command touched by a PR gets a corresponding test. That way, we know the command works as expected and will continue to with each and every merge.
Read moreChrissy LeMaire
Aug 3, 2017
Constantine and I recently presented for 24 Hours of PASS and the video is now online! Our goal in this intro-level session was to help make PowerShell feel approachable and demonstrate its immediate value with commands like Get-DbaLastGoodCheckDb, Test-DbaSpn and Invoke-DbaDiagnosticQuery. Slides | Demo Code Entire Presentation | Demo Portion of Presentation | Included SPN Sample Video If you’re already familiar with the project and would like to bypass the intro, you can jump right to the demo.
Read moreChrissy LeMaire
Jul 26, 2017
If you work in a secure environment or your computers cannot access the Internet for any reason, you can still install dbatools with ease by downloading the zip from a workstation that does have Internet access 🎉 And now that our module is digitally signed, you can keep your Execution Policy set to AllSigned, too. There are essentially 3 ways to get the zip of our module From PowerShell Gallery using Save-Module From PowerShell Gallery by downloading from powershellgallery.
Read moreChrissy LeMaire
Jul 4, 2017
Well, first we’d like to give a big ol’ shoutout to our teammate and new PowerShell MVP Rob Sewell! Rob is one of the most visible members of the SQL PowerShell community, an officer in the PASS PowerShell Virtual Group and an outstanding evangelist & Pester test maker for dbatools. We’re all so excited about Rob’s well-deserved recognition – love you, buddy! ❤️ Bagofbobbish Beta Testing Before the official release of bagofbobbish to master and the PowerShell Gallery, we need help finding bugs.
Read moreChrissy LeMaire
Jun 14, 2017
How cool is this? dbatools Major Contributor Constantine Kokkinos and I will be presenting a full-day session at PASS Summit in Seattle, WA, USA on Tuesday, October 31, 2017! Our precon will have a lab so seats are limited — you’ll need to sign up now to ensure a spot. Rob Sewell will also be joining us as a guest presenter and it looks like teammates Sander Stad and Shawn Melton will help proctor the lab 😊
Read moreChrissy LeMaire
Jun 13, 2017
Today’s article is part of T-SQL Tuesday. T-SQL Tuesday is the brainchild of Adam Machanic. It is a blog party on the second Tuesday of each month. Everyone is welcome to participate. This month’s T-SQL Tuesday, hosted by Grant Fritchey (b|t), is all about Databases and DevOps. What Is DevOps? Recently, I took an Intro to DevOps Engineering class in my Masters program at Regis.edu. I actually found one of our first assignments to be one of the most challenging: define DevOps.
Read moreShawn Melton
Jun 9, 2017
While we are still hard at work getting everything ready for the 1.0 release, thought I would share something I figured out with VS Code. If you are not familiar with VS Code you can check the link out on how it is used to contribute to dbatools. Pester One of the big initiatives we are working fearlessly on for the module is getting the Pester test added and cleaned up.
Read moreChrissy LeMaire
May 4, 2017
In the latest release, we gained 8 new commands and 5 new contributors to the dbatools master repository for a grand total of 53! We even added a few new Major Contributors to the team. Thanks to all who have joined in to make the awesomest toolset for SQL Server DBAs — we’re now offering the community nearly 190 quality commands! Export Commands Export-DbaScript Exports scripts from SQL Management Objects.
Read moreChrissy LeMaire
Apr 28, 2017
My favorite vacation ever was the time I visited Steve Jones’ wardrobe. It bore a striking resemblance to Maui and even came with complimentary piña coladas. The year was 2009. The sun was out, Colbie Caillat was on the radio and I hadn’t mastered PowerShell yet, so I was left feeling frantic about the health of my SQL Server estate. Now, though, I’ve got dbatools which allows me to quickly check the things that concern me most.
Read moreApr 12, 2017
Recently, Constantine, Rob, Aaron, and I got together to record a podcast for SQL Data Partners with Steve Stedman and Carlos L Chacon. We talked mostly dbatools, the community, open source projects and then I answered some SQL Family questions. Today, the SQL Data Partners team released the podcast, along with a corresponding transcript. Spoiler Alert: I know you’re all wondering what my superhero power would be, so here’s my answer 😊
Read moreChrissy LeMaire
Apr 11, 2017
So, there’s a World Backup Day, but what about World Restore Day? We’ve all been told over and over, backups are useless if they can’t be restored and verified. Grant Fritchey has even yelled it at us a couple times. Using dbatools to Automate Tests dbatools makes it crazy easy to automate your backup testing, as demonstrated by Sander Stad, Rob Sewell and Anthony Nocentino. It even works on Linux!
Read moreChrissy LeMaire
Mar 16, 2017
In the latest release, we gained 22 new commands and 2 new contributors to the dbatools master repository for a grand total of 48! We even added a couple new Major Contributors to the team. Thanks to all who have joined in to make the awesomest toolset for SQL Server DBAs — we’re now offering the community 180 quality commands! 1.0 Reminder On March 1, 2017, we initiated a new command freeze.
Read moreClaudio Silva
Mar 8, 2017
This time it’s not Chrissy, not Drew, not Stuart, not even Shawn…today it’s Claudio writing to you! 😊 With our recent release, “twentyfiveschmeckles (v0.8.694)”, we introduced the command Find-DbaStoredProcedure. This command allows us to find which stored procedures have a specific string or regular expression. While that may not be groundbreaking, what is new are the features we provide and the speed at which we return them. Use Cases Let me explain at least two cases where I think this command is (very) useful:
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