Dbatools

Introduction To PowerShell For The DBA Part 2

In Part 1 of this series we began to look at how you can leverage PowerShell as a DBA and there was a brief discussion about automation. Today you will experiment with the DBATools command Copy-DbaLogin and learn about Out-Gridview and the -whatif switch.

Let’s suppose you have one, or more logins you need to get from one SQL instance to another.  Perhaps you are setting up a new test environment for SQL Server 2019 and you need  to move this login to that environment. Maybe this is one node of a SQL Server AlawaysOn Availability Group and you need to get this login, with its SID, on each node of the AG. Below you see I have a screenshot of a login called mysqltestlogin. It’s on a SQL Server 2017 instance.

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Introduction To PowerShell for the DBA Part 1

Automating Tasks With PowerShell

What we’re really talking about in this series is automation, specifically by using PowerShell. Now, in simple terms, automation is about removing the human, manual element in doing tasks. Why should you care about that? Automation will provide the following benefits:

• Automation saves you time
• Automation provides consistency
• Automation results in reduced and easier troubleshooting
• Automation can use your current inventory of T-SQL Scripts
• Automation is easier to get started with than you think
• Automation skills are a mostly required skill for career advancement

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SQL Server Install Guide Part 2

In part 1 of this series, I discussed pre-installation steps.  There are many guides available online for the actual installation process so I’m not going to give a step by step installation guide here.  Rather, I’m going to focus on what to think about after the install is complete.

Recent versions of SQL Server will now go out and download additional content for you before the install actually happens so you’re not left on the base, RTM release of the product.  However, one thing to consider post installation is still, are you on the latest patch?  How do you know?  Where can you go to compare the version number of the SQL Server you installed to what is currently available?  Well, you can look back at this post to answer that question.

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Setting Min and Max Server Memory Setting

Configuring the min and max server memory settings for SQL Server has a number of things to consider prior to making changes. Before we jump into those considerations, let’s learn what the min and max server memory options do.

What does the min server memory option do?

The min server memory option specifies the minimum amount of memory utilized by the SQL Server buffer pool. It may seem that this should mean that when SQL Server starts it will automatically grab the memory equal to the min server memory value. However, this is not what happens. Instead, SQL Server acquires system memory as needed to process a workload. Consequently, if the SQL Server workload remains low, it is possible that the min server memory value is never reached. However, once it is reached SQL Server will not release an amount of memory that would take it below that minimum setting.

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