Powershell

Introduction To PowerShell For The DBA Part 3

Hello dear reader! This is the third post in a series to help you get started automating things with PowerShell. You will be looking at how to start and stop SQL Server using PowerShell as well as setting the Max Server Memory setting, measuring free disk space and more.

This series is just an introduction to PowerShell and basic functionality you might be interested in as a SQL Server Database Administrator or as a System Administrator responsible for SQL Server. Because it is introductory I don’t have examples of long scripts that do a series of complex things as part of these posts. What the series does have are one or two line scripts that are still powerful and help you explore what is available to you in PowerShell.

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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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3 Ways to Restore SQL Server Databases

This is likely the last in a series of three posts about backups and restores.  My aim with this series has been to give you an idea of the options available and a basic start on using those options. I’m not trying to go in-depth on the subject of backups and restores.

Today will be about getting you going on the concept of restoring databases in SQL Server.  I’m using a local install of SQL Server 2017 on my desktop PC to demonstrate these techniques.

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5 Ways to Make SQL Server Backups

Last time we discussed 5 backup types for SQL Server.  Now I want to introduce you to five ways to make backups in SQL Server. I can’t possibly explore all the options available with each of these six methods. There is a lot to cover for even a “simple” topic like backups.

Method 1: Using the SSMS GUI to Make a SQL Server Back up

For those readers who like the SSMS GUI, there is good news.  SQL Server Management Studio offers a fairly straightforward method for backing up a database. Once you connect to the SQL Server instance containing the database you want to back up, left click on the “+” sign next to the Databases folder.  Then right click the name of the database you want to backup, choose Tasks, then choose the Backup option in the fly out menu.

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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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