Powershell

Ok, so besides my wonderfull adventures in Docker, i’m on a different quest as well. I’m trying to get familiar with Powershell. 

Long story short, if you want to manage a system quickly, easily and without too much RSI, use Powershell. It does take a bit of time to get used to, but it is highly addictive.

I started out with the MVA video’s from Jeffrey Snover and Jason Helmick.  It’s fun and you get the basics.

As a SQL Server user, my main interest is off course in managing SQL Server stuff. At this point, i’ve only scratched the surface a bit, but right there is a true gem, psdbatools. 

To get to grips with Powershell i started out writing an installer script. The reason i was writing this has to do with my job. I work at Axians and we provide training for a number of tools. For now, we haul around a set of laptops to practice on, but we want to change that setting to a cloud service. Clients can login on a cloud environment, play around and follow the training. But we need to be able to provision the servers. That’s where the Powershell comes along. It’s the easiest way to install and configure a server without too much manual interference. 

I proudly posted my first efforts on twitter and before i knew it, Chrissy Lemaire asked if i would be interested in upgrading the code so it could be used in her dbatools. Honoured to be asked i jumped at the opportunity and my learning curve is, when time permits, very very steep. 

So, if you want to learn about Powershell, get coding! And, if possible, try and create something new or check if you can improve existing code. the people behind dbatools are very helpfull, give constructive feedback and allow you to learn. A lot.

Thanks for reading!