Database engineer with a passion for automation
I’ve recently found myself in a few situations where I’ve needed a certain lab setup to test something. Most scenarios these days I find myself firing up some docker containers to run demos or tests against. However, there are a few circumstances where you may need a little more than that, perhaps to test something…
I have just a quick tip for you today using the BurntToast module to notify us when a backup is complete. As DBAs there is always plenty to do, so we don’t want to have to sit and watch a long running script to catch the moment when it finishes. Usually what happens to me…
When you enact a configuration against a target node by default the process runs as the local system account. For most of your DSC resources this is fine. However, if you need to access something like a file share, active directory or user registry settings, you might start to run into permission issues. DSC Resources…
Sometimes it’s best not to ask why. However, if for some reason you have a number of triggers on tables within a database that you would like to temporarily disable, read on. I came across a situation recently while automating a process to refresh test environments where this exact scenario came up. As part of…
As a SQL Server DBA, aggregating data is first nature. I can easily throw together some T-SQL if I need to get the average sales per product group, or perhaps the number of employees hired per month. Yesterday I was writing a little PowerShell when I came across a problem. I needed to get the…
One of the biggest obstacles people face when using DSC is the troubleshooting and reporting pieces. There are options here to integrate with third party tools to create a more polished enterprise solution, but if you’re going with just straight DSC you might feel it is lacking some in this area. We do however have…
There have been a lot of blog posts and talk around upgrading your servers in the past. However, the chatter always seems to intensify when we start getting close to that dreaded ‘end of support’ date for your older Windows and SQL Server versions. I hope this isn’t the first place you are discovering this,…
One of the reasons I love PowerShell is the comment based help. This allows you to easily get documentation for functions directly within your PowerShell session. By using Get-Help for a function you can retrieve a description, information on the parameters, and examples of how to use the function. Recently I was adding help to…
Learn more about the building blocks for our #Powershell #DSC configurations.
Once we have crafted the perfect configuration and shipped it out to our target nodes, it’s time for the magic to happen. The MOF file that we created by executing our configuration is translated and enacted by the Local Configuration Manager (LCM) on each target node. The LCM is the engine of DSC and plays…