If you work in the world of SQL Server you’ve almost certainly heard of dbatools. For those who haven’t, it’s an open source PowerShell module for automating literally hundreds of tasks on your database instances.
What the rest of you may or may not know, is that the creators of dbatools have been working on a book to make it easy to get started with the tool – Learn dbatools in a Month of Lunches
If you’re saying to yourself, it all sounds good, but I don’t really know PowerShell that well, I’m not confident how I work with modules, open source and otherwise, it all seems like a lot to learn for things I can do already another way… then I highly recommend you check out this book.
Written by Chrissy LeMaire and Rob Sewell this book takes you through the steps to get going before leading you through many of the tasks that dbatools can help you with.
Speaking for myself, I’m not a PowerShell afficionado, I’d struggle to write more than a few basic commands without googling the syntax. Following this book though made it really easy to get going, and I learnt a lot of PowerShell fundamentals along the way. It was certainly a lot easier than if I’d had to figure out things for myself, and it felt like I was aquiring a more complete knowledge that will stand me in good stead. Within a very short time of accessing the live book in the browser, I was set up and running commands with dbatools.
The book isn’t complete yet, but is being published through the Manning Early Access Programme, which means you can access chapters as they are published. Each chapter is a nice bite sized chunk you can consume fairly quickly and painlessly. Everything is explained really clearly – and there are comprehensive code samples you can work through.
If you’re a DBA who is aware of all this stuff, not sure you really need it, but have a niggling doubt that you’re getting left behind and probably should get around to learning it at some point, grab the book and start working through a few chapters. You’ll be operating with confidence in no time.
You can find out more about the book and access some preview content through the Manning website:
Learn dbatools in a Month of Lunches
If this post has helped you, consider buying me a coffee to say thanks.