How to master Mount-Diskimage in Powershell

Question: I want to set up a script to Mount a Disk in an automated way utilising Powershell ? The image exists as an ISO on a network path and requires to be made available as a drive letter & path. It doesn't have to be a dedicated drive letter - just the next letter after the highest. So for example , if I already have E:, F:,G:  than I want it to be set as I: . 

I have some code in the script which can identify the drive letter assigned 

Answer: The Powershell code below will create the temporary drive letter and mount the image. 

 %SystemRoot%\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe  -Command  Mount-DiskImage  -ImagePath  '"\\my_network_path\Microsoft\SQL2017\SW_DVD9_NTRL_SQL_Svr_Ent_Core_2017_64Bit_English_OEM_VL_X21-56995.ISO"'

This is similar as if you were attempting to Mount a disk image ISO  via the manual method.

If you want to dismount the drive - you can either restart the server or alternatively use the Dismount-Image powershell cmdlet. 

PowerShell  -Command  Dismount-DiskImage  -ImagePath  '"\\my_network_path\Microsoft\SQL2017\SW_DVD9_NTRL_SQL_Svr_Ent_Core_2017_64Bit_English_OEM_VL_X21-56995.ISO"'

These sort of techniques can be used in automated procedures - where you could complete repeatable tasks with code. For example if you were building multiple servers - rather than staging the code on the server - you could mount the disk image and install from this point - saving you disk space and keeping the process streamlined

Read more on Powershell and SQL Server install techniques 

Powershell script for unattended install of SQL Server standard patches