How to get powershell System.Data.DataTable row count

Question: i'm working with Powershell System.Data.DataTable to get values from a SQL Server to generate a report for DBAs. the report is sent via email to the DBA team. As part of the email subject - I'd like to add the row count as a summary - so the DBAs don't need to always click into the email - i.e they only need to click in if there is a row count greater than 0. How can I get the row count from System.Data.DataTable ? Answer: When you use the Powershell Powershell System.Data.DataTable , certain properties are available . One... Read more →

How to use the SQL Assessment API through Powershell

Microsoft released a SQL Assessment API module , available to Powershell . What is the SQL Assessment API? It's a new method to assess the SQL Server configurations against a set of SQL Server best practises. The SQL Assessment API is available through the SMO and a bunch of new Powershell cmdlets. It's currently in Public Preview. I've installed the SQL Assessment API and started thinking about how to apply to multiple server.s The availability of the rules via Powershell is a massive plus. This raises fantastic opportunities for automation and inclusion into regular sql server health checks or certification... Read more →

How to specify encoding when creating Powershell text file using Out-file

Question: I've deployed a Powershell script - which includes a process to dump out a resultset to a csv file. I'm having an issue where the file is saved with encoding type Unicode - whereas I want the file to be saved as ANSI . This is a Powershell code snippet , using the Powershell cmdlet Out-File (some_input) | select * -ExcludeProperty RowError, RowState, HasErrors, Name, Table, ItemArray | ConvertTo-Csv -NoTypeInformation | Select-Object -Skip 1| Out-File -filepath myoutputfile.txt When I open the file in Notepad - and attempt a Save As - the encoding displays as Unicode . How can... Read more →

How to get the Active Directory groups membership for user with Powershell

Question: How can I get the Active Directory groups for a specific user using Powershell? I'm facing a problem where a user is getting a failed login to a SQL Server. This SQL Server has multiple Active Directory groups attached to it - but I don't have visibility to the members of the groups. I know I can use the Get-ADGroupMember powershell cmdlet , which would give the member list of a specified Active Directory group, but this would be time - consuming . Is there a Powershell based method to specify the domain user and return the list of... Read more →

How to list Windows users with Powershell

Question: How can I use Powershell to list out Windows users? Are there Powershell cmdlets which can report on Windows users ? Answer: There are "out of the box" Powershell cmdlets which will support the requirement . How you apply the powershell cmdlets will depend on how much detail is required. Here are some examples: --return local groups Get-localgroup --return all members of a group - in this example the Administrator group Get-LocalGroupMember -Group "Administrators" --Get the local users Get-Local User --SID of a local group (Get-Localgroup Administrators).SID These are some basic examples to extract Windows users information with Powershell.... Read more →