Easily Splatting PowerShell with VS Code

So I always like to show splatting PowerShell commands when I am presenting sessions or workshops and realised that I had not really blogged about it. (This blog is for @dbafromthecold who asked me to πŸ™‚ )

What is Splatting?

Well you will know that when you call a PowerShell function you can use intellisense to get the parameters and sometimes the parameter values as well. This can leave you with a command that looks like this on the screen

Start-DbaMigration -Source $Source -Destination $Destination -BackupRestore -NetworkShare $Share -WithReplace -ReuseSourceFolderStructure -IncludeSupportDbs -NoAgentServer -NoAudits -NoResourceGovernor -NoSaRename -NoBackupDevices
It goes on and on and on and while it is easy to type once, it is not so easy to see which values have been chosen. It is also not so easy to change the values.
By Splatting the parameters it makes it much easier to read and also to alter. So instead of the above you can have
$startDbaMigrationSplat = @{
Source = $Source
NetworkShare = $Share
NoAgentServer = $true
NoResourceGovernor = $true
WithReplace = $true
ReuseSourceFolderStructure = $true
Destination = $Destination
NoAudits = $true
BackupRestore = $true
NoSaRename = $true
IncludeSupportDbs = $true
NoBackupDevices = $true
}
Start-DbaMigration @startDbaMigrationSplat
This is much easier on the eye, but if you dont know what the parameters are (and are too lazy to use Get-Help – Hint You should always use Get-Help ) or like the convenience and efficiency of using the intellisense, this might feel like a backward step that slows your productivity in the cause of easy on the eye code.
Enter EditorServicesCommandSuite by SeeminglyScience for VS Code. Amongst the things it makes available to you is easy splatting and people are always impressed when I show it
You can install it from the PowerShell Gallery like all good modules using
Install-Module EditorServicesCommandSuite -Scope CurrentUser
and then add it to your VSCode PowerShell profile usually found at C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.VSCode_profile.ps1
# Place this in your VSCode profile
Import-Module EditorServicesCommandSuite
Import-EditorCommand -Module EditorServicesCommandSuite
and now creating a splat is as easy as this.
Write the command, leave the cursor on a parameter, hit F1 – Choose PowerShell : Show Additional Commands (or use a keyboard shortcut) type splat press enter. Done πŸ™‚
So very easy πŸ™‚
Happy Splatting πŸ™‚

Some Pester Tests for SQL Defaults

When I was at PowerShell Conference EU in Hannover last month (The videos are available now – click here and the slides and code here) I found out about Irwin Strachans Active Directory Operations Test which got me thinking.

I decided to do the same for my usual SQL Set-up. Treating all of your servers to the same defaults makes it even easier to manage at scale remotely.

I am comfortable with using SMO to gather and change properties on SQL Instances so I started by doing this

        It 'Should have a default Backup Directory of F:\SQLBACKUP\BACKUPS' {
$Scriptblock = {
[void][reflection.assembly]::LoadWithPartialName('Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo');
$srv = New-Object Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Server .
return $srv.BackupDirectory}
$State = Invoke-Command -ComputerName ROB-SURFACEBOOK -ScriptBlock $Scriptblock
$State |Should Be 'F:\SQLBACKUP\BACKUPS'

This is the how to find the properties that you want

  ## Load the Assemblies
[void][reflection.assembly]::LoadWithPartialName('Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo');
## Create a Server SMO object
$srv = New-Object Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Server SERVERNAME

## Explore it
$srv|gm

## If you find an array pick the first one and expand and then explore that
$srv.Databases[0] | select *
$srv.Databases[0] | gm

I quickly found as I added more tests that it was taking a long time to perform the tests (about 5 seconds each test) and that it took an age to fail each of the tests if the server name was incorrect or the server unavailable.

I fixed the first one by testing with a ping before running the tests

   ## Check for connectivity
if((Test-Connection $Server -count 1 -Quiet) -eq $false){
Write-Error 'Could not connect to $Server'
$_
continue
}

The continue is there because I wanted to loop through an array of servers

I improved the performance using a remote session and a custom object

      Describe "$Server" {
BeforeAll {
$Scriptblock = {
[pscustomobject]$Return = @{}
$srv = ''
$SQLAdmins = $Using:SQLAdmins
[void][reflection.assembly]::LoadWithPartialName('Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo');
$srv = New-Object Microsoft.SQLServer.Management.SMO.Server $Server
$Return.DBAAdminDb = $Srv.Databases.Name.Contains('DBA-Admin')
$Logins = $srv.Logins.Where{$_.IsSystemObject -eq $false}.Name
$Return.SQLAdmins = @(Compare-Object $Logins $SQLAdmins -SyncWindow 0).Length - $Logins.count -eq $SQLAdmins.Count
$SysAdmins = $Srv.Roles['sysadmin'].EnumMemberNames()
$Return.SQLAdmin = @(Compare-Object $SysAdmins $SQLAdmins -SyncWindow 0).Length - $SysAdmins.count -eq $SQLAdmins.Count
$Return.BackupDirectory = $srv.BackupDirectory
$Return.DataDirectory = $srv.DefaultFile

The BeforeAll script block is run, as it sounds like it should, once before all of the tests, BeforeEach would run once before each of the tests. I define an empty custom object and then create an SMO object and add the properties I am interested in testing to it. I then return the custom object at the end

   $Return.Alerts82345Exist = ($srv.JobServer.Alerts |Where {$_.Messageid -eq 823 -or $_.Messageid -eq 824 -or $_.Messageid -eq 825}).Count
$Return.Alerts82345Enabled = ($srv.JobServer.Alerts |Where {$_.Messageid -eq 823 -or $_.Messageid -eq 824 -or $_.Messageid -eq 825 -and $_.IsEnabled -eq $true}).Count
$Return.SysDatabasesFullBackupToday = $srv.Databases.Where{$_.IsSystemObject -eq $true -and $_.Name -ne 'tempdb' -and $_.LastBackupDate -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-1)}.Count
Return $Return
}
try {
$Return = Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock $Scriptblock -ComputerName $Server -ErrorAction Stop
}
catch {
Write-Error "Unable to Connect to $Server"
$Error
continue

I was then able to test against the property of the custom object

   It 'Should have Alerts for Severity 20 and above' {
$Return.Alerts20SeverityPlusExist | Should Be 6
}
It 'Severity 20 and above Alerts should be enabled' {
$Return.Alerts20SeverityPlusEnabled | Should Be 6
}
It 'Should have alerts for 823,824 and 825' {
$Return.Alerts82345Exist |Should Be 3
}
It 'Alerts for 823,824 and 825 should be enebled' {
$Return.Alerts82345Enabled |Should Be 3
}

Occasionally, for reasons I haven’t explored I had to test against the value property of the returned object

          It "The Full User Database Backup should be scheduled Weekly $OlaUserFullSchedule" {
$Return.OlaUserFullSchedule.value | Should Be $OlaUserFullSchedule
}

I wanted to be able to run the tests against environments or groups of servers with different default values so I parameterised the Test Results as well and then the logical step was to turn it into a function and then I could do some parameter splatting. This also gives me the opportunity to show all of the things that I am currently giving parameters to the test for

   $Parms = @{
Servers = 'SQLServer1','SQLServer2','SQLServer3';
SQLAdmins = 'THEBEARD\Rob','THEBEARD\SQLDBAsAlsoWithBeards';
BackupDirectory = 'C:\MSSQL\Backup';
DataDirectory = 'C:\MSSQL\Data\';
LogDirectory = 'C:\MSSQL\Logs\';
MaxMemMb = '4096';
Collation = 'Latin1_General_CI_AS';
TempFiles = 4 ;
OlaSysFullFrequency = 'Daily';
OlaSysFullStartTime = '21:00:00';
OlaUserFullSchedule = 'Weekly';
OlaUserFullFrequency = 1 ;## 1 for Sunday
OlaUserFullStartTime = '22:00:00';
OlaUserDiffSchedule = 'Weekly';
OlaUserDiffFrequency = 126; ## 126 for every day except Sunday
OlaUserDiffStartTime = '22:00:00';
OlaUserLogSubDayInterval = 15;
OlaUserLoginterval = 'Minute';
HasSPBlitz = $true;
HasSPBlitzCache = $True;
HasSPBlitzIndex = $True;
HasSPAskBrent = $true;
HASSPBlitzTrace =  $true;
HasSPWhoisActive = $true;
LogWhoIsActiveToTable = $true;
LogSPBlitzToTable = $true;
LogSPBlitzToTableEnabled = $true;
LogSPBlitzToTableScheduled = $true;
LogSPBlitzToTableSchedule = 'Weekly';
LogSPBlitzToTableFrequency = 2 ; # 2 means Monday
LogSPBlitzToTableStartTime  = '03:00:00'}

Test-SQLDefault @Parms

I have some other tests which always return what I want, particularly the firewall rules which you will have to modify to suit your own environment

To be able to run this you will need to have the Pester Module. If you are using Windows 10 then it is installed by default, if not

  Find-Module –Name 'Pester' | Install-Module

You can find more about Pester here and here and also these videos from the conference
You can find the tests on GitHub here and I will continue to add to the defaults that I check.
This is not a replacement for other SQL configuration tools such as PBM but it is a nice simple way of giving a report on the current status of a SQL installation either at a particular point in time when something is wrong or after an installation prior to passing the server over to another team or into service

.