From the course: Automating SQL Server with dbatools

Introducing dbatools - SQL Server Tutorial

From the course: Automating SQL Server with dbatools

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Introducing dbatools

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- [Instructor] Have you ever dreamed of an easier way to manage your SQL Server estate? Are you tired of clicking through GUIs for every instance, every database, or every job just to complete your morning checks? If so, follow us on this journey as we learn all about how dbatools can make your life easier. Dbatools is an open source PowerShell module written and maintained by the community. It was first created by Chrissy LeMaire back in 2014 when she needed to migrate some SharePoint instances, so she wrote a long PowerShell script to migrate all the pieces and parts to the new instance. Chrissy was talking to some folks in 2015 about this project, and they convinced her how useful it was and that she should turn it into a module and put it up on GitHub. This allowed people to contribute and use the code for their own migrations. Over time, the module has grown to include over 650 different functions that can help you manage your SQL Server environment. Basically everything you can do in SQL Server Management Studio, you can also do with dbatools. For example, check in on whether your SQL Server agent jobs are all running successfully. Ensuring this community module is enterprise-ready is very important. We want to make sure that you can take this into your workplaces and start scripting and automating your work with confidence. Therefore, we have security and reliability checks built into the development and deployment processes. This is vital to ensure users can depend on the module with every new release. One of the ways that the dbatools team ensures reliability is by running pester tests. Pester is a PowerShell testing framework that allows us to ensure that our code does what we think it should. Tests are created for every function, and whenever someone creates a pull request against the module, all those tests run to ensure nothing is broken. This means that we can feel confident in the new versions that we deliver. I'm so excited to share this content with you. I look forward to seeing what the next wave of dbatools fans will build and create with this great module. Let's get to it.

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