So here we are, post 34 in my 31 post series about using PowerShell to perform SQL Server backups and Restores. We’ve taken a fairly whistle stop tour of the main points. There’s been a couple of omissions, but hopefully I’ve provided you with plenty of examples you can use in your own situations, or at least some ideas about how you can approach automating your restores. I also hope I’ve shown you that automating those restores needn’t be the nightmare you might have been led to believe from reading through some of the dynamic T-SQL out there.

Much of the more advanced uses of these techniques is down to using deeper features of PowerShell rather the SMO features. If you want to learn more about PowerShell then I recommend the following books:

And the following blogs:

And the following blogs:

I have also been presenting on this topic at UK SQL Server User Groups this year. A set of slides, scripts and demos from one at Cardiff SQL User Group from October 2013 are available for download (cardiff-usergroup-powershell-backups-and-restores-01012013).

I’m also consolidating some of my production functions and routines into a PSBackup module, which I’m hoping to put up on GitHub so they can be worked on as a Open project by anyone who wants to contribute. When it’s up I’ll post an announcement.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the posts, and please feel free to leave a comment, drop me a mail or ping me on twitter if you have a questions.

This post is part of a series posted between 1st September 2013 and 3rd October 2013, an index for the series is available here.