Microsoft SQL Server is a complex server product, with many components and tools that enable consumer success. Due to this, perfect tooling for PowerShell is not always available. On the other hand, it has one of the most active user communities, driving rapid improvement and expansion of the available tool-sets.
Currently, there are four major PowerShell modules to choose from:
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SqlServer |
The official and supported module developed by Microsoft. It contains tools to navigate and manage SQL instances. |
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ReportingServicesTools |
The equally official module managed by Microsoft that handles managing reporting services. Unlike the SqlServer module, it is open source and the community can contribute to it on GitHub. |
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dbatools |
The largest community-driven PowerShell module in existence. More than 400 commands that deal with SQL Instances, covering many of the tasks that the long-neglected official SqlServer module could not handle. |
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dbachecks |
A community project that marries dbatools to Pester, offering complex, powerful health checks. It is a tool designed to ensure the health of an entire SQL estate at scale. |
All of these modules have their uses and reasons to co-exist, as follows:
- ReportingServicesTools is without serious competition. It also isn't too complete, so for some uses, you will have to work around the existing tools. However, there are no other major modules dealing with the SSRS role in SQL Server.
- SqlServer has far fewer features than dbatools, and is closed source. It is the safe choice, however, as it is covered by official Microsoft Support.
- dbatools covers most of the same ground as the SqlServer module. As an energetic community project, however, updates are a lot more frequent, bug resolution times more fast, and features more numerous. This makes it a good choice in situations where features are more important than contractually guaranteed support.
- dbachecks is again mostly without competition. There are no other comprehensive health validation tools for SqlServer in the PowerShell ecosystem. Use this if you want to know whether your SQL estate is healthy.
This is accurate at the time of writing; there will probably be a lot more as you are reading.