Sigh… I just spent almost a full work day trying to come up with, what turned out to be a single line script. The requirements were simple. After patching of servers is completed, and everything is rebooted, sometimes, not often, but sometimes, SQL Server Agent doesn’t restart correctly. I was asked to put together a script that will check a list of servers to see if Agent is running. Any PowerShell guru’s reading this are either laughing or crying, already.

So, I started exploring how to connect to the server using using some type of PS-Drive, but I quickly figured out that I’d have to loop through the servers that way. Plus, I don’t think there’s a way to check Agent status through the SQL drive. So that went out the window. Then, it was to use Invoke-SQLCmd. After all, I can call multiple servers through the -ServerInstance property, so I just need to find a good T-SQL statement to check Agent status… Googling & Binging didn’t turn up a good T-SQL statement to check Agent status (not saying there isn’t a way, but I couldn’t find one easily, plus, this is a story about PowerShell). On to SMO. All I had to do was figure out how to connect to the server and the SQL Agent object through SMO. I’d have to loop through the servers, but for such a simple script, that shouldn’t be hard. Ever tried to connect directly to the Agent through SMO? Me neither. It’s a pain.

Finally, I referred back to Don Jones (blog|twitter) book, Windows Powershell 2.0, TFM (and a more appropriately named book, there isn’t), and noticed a statement, Get-Service… Hey! Isn’t SQL Agent basically a service? Yes. Yes it is. Here’s the final script, in all it’s simplistic glory:

Get-Service -DisplayName "SQL Server Agent*" -ComputerName (Get-Content "servers.txt") | Select-Object MachineName,Status

Yep, it was that easy. Kids, don’t try this at home. Take the time to learn what you’re doing. Don’t assume you know.