January 2025

Pre-Setup Semi-Automation

Standing up a new system meant installing SQL Server, Management Studio and Reporting Services, then setting collation, service accounts, named pipes and mixed-mode authentication. About an hour of careful clicking, every time.

PowerShell
SQL Server
Windows

Result about an hour → 20 to 25 minutes, and it matters most when ten to fifteen systems need setting up at once.

What I Built

PowerShell scripts took that hour down, then went into an executable that runs the eight steps in order, takes a few inputs, shows progress as it goes and logs what it did. If a machine is interrupted part way, it resumes from the step it stopped on rather than starting again.

The installer window: a Ready to install panel with a progress row, a
note that eight steps run in order and three of them ask for a password,
and an activity log showing the host, the PowerShell version and the step
it is resuming from. — Ready to run, resuming from where the last attempt stopped.

What Got In The Way

It cannot run unattended. Three of the eight steps ask for a password, and several hand over to the vendor’s own installer window.

So what it removes is the ordering, the settings and the remembering, not the person at the keyboard. That is why it is called semi-automation rather than automation. I am still extending it.

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