Translation: Fail Whale for SQL Server Management Studio and Central Management Server for Policy Based Managment using PowerShell…. lol simple eh?

So this is a Microsoft Connect Item in the making…

I had created a PowerShell script to run a bunch of policies against a list of servers that I defined in a ServerList.txt file.  I decided that I didn’t like the idea of needing to maintain a text file and instead of storing the Instance Names in a table somewhere I decided to hook into the Central Managment Server.

So I logged into the server that is currently running the SQL Server Agent job that was doing all this using a ServerList.txt file.  I changed the PowerShell Script to point to my CMS server instead and ran the .ps1 directly on the server using “sqlps F:\PBM\EvaluatePolicies.ps1″.  The script ran as expected, used my CMS server, and everything was tickidyboo.  Or so I thought….

I decided to do my final check and run the SQL Server Agent job itself… and it failed.

Hmmmm that’s weird… so I confirmed that the SQL Server Agent account had access to the CMS server and even granted it explicit sysadmin rights (just for my troubleshooting).

FAIL

I started tweeting about the problem and got some immediate advice from @afernandez, @russjohnson, @wendy_dance, and @SQLChicken.  While none of the advice solved my problem it was great to have some other “eyes” reading my problem and confirming the stuff that I had already thought of and tested.

The SQL Server Agent Service Account is a secure account that I don’t even have access or the password for so I asked for some help from one of our Server Admins for my troubleshooting… he logged into the server for me and I tried to run the ps1 file….

FAIL

So I opened up SSMS and checked if I could connect to the CMS directly….

SOLUTION:  In order to use a PowerShell script to connect to the Central Management Server using the SQL Server Agent the service account that SQL Server Agent is running under must REGISTER the CMS Server through SSMS on the Server that is running the job.

Did you get all that…. because I had never Remote Desktopped onto the Server using the SQL Server Agent service account and Registered the CMS Server in SSMS using that account when I tried to access the CMS Server through my PowerShell script it failed.

I registered the CMS Server using the SQL Server Agent Service Account and everything started sizzling like bacon on a hot pan.

Enjoy!!

OK so the last time I handed out a SQL Bacon Nugget of Excellence Award was July 8th for @SQLAgentMan ‘s article on Determining Free Space, Consumed Space, and Total Space Allocated for Microsoft SQL Server Databases

and this time around @SQLGal has put something together that can only be described as a SQL Bacon Nugget of Excellence.  So a little background story on this one… I’ve been doing more with Policy Based Management lately and coincidently more with PowerShell as well.  So I started playing around with having an automated policy checker run in the night via PowerShell and email me the “non conformists”

I was almost done my initial release when I all of a sudden found that if I ran the powershell script from the server directly that I couldn’t connect to some of my servers (SQL 2000).  I re-ran… nothing… tried a few different ideas… no dice.  So as I like to do from time to time if my “googling” doesn’t help much is I posed the question to the Twitterverse.

As always (cause Twitter is just great for community support) I got a couple replies and offers of assistance.  One reply was from @Timbo_B_Edwards.  His tweet pointed me to a site that suprisingly (with my googling on Policy Based Management and Powershell) I didn’t find before.

Enterprise Policy Management Framework

This offering from @SQLGal puts my ragamuffin first attempt at Policy Based Management via Powershell to shame.

The Enterprise Policy Managment Framework uses PowerShell to evaluate policies against your SQL Server Environment, shreds the XML for you, and then renders and delivers your policy history reports via Reporting Services.

So for the love of all things good and pure in this world… if you have SQL Server 2008 (and if you don’t this is one heck of a good reason to start) this is something you HAVE TO check out and spend some quality time with. 

Lara Rubbelke

• Laura on SQLBlog.com
• @SQLGal on Twitter
• Enterprise Policy Management Framework

P.S. I found the solution to my problem on the top of the Enterprise Policy Management Framework page…

“Update on SP1: You must install SQL Server 2008 SP1 Cumulative Update 3 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971491) if you have installed SP1 on the Central Management Server. SP1 Cumulative Update 3 will fix the SP1 bug which prevented down version policy evaluation.”

Enjoy!!