A number of Microsoft applications have increased their PowerShell support with each new release. Enterprise applications, such as Microsoft Windows Server, Exchange, SharePoint, and SQL Server, all have PowerShell support through cmdlets and providers that come with their default installations. Even cloud solutions, such as Windows Azure, have PowerShell support.

In this chapter, we will specifically look at components and pre-requisites required for working with SQL Server using PowerShell. Before you run the scripts in this chapter, remember to run your PowerShell console or ISE as an administrator and set the execution policy to the appropriate one in your environment. The topics included in the chapter are as follows: