From ISO to Ready to Go: Automating SQL Server Installation with PowerShell

Teams Meeting: Soon

Teams Meeting: Link
Room Sponsor: SSM Health

Installing SQL Server involves more than clicking through Setup. Preparing installation media, configuring service accounts, choosing file locations, and completing post-install tasks all take time—and create opportunities for inconsistent results.

In this demo-driven session, we’ll use PowerShell and DBATools to build a repeatable installation process. We’ll mount an ISO, copy its contents, and use `Install-DbaInstance` to configure and install SQL Server. Then we’ll extend the process with a post-install script that creates a DBAUtility database, installs common troubleshooting stored procedures, and configures settings such as Cost Threshold for Parallelism, Max Server Memory, and backup compression.

Along the way, we’ll discuss which choices can be standardized and which need to reflect the instance and its workload. Whether you build lab environments or provision servers at work, you’ll leave knowing how to replace repetitive setup tasks with reusable scripts and establish a consistent starting point for your SQL Server instances.

Speaker: Lee Markum
Lee is a SQL Server Database Administrator who got his start with SQL Server back in 2009. Back in the day, he earned an MCTS certification on SQL Server 2008. That was followed up in 2020 with the AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals and DP-900 Microsoft Azure Data Fundamentals certifications. He has officially been a DBA since 2014. Lee has worked for small companies under 100 people to large enterprises of thousands of employees and used databases of all sizes.
He has presented at SQL Server Meetups, New Stars of Data, various SQL Saturdays, was an online speaker for the RedGate PASS Data Community Summit 2022, and spoke at Saint Louis DevUp in 2024 and 2025.
Lee blogs at LeeMarkum.com and he loves finding and experimenting with new features in SQL Server. High availability and disaster recovery, as well as performance monitoring and troubleshooting, are of special interest to Lee.