sqlSPADE Presentation Scheduled for March

I always felt bad when John our WISSUG leader(http://wisconsin.sqlpass.org) would ask for help, and suddenly the sound of crickets would fill the air.   It isn't that we don't want to help, many do help; it is just that none of us really wants to expose our own ignorance.   I am always grateful for the people who choose to speak, prepare demos, take questions and then I am amazed when they are able to answer the questions... or speak those words that men find it so hard to say: 'I don't know'.  The good thing is ignorance is curable for the diligent, and the persistent.  

Kevin Kline who spoke a few years ago at WISSUG, (http://kevinekline.com/) tweeted about SPADE - http://sqlspade.codeplex.com/ Scripted PowerShell Automated Deployment Engine for SQL Server, and knowing that Jon is going to speak on PowerShell topics in March, I thought I can do installations... so I volunteered to present sqlSPADE to our group.

So I have downloaded all the files and am setting it up for execution in a VPC environment.   I know I am going to learn a bunch in this process.  I expect it to be really valuable for my future, and hopefully others too. :)

"SPADE simplifies the process of standing up a new SQL Server instance by applying standard Operating System pre-configurations, Installing SQL Server and then applying post-configurations and creating standard objects.

SPADE is a tool that is designed to speed up your standard deploymets of SQL Server. You may be saying "But I can already do an unsattended install"...but that's not all that's involved in most server builds. There are Operating System configurations like Microsoft Distrubuted Transaction Coordinator (MSDTC), Local Security Policy and others. I'm sure that you also have standard SQL objects that need to be deployed like Stored Procedures, Agent Jobs, Operators, etc. All of this can be done by SPADE automatically by running 1 simple PowerShell script."

I think I heard somewhere tonight "Simple doesn't necessarily mean easy" maybe it was @onpnt who said it at the @madpass tonight.   I am looking forward to this project.