There was a question in the #dbatools slack channel 

Getting dbatools

dbatools enables you to administer SQL Server with PowerShell. To get it simply open PowerShell run

Install-Module dbatools

You can find more details on the web-site

Finding the Command

To find a command you can use the dbatools command Find-DbaCommand For commands for service run

Find-DbaCommand Service

There are a whole bundle returned

This is how you can find any dbatools command. There is also a -Tag parameter on Find-DbaCommand.

Find-DbaCommand -Tag Service

This returns

How to use any PowerShell command

Always always start with Get-Help

Get-Help Get-DbaService -Detailed

This will show you all the information about the command including examples 🙂

All of these commands below require that the account running the PowerShell is a Local Admin on the host.

One Host Many Hosts

Now I have used just one host for all of the examples on this page. Do not be fooled, you can always use an array of hosts wherever I have $ComputerName you can set it to as many hosts as you like

$ComputerName = 'SQL0','SQL1'

You can even get those names form a database, Excel sheet, CMS.

Getting the Services

So to get the services on a machine run

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$ComputerName = 'Name of Computer'
Get-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName

You can output into a table format.

Get-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName | Format-Table

I will use the alias ft for this in some of the examples, that is fine for the command line but use the full command name in any code that you write that other people use

You have an object returned so you can output to anything if you want – CSV, JSON, text file, email, azure storage, database, the world is your oyster.

Getting the Services for one instance

The Get-DbaService command has a number of parameters. There is an InstanceName parameter enabling you to get only the services for one instance. If we just want the default instance services

Get-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -InstanceName MSSQLSERVER| Format-Table

Just the MIRROR instance services

Get-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -InstanceName MIRROR| Format-Table

Getting just the Engine or Agent services

You can also use the -Type parameter to get only services of a particular type. You can get one of the following: “Agent”,”Browser”,”Engine”,”FullText”,”SSAS”,”SSIS”,”SSRS”, “PolyBase”

So to get only the Agent Services

Get-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -Type Agent

You can combine the InstanceName and the Type parameters to get say only the default instance engine service

Get-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -InstanceName MSSQLSERVER -Type Engine

Starting and stopping and restarting services

You can use Start-DbaService and Stop-DbaService to start and stop the services. They each have ComputerName, InstanceName and Type parameters like Get-DbaService.

So if after running

Get-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName | Format-Table

you find that all services are stopped

Start All the Services

You can run

Start-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName | Format-Table

and start them all

The full text service was started with the engine service which is why it gave a warning. You can see this if you have all of the services stopped and just want to start the engine services with the type parameter.

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Get-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName | Format-Table
Start-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -Type Engine
Get-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName | Format-Table

If you just want to start the Agent services, you can use

Start-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -Type Agent

You can start just the services for one instance

Start-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -InstanceName MIRROR

Stopping the services

Stopping the services works in the same way. Lets stop the MIRROR instance services we have just started. This will stop the services for an instance

Stop-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -InstanceName MIRROR

We can stop them by type as well, although this will show an extra requirement. If we start our MIRROR instance services again and then try to stop just the engine type.

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Start-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -InstanceName MIRROR | ft
Stop-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -Type Engine

You will get a warning due to the dependant services

WARNING: [10:31:02][Update-ServiceStatus] (MSSQL$MIRROR on SQL0) The attempt to stop the service returned the following error: The service cannot be stopped because other services that are running are dependent on it. WARNING: [10:31:02][Update-ServiceStatus] (MSSQL$MIRROR on SQL0) Run the command with ‘-Force’ switch to force the restart of a dependent SQL Agent

So all you have to do is use the force Luke (or whatever your name is!)

Stop-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -Type Engine -Force

You can also stop the services for an entire host, again you will need the Force parameter.

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Start-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName |ft
Stop-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -Force | ft

Restarting Services

It will come as no surprise by now to learn that Restart-DbaService follows the same pattern. It also has ComputerName, InstanceName and Type parameters like Get-DbaService, Start-DbaService and Stop-DbaService (Consistency is great, It’s one of the things that is being worked on towards 1.0 as you can see in the Bill of Health)

Again you will need the -Force for dependant services, you can restart all of the services on a host with

Restart-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -Force

or just the services for an instance

Restart-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -InstanceName MIRROR -Force

or just the Agent Services

Restart-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -Type Agent

Doing a bit of coding

Now none of that answers @g-kannan’s question. Restarting only services with a certain service account.

With PowerShell you can pipe commands together so that the results of the first command are piped into the second. So we can get all of the engine services on a host for an instance with Get-DbaService and start them with Start-DbaService like this

Get-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -Type Engine | Start-DbaService

or get all of the engine services for an instance on a host and stop them

Get-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -Type Engine  -InstanceName Mirror| Stop-DbaService

or maybe you want to get all of the service that have stopped

(Get-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -Type Engine).Where{$_.State -eq 'Stopped'}

You can do the same thing with syntax that may make more sense to you if you are used to T-SQL as follows

(Get-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -Type Engine) | Where State -eq 'Stopped'

and then start only those services you could do

(Get-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -Type Engine) | Where State -eq 'Stopped' | Start-DbaService

(note – you would just use Start-DbaService in this case as it wont start services that are already started!)

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\# Stop just one of the engine services
Stop-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -InstanceName MIRROR -Type Engine
\# Get the engine services
Get-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -Type Engine
\# This will only start the one engine service that is stopped
Start-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -Type Engine

Come On Rob! Answer the question!

So now that you know a lot more about these commands, you can restart only the services using a particular service account by using Get-DbaService to get the services

Get-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -Type Engine | Where StartName -eq 'thebeard\\sqlsvc'

and then once you know that you have the right ‘query’ you can pipe that to Restart-DbaService (Like making sure your SELECT query returns the correct rows for your WHERE clause before running the DELETE or UPDATE)

Get-DbaService -ComputerName $ComputerName -Type Engine | Where StartName -eq 'thebeard\\sqlsvc' | Restart-DbaService

Happy Automating !