Service management is a pretty common task for both DBAs and Windows administrators.  If you're like me, you've spent countless hours remoting into servers just to check the status of a service or to manually restart it.  Perhaps you've needed to disable a service briefly while troubleshooting or ch...

Windows patching is usually a topic left for Windows administrators.  But what if, as a DBA, you're tasked with patching both the OS and SQL Server?  That scenario is common in smaller or cross-functional IT teams where boundaries between roles aren't so clear.  DBAs can't ignore OS patching for ser...

My Early Challenges with Ansible on Windows

When I was getting started with Ansible back in 2017, I ran into issue after issue.  Coming from a Windows background, trying to use a tool that was primarily used on Linux meant there was little documentation to reference.  You might be saying, "Why didn...

How do I install Ansible on Windows?

This is a common question for those of you who are just getting started with Ansible or are curious about how to use it from a Windows machine.

When I talk about installing Ansible, I'm referring to installing the Ansible control node—the machine from which you...