SQL SERVER – PowerShell way of Restarting SQL Server Service

I learn a lot when I go for conferences all around the world. There are styles, content and cultural differences that I get a chance to learn and enjoy as part of my trips. Most of these trips I make are geared towards at least one learning experience I can get end of the day. With these travels, I also attend and speak at local user groups to get a flavour of what is the neat and coolest way to work with SQL Server. Recently at our local user group (SQL Server Bangalore UG) UG meeting, I was vividly stumped by a question from one of the speakers. Here he was talking about various ways to shut down or start SQL Server.

This is was an interesting quiz and I was pleasantly surprised by the most common methods and wanted to participate in this quiz. The answers were flowing all over and here are some that I would like to share which were part of audience interactions:

1. Object Explorer in SSMS (SQL server Management Studio)
2. Net Start Command.
3. SQL Server Configuration Manager.
4. Windows Services.
5. Using the Sqlservr.exe executable

I thought I had known most of these and the usage of sqlservr.exe was something I wanted to check as it had been ages. For complete list of startup parameters refer book online.

Getting back to UG meet, I couldn’t hold my curiosity back and I was quick to raise my hand to give what I thought could be yet another answer. I shouted out loud the “SHUTDOWN” command. This was something I thought would fit the bill too. The speaker was understanding to say, this was one of the partially correct answer. Taken aback, I eagerly waited for the explanation.

Though the answer was correct, it was to shut down the service and didn’t allow us to restart our SQL Server service. And the speaker, waited for more answers. This made me curious of the fact that there was more to what I knew.

Welcome PowerShell

The speaker was quick to say, now that we have exhausted all the options available – let me talk about Windows PowerShell and it can be yet another way to restart SQL Server Service. It completely slipped my mind about this option. PowerShell is a powerful way to script and do activities with SQL Server. If you haven’t played around, then I strongly suggest to have a look into the same.

Now, how can I restart SQL Server Service? In this example below, I have used the PowerShell ISE IDE to execute the command as identified below:

Restart-Service -Force MSSQLSERVER

Since there was no feedback from the console, I was curious to know if the SQL Server service did restart properly. On examining the Task manager I could confirm that the service did restart because the PID values were completely different after the command got executed.

Sometimes, we carry of knowledge that needs a refresher. Hence taking a student approach to everything we do can help a lot in this learning experience.

Do let me know if you found any other way to restart SQL Server and I would be more than happy to learn it from you.

Reference: Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com)