I was messing around with PowerShell the other day and using it to read SQL Server error logs. It’s actually a pretty trivial thing.

From SQLPLS

$Logs = DIR SQLSERVER:SQLLOCALHOST

$Logs.ReadErrorLog()

Quick and easy. Then I tried to read from a clustered instance of SQL Server and ran into an issue

$Logs = DIR SQLSERVER:SQLCLUSTEREDINSTANCE

$Logs.ReadErrorLog()

This didn’t make a lot of sense, after all the method was there before. I decided to go and check to see if the method existed

$Logs = DIR SQLSERVER:SQLCLUSTEREDINSTANCE

$Logs | gm

Yup, the method exists just fine.

I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I enlisted the help of Sean McCown (blog|twitter) who posted a short training video on how to read the error logs on named instances of SQL Server.