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dbaclone

dbaclone is a PowerShell module for creating SQL Server database images and clones. It enables administrator to supply environments with database copies that are a fraction of the original size.

Do you have any ideas for new commands? Please propose them as issues and let us know what you'd like to see. Bug reports should also be filed under this repository's issues section.

Take a look at the wiki to get more information on how to install, configure and use dbaclone.

Why use dbaclone

• Save lots of space provisioning data to other locations
• Spend less time provisioning databases
• Create multiple local copies of a database from the same image
• Make sure there tests are accurate with up-to-date data

Usage scenarios

There are multiple scenarios where you could use the module with

• Supply developers with a local copy of the database
• Provision non-production servers with production data
• Implement a CI/CD pipeline with production like copies

Prerequisites

As with every piece of software we need to set some prerequisites to make this module work.

• Windows 10 (Professional, Enterprise or Education) or Windows Server 2012 R2 (Standard, Enterprise or Datacenter) and up
• PowerShell 5 or above
• SQL Server instance for saving image and clone information (dbaclone database)
• SQL Server instance to create the images (can be the same as for saving the information)
• Enough space to save to save one copy of the database (size of the image is the size of the database)

How does it work

The process consists of the following steps:

1. Setup the module
2. Create an image of the database
3. Create a clone based on an image

It's that easy.

Planned for future releases

• Default directories for the images
• Creation of multiple disks for a single database to rebuild original file structure