A holographic inventory ledger counting database icons above rows of server racks in a dark datacenter

Build a SQL Server Estate Registry: Inventory 25K Databases with PowerShell

Build a SQL Server Estate Registry: Inventory 25K Databases with PowerShell Every estate-management failure I have watched starts the same way. Somebody asks how many databases we have, and the room goes quiet. The honest answer is a shrug and a spreadsheet someone updated in March. A registry fixes the shrug. Not a spreadsheet. Not a wiki page. A queryable store that answers, in seconds: what exists, where, what version, who owns it, and how much it matters. This post builds one, with the actual scripts. ...

October 12, 2026 · 8 min · Dustin Marzolf
A dark server room aisle representing a 25,000-database SQL Server estate managed by one DBA

SQL Server Estate Management at 25,000 Databases: The Operations Manual Nobody Wrote

SQL Server Estate Management at 25,000 Databases: The Operations Manual Nobody Wrote I run 25,000 databases across more than 300 Azure VMs. I’m the only senior DBA. Most estate-management advice assumes you can name your instances from memory. That stops working somewhere around server forty. I stopped counting names years ago and started counting ratios instead. This post covers the operating model that keeps the estate alive. It isn’t a product pitch. Search for “SQL Server estate management” and you get wall-to-wall vendor pages: Redgate, Quest, Aireforge, IDERA. Every one of them sells a tool. Tools are fine, but tooling was never the bottleneck at this scale. ...

October 5, 2026 · 10 min · Dustin Marzolf