It’s surprising to find out how few organizations have a list of all of their SQL Server instances. In the past, building such a list was an onerous task. It turns out that there’s a great way to to find out about all of the SQL Server instances that a given server can see. Just ask SQL Browser!
As PowerShell can reach into the .Net object model, it’s a great platform for simple tasks like this. To use it, you need to remote to a desired SQL Server, start PowerShell, and paste in this command:
[System.Data.Sql.SqlDataSourceEnumerator]::Instance.GetDataSources()
This will produce a list of servers along with the instance name (if any) and the server version number.
It’s a simple solution to an annoying problem!
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