Automatically building a Microsoft BI machine using PowerShell – preparation: logging infrastructure (post #4)

This post is #4 in the series to automatically build a Microsoft BI machine using PowerShell – see the start of series.

In this series so far:

Start of series – introduction and layout of subjects
Post #2 – Preparation: install files using Azure disk
Post #3 – Preparation: install files using Azure File Service

Our final step in preparation is setting up a logging infrastructure. I found a very simple to use function online, see the code below:

Function Write-Log {
    [cmdletbinding()]

    Param(
    [Parameter(Position=0)]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [string]$Message
    )
    
    #Pass on the message to Write-Verbose if -Verbose was detected
    Write-Verbose $Message
    
    Write-Output "$(Get-Date) $Message" | Out-File -FilePath $global:LogFile -Append
    

} #end function

Including this function in the script enables any step to write to a log by passing a $Message to this function.

Next post will be our master script.