Having discovered that SQL Agent PowerShell steps use PowerShell 2.0, I found you can use the latest version of PowerShell on your server by invoking PowerShell and passing it the path to a script file:
powershell.exe -file “\\servername\path\filename.ps1”
I thought it would make the job easier to port to a new server one day if, instead of \\servername, I used \\127.0.0.1 but PowerShell said that the current execution policy prevented running remote unsigned scripts. (Our execution policy was RemoteSigned.)
I don’t understand why it treats the names this way. According to my reading, you can spoof \\machinename simply by adding it to the hosts file and redirecting it elsewhere. But, although you can do that with 127.0.0.1, it doesn’t work so I would have though PowerShell would treat such a script as local.
I’m not sure what’s going on here but it’s one to remember.
David Wimbush 