Very simple, just contact a SQL Server instance to see if it can do the CPU-heavy calculation of 2+2 :) I put this together just to verify that I could use server=hostname,port when connecting to a SQL Server instance on a particular port.
param( [string] $serverName = $(throw 'serverName is required') ) $connectionString = "Server=$serverName;Database=master;Integrated Security=SSPI" write-host "Attempting to contact via connection string $connectionString" # Formulate the query we'll run $query = 'select 2+2' # Load the System.Data assembly for access to SQL Server [void][System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Data") $serverConn = new-object 'system.data.sqlclient.SqlConnection' $connectionString trap { write-host -foreground red "Failed to contact $serverName" write-host ('[{0}] {1}' -f $_.exception.getbaseexception().gettype().name, $_.exception.getbaseexception().message) continue } &{ $serverConn.Open() $sqlCommand = new-object 'system.data.sqlclient.SqlCommand' $query, $serverConn $result = $sqlCommand.ExecuteScalar() if ($result -eq 4) { write-host -foreground green "Successful ping of server $serverName" } else { throw "unexpected result from query: $result" } }