Few days ago, I reviewed SQLAuthority News – Book Review – SQL Server 2005 Management and Administration (Paperback) on this blog. I received few comments on this review. Some people think it is good book, some thought that this waste of time. Well, after so many emails, I feel that I should point out something special about this book, which attracted me.
The reason, I decided to review this book is practical advise, rather then some technical long answer. Technical answers have their places and helps to fix issues in most cases, however common sense is extremely important. To prove that this book gives practical answers, I have copied one of the section from this book and listed only few of the topics from that section.
I have received authorization from publisher to review this book, this article does not violate any copyright issues.
- Conduct general health checks every 6 to 12 months.
- Create documentation and associate it with production and test SQL Servers to supplement operations and routine maintenance.
- Identify all the health issues during the health check and then develop a remediation plan. Don’t try to fix the issues during the health check because doing so muddles the results and slows down the health check process. And the fix for one issue might affect another.
- Retain all health check documentation and information for future use.
- Using SQL Server 2005 BPA is the most efficient way to scan the core components of SQL Server 2005.
- When using a locally attached storage, isolate the operating system from the database and transaction logs, preferably on separate RAID volumes.
- Allocate enough space on mission-critical databases and transaction logs to accommodate their growth.
- Manage antivirus scanning, excluding specific files within SQL Server.
- Use Windows Authentication.
- No one should log in as the Service Account to do administration.
Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) , SQLAuthority News – Book Review – SQL Server 2005 Management and Administration (Paperback)
Truely said. The health checkup is a big exercise and should involve all possible angles to indentify the performance issues. Some most common mistakes hit the performance in long run and we never realise that.
Experts can point to those aeras during the Health Checkup process.
suggest me a good book for sql server2005
Hi,
Pinal i found the best tool for health check is SQLDIAG, but still lots of festures i didnt get. I would suggest you to write on SQLDIAG formulas and how and what do we found while SQLDIAG report,
I havnt found yet .
It would be great if you can help me out in that ,any article or book on SQLDIAG.
Cheers
Praveen Barath
Hi I would like to know what would I need to look for when I perform a SQL Server 2005 database assessment. What would I need to look for when performing a database monthly healthcheck.
Hi,
Is there a better tool? Or can we create a set of scripts for monitoring this?
Nandhini,
Some SQL SERVER good books:
MS SQL SERVER 2005 Administrator’s Companion &
Sams.Microsoft.SQL.Server.2005.Unleashed
what is database health checkups ?
Please help me to identify which SQL patches if any are installed on Server
Hi
I was wondering if maybe there is an sql command used to monitor the server health or do you have to check for the health manually?