Practical Maintenance Plans in SQL Server: Automation for the DBA

by Bradley Beard

Overview

This book is a complete guide to setting up and maintaining maintenance plans for SQL Server Database Administrators. Maintenance plans too often consist of a backup task and that’s it, but there is so much more that can and must be done to ensure the integrity of your most important company resource – the data you are tasked to manage and safeguard. This book walks even the newest of users through creating a powerful, automated maintenance plan.

Automate your job using SQL Server Agent to leverage the power of Maintenance Plans to deliver real, proactive solutions to common issues. Schedule common tasks such as backups and index rebuilds to run automatically, and get early-warning notifications of impending problems relating to resource usage and query performance. By the time your boss knows to call you about a problem, you’ll have already called him to describe your solution.

The large majority of books never really cover the topic of inheriting a database server with multiple live databases; the common thread is that the databases will be created and maintained by the reader forever and ever. In the real world, that scenario rarely happens. Practical Maintenance Plans in SQL Server covers that scenario and provides you with the knowledge and tools needed to get comfortable writing your own maintenance plans for any SQL Server database, whether created by you or inherited.

• Shows the different tasks that can be run in a maintenance plan.
• Explains how and why those tasks can be implemented.
• Provides a roadmap to creating your own custom maintenance plan.

What You Will Learn

• Implement a completely automated backup maintenance plan

• Be alerted to performance problems and outages ahead of your boss

• Learn the different types of database maintenance tasks
• Plan the workflow of tasks within a maintenance plan
• Automate your work by implementing custom maintenance plans
Who This Book Is For

Practical Maintenance Plans in SQL Server is for any level of database administrator, but specifically it’s for those administrators with a real need to set up a powerful maintenance plan quickly. New and seasoned administrators will appreciate the book for its robust learning pattern of visual aids in combination with explanations and scenarios. Practical Maintenance Plans in SQL Server is the perfect “new hire” gift for new database administrators in any organization.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781484218945
Publisher:	Apress
Publication date:	04/21/2016
Edition description:	1st ed.
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	7.01(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Bradley Beard is a professional software developer residing in the lovely city of Palm Bay, Florida. He started off designing websites using PHP and MySQL in the late 90’s, and gradually moved on to ColdFusion and SQL Server. His breadth of SQL Server experience began with SQL Server 7, mainly concentrated on SQL Server 2000, and then picked up again in SQL Server 2008. He earned his MCSA: SQL Server 2012 certification in July 2013, and he was the Technical Reviewer for Mike McQuillan’s Introducing SQL Server, also available by Apress.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Backing Up a Database
2. Checking Database Integrity
3. Executing SQL Server Agent Jobs
4. Purging Log History
5. Clearing Old Backup Files
6. Rebuilding Indexes
7. Reorganizing Indexes
8. Shrinking Database Files
9. Updating Object Statistics
10. Executing T-SQL Statements
11. Notifying Database Operators
12. Tying It All Together