While many of your colleagues are putting in vacation requests and cutting out early every Friday to soak up summer rays, it may seem like as a DBA you never get a break. It true, since most mission critical business applications are running on your SQL Servers and server performance is in your hands. We all know a failing server will cause greater panic than Chief Brody in Steve Spielberg’s Jaws 2, ringing the shark alarm to get everyone out of the water. (Please visit the site to view this video) In order to step away from the data center and actually unplug, it’s important to put processes in place that will provide ongoing SQL Server monitoring to alert you – or whoever you left in charge – to a potential issue before the issue actually becomes a major problem. Here are a few steps for remote management: Execute a System Health Check : For a panic-free summer, run an analysis on your SQL Server infrastructure today to determine current status of each. A thorough health check will look at CPUs, memory and indexes, and will help identify servers that might need a refresh or update. Evaluate Performance Health to Understand Baselines : Beyond the basic health check, a performance review will provide recent history of query instance performance, system waits and I/O latency. The historic view will showcase performance over time as well as trends, which provides the data you need when users or managers question server performance. You’ll be able to quickly determine if there’s a variation. Invest Time Now to Set up Monitoring : Both native and third party tools offer monitoring capabilities, providing either a quick glance at defined performance metrics or deeper analysis. Visual dashboards, such as a heatmap that associates color with the severity of an issue, make it easy for DBAs to spot and correct an issue. Utilize Alarms: Monitoring tools often feature alarm functionality to alert users of problems identified when certain thresholds are met. Not very different than the alarm clock on your phone, each alarm will expect a response: 1) Acknowledging the alarm and then perform some function to resolve the offending issue or 2) Snoozing the alarm to be called to your attention at some other time. Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise Users: Want to see which SQL Servers demand attention now? Download the free Spotlight™ Essentials Plug-In for SQL Server Management Studio here and check out the SQL Server monitoring Heatmap. hat’s cool about monitoring and alarm tools is that most reports and alerts can be viewed from and/or sent to your mobile device. So even if you haven’t assigned ongoing SQL Server monitoring and management to another IT pros when you’re out of the office, you’ll be able to get quick information about the database infrastructure anywhere. The man-eater Chief Brody saw in the water in Jaws2 was actually a school of blue fish. But a major SQL Server fail can come to shore just as unexpectedly, taking out important applications in its path. Will you be on the lookout?
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