Bradley Beard - Practical Maintenance Plans in SQL Server

Bradley Beard 2016

Bradley Beard 1

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Ever heard of the faster/cheaper/better paradox? It says that anything can be broken down into three groups: get it faster, get it cheaper, or get it better but you can only pick two. So something must always be sacrificed: faster and cheaper means it wont be better, and cheaper and better means it wont be faster. Does this strike anyone as a bit unrealistic? Why cant something be all three?

Proper planning can isolate almost any failure. Correctly aligning resources can diminish nearly any risk. At the heart of database administration is the ever-present challenge to provide these three principles: faster performance, cheaper overhead, and better quality data. The failure to provide these for the organization employing you will definitely result in your lack of employment. Most of the time, its not really as serious as this, but the point can be made that you are the person responsible for the safe handling of the companys most important assetits data. Whether proprietary or trade data, or government classifications, or even just a simple database holding names and phone numbers, the data that you are responsible for is important to the people that need to access it. For that reason, we as DBAs are the last line of defense to make sure that we are maintaining our databases correctly in order to provide a higher level of database integrity for our end users, whether they are our grandmothers, or stockbrokers, or any other level of user.

The most important part to database administration, beyond installation and actual development, is the maintenance of the database. This ongoing practice should be a part of the daily life of any seasoned database administrator (DBA) . Since the DBA is the primary focal point for the database, if it goes poof in the dark, you had better hope its not your fault. Luckily, SQL Server provides a wealth of tools specifically geared toward giving a lot of power to the DBA in as small a package as possible, with the hope that the DBA uses these tools to mitigate any possible risk to the data they are responsible for.

After all, the primary responsibility of the DBA is to ensure protection, integrity, consistency, and availability of their data. Following the instructions in this book and implementing a complete maintenance plan will get you started accomplishing those goals.