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Welcome back to the series “Server Review Essentials for Accidental and Junior DBAs.” So far in this series we’ve taken a look at how to set up your work environment, best practices for onboarding new servers and clients, and prepping your servers for daily reviews.

What You’ve Accomplished Thus Far

After all of our work and prep during the last several posts in this series, it’s finally time to get down to the “real” work of a DBA.

Wait, that’s not quite right. While it may seem as if everything covered so far in this series has been pretty basic and production servers have barely been touched, don’t get the idea that the work done so far isn’t of high value. Think about some of the things you’ve already learned about your servers during this preparation process:

• You’ve gathered all of the necessary credentials needed to log into VPNs and individual servers, verifying the accuracy of those credentials.
• You’ve set up a stable work environment.
• You’ve built a starting personal script library that will grow and evolve over time.
• You’ve collected “biographical” information about every server you’ll be reviewing, so you have a baseline to see how everything stands before you begin reviews.
• You’ve learned the expected RPO and RTO for all of your databases.
• You’ve built a Server Inventory List that shows the status and use of every server for which you will be responsible for administrating.
• You’ve discovered the current patch level of all the servers within your purview, which will give you vital knowledge as you move forward.
• You’ve learned what maintenance jobs are already active on your servers.
• You’ve learned what the current backups look like and whether or not you’re currently meeting RPO and RTO.
• And you’ve created a DBA Tools database on all of your servers so that you’re prepared for regular server reviews.

Why is all of the above so vital? If I’ve learned one thing in my two years of database administration it’s that there seems to be a large number of folks who really have no clear understanding of what’s going on in their server environments. Their approach to preserving their data is more seat of the pants and reactionary than proactive monitoring.

As outside consultants, these are the types of folks who typically end up calling us to say, “my server is on fire!” Many of the issues we see on an “emergency” basis could have been prevented with regular reviews.

A Proactive Approach

At Dallas DBAs, we much prefer a proactive approach to database maintenance and performance. When we take on a new group of servers, the first thing we do is run a health check on the boxes and search for any issues that may need immediate remediation or any server settings that can be adjusted for immediate benefit.

While these topics are not covered in this series, we’re often looking for common issues related to things such as Cost Threshold for Parallelism, Instant File Initialization, MAXDOP, max server memory, the current state of backups, TempDB configuration, and more.

This gives us a launchpad to implement all of the prep work mentioned in this series so far, and better guide the people who are depending upon the data to run their business or otherwise get work done.

By taking a proactive approach, we often know about problems days or hours before our clients do. We can see if backups have failed, ensure index maintenance is occurring regularly, and keep an eye on job failures and errors.

We often prefer to do a quick 15 minute or less check of all servers daily, running a handful of scripts that I’ll begin sharing in the next few posts. These scripts quickly show us the state of the backups, reveal any job failures or errors we need to investigate, and find alerts we may need to be aware of.

This proactive approach also helps us get to know what is expected from the servers. As we report job failures and errors, we may learn that certain issues are common knowledge and are not necessarily causing the end-users any pain.

We learn how our data users feel about deadlocks. They may not care about them if they don’t “feel” them. A job that runs every 10 minutes and is the victim of a deadlock once or twice a day likely isn’t going to be an issue. Sometimes job failures are simply random “network blips” that happen periodically, so all you can do is name a note, shrug your shoulders, and move on.

That’s all for now. Next time we’ll take a deeper dive into looking at investigating your server’s backup history.

If you’d like to know more about SQL Server Maintenance, check out Kevin’s Getting Started with SQL Server Maintenance course at Pluralsight.

Follow me on Twitter at @SQLandMTB, and if you’re into mountain bikes come over and check out my site NTX Trails.

Follow @Dallas_DBAs

Welcome back to our series, Server Review Essentials for Accidental and Junior DBAs, where we’ve been taking an in-depth look at how to get ready to perform regular SQL server reviews for your company or clients. So far, we’ve covered how to get your working environment set up (Part 1 | Part 2) setting up biographical information about your environments, collecting server information, building a maintenance job list, and backup frequency list, as well as providing sample biographies and server reports.

Now it’s time to move forward and put all your preparation to use and perform regular server checks…almost. We’ve got one more round of prep work to do before your environment is completely ready to go.

Verify RPO

Before you go any deeper into this process, now is the time to ensure all of the servers you’ve been entrusted with are meeting the stated Recovery Point Objectives. My advice at this point is to not worry over the Recovery Time Objective until you’ve ensured you’re meeting RPO. Your company or clients won’t care how fast their data can be recovered if they can’t recover the data they actually need.

Use the backup frequency list you created in an earlier step and take the time to look through each server to see if the backup schedule meets the stated RPO in terms of FULL and LOG backup frequency (and DIFFs if relevant). We’re not confirming the existence of the backups yet, we’ll do that in a later step. For now, just make sure the backup jobs are scheduled properly to meet your RPO requirements.

If you find that your backup jobs are not scheduled properly, get with your senior DBA or the relevant person in authority and correct the backup job schedules accordingly.

Create Your Own DBA Tools Database

Though not necessary, I’d suggest creating your own DBA Tools database on each of the servers for which you are responsible. Most companies and clients won’t have any problem adding such a database since it is lightweight, provides tools beneficial to your server health, and creates a sandbox in which those tools can reside separately from the data.

This is a common method for us here at Dallas DBAs. Whenever we’re given the responsibility for administrating a new server or environment, one of the very first things we do is evaluate the current state of the server, implement some best practices, and create a new database like this to install our preferred scripts.

We’re not going to cover the steps to creating a new database for your tools. If you don’t know how to do that, check out the Microsoft Docs to learn how to make a new database. Having said that, we feel it’s always best to put the database in SIMPLE recovery model and make sure the database owner is “sa”. Otherwise, you can pretty much use the defaults in creating your new DBA Tools database.

What scripts do we install and use regularly? In the following posts in this series we’ll showcase some of the scripts we use, but below you’ll find a list of scripts and stored procedures we like to implement on the servers we touch.

Keep in mind the purpose of this post is not to explain how to install or use any of the scripts and tools listed below, only to show you some of the tools we like to use.

• Ola Hallengren’s SQL Server Maintenance Solution is our preferred tool for all database backups, integrity checks, and index optimization. His scripts are far superior to the built-in Maintenance Plans in SQL Server.
• Adam Machanic’s sp_WhoIsActive.
• Brent Ozar’s First Responder Kit, which includes fantastic tools such at sp_Blitz, sp_BlitzCache, sp_BlitzIndex, and more.

Get Ready for Proactivity

Now your servers are primed for regular reviews, which means you will often know about potential issues long before they become catastrophic failures. Having done all of this work doesn’t guarantee your servers will be problem-free, but it does mean your servers will be less likely to suffer common issues and you’ll be better equipped to handle issues as they arise.

If you’d like to know more about SQL Server Maintenance, check out Kevin’s Getting Started with SQL Server Maintenance course at Pluralsight.

Follow me on Twitter at @SQLandMTB, and if you’re into mountain bikes come over and check out my site NTX Trails.

Follow @Dallas_DBAs

Let’s take a look at the final few steps of your initial server intake process and get your workflow up and running as you push toward performing regular server reviews. These last few steps are relatively easy and quick to set up.

(Also see Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of this series)

Build a Backup Frequency List

Now that you’ve set up your Maintenance Job list, you should be able to see how backups are scheduled for your servers. This is the point where you begin pushing from simply gathering info on your servers towards ensuring your servers are set up correctly.

Depending on your situation and environment, you may not need to create an actual list in a document or spreadsheet. Sometimes simply having a familiarity with what databases are backed up and their frequency is enough, but it may be best to create an actual list in the beginning.

You’ll need to be able to determine what types of backups are happening—FULLs, DIFFs, LOGs—and when those backups occur. Once you’ve collated this information then you’re ready to see if the current backup scheme meets the expected Recovery Point Objective and Recovery Time Objective. If not, then getting your backups whipped into shape should be the first task you assign yourself for your new servers.

I’m personally at the point where I have enough servers spread across different environments that I need to create a new writeup of backup schedules for those environments. There are currently too many environments to keep straight in my head, which means it’s far too easy to miss whether or not a particular server group’s backups are on schedule and up-to-date.

How so? Some of the server groups I check are scheduled to create Full backups daily, while others are only creating these backups weekly. I have some server groups in which there’s a mix of scheduling, and others that have either native SQL Server backups, virtual device “snapshot” backups, or sometimes both. One client in particular has two server groups that I check regularly, one of which is using native SQL Server backups while the second group is primarily using virtual device backups.

So, if you decide to write up an actual list, what do you include? Here’s a not-so-comprehensive list of items you may want to include in your document:

• Database name
• Recovery model
• Backup types (FULL, DIFF, LOG)
• Backup frequency for each type (weekly, daily, hourly, etc.)
• Schedule/frequency of each backup type
• Backup path/device
• Backup retention period
• Backup compression yes or no
• Native SQL Server backup, virtual device backup, or other
• Maintenance Plan, Ola scripts, or other

The above is simply a sampler of items you may choose to include. Again, depending on your environment and SLAs, your list might look somewhat different.

Example Server Review Report

Now that you’ve gotten all of your server’s baselines gathered you’re ready to start implementing regular checks. How often you perform these server reviews will depend on your employer’s dictates or current SLAs. For me, I currently have several server groups I check daily, one server group that is checked twice per week, and one server group that is only checked once per week.

What’s included in my regular reports? In the coming weeks I’ll be stepping through how I get my reviews done, but for now I’m including a sample report below so you can get a sense of the sorts of items you’ll be looking over as you check your servers.

ABC Server Review 03-22-2021

Servers:

     Unable to connect to ABC-SQL-03. Upon ping "Ping request could not find host ABC-SQL-03.". 

     Recommend applying CU22 for SQL Server 2017 and Security update for SQL Server 2017 CU22: January 12, 2021 [CVE-2021-1636] to ABC-SQL-01. 

Third Party Monitor:

     If there are any third party monitoring products in use—such as Solarwinds DPA or Redgate Monitor—any current alerts get notated here.


Replication:

     ABC2020_Pub5 is reporting Critical performance.

     All other publications are reporting Excellent performance.


Jobs:

     The job 'Write Stuff to the Table' failed at step 'Load Stuff' on ABC-SQL-01 on 03-21-21 at 4:00 AM. This job is scheduled to run hourly and failed previously on 03-17-21. The job has executed successfully since 03-21-21 at 5:00 AM.
          The job was the deadlock victim.

Backups:

     All backups are up to date.

Errorlogs:

     Login failure for user 'ABC\lcage' on ABC-SQL-02 on 03-21-21 at 7:36 AM. Reason: Could not find a login matching the name provided. [CLIENT: 100.10.10.1]

     66 deadlocks on ABC-SQL-02 on 03-21-21 through 03-22-21.

Alerts:

     No alerts to report.

AG Health

     All Availability Groups reporting Healthy.

Other:

Your own reports may look significantly different than what you see above. Obviously, if your servers are not using features such as replication or Availability Groups then there’s no need to include them in your report. Depending on your employer’s or client’s expectations—and your SLAs—your report may be more or less detailed. You may even have some sort of ticketing system in place.

In my case, I send my reports to my senior, Kevin, as an attachment to an email for his review. I’ll note any items I believe are critical and need immediate attention in the body of the email and highlight them in red text. There are certain issues which are appropriate for someone at my level that I will rectify on my own, otherwise Kevin and I will address issues together, or he will contact the necessary personnel who oversee particular aspects of the servers as needed. This is the workflow that works for us, but your practices and procedures may look different.

Diving Deeper

At this point, you may need to go even deeper and to build a full server inventory which is more comprehensive than what I’ve laid out in the last few posts.

This may also be the point where you need to do a full Health Check on your servers and look for any best practices that need to be implemented and note any problems you find that need to be addressed. Create a list of these items and your suggested recommendations for remediation, as well as a potential schedule of when and how it might be best to address these issues.

Stay tuned! In the next group of posts we’ll start an overview of implementing server monitoring and active reviews.

If you’d like to know more about SQL Server Maintenance, check out Kevin’s Getting Started with SQL Server Maintenance course at Pluralsight.

Follow me on Twitter at @SQLandMTB, and if you’re into mountain bikes come over and check out my site NTX Trails.

Follow @Dallas_DBAs