Experienced Guidelines for upcoming or growing DBA's

Hello Friends,

This morning I felt writing these practices that helped me grow up to as a good SQL DBA. Hope this will also help you grow faster and better.

I haven't organized them in a proper sequence or factor. But have jotted all those good qualities that I recollected from my experience.

 

· Plan to reserve a schedule on a weekend for any maintenance. Ensure there are no data driven jobs or high maintenance jobs running during that window. Having this across the servers will help to work effectively as it allows maintaining all serves in a single window.  

· Always ensure to have identical monitoring across all the servers unless there is a particular issue that you are addressing needs a special unique monitoring. 

· Review the recovery models of all User databases across the servers and plan backups based on the recovery model. Never leave a database in full recovery Model and without configuring frequent T-log backups. This will grow the log file to huge size impacting the disk free space as well as log file reader due to high VLF’s. Practically there should be no database without a Full backup per day.

· On a 64 bit SQL Server; ensure the Max memory value is reserved and not unlimited as it will try to occupy all the memory available on the Physical Server.

· It will be nice to have a production identical Test server to diagnose or troubleshoot or improve performance of the servers. Will be a good platform to test the windows / SQL Server changes

· Keep track of all the migrations or changes to the Server, Databases & Code. Will help you review the improvements you have done in a long way on supporting the SQL Servers

· Request end users and business to submit a request for any performance issues, so that you will know where to tune up.

· Set coding standards and educate developers to follow them and request DBA to always review the code for performance factors and better logic

· Ensure developers never code with “Select *” or run any Select without NOLOCK. This is purely based on the isolation levels

· Maintain a friendly environment with your peers and mates

· Having a manager with knowledge on “SQL Server internals” is the best work place

· Always Calculate Risk and Cost for any kind of implementation

· Try to have a Monthly Downtime where you can reboot your SQL Servers at least once a while

· Try to convince your managers to purchase license for a good monitoring tool like ‘SQLSentry’. I have so far used MOM, Sitescope, Spotlight and SQLSentry. Among which SQLSentry is the best of my experience.

· Keep yourself advanced and innovative on a day-day basis. Watch Plural sight, Read Blogs, Articles, Books etc. This will satisfy your day when you learn at least one new thing related to your job

· Perform periodic health Checks on SQL Servers. You can do this by using some tools like: SQL Server error log, Activity and Resource Monitors, SQL Server monitoring tools, Microsoft Baseline Configuration Analyzer, Server Administrator Console etc

· Disable all the services unless they are being used. Say like SSAS, SSRS. Not all SQL production servers will use this. But will have those services running by default when you install SQL Server. This will save some memory and CPU as they reserve resources by default.

· It is better to always have your own favorite tools and scripts to monitor SQL Server. Have them handy where ever you work.

· Keep a practice of reviewing and validating the SQL Servers as your first primary task for any new job or any new server. Document your investigation and analysis. Submitting some good reports to your managers will really help you gain their confidence and trust on you.

· Discuss as much as you can with the Server and Network administration team so you know well about the hardware equipment and infrastructure.

· Work with broad minded personality rather than narrow minded.

· Always stress for a root cause analysis and resolution for any issue and from any dependent team. Ensure to document them.

· Keep a habit of noting your achievements and Service oriented appreciations to add them in your self-input for Performance review and Appraisals.

 

 

 

 

...Happy SQLing / Thanks for Visiting and Sharing your Views