“How to do a Complete Server Assessment”

Completing a full assessment on a SQL Server is essential to learning about not only the current state of the server, but also any area that may be impacting performance or security. If you have more than one DBA, it is also important to have all the DBA team members review the same areas when completing an assessment. During this session we will discuss when assessments are useful, what should be included in the assessment as well as how to interpret some of the results. We will start by using an SQL script that will capture all the data needed. This script covers more than 88 data points, including fragmentation of indexes, performance counter values, configuration settings, server and database security information, queries that consume the most CPU as well as many other data points. As part of this session, we will also go over a newly created “Dashboard” and a suite of over 100 custom reports for SSMS that will make completing the assessment easier as well as help quickly get critical data during a production issue. These custom reports will work and have been tested on SQL Server 2008 or newer as well as Azure SQL DB.

SPEAKER
Dave Bland, Manager of Database Administrators Stericycle
http://davebland.com/about-me