The DBA Quit and now you’re it: how to survive

Who AM I? Matt Gordon You can find me at: @sqlatspeed www.sqlatspeed.com Matt.Gordon@insight.com

Speaker info 15+ years of SQL Server experience Microsoft Data Platform MVP IDERA ACE Managed 24x7 datacenters Worked on development teams MCSE: Data Management and Analytics Local & international community speaker Leader of Lexington, KY PASS local group

Hey, our DBA just quit. I think you do stuff with data – you’re it Hey, our DBA just quit. I think you do stuff with data – you’re it! You’re our new DBA. Good luck – we’re all counting on you.

What do you do now? Action Plan Security Review Backups & Maintenance High Availability & Disaster Recovery Evaluation Performance Baselining Automation

SECURITY REVIEW What version/patch level is running? Extended support for SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 ends 7/9/19 What services are running? SQL Server Configuration Manager What port is SQL Server listening on? Is the Browser service running and can it be turned off? Disable xp_cmdshell Which users have sa or sysadmin access? Who has sa password? EXEC sp_helpsrvrolemember 'sysadmin’ can be run to show this If browser service is turned off the connection must be specified including port number You can always turn it off and see who screams but in production that may not be a great plan

SECURITY REVIEW (Continued) What authentication mode is being used? SQL Server authentication Windows authentication Mixed mode Is auditing turned on? Should it be? Should it be server level or instance level? Auditing can be very complex but it is something to think about initially depending on the sensitivity and security surrounding the server Can be setup via SSMS or T-SQL (MS docs are quite good here)

Backups & maintenance Review SQL Server Agent jobs Review any third-party backup software jobs Talk to ops team to see if they are handling backups Set up backups if none exist Set up a restore test process soon Is DBCC CHECKDB running? Are indexes being maintained? Are statistics being maintained? How are you organizing your maintenance? Ola Hallengren’s maintenance solution (ola.hallengren.com) Maintenance plans via SSMS Storage team may be handling backups via snapshots or other techniques particular to the vendor If they’re only backing up the server itself and not the database itself, that can be a big problem

High availability & Disaster recovery evaluation Are any HA/DR options configured? Replication Log shipping Mirroring Always On Availability Groups Always On Failover Cluster Instances How do you know whether or not these exist? How are they being monitored?

Performance baselining Are there third-party monitoring tools available to you? Evaluate wait stats https://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/capturing-wait-statistics-period-time/ https://www.sqlskills.com/help/waits/ Any known pain points? Investigate those using methods discussed above Develop a strategy to do basic performance monitoring moving forward Write your own scripts? Monitoring tools? Help from the community? Perfmon counters of interest

Performance baselining (continued) Perfmon counters of interest What is Perfmon? Counters: Memory – Available Mbytes Physical Disk – Disk reads/sec, Disk Writes/sec Processor - % Processor Time SQL Server: Memory Manager – Memory Grants Pending SQL Server: SQL Statistics – Batch requests/sec

automation Maintenance plans if nothing else exists SQL Server Agent scheduled jobs DBCC CHECKDB Backups Index and statistic maintenance PowerShell dbatools.io cmdlets dbachecks

Thanks! Matt Gordon You can find me at: @sqlatspeed www.sqlatspeed.com Matt.Gordon@insight.com