1. SQL Server Management Strategies

2. Please Support Our Sponsors
SQL Saturday is made possible with the generous support of these sponsors. You can support them by opting-in and visiting them in the sponsor area.

3. Don’t forget to silence your phone

4. Post Con

5. whoami Senior DBA @ Alberta Gaming & Liquor Commission 10+ Years in IT
Moved to Edmonton April 2016
10+ Years in IT
Originally from Kamloops BC
Graduated from Thompson Rivers University
9 years working in Vancouver BC

6. Agenda SQL Server Best Practices Technologies Building your servers
Application Deployment
Maintenance & Operations

7. SQL Server Best Practices

8. Windows Configuration
Local Security Settings
Lock Pages In Memory
Perform Volume Maintenance Tasks
Logon as a service

9. Windows Configuration
Power Settings
High Performance Mode
Windows Firewall
Disable
Create Rule for SQL Server Ports

10. Disk Setup Separate Disk Drives Formatting Data Log TempDB System DB
Backups
Formatting
NTFS 64KB Block Size
ReFS

11. Instance Configuration
Max Degree of Parallelism (MaxDOP)
Default is 0
Set to 8 or number of physical cores for your processors
Cost Threshold for parallelism
Default is 5
Consider raising – 50 is a good starting point
Optimize for Adhoc Workloads
Optimizes Plan Cache

12. Instance Configuration
Min/Max Memory
Default Minimum is 0 MB
Default Maximum is MB
Set the min if reservation is needed
Multiple Instances
Max Memory
Leave room for OS/Other programs
onathan/how-much-memory-does- my-sql-server-actually-need/

13. Instance Configuration
TempDB Configuration
Add files for multiple cores
Change Auto Growth
Model Database
Set Recovery Model

14. Instance Configuration
CPU Affinity Mask
Consider setting if you have multi- instance servers
Trace Flags
1117, 1118, 3226, 7806
SysAdmins

15. Database Maintenance Common Tasks Tools Backups Integrity Check
Index's/Statistics
History Cleanup
Cycle Error Log
Tools
Built In Maintenance Plans
Roll your own scripts
Ola Hallengren's Scripts
3rd party tools 

16. Database Maintenance Daily Maintenance Sub Hourly Weekly
Full Backups (User Databases) 
DBCC CheckDB (User Databases)    
Index Maintenance (Defrag)    
Statistic Updates    
Sub Hourly    
Log Backups    
Weekly    
Full Backups (System Databases)    
Integrity Check (System Databases)    
System Log Rollover    
MSDB History Cleanup    
Index Maintenance (Rebuild) 

17. SQL Server Best Practices
Define what your best practices are
Makes these your standard
The internet is full of advice
Do your own research
Determine what makes sense for you
Not all of your instances will follow every standard
Eg: SharePoint
But better off having a proper starting point

18. Technologies

19. Policy Based Management
Introduced in SQL Server 2008
Consists of 3 components
Facets – A set of logical properties
Conditions – A Boolean expression that evaluates a target using a facet.
Policy – The expected behavior of a condition.
When policies are evaluated
Failed policies can generate alerts
Can prevent configuration changes

20. Group Policy Uses Active Directory to push configuration
Computer or User Settings
Applied to computers joined to AD domain
Can be used to
Install Software
Update Registry Settings
User Rights
Computer Settings

21. Desired State Configuration
PowerShell feature
Introduced in version 4
Introduces configuration function
Utilize DSC Modules
State based configuration
Script can be run multiple times without a problem
Configuration data passed into configuration function

22. Building Your Servers

23. Building Your Servers Provision Server Configure OS Install SQL Server
Configure SQL Server

24. Building Your Servers Build a framework that works for you
That makes your life easier
Makes standards easier to implement
Ensures that others can follow
New instances shouldn’t add overhead
Design processes/framework to scale
New instances shouldn’t add a lot of overhead
Works towards a DevOps workflow

25. OS Configuration Utilize AD infrastructure
Push OS configuration with Group Policy
Separate OU for SQL Server
Group Policy applied to that OU
Virtualization
Utilize a standard template
Ensures disk structure is consistent
Server build can become automated

26. SQL Installation Command Line Install Install from configuration file
Local installation option
Define install parameters in command line
Install from configuration file
Define parameters in config file
Desired State Configuration (PowerShell)
Remote installation option
Define parameters in configuration function

27. Desired State Configuration
Numerous modules by Microsoft on GitHub
xSQLServer
Install and Configure SQL Server
xDatabase
Deploy databases
xFailoverClustering
Setup Windows Server Failover Clustering
Other modules available
Mike Fal’s cSQLResources

28. SQL Configuration First Time Configuration Maintaining Configuration
Desired State Configuration
Scripts
Maintaining Configuration
Policy Based Management
Jobs
Triggers

29. Application Deployment

30. Application Deployment
Define
Be as granular as it makes sense for you
Standards should be easy to enforce
If you spend all your time enforcing its time to revisit
Determine who is going to implement these standards
Developer or DBA?
Standards for application deployment
Build against these standards

31. Users Windows authentication is preferred
Define a AD group structure that works for you
Eg: app_users, app_read, app_admin

32. Database Standards Define your logical and physical structures Example
Filegroups, schemas, naming conventions
Example
Application components use different schemas
Each schema resides in a different filegroup
Separate file groups for data and indexes
File groups named after schema
Eg: <Schema>_Data, <Schema>_Indexes
Files named <DBName>_<FileGroup>.ndf

33. Database Deployments Migration Based Deployments
Change scripts in order executed to upgrade database versions
Use PowerShell/SQLCMD to execute scripts in order
Each change has change scripts associated
State Based Deployments
Changes deployed based on comparison
Compare with staging database
Compare with deployment file (DACPAC)
Demo

34. Client Connectivity Decouple client application from server name
SQL Server Alias (Client Configuration)
DNS CName (DNS Server)
Availability Group Listener
Easy client redirection
No changes to client configuration if server name changes

35. Maintenance & Operations

36. Maintenance Plans Treat like an application Should be flexible Demo
Package scripts/jobs and deploy
Push the same solution to all instances
Schedules may vary
Should be flexible
Ola Hallengren
Demo

37. Daily Checks Automate Alert on fails Log everything
Scripted Checks
Policy Based Management
Alert on fails
Spend your time focusing on the problems
Log everything
Failure to log is a failed check
Treat your instances as a pool
Don’t focus on individual instances

38. Monitoring & Alerts Monitoring Software SQL Agent Alerts
SQL Server specific product are expensive
Licensed per instance
Generic Monitoring Software such as SCOM
Can be lacking in what you need
SQL Agent Alerts
Event Notifications
Service Broker
Extended Events

39. Automation Identify what tasks take up your time
Improve the process until it can be automated
Once automated you can free up your time
Ideally you can offload the task all together
Setup a Central Management Server
Allows you to run a query against multiple Instances

40. Closing Thoughts Scripting/Programming is key
The specific tool doesn’t matter its how its used
Understand how to leverage infrastructure
Know what is available to you and how to leverage it
Continuous Learning
Find ways to apply what you learn
Identify what works for you
Automate the easy tasks
Define and enforce your standards
Free your time for new and exciting work

41. Questions?

42. References https://ola.hallengren.com/
Ola Hallengren
Lock Pages In Memory
server-and-the-lock-pages-in-memory-right-in-windows-server/ 
Instant File Initialization
and-why-to-enable-instant-file-initialization/ 
Power Options
performance-on-windows-server-when-using-the-balanced-power- plan

43. References State vs Migration-Driven Database Delivery
Data-tier Applications
applications 
Data-tier deployments
a-data-tier-application 

44. References DSC Modules Mike Fal’s Blog xSQLServer xDatabase
xDatabase
xFailoverCluster
Mike Fal’s Blog