1. Helpdesk to DBA in 60 Tips & Tricks for the new DBA
Meredith Ryan-Smith
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2. Meredith Ryan-Smith 12 years in IT, 5 years as DBA at The Bell Group
Chapter Leader of the PASS WIT VC
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3. First Things First: Don’t Panic!
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4. Learn what your scope is
Hardware forward
OS forward
SQL forward
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5. Get to know your instances
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6. Other methods Where is SQL installed?
Ted Krueger’s blog using SQL Ping 2:
Buck Woody’s blog uses Power Shell and WMI:
SQL Discovery, Discovery Wizard
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7. Who uses it? Talk to your customers to get the real story.
What applications depend on your instances?
What are the Service Level Agreements?
How is it performing now?
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8. Learn the basics Management Studio is a beginners best friend
Wizards get the job done and sometimes they can be quicker than scripting.
Focus on the features that you use today
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9. Mike Walsh on where to start
SQL University
Mike Walsh on where to start
Brent Ozar on where to start
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10. Community to the rescue!
The SQL community lives to help you learn.
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11. SQL Server Central http://www.sqlservercentral.com/
SQLServerPedia
LessThanDot
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12. Learn to love Documentation
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13. Should be complete and concise
Level of detail depends on the complexity of your systems
Keep a physical copy – electronic won’t cut it in a disaster
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14. Needs to be considered a ‘living document’ and updated frequently
One set of documentation for each server
Database details live inside the server’s documentation
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15. Jorge Segarra’s Runbook template http://sqlchicken
SQL Doc from Redgate
Use Visio to map out your integration points – translate that whiteboard map into something less volatile
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16. Turn this…
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17. Into this.
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18. Automate yourself out of a job
Backup jobs
Index maintenance
Integrity checks
Event/error notifications
Any other repetitive tasks
Gathering baselines
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19. Michelle Ufford’s index maintenance script
Ola Hallengren’s Backup, Integrity Check and Index Optimization solution
Michelle Ufford’s index maintenance script
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20. Ted Krueger’s blog on setting up email notifications
Grant Fritchey’s blog on automating Server Side Traces
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21. Next steps: Act on the info you collected from user base
Remediate any issues
Performance tuning
Plan for future growth
Look at ways to simplify and standardize your environment
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22. Thank you and Feedback
Thank you for attending Helpdesk to DBA in 60 Minutes at SQL Saturday #73
Please make sure to fill out the session evaluation and place it in the box in the back of the room
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