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

2. Who AM I? Matt Gordon You can find me at: @sqlatspeed

3. 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

4. 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.

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

6. 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

7. 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)

8. 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

9. 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?

10. Performance baselining
Are there third-party monitoring tools available to you?
Evaluate wait stats
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

11. 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

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

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