Thursday, September 4, 2008

DBA Morning Checklist

Backups
  • Verify that the Network Backups are good by checking the backup emails. If a backup did not complete, contact _____ in the networking group, and send an email to the DBA group.
  • Check the SQL Server backups. If a backup failed, research the cause of the failure and ensure that it is scheduled to run tonight.
  • Check the database backup run duration of all production servers. Verify that the average time is within the normal range. Any significant increases in backup duration times need to be emailed to the networking group, requesting an explanation. The reason for this is that networking starts placing databases backups to tape at certain times, and if they put it to tape before the DBAs are done backing up, the tape copy will be bad.
  • Verify that all databases were backed up. If any new databases were not backed up, create a backup maintenance plan for them and check the current schedule to determine a backup time.

Disk Space
  • Verify the free space on each drive of the servers. If there is significant variance in free space from the day before, research the cause of the free space fluctuation and resolve if necessary. Often times, log files will grow because of monthly jobs.

Job Failures
  • Check for failed jobs, by connecting to each SQL Server, selecting "job activity" and filtering on failed jobs. If a job failed, resolve the issue by contacting the owner of the job if necessary.

System Checks
  • Check SQL logs on each server. In the event of a critical error, notify the DBA group and come to an agreement on how to resolve the problem.
  • Check Application log on each server. In the event of a critical or unusual error, notify the DBA group and the networking group to determine what needs to be done to fix the error.

Performance
  • Check Performance statistics for All Servers using the monitoring tool and research and resolve any issues.
  • Check Performance Monitor on ALL production servers and verify that all counters are within the normal range.

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