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Publication Date: January 18, 2010 | Series: Dba Handbooks
In his new book, Brad's Sure Guide to SQL Server Maintenance Plans, Brad McGehee takes you on a comprehensive tour of two SQL Server tools designed to help DBAs ensure that a "required minimum" level of maintenance takes place on their SQL Server instances: the Maintenance Plan Wizard and the Maintenance Plan Designer. Table of Contents * Chapter 01: Why is Database Maintenance Important? Chapter 02: Before you Create any Maintenance Plans Chapter 03: Getting Started with the Maintenance Plan Wizard Chapter 04: Task Scheduling Chapter 05: Check database Integrity Task Chapter 06: Shrink Database Task Chapter 07: Rebuild Index Task Chapter 08: Reorganize Index Task Chapter 09: Update Statistics Task Chapter 10: Execute SQL Server Agent Job Task Chapter 11: History Cleanup Task Chapter 12: Define Back Up Database (Full) Task Chapter 13: Define Back Up Database (Differential) Task Chapter 14: Back Up Database (Transaction Log) Task Chapter 15: Maintenance Cleanup Task Chapter 16: Using the Maintenance Plan Designer Why read this book? Millions of SQL Server instances run in the offices of small and medium-sized organizations and there are many "accidental" DBAs out there whose job it is to maintain them. Often, they find that they don't have the knowledge, experience, or critically the time, to perform the correct level of maintenance on their SQL Server databases, much as they might like to. This can mean poor performance and reduced availability. Regardless of the size of your organization, if your mission critical data becomes unavailable, then business will suffer greatly. The Maintenance Plan Wizard and Designer allow you to configure and schedule eleven core database maintenance tasks, ranging from integrity checks, to database backups, to index reorganizations and rebuilds. Brad walks through every one of these tasks covering: * The intent of each task and why it's important * How to configure each task and what all the options mean * Scheduling considerations: when and how often should you run the task? * Customizing and extended your Maintenance Plans using the Designer Used carefully, these Maintenance Plan tools represent powerful time-saving devices for any DBA. At each stage of the book, Brad explains clearly the correct and incorrect uses for the tool, and indicates where more advanced solutions, using T-SQL or PowerShell scripting, would be more appropriate.
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Brad McGehee is an Industry speaker, writer, and consultant on Microsoft SQL Server, specializing in SQL Server performance tuning, clustering, and high availability.He is now Director of DBA Education at Red Gate Software. Brad is a frequent speaker at SQL PASS, SQL Connections, SQL Server user groups, and other industry seminars, and he is the author or co-author of more than 12 technical books and over 100 published articles. He spends what time he has left with his family in Hawaii. He is a Microsoft SQL Server MVP, MCSE+I, MCSD, MCT.
Brad M. McGehee is a MCTS, MCSE+I, MCSD, and MCT (former) with a Bachelor's degree in Economics and a Masters in Business Administration. Brad is an accomplished Microsoft SQL Server MVP with over 17 years SQL Server experience, over 8 years training experience, and has been involved in the IT since 1982.
Brad is a frequent speaker at SQL PASS, European PASS, SQL Server Connections, SQLTeach, devLINK, SQLBits, SQL Saturdays, TechFests, Code Camps, SQL in the City, SQL Server user groups, webinars, and other industry seminars, where he shares his 17 years of cumulative knowledge and experience.
Since 2007, Brad has presented over 154 presentations to over 10,300 attendees in six different countries.
Brad was the founder of the popular community site SQL-Server-Performance.Com, and operated it from 2000 through 2006, where he wrote over one million words on SQL Server topics.
Brad is also the founder, and current president, of the Southwest Missouri SQL Server Users Group in Springfield, MO.
Brad McGehee's latest book, "Brad's Sure Guide to SQL Server Maintenance Plans", is aimed squarely at inexperienced DBAs, but as there's a lack of starter administrative texts, this is definitely a good thing.
To give my SQL Server background - I have around 10 years development experience on the platform and am a Microsoft Certified IT Professional in SQL Server 2008 Development. However, my administration experience is limited, and I am what Brad would call an "accidental" DBA, i.e. I manage the servers alongside my other daily work.
My company has recently been upgrading its network, and this has involved the addition of more SQL Servers. As we're now starting to see lots of capacity coming through these servers, I decided it was high time I started maintaining the servers properly, and this book seemed like a good place to start. Maintenance plans are essentially the "easy" way to manage SQL Servers. The book concentrates on the two methods used to create maintenance plans - the wizard and the designer.
The first half of the book is dedicated to the maintenance plan wizard. This is a useful tool that can create plans that run scheduled maintenance tasks. It does have some limitations, and Brad points these out throughout the book. Each task the wizard can perform is well explained and there's lots of helpful screenshots to walk the reader through the process. Crucially, Brad also highlights which tasks should not be performed using the wizard, which is great for those less experienced. The book continually states that if more control needs to be exerted over a particular task, PowerShell or custom T-SQL scripts should be used. The second part of the book moves on to the more powerful maintenance plan designer, which allows DBAs to exert more influence over their maintenance plans. Again, the various parts of the process are well explained, and Brad clearly shows why the designer is often a better choice than the wizard (improved control over scheduling and support for different database backup types are just two examples).
This is a great book for inexperienced DBAs and DBAs who are not really DBAs but have "acquired" the job as an addendum to their daily work. More experienced DBAs will probably find its handholding approach and the lack of technical depth annoying, but then it isn't aimed at them. It will help experienced DBAs is in the training arena. For anybody running classes on SQL Server maintenance, this is an ideal starter text as it clearly and reasonably concisely shows the principal maintenance tasks DBAs should be performing.
In short, this is a well written and information book, and will help beginners just starting to learn about SQL Server maintenance. Well done Brad.
One of my peeves is verbose books on technology by publishing companies who assume to offer great value and content by over stuffing their books with a lot of superficial words and pages in my opinion.
A rule of thumb: LESS IS MORE.
If most IT professionals are like me, when I need answers, I don't want to be spending realms of my precious time shifting through endless pages of "page stuffing" to get the information I really need and want. Goodness knows that our project timelines are already too short and expectations are already off the chart.
So that being said, here is what I look for when I start to read a book on technology (How-Tos and Reference books alike), what is it about, what are the facts. This is what I like about "Brad's Sure Guide to SQL Server Maintenance Plan", he is giving me the facts and not the fluff.
For a guy like me who doesn't do a lot of administration, Brad gave me some great advice on how to maintain my databases with little effort. I think this is a must have book for developers who also do maintenance on database servers. I can't speak for DBAs because one I'm not. I didn't even know of some of the topics Brad's wrote about existed like the Maintenance Plans and the Maintenance Designer. He also showed me through his simple and clear examples how to use and write PowerShell scripts. I, like a lot of people in IT, have heard of PowerShell but haven't used it before.
I heard about the author from the well-known "Brad's DBA checklist" on Simple-talk. Surely this book is a well-done job for Brad. Not a lot of people use the maintenance plan. But the book's content is quite enough to be used by those who do (or plan to) use this tool in daily work.
I like the book for these particular reasons. 1. The book describes the maintenance plan wizard and designer in a proper detailed level. It is kind of a "step-by-step" guide for the audience.
2. Brad also mentions a lot of good tips on what are the "must-do" or "must-not-do" things as the maintenance work. This is particular good for junior DBAs.
3. The overall language and presentation of the book is direct and clear. That's like a operational handbook for DBAs.
There are two things that I would like to add. First, one should be clear that maintenance plan can still be used in large organizations with TBs of data in databases. The reason is that there are plenty of "small" databases in such organizations and DBAs for different departments still have plenty of chances to use this tool. Second, I think the book can be a 5-star if a few (real life) case study can be included to make the readers more experienced after learning the basic steps and the technical comments.
All in all, this is an excellent book for DBAs in the early career life. I will suggest the book to my friends.
