Ross Mistry, MCTS, MCDBA, MCSE Ross Mistry has spent more than nine years in the computer industry and is a seasoned veteran in the Silicon Valley. As a Principal Consultant and Partner with Convergent Computing (CCO), located in the San Francisco Bay area, he has had the opportunity to work with the SQL Server product for two to three years before versions release to the public. His primary focus is implementing and maintaining SQL Server in large enterprise environments with a global presence. He also focuses on Active Directory, Exchange, Operations Manager, and specializes in SQL Server High Availability. He has a strong understanding of how these technologies integrate with one another. Ross has held several roles with Sams Publishing, including lead author, contributing writer, and technical editor. His works include SQL Server 2005 Unleashed, SQL Server 2005: Changing the Paradigm, Exchange Server 2007 Unleashed, SharePoint 2007 Unleashed, SharePoint 2003 Unleashed, and ISA Server 2004 Unleashed. Ross has also written numerous whitepapers and keynote seminars on SQL Server, in which he leverages best practices based on his experiences in the industry.
Chris Amaris, MCSE, CISSP Chris Amaris is the Chief Technology Officer and cofounder of Convergent Computing. He has more than 20 years’ experience consulting for Fortune 500 companies, leading companies in the technology selection, design, planning, and implementation of complex Information Technology projects. Chris has worked with Microsoft SQL since version 4.2 on OS/2. He specializes in database management, messaging, security, performance tuning, systems management, and migration. A Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) with an Information System Security Architecture Professional (ISSAP) concentration, Certified Homeland Security (CHS III), Windows 2003 MCSE, Novell CNE, Banyan CBE, and a Certified Project Manager, Chris is also an author, writer, and technical editor for a number of IT books, including Network Security for Government and Corporate Executives, Windows Server 2003 Unleashed, Exchange Server 2007 Unleashed, and Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Unleashed. Chris presents on Messaging, Operations Management, Security, and Information Technology topics worldwide.
Alec Minty, MCSE Alec Minty is a Senior Consultant with Convergent Computing located in the San Francisco Bay area. He has more than 10 years’ industry experience with extensive knowledge designing and implementing enterprise class solutions for a diverse array of organizations. Alec has been an early adopter of database technologies, operations management, systems management, and security technologies. He specializes in designing, implementing, migrating, and supporting complex infrastructures for a variety of large utility, telecommunications, and engineering organizations. Alec’s experience spans the business and technology areas; he has in-depth experience in the deployment, migration, and integration of key business technologies such as SQL Server, Windows, Exchange, Active Directory, ISA, and Identity Management. Alec is coauthor of MOM 2005 Unleashed and is a contributing author on Exchange Server 2007 Unleashed and ISA 2004 Unleashed, all published by Sams Publishing.
IntroductionIntroduction
What Is in This Book?
SQL Server 2005 is Microsoft's product for providing data management and analysis solutions for the enterprise. SQL Server 2005 is a trusted database platform that provides organizations a competitive advantage by allowing them to obtain faster results and make better business decisions. This is all achievable via a new management studio, deep integration with Visual Studio, and a comprehensive business intelligence platform. The product is modular and broken down into the following technologies: database engine, Analysis Services, Integration Services, replication, Reporting Services, Notification Services, service broker, and full-text search.
Because SQL Server has been released for almost two years, organizations are well versed in designing, installing, and implementing SQL Server 2005. However, database administrators are currently facing new challenges, such as how to manage, administer, and monitor their new SQL Server infrastructure based on industry best practices. This book improves the experience these professionals have working with SQL Server.
In addition, this book provides detailed guidance on management, administration, and monitoring. These areas remain challenges to database administrators who have SQL Server already deployed. Because this book assumes the reader has experience with installing SQL Server 2005, it goes far beyond the basic installation and setup information found in hundreds of other resources. Instead, it focuses on day-to-day administration, best practices, and industry case scenarios. All topics and examples covered in this book are based on the new features and functionality included with SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2.
The topic of SQL Server 2005 administration and management is huge, and the size of this book reflects the size of the topic. To help orient you within the book, the following sections describe the various parts and chapters in the book. This book is focused on the administration and management of SQL Server 2005. Apropos to that, the content of the book does not cover the topics of planning, design and installation of the SQL Server 2005 platform. These are broad and deep topics, with books such as Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Unleashed (Sams Publishing, ISBN: 0672328240) dedicated to those topics alone.
However, to facilitate running the steps given throughout the book, the appendix lists the basic steps needed to set up a lab environment with the databases needed to test the procedures given in the book.
Part I: Administering SQL Server Components
The administration of the different components of the SQL Server 2005 platform is covered in this part. The administration encompasses the configuration of the various components, including initial setup and adjustments during normal operations.
The chapters in this part cover the administration of the main components of SQL Server 2005.
Chapter 1: Administering SQL Server 2005 Database Engine
This chapter focuses on configuring the Database Services component, managing the server, and configuring the database properties of the SQL Server Database Engine after the product has been installed. Managing server and database configuration settings such as memory, processor performance, auditing, database files, and auto growth is covered in depth.
Chapter 2: Administering SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services
This chapter focuses on configuring the Analysis Services component for OLAP and business intelligence. Administration topics on how to manage OLAP cubes, partitions, database processing, and storage models are covered.
Chapter 3: Administering SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services
Reporting Services is a set of technologies utilized to deliver enterprise web-enabled reporting functionality. This chapter focuses on configuring the Reporting Services component, including Internet Information Services (IIS), and managing the Reporting Services settings.
Chapter 4: Administering SQL Server 2005 Notification Services
This chapter focuses on configuring the Notification Services component and managing the notification engine for generating and sending notifications.
Chapter 5: Administering SQL Server 2005 Integration Services
Integration Services is Microsoft's extract, transform, and load (ETL) tool for data warehousing and is a platform for building high-performance data integration and workflow solutions. This chapter focuses on installing the Integration Services component, saving packages, and executing packages.
Chapter 6: Administering SQL Server Replication
SQL Server Replication is another way of distributing data from a source SQL Server to either one or more target SQL Servers. The chapter focuses on replication components and provides a prelude to the different types of replication scenarios a database administrator can manage, such as Snapshot, Merge, and Transactional Replication.
Step-by-step replication configurations including the new peer-to-peer replication scenario, a new form of high availability, are discussed.
Part II: Managing SQL Server 2005
This part of the book covers the management of the SQL Server 2005 platform. This discussion encompasses the routine tasks needed to ensure that the platform is operating properly and at optimal levels.
This part includes topics such as conducting health checks, performing maintenance tasks, and generating indexes to keep SQL Server 2005 operating efficiently.
Chapter 7: Conducting a SQL Server 2005 Health Check
On many occasions IT professionals inherit a SQL Server implementation when they join an organization or through consultants who design and implement the SQL solution at their organization. It is imperative these IT professionals manage the new SQL installation; however, they are often unaware of what to review.
This chapter focuses on how to conduct a SQL Server health check so the organization's implementation is fully optimized and adheres to industry best practices.
Chapter 8: SQL Server 2005 Maintenance Practices
This chapter focuses on managing and maintaining a SQL Server environment. This discussion includes creating maintenance plans to check database integrity, shrink databases, reorganize indexes, and update statistics. Additionally, this chapter provides recommendations on daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly maintenance practices that should be conducted on SQL Servers. This also includes managing replication.
Chapter 9: Managing and Optimizing SQL Server 2005 Indexes
Similar to an index found in a book, an index in SQL Server is utilized for fast retrieval of data from tables. This chapter focuses on index concepts, ways to design the appropriate index strategy to maximize performance, and data retrieval. In addition, the chapter shares best practices on implementing, managing, and optimizing indexes.
Chapter 10: Managing Full-Text Catalogs
More and more of today's applications leverage full text-search capabilities of the back-end database. This chapter covers administration concepts associated with full-text search and step-by-step instructions for performing tasks such as enabling full-text indexing, removing full-text indexing, and best practices for managing full-text indexing.
Chapter 11: Creating Packages and Transferring Data
A common database administrator task is to transfer data or databases between source and target environments. This chapter focuses on importing, exporting, and transforming data and databases via SQL Server Management Studio and the newly created ETL tool, Integration Services. The chapter covers using packages to transfer data and to automate maintenance tasks.
Part III: Securing the SQL Server Implementation
In this part of the book, the important topic of security is addressed.
