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 essential database maintenance tasks, such as backups and integrity checks, are performed on their SQL Server instances: the Maintenance Plan Wizard and the Maintenance Plan Designer..
Brad's Sure Guide to SQL Server Maintenance Plans -- Coming Soon!
By Brad M. McGehee; Publish Date: January 18 2010
(Free 19-chapter, 290-page eBook!)
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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: Introduction to the Maintenance Plan Designer
- Chapter 17: Configuring Maintenance tasks using the Designer
- Chapter 18: Subplans and Precedence
- Chapter 19: Creating and Modifying Maintenance Plans using the 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 many of the vital 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.
About the Author
Brad McGehee, currently Director of DBA Education at Red Gate Software, is a SQL Server DBA, trainer and writer with over 15 years’ SQL Server experience, and over 6 years’ training experience. He is an accomplished Microsoft SQL Server MVP and was the founder of the popular community site SQL-Server-Performance.Com, which he operated from 2000 through 2006, writing over one million words on SQL Server topics.
Brad is a frequent speaker at SQL PASS, European PASS, SQL Connections, SQLTeach, devLINK, SQLBits, SQL Saturdays, TechFests, Code Camps, SQL Server user groups, and other industry seminars. In 2009, Brad made 33 public presentations to a total of 1,853 attendees, in six different countries.
A well-respected and trusted name in SQL Server literature, Brad is the author or co-author of more than 15 technical books and over 100 published articles. His most recent books include How to Become an Exceptional DBA (2nd Edition), Brad's Sure Guide to SQL Server 2008, and Mastering SQL Server Profiler, all of which are available in PDF format at: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Books/.