MS SQL Server Database Administration | ||
Every business at
a certain stage of its maturity comes to realize the vital importance of
proper management of its business data. The Database Administration team
within the IT Department is directly responsible for the overall health
of business data.
It is obvious that certain level of skills and experience must be
present within the DBA team to produce expected quality results. Also,
certain resources and effort must be allocated and put in place to bring
the Database Administration function to its proper industrial level.
This page describes major activities the DBA team must perform and
should be viewed as high level management guide only.
Major Database Administration responsibilities include:
1. Installing and maintaining database servers.
2. Managing and monitoring Access Security.
Access to the
business data must be properly controlled and maintained to ensure its
proper use and quality. The DBA Team is responsible for implementation
of data access controls within a framework of organization level
security policies in cooperation with Security Administration Officer.
The activity includes:
3. Performance Monitoring and Tuning.
This activity takes a longer view to ensure adequate performance of
database parts of business applications while accumulated business data
grows over time. With regular and systematic performance monitoring,
potential “bottlenecks” can be identified and resolved in a manner that
minimizes disruptions to
normal business operations.
4. Disaster Recovery Planning and Testing.
DRP is an
organization wide continuous process of planning, testing, learning,
improvement and implementation. The DBA team must be deeply involved in
this very important activity including:
5. Application Software Development Support.
When business
applications are being developed in-house, it is crucial for the DBA
team members to be involved in all stages of application life cycle:
It is
responsibility of the DBA team to set up and enforce various database
related standards.
6. Data Management.
7. Third party products support.
To ensure
continuous availability and general health of databases used by third
party software products, it is responsibility of the DBA team to perform
regular diagnostics, monitoring and maintenance tasks in a view to early
detect and identify possible performance degradation and alert related
software vendor. Also, these databases must be included into
organization’ Disaster Recovery Planning and testing activities.
8. General Production Operations monitoring and support.
9. Maintaining and publishing of up to date database related documentation.
All above
activities when done properly, generate considerable amount of
documentation, which is to be useful in the time of need must be kept up
to date, backed up and its location well known. While MS SQL Server as a
product includes many features that are self documented (like
maintenance plans and database properties, for example), there are
plenty of scripts and NT jobs that are executed regularly and on ad hoc
basis. Having proper Operation Guides (run books) related to
database/applications operations is the aim worth considering.
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