TOP 10 ADMIN

MISTAKES ON SQL
SERVER
Kevin Kline

Director of Engineering Services, SQL Sentry

SQL Server MVP since 2003
Twitter, FB, LI: KEKline
Blog: http://KevinEKline.com, http://ForITPros.com

AGENDA
About SQL Sentry
The Top 10 Countdown: DBA Mistakes on
Microsoft SQL Server
o Mistakes come in surprising forms
o Often people & process, instead of technology

Summary, Resources, and Q&A

FOR FRIENDS OF SQL SENTRY

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TOOLS FROM SQL SENTRY

OTHER TOP SQL SERVER MISTAKES

Excludes SQL Server mistakes that
are primarily development or design
in nature:
o Inadequate normalization and
database design
o Unknown scalability requirements
o No baselines or benchmarks
o Indexing issues
o Query tuning ignorance

10. DISKS THINKING SPACE BUT NOT IO

Frequently think about disk subsystems only in terms of
disk space, not IO load.
Without this knowledge, the following problems occur:
o Inadequate fault tolerance
o Insufficient IO:
OLTP requires high transactions/sec
OLAP requires high MB transfers/sec

o Poor choice of RAID type, controllers, channels

o Not enough disk spindles

SSD is a game changer for IO!

9. BUSINESS IGNORANCE
As the IT professional, you should know how SQL Server
works at an internals level.
o What is checkpoint? Lazywriter?
o How is TempDB used? Whats in the plan cache?

The DBA is the guardian of the corporate data assets.

For
more
tech
info:how
As the liaison between business and IT,
you
should
know
- SQLPASS.org
and in what ways your servers are used.
o
o
o
o

SQL University
SQL Crunch
SQLBlog.com

Who cares if this app is down? How much does the downtime cost the company?
What are the business cycles?
When are the best downtimes?
Baseline? Benchmarks? What is normal?

BONUS BLUNDER: NOT ASKING

for help:

Forums vs Support: know the value

#sqlhelp and Twitter

for mentoring:

Senior bloggers love to mentor!

8. NO TROUBLESHOOTING
METHODOLOGY
When the chips are down, the DBA needs a
strong, step-by-step methodology for root-cause
analysis. Without one, you get:
o
o
o
o

Missed errors and problems

Errors resulting data loss and catastrophic failure
Poor response times and breached SLAs
Lost credibility

Dont have a methodology? Check out End-toEnd Troubleshooting on http://SQLSentry.TV

SQL Server Troubleshooting Guide by J.
Kehayias on http://www.simple-talk.com

BONUS BLUNDER: REACTIVE NOT

PROACTIVE

DEMO

DEMO: ERROR NOTIFICATIONS

7. GOING WITH THE DEFAULTS

SQL Server installation defaults are intended to get the
server up and running, but not running optimally:
o
o
o
o

Auto-grow and Auto-shrink on databasese

Auto sizing of auto-growing databases
Default filegroups
Minor issues can become major issues:
MAXDOP
FILLFACTOR
o Many server- and database-level configuration settings

6. SECURITY AS AN AFTERTHOUGHT
SQL Injection is the #1 hack on the internet today.
o Remarkably, we knew as much about preventing SQL Injection ten years
ago as we do today.

Plan ahead of time to minimize issues:

o
o
o
o

Ensure the least privileges principle for applications running on your servers
How much surface area do your servers expose?
Who has access to your servers?
How do you find out the who, what, and when of a breach?

See my session Understanding & Preventing

SQL Injection for more info

5. INADEQUATE AUTOMATION
Automation is the means by which DBAs work smarter
instead of harder. Ironically, it takes a lot of work at the
outset to automate.
Without automation, DBAs must deal with:
o Manual processes prone to error, omission, and forgetfulness
o Inability to scale environment to multiple servers
o Time constraints from fire-fighter and script-pusher modes

Automation made easy

Examples of working smarter instead of
harder:
with
PowerShell and/or
o Automated error notification
WMI:
o Scheduled jobs
o Lots of scripts, not too much GUI
- PowerGUI
- Scriptomatic

4. WRONG FEATURE OR TECHNIQUE

FOR THE JOB
DBAs are the performance engineer for their corporations IT
applications.
Its imperative that the most appropriate feature be applied to
each business requirement. Otherwise:
o
o
o
o
o

Brittle applications
Applications complexity
Excess resource consumption
Ooooh! Shiny!
Design reflects the current fad

Axiom: There are no IT projects. There are business projects

solved using IT.

3. APATHY ABOUT CHANGE

MANAGEMENT
Change management is important! Without it, DBAs face:
o Changes that leave things worse than they started
o Piecemeal rollbacks that cripple applications
o Inconsistent support across applications and servers

Change control versus Change management?

Proper change management means:
o Key stakeholders have a say in Go-NoGo (CM board)
o Performed at pre-planned times and within a defined time limit
o Change is tested and verified to have no effect or positive effect on production
environment
o Changes are isolated, atomic, and reversible

2. INADEQUATE PREVENTATIVE
MAINTENANCE
Proper preventative maintenance (PM) helps you:
o Catch issue before they become problems
o Ensure optimal performance
o Perform resource intensive operations with few, if any, users on the system

PM on SQL Server should include:

o
o
o
o

Database consistency checks (DBCC) and CHECKIDENT

Backups with verification & Restore checks
Defragmentation, Fill factor, Pad Index
Index Statistics

Dont rely on the Database Maintenance Wizard!

BONUS BLUNDER:
REINVENTING THE WHEEL
Most PM has already been written and vetted by
others.
Check out:
o www.sqlfool.com
o www.olahallengren.com

1. BACKUPS <> RECOVERY

DBAs often dont test backups or recoveries as they should.
Causes lots of problems:
o
o
o
o
o

Can you meet your SLA? RTO? RPO?

Not certain that backups are good: verified and available?
Wheres all the data, files, DLLs, etc for recovery?
Got all of the databases that are needed?
Havent tested a full, ground-up restore:
What if you have to reinstall everything?
o One of the great things about VM recovery!
The importance of recovery: the Lost Job scenario
o Can you actually restore older, archived data?

Its
All About
The Data, All
The Time, Every
Time

SUMMARY
1. Only

a few b
ig DBA
to tech
blunde
s k ills :
rs ar e

d ue
Di
sks as
spa
No
trouble ce, not IO
shootin
Go
g meth
i
n
g with t
odology
2. Most
h
e defau
DBA bl
lts
un
a
nd bu s

iness is ders are due t

o proce
sues:
Se
ss
cur

ity as a
W
n aftert
rong fe
hought
atures
Ch
ange m
a
Pr
eventat nagement
ive
Ba
ckups < maintenance
/autom
> Reco
ation
very

RESOURCES
http://www.sqlcat.com - Excellent source of SQL
Server best practices, white papers, etc.
Paul Randal and all the blogs at SQLSkills
http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/ et al
http://SQLPerformance.com
http://www.sqlpass.org

Q&A

Send questions to me at: kkline@sqlsentry.net

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn at KEKline
Slides at http://SQLSentry.TV
Kevins IT leadership and soft-skills content at
http://ForITPros.com

THANK YOU!