DBA Functions

  • Hi,

    We are a small SQL 2000 shop but growing quite a bit. I wanted to know what a typical DBA would do on a daily basis, weekly basis, monthly basis in regards to ensuring data integrity, performance, etc.

    Thanks...Todd

  • It depends. Are you a development dba or production dba. development dba are usually very busy working on current project with other people to make sure table and database design, query, performance tuning and other stuff is up to speed. Production DBA does backup daily, transaction backup daily(more if you need), dbcc daily, restore, sql patch, hot fixes, monitor sql jobs to make sure it is completed and sucessfull every morning. We move or migrate database from development server to test server and then to production server. We also write lots of sql script to generate reports for dba use only. It a whole lots of stuff to do but it depends. At my fist job I even have to take care of the backup tap in which I have to stop by the bank every evening before coming home to deposit last night backup there. It also depends on how many sql servers do you have to take care. DBA also take part of hardware planning and backup strategy. Your company have to answer the question of how much would it cost if Server A is down for 1 hour and plan according to that answer. I used to work for a small e-commerce company and it cost them $10,000 for every hour that it is down.

  • Daily - Backups!! Make sure these work

    Weekly - Run dbccs, maint plan helps here. Patches, etc. We have a weekly window available for maint. Don't always take it, but dbccs should run. Might rebuild indexes as well.

    Monthly - Baseline - get some perf numbers for a day or two.

    Quarterly - test restores. There're easy, but worth testing

    Perf - Need to grab profiles periodically and see what the slow queries are (relative) as well as the most often run. Focus on these.

    Steve Jones

    sjones@sqlservercentral.com

    http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/sjones

    The Best of SQL Server Central.com 2002 - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/bestof/

    http://www.dkranch.net

Viewing 3 posts - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply