Maintenance Practices

Goal Automate the necessary DBA chores to put

organizations on the path of having healthier, consistent and more trustworthy DBs

The DBA chores could be• Rebuilding indexes• Checking db integrity• Updating index statistics• Backing up• Etc

With a maintenance plan, we can perform a comprehensive set of jobs running at scheduled intervals

Maintenance Plan tasksTask DescriptionBack Up Database Task Performs different types of SQL Server database backups.Check Database Integrity Task Checks the allocation and structural integrity of database

objects and indexes.Execute SQL Server Agent Job Task

Runs SQL Server Agent jobs.Execute T-SQL Statement Task Runs Transact-SQL statementsHistory Cleanup Task Deletes entries in the history tables in the SQL

Server msdb database.Maintenance Cleanup Task Removes files related to maintenance plans, including

reports created by maintenance plans and database backup files.

Notify Operator Task Sends notification messages to SQL Server Agent operators.

Rebuild Index Task Rebuilds indexes in SQL Server database tables and views.Reorganize Index Task Reorganizes indexes in SQL Server database tables and

views.Shrink Database Task Reduces the size of SQL Server database data and log

files.Update Statistics Task Updates information about the distribution of key values

for one or more sets of statistics on the specified table or view.

Create Maintenance Plan Use Wizard

• http://www.databasedesign-resource.com/sql-server-maintenance-plan.html

Manually Can be multi-server

• With master and target servers

What to do and when See pages 270 and 271