You can watch the replay for this Geek Sync webcast in the IDERA Resource Center: http://ow.ly/3mt150A5fo2 It's the end of the year and you want to have a safe and uninterrupted holiday vacation. Or you're the one who won't be taking time off but you have plenty of co-workers who will and you don't want to be stuck holding the bag if something goes wrong (and Murphy says it will). While this sounds like a pipe dream for anyone who works in IT, there are steps you can take to minimize your chances of being interrupted by that frantic phone call or email from work.

1. Surviving the
Holidays with
SQL Server
December 14, 2016

2. Our Goals
• Ensure whoever is in the office has everything
he or she needs.
• Minimize the requirement for contacting
someone out of office.
• Train up more people to do the job.

3. Performance Criteria
The Right Backups
Restore Scripts
Points of Contact
3
1
2
4

4. Should
you
assume …?
No!

5. The Right Backups
What are the right
backups? How do you
know you have them?

6. The Right Backups
How You Know You’ve Got What You Need…
• Recovery Point Objective (RTO)
• Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
• Operating Level Agreements (OLAs)
• Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

7. The Right Backups
Check Against What You’ve Got
• Review Your backups – Do you have them all?
• Check backup history looking for failures.
• Check the actual backup locations!
• Check permissions for support staff.

8. Everything
in place?
Check / correct
documentation.
No
“tribal knowledge!”

9. Restore Scripts
How do you know the
backups are good?

10. Restore Scripts
Test Restores of Your Backups
• Use scripts, not the GUI.
• Build your scripts to take input.
• Test restore automation for complex recovery.
• Make sure support has access to the scripts!

11. Restore Scripts
Why You Should Test
• Verify the backups are, in fact, good.
• Ensure there are scripts for every database.
• Be able to generate estimates for recovery time.
• Have support test with you (OJT).

12. Performance Criteria
Do you know what
indicates a performance
issue?

13. Performance Criteria
Have Baselines
• Know what a system looks like normally.
• Have a baseline to refer back to.
• Make sure support understands the baseline.
• Batch processing as well as business day.

14. Performance Criteria
What other duties are
required?

15. Performance Criteria
Document Additional Duties
• Every group is different.
• What do you do outside of the standard DBA?
• Document what, when, and how.
• Train support to do these additional duties.
• Make sure PoCs know about support.

16. Points of Contact
Who should be
contacted?

17. Points of Contact
Compile Them All
• Outside vendors for the products.
• Support personnel from other teams.
• Business folks over systems.
• Escalation paths.

18. Points of Contact
Include:
• When folks will be in and out of office.
• Work, cell, and other contact numbers.
• SLA/OLA expectations for each system.

19. Questions?

20. Visit IDERA.com to
download any of our tools
free for 14 days