It’s been a few months since I’ve updated my SQL Server monthly maintenance checklist. Even though it hasn’t been updated, hopefully people have been continuing to look at their environments and performing the needed monthly maintenance activities.
Doing this is important because if you don’t know where you are today, or last month, its hard to understand where your environment stands and where it is going. You need to be sure that you have the right resources in place and that unexpected problems are prevented or their risks are mitigated as much as possible. One of the best ways to do this, is to have a process in place that provides a basis for checking your environment on a monthly basis.
As an example of what you need to check, you can use my 10 Monthly Maintenance Tasks for SQL Server. It covers most everything in your SQL Server environment that needs to be checked. If you see anything missing from that list, please leave a comment on this post. And if there are good resources out there that should be included on the list – share those as well.
Checklist Updates
Since three months back, the checklist hasn’t changed too much. This is likely due to the launch of SQL Serve 2014 and getting working on the next version of SQL Server. The main changes are:
- Separated SQL Server versions and updates by those within and outside Mainstream support. This was mainly due to the end of Mainstream support for SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2. Even though out of Mainstream support, Microsoft has committed to one more Service Pack for each of these SQL Server versions.
- Add support information on KB2969896, which resolves data corruption issues related to index rebuilds.
- Added Cumulative Update for SQL Server 2014 RTM
- Added Cumulative Update for SQL Server 2012 SP1
SOMETHING MISSING?
Is there something missing in this checklist or with the pages that has been overlooked? Any cool links that would aid in the review of your SQL Server environments? If so, leave a comment below and I’ll take a look.
