It's not exactly a "best practices" guide but here is the link to the msdn operations guide (as it currently exists) for SQL Server 2005
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/library/operations.mspx
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If most people are not willing to see the difficulty, this is mainly because, consciously or unconsciously, they assume that it will be they who will settle these questions for the others, and because they are convinced of their own capacity to do this. -Friedrich August von Hayek
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