October 26, 2011 at 6:54 pm
In short, my question is: now that our data is hosted and supported in the remote, corporate, centralized datacenter what should we expect and/or demand for our "support experience". Please comment on or add to the questions I need to ask them below.
Background:
Our small company is now part of a very large corporation. We have always supported our own SQL Server environments. Now for the first time we are hosting our new application in the corporate datacenter in a remote location.
We don't have "real DBA's" here and they do so that is a plus I hope. But there has not been much talk so far about what happens now. Right now we cannot even see or connect to the sql server instance directly.
Two years ago I tried to move us a little more toward "proactive" support with our database. We purchased SQL Sentry to monitor our server. We had a goal of establishing a baseline for the dashboard and alert messages when the server went too far or too long outside the baseline. We were able to detect slowdowns and sometimes to take action before they became train wrecks. When users asked why the system was slow we could tell them. If the users were getting timeouts we had a log of when and why.
I am asked to provide some questions that could be raised to the datacenter support folks. I was thinking of something like this:
1) We have a monitoring tool (SQLSentry) that alerts us to problems so that we can detect trends and be alerted of problems. Will we be able to use the same tool or something like it?
2) Will we be able to view execution plans in the target environment in order to tune our queries?
3) Will we be able to setup and run perfmon traces?
Other questions I should ask?? What should we expect??
October 26, 2011 at 7:45 pm
I hope you have a job(s) to periodically back up your DB and log files.
If so.
1. Who is going to check those jobs and modify the backup path if required?
2. Who is responsible for checking that the backups successfully completed?
3. Who will periodically test those backup to see that the DB can be properly restored to a given data and time.
These first 3 will, as a side effect demonstrate to corporate that you are concerned about the possibility of a disaster and the need to have a good recover plan should a disaster happen. In other words your companies data recovery comes before your concern about your job position.
4. Who will personnel in your company (now maybe a division in the larger corporation) call for support? Will you (the local staff) be the first step and you will escalate support call when and if required.
Check out this link for some additional ideas
http://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/1278/sql-server-dba-database-management-checklist/
October 27, 2011 at 7:57 am
Thanks, bitbucket (Ron). I guess I had assumed that they would be really good at all the standard management things (backups, watching logs and alerts, keeping the trains running) -- better than we were I hope.
I wonder what to expect mostly in the tuning area as it has been my experience that apps are put into production with little tuning and require diligence especially early in their deployment. Then as they grow and age it seems that you need to be proactive to give good customer service.
October 27, 2011 at 8:22 am
I was also thinking about backup solutions. Perhaps, depending on environment, a slightly more important topic would be security. Who has access to the server, who has access to the instance, how are the objects/instance/server being secured. How is the data secured on the server and physically in the data center. You know, all those good questions when you're responsible for data that's out of your hands.
Might go on to performance and how the server/instance is structured. Storage (RAID no RAID What type of RAID) setup, tempdb setup, disk setup and who manages maintenance tasks. Who determines RAM limits and usage, CPU setup, and all that good technical stuff.
Could include questions along the lines of High Availability and Disaster Recovery. What HA/DR tools are in use, planned to be implemented, and who maintains them. Instance availability SLAs and who's responsible for them.
These questions should spark a very good conversation. Good luck!
October 27, 2011 at 8:43 am
scott mcnitt (10/27/2011)
Thanks, bitbucket (Ron). I guess I had assumed that they would be really good at all the standard management things (backups, watching logs and alerts, keeping the trains running) -- better than we were I hope.
Remember what assumed means, just in case it slipped your mind. Assume = Makes an a$$ out of you and me
October 27, 2011 at 8:57 am
You need to ask about Server Maintenance. How frequently will OS patches be applied? SQL Server update/patches/upgrades?
Will they be analyzing indexes and re-indexing when necessary?
How many people have access to the data?
How will you be notified the server will be off-line for maintenance? How much advance notice will you be given?
Are backups written to tape? Are tapes moved to off-site storage? What is the retention policy?
Who to contact off-hours? What is the expected response time?
Are databases in Full recovery and are logs being backed up?
Who is responsible for change management to database structures and stored procedures? How are these changes applied?
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