Test the restore process regularly. That's the best thing to do for any backup. I also like the idea of adding a mid-day diff. Test that too though. And test...

No for sure 100% method on this. Make sure you backup the databases and you backup the server. Test the backup on the databases to ensure they're correct. Then  install...

Yep, absolutely, Extended Events.

You also have access to the same DMVs to query the cache, sys.dm_exec_requests, etc., and you have Query Store, which is on by default in...

I trust Edwin to know what he's talking about, so here's a good article. I'd pay attention to the caveats because that's where the pain points may come...

PLE all by itself as a measure doesn't tell much. What kind of wait statistics are you experiencing? How fast are the queries? Are you experiencing blocking? I'd be much...

If you want to see what's currently happening, look to the Activity - All Sessions or Activity - Top Sessions reports. They're querying sys.dm_exec_requests (and other Dynamic Management Views) to...

More and more we're seeing the successful companies move into a DevOps approach. The jobs, DBA & Database Developer, are congealing some. I wouldn't worry too much about the title...

You should be able to automate this pretty easily through Powershell. You provide a list of servers and then you can query for the list of databases on each server...