Rock Solid SQL Server Management

Red Rock Consulting Rock Solid

Red Rock Consulting Overview

Australian-owned company; established in 1998

Focused on providing the best solutions using Microsoft SQL Server & Oracle technologies

SQL Server Group

Support

Consulting

RockSolid Product

Over 350 staff with offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Canberra, Wellington and Auckland

Microsoft Gold Certified Partner

Government endorsed supplier

Member of UXC - ASX Top 300 listed business solutions company

Overview Tony Bain, Rock Solid Product Manager

12 years SQL Server DBA Management experience

Former SQL Server MVP

Author (SQL Server 2000 Stored Procedure Handbook, SQL Server 2000 From Novice to Pro, Data Warehousing with SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services, Building an Effective Data Layer with SQL Server 2000 and VB.NET)

Frequent speaker at Microsoft Tech Ed

Overview The Rock Solid Product

RockSolid software currently provides automated DBA support for more than 10000 commercial instances

One of the worlds largest IT Services Company uses RockSolid to provide outsourced DBA support to large Australian customers

Several of the largest banks in Australia—(w/2006 revenues of AUD$19B)—manage their large SQL database infrastructures with RockSolid

RockSolid is developed in Microsoft .NET & is a group of Windows Services, ASP.NET Web Site, ASP.NET Web Service, TSQL and Reporting Services Reports

RockSolid is over 500,000 lines of code

Product team of 10

Development, testing, documentation, support

Overview The Rock Solid Product

Overview Rock Solid Architecture Data Store Client Agent Server Agent Web Service Analysis Agent Notification Agent Web Portal Report Library Site SQL Servers Client Agent Site SQL Servers

Deployment Model: Enterprise

RockSolid is fully installed onsite

Licensed on perpetual license model

Site RockSolid

Deployment Model: Enterprise - Cloud Enabler

Seamless management between local & cloud based instances

Allows organizations to start a transition to cloud based SQL infrastructure

Site RockSolid

Deployment Model: Service Provider

Allows a Service Provider to manage multiple customers

Service Provider has a “global” view of all customers

Customer has a “local” view of just their site

Site RockSolid Site Service Provider

Deployment Model: SaaS

Multi-tenanted RockSolid installation

Sites are independent and managed locally by site resources

SaaS provider can make available “best practice” defaults to SaaS clients

Site RockSolid Site

Goal: “Allow DBAs to manage any number of SQL Server Instances to the same service quality possible if they were just managing one.”

Core Concepts – A Constant High Robust Service Level

Virtualized Management

Automated Management

Real Time SQL Server Analysis

Issue Escalation, Notification & Change Control

Information Availability

A Constant High Robust Service Level Virtualized Database Management

Virtualized Database

All the configuration, management, security and recovery options that effect the database

Not just “SQL Server” settings, but the monitoring and management of the database

Virtualized Instance

All the configuration, management, security options that effect the Instance

Again not just “SQL Server” settings, but the instance management, patching and availability settings.

A Constant High Robust Service Level Virtualized Database Management Hierarchy

Instance Hierarchy

Settings are inherited from the parent, and can overridden at the children

Database Hierarchy

Not just “SQL Server” settings, but the monitoring and management of the database

Service Provider Group Site Domain Instance Bucket Site Domain Instance Database

A Constant High Robust Service Level Virtualized Database Management Routing

Routing allows databases to be automatically managed to standard on discovery

Routing ensures databases are not “forgotten” about

Prod Test Dev XYZ DB_Test DEF ABC

A Constant High Robust Service Level Virtualized Database Management Management Set Prod Test Dev

A Constant High Robust Service Level Real Time SQL Server Analysis

Monitoring

Our monitoring of SQL Server is highly detailed and specific to SQL Server

Monitoring is carried out for Analysis and Reporting

Our monitoring of SQL Server is comprehensive

Analysis

RockSolid does all the expected reactive checks

Proactive Checks are key point of difference

Uses relevant historical information to isolate potential issues

Examples:

Backup space in advance

tps decrease

Growth rate increase

Security login activity

Blocking data (blocker, blockee, blocking query) SQL Server Version, License, Clustering,Edition Information Database User Database User Roles Server Role Members Data Database File (space, type, used etc) Database File Groups Stored Procedure checksums Table (rows, space etc) Indexes (space etc) Databases Internal Memory Status (DBCC MemoryStatus) Connection counts Database Virtual File Stats SQL Agent jobs SQL Agent job steps SQL Agent job schedules SQL Agent job histories Instance Wait Stats (select * from sys.dm_os_wait_stats) SQL Configuration (sysconfigures) SQL Registry keys (backup location, log location etc) Backup histories (sysbackups, backupsets etc) Logins SQL Server Error Log rows SQL Server Error Log sizes Profiler Login Failed Event Profiler Login Completed Event Profiler Object Create Event Profiler Object Modified Event Profiler Object Dropped Event Profiler RPC:Completed Profiler SQL Batch Completed Profiler Recompile Profiler Database Auto Srhink Event SQL Agent Error Log Windows Service Status Disk Information Disk Usage Index usage (2005) Index recommendations (2005) Selective Query Plan (showplans) SQL Server Build Server Role Membership Authentication Mode Database Ownership SQL Login Password Policy Compliance Disk Allocations and Usage Instance Configuration Disk Growth and Projected Capacity Backups Failing Backups not running or not scheduled Service Availability Log Shipping Issues Log Backups not run DBCC Checks not run Database options in violation of standard Instance options in violation of standard Transactions per second rate CPU Pressure I/O Pressure Common Query Performance Blocking issues Database Growth rate issues Error Log Issues Login Failures Security Issues Memory Pressure Job Executions times abnormal Users performing administrator functions Changes occurring without change control New Index recommendations Unused Index removal recommendations Performance Issue Analysis

Cost of SQL Server Management Automated Issue Resolution

DBA actions are defined as activities

RockSolid contains a comprehensive business rules engine which organizes activities into resolution processes. Resolutions use best practices.

Performance Decrease Backup Failure Disk Space Issue Shrink Data File Remove Old Backups Shrink Log File Backup Database Check Blocking Check Open Trans Kill Non Critical Spid Shrink Data File Remove Old Backups Shrink Log File Remove Old Backups Backup Database Check Open Trans Check Blocking Kill Non Critical Spid Create Job Start Job Run Script Change DB Option Apply Service Pack Create Database Create Login Create Object Remove Database Restore Database

Cost of SQL Server Management Automated Issue Resolution

Fault Resolution

Availability Failure

Service Failure

Job Failure

Backup Failure

I/O Corruption

Disk Space Issues

Performance Degradation

Repeated Login Failure

Error Log Errors

Replication Failures

Log Shipping Failures

Task Resolution

Creating

Databases, Logins, Users, Roles

Assigning Permissions

Altering Database Configuration

Altering Instance Configuration

Apply Service Packs

Backing up a Database

Move Database / Data File

Restoring Databases from Backup

Database Ownership

Create / Alert / Drop jobs

Run Script

Update Statistics

A Constant High Robust Service Level Automated Database Management

A Good Operational DBA process is flowchartable

Numerous automated management tasks exist e.g.

Index Maintenance

Data File Management

Automatically resizing data files during maintenance windows

Statistics Management

Backup Management

Database Consistency Checks

Patch Management

Error Log Management

History Table Management

CPU Affinity & Parallelism Management

Detailed Functionality Example: Index Management

Index management approach is different to “typical” approach.

Using calendars DBA assigns times when Index Maintenance is allowable

RockSolid decides how to use that time to full potential

RockSolid evaluates what indexes to maintain in that window based on

Index size

Index fragmentation

Index usage

Index relevance to “common queries” (query plan analysis)

Index rebuild history

Large chunks of time and not necessary to maintain indexes. Small pockets of time between batch processes etc can be used to their full potential to maintain the database

Cost of SQL Server Management Zero Screen Time

Normal DBA operations can be fully completed without requiring log in to the SQL Server itself to carry out the tasks

Task Completion Time Frame

Tasks are completed faster as login access is not required

Tasks are completed more accurately as task is implemented as per request approved by change approvers

Tasks are carried out using a consistent approach and methodology

Security

Does not require DBAs to have login access to SQL Server

Enforces all changes to have a history and have change records

Certain tasks can be prevented from certain users.

Cost of SQL Server Management Reduced Investigation & Resolution Timeframes

Data Gathering & Presentation

When an issue is passed to a DBA for manual resolution, an error message is not simply passed

Instead all the detailed relevant information required to resolve the issue is passed to the DBA for immediate analysis.

Cost of SQL Server Management Reduced Investigation & Resolution Timeframes Eventing

Eventing is the capture and recording of every task, change, process or situation of interest that occurs within a SQL Server instance

Events are not issues, events are simply things that have happened

Events are categorized based on their impact on areas such as performance, security, recoverability and availability.

Examples:

Backup completed, index create, table altered, query run for first time, application detected for first time, login failed, login succesful, data file grown, statistics update, stored procedure plan recompiled……

Events can then be used for analysis in the context of issues.

For Example:

A stored procedure is failing, what changes have been recently made and by who…

Or, I can see that performance of this query has slowed down significantly, but why?

16/10/2007 10:00 Index "ix_TableABC_Index1" was dropped by Login "DOMAIN oms" 16/10/2007 10:13 Common Query "SELECT * FROM ABC WHERE A={numericvalue}" query plan recompiled 16/10/2007 10:20 Common Query "SELECT * FROM ABC WHERE A={numericvalue}" performance changed by more than 70% 16/10/2007 10:40 Table ABC statistics update automatically by SQL Server 16/10/2007 11:45 Table ABC long term exclusive locks causing 5 concurrent process to blocked for 120 seconds 16/10/2007 17:00 Table ABC Index "ix_TableABC_Index2" offline rebuild completed successfully

Detailed Functionality Performance Management

Executed queries are parsed to isolate root query

Root query is then aggregated to show try impact of query execution

Server Agent SELECT a,b,c FROM xyz WHERE Y=10 SELECT a,b,c FROM xyz WHERE Y=30 SELECT a,b,c FROM xyz WHERE Y=50 SELECT a,b,c FROM xyz WHERE Y={numeric} EXEC proc_DEF ‘ON’,1,’10/2/2007 EXEC proc_DEF ‘OFF’,5,’12/2/2007 EXEC proc_DEF {string},{numeric},{date} Sp_executesql ‘SELECT a,b,c FROM hij WHERE Y=@P1’,’int’,’1’ SELECT a,b,c FROM hij WHERE Y={numeric}

A Constant High Robust Service Level Reduced Investigation & Resolution Timeframes