Chris Skorlinski Microsoft SQL Escalation Services Charlotte, NC http://blogs.msdn.com/repltalk
One of my favorite shows is CarTalk on Public Radio. Those guys always make me laugh. I enjoy listening to all the great troubleshooting advice and car stories. While I m no Bob and Ray, I ll try to bring you a little smile today as I tell the story of the Microsoft Atlanta Project.
Like all good stories this begins once upon a time..
There was a very successful car salesman Bob who understood that many car shoppers buy on impulse
They take the car out for a test drive, check out the seats, turn up the radio, and when they decide to buy, it should be ready to go, just sign and drive!
If there is the smallest problem, then out the door they go
So every morning Bob arrives early and walks the lot to make sure every one of his cars are checked out and ready to go
He does a quick check on the outside, looks under the hood checks the coolant, oil, and battery, things keeping the engine running smoothly
One morning Bob watches a news story about a critical problem leading to a CRASH That morning, in addition to walking the lot Bob checks the VIN on every one of his cars to determine if there are any CRITICAL recalls
As Bob s business expands, he s spending more hours inspecting the cars, and checking for recalls He knows how important it is for his business to have his cars ready to go But he also knows his time is more valuable than walking the lot
besides it doesn t take a rocket scientist to walk the lot and check for recalls
He thinks, why not hire his daughter to check the cars? Okay, maybe not her, but some other teenager
Bob places an ad in the local paper and the next day Andrew comes in; real smart, but kind of a funny looking kid
Quickly up to speed, Andrew is now walking the lots preparing a checklist each morning for Bob to review
Implementing a daily checkout makes Bob a very successful business man
Years later Andrew, is now in charge of a major international company
comes across a picture of his old boss Bob and remembers how successful Bob was because he checked each car every night to ensure they were working and ready to go
and how those rows of cars are like rows of computers sitting in his data center
with Microsoft SQL Servers as the engines that drive his company
Like so many others, his company is running mission critical applications with data stored in SQL Server. Let s take a look at look at some others.
They re also running Microsoft SharePoint with content stored in SQL Server
and storing terabytes of data in Microsoft Analysis Services data warehouse
being analyzed directly by users with PowerPivot tools
so Andrew calls together his most senior DBA team and tells a story about his old boss Bob, and how he checked his cars every night. He says it s important they also check their systems; their SQL Server engines
They want to do everything possible to avoid a server crash putting them on the evening news
The DBAs are now checking Windows Event logs for any unusual events affecting the health of their SQL Servers What other Windows Event to you look for to indicate a problem?
DBAs are also scanning the SQL errorlog for unexpected problems that occurred that night BACKUP failed to complete the command BACKUP DATABASE SQL Server has encountered 1 occurrence(s) of I/O requests taking longer than 15 seconds to complete on file What other errors have you found in the SQL Errorlog?
The DBAs, already overworked, spend hours each night checking 100s of SQL servers
One day Andrew hears about critical Security Updates You guessed it, DBAs are now cross checking SQL Servers for any Microsoft for any critical patches
About a week later the head of their finance department calls and he is furious They ve been running a long-range financial planning application which uses SQL as a back-end Their department computer had a hard drive crash last night now they can t get their data
Andrew checks with the DBAs and discovers his team never new this application was installed and therefore the SQL database wasn t included in their nightly backup Have you ever come across a SQL Server and discovered the databases were never backed up?
As CIO, he doesn t want this to happen again. You guessed right again, he asks the DBAs to survey all the SQL Servers for any databases that have NEVER been backed up.
DBAs are overworked are trying to keep up on all their responsibilities AND scan their servers each night.
Andrew needs to reward with more than just a job well done.
As CIO, he needs to schedule time off for the DBAs to improve their skills, learn about new features, and socialize with other SQL Server professionals Above all to develop a more efficient method to check their SQL Servers on a nightly basis in order to utilize the DBAs for more critical functions.
he decides to provide a special learning opportunity and register them all for SQLSaturday on their day off!
but there is one session they really want to attend The DBAs find difficulty in selecting from all the great topics from world-class speakers
The smartest of all the DBAs, attends a presentation on new project being developed by Microsoft called Atlanta
From the presentation they learn Microsoft codename Atlanta is a new cloud service that proactively monitors their Microsoft SQL Server deployments
Once installed, it helps DBAs reduce downtime, avoid configuration problems, and improve performance
You too can start monitoring your SQL Servers in a few easy steps It begins when you open your Web Browser and connect to the Microsoft Atlanta web site
from there create a new Atlanta account using your Windows Live ID
Once signed in, download a registration certificate This certificate is used during the client installation to provide secure communications Next download the setup program
After downloading, running setup and install the Gateway then Agent Gateway needs access to the cloud to download checks used by the Agents Agents are installed on each Windows 2008 sever running SQL Server 2008 During the night Gateway uploads data collected from the Agents Around 2am it runs checks downloaded by the Gateway and sends results back to the Gateway
Sign into the Atlanta Website each morning from any internet connected computer and investigate Alerts upload that night
Drilling down you can investigate details about an Alerts. Here for example is an Alert suggesting the page_verify option for a database be set to CHECKSUM
This alert about potential TempDB errors includes a link to the Microsoft Knowledge Base Article containing technical details about the Alert and steps to resolve.
Are all databases included on your DBCC CHECKDB maintenance plan? This Alerts notifies you of databases created but never having been checked by DBCC CHECDB. Why is this an important alert?
Are all of your databases backed up? This Alert notifies you of databases created but never backed up Sounds like another important alert
Some Alerts, like this SPN Alert are configuration Alerts. Important, but not critical to the safety of the databases. Others like this TempDB configuration could be more serious and should be investigated.
Rules, Alerts, and Best Practices are provided by 100 s of dedicated Microsoft SQL Server Support Engineers If a CRITICAL problem is discovered tomorrow, a new RULE can be added to that night s check
From the main web page, server configuration information is also available. As mentioned earlier, the Agents run on each Windows 2008/SQL Server 2008 server while the Gateway uploads the information collected by the Agents to a Microsoft Azure cloud database
About 13 Windows settings, 124 SQL Server-wide settings and 56 database settings are currently being tracked and uploaded nightly.
Some of the Windows 2008 (R2) settings include version, installation directory, number of logical processors, and physical memory.
The SQL Server-Wide information includes build number, authentication mode, and service name.
also tracked are sp_configure settings like MaxDOP, MinServerMemory, and MaxServerMemory
SQL Default folder locations for Errorlog and Master Database location are also found under the SQL Server-wide settings What other SQL Server settings do you check?
Database settings such as DatabaseId, RecoveryModel, Owner, AutoGrow, and Is Published are available for each database
Sometime its just as important to see what has changed! The web site includes an option to look at the Change History Such as when the Authentication mode was changed or the Startup Account has been modified. Doesn t this sound like something that would be helpful when SQL Support engineer asks Okay, so what has changed? Wouldn t be great if you could look together to see exactly what has changed?
Wait, hold the fort, did he say only currently available for SQL Server 2008/R2 running on Windows 2008 or Windows 2008 R2?
Perhaps its time to begin working on a retirement plan for those 10 year old SQL Servers 2000 servers
Atlanta is going to save the DBAs hours each night by checking the SQL Servers against Microsoft Best Practices recommendations
and tracking Alerts and Warnings that could lead to a server crash
Atlanta provides those extra eyes helping the DBAs to monitor all of their SQL Servers freeing them up for more critical tasks
Project Atlanta provides the advantage of SQL Best Practices Analyzer along with ongoing rule updates like the full enterprise solution available in Microsoft System Center Operations Manager
WOW! Isn t Microsoft Atlanta great?
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This is turning out to be a great story! You can continue the ride by signing up at microsoftatlanta.com