Brad’s Sure Guide to SQL Server Maintenance Plans- P40 pdf

Designer Menu barAt the top of the right-hand side of the screen, for each Maintenance Plan that you have open in the Designer, is a menu bar, as shown in Figure 16.10.. When you click o

Designer Menu bar

At the top of the right-hand side of the screen, for each Maintenance Plan that you have open

in the Designer, is a menu bar, as shown in Figure 16.10

Figure 16.10: A lot of functionality is hidden in this small section of the screen.

This menu bar holds a surprising number of options, so let's explore each of the eight icons

in turn The first five options allow you to create (and remove) subplans and their schedules The next two options pertain to the Maintenance Plan as a whole and allow you to configure the connections used by the plan, and the reports that are sent when the plan executes The final option allows you to configure multiserver Maintenance Plans (an option I advise you

to avoid)

Add Subplan

We've already used this icon in order to add a new subplan to a Maintenance Plan When you click on the Add Subplan icon, the Subplan Properties screen appears where you can name,

describe and schedule your new subplan, as shown in Figure 16.11

Subplan Properties

When you click on this icon, you get the exact same screen shown in Figure 16.11 Why, you may ask? Basically, you define these properties for new plans using the Add Subplan icon,

and use this Subplan properties icon to change the properties of existing subplans and

Chapter 16: Introduction to the Maintenance Plan Designer

Figure 16.11: Adding a new subplan.

Delete Selected Subplan

The Delete Selected Subplan icon (which looks like an "X") is fairly self-explanatory, and

will remove the selected subplan from the Maintenance Plan When you first create a

Maintenance Plan it will consist only of the default subplan, which cannot be deleted, so the option will be grayed out When additional subplans are added, this option is activated

Subplan Schedule

The Subplan Schedule icon looks like a calendar and is used to schedule a subplan When

you click on it, you are presented with the Job Schedule Properties screen that we have seen

many times before in previous chapters, as shown in Figure 16.12

Schedule a subplan (which may include one or more tasks) by highlighting it in the list, and clicking on this icon, or by clicking the equivalent icon in the subplan grid (Figure 16.7)

Figure 16.12: We saw this same screen when we learned about scheduling using the

Maintenance Plan Wizard.

Remove Schedule

The Remove Schedule icon looks like a calendar that has been crossed out, and is used to

delete the schedule for an existing subplan Simply highlight any plan that has a schedule, and click the icon to remove the existing schedule for the selected subplan Until you've created a

Chapter 16: Introduction to the Maintenance Plan Designer

assumption, but the Manage Connections… option allows you to change the connection to

a different SQL Server instance When you click this icon, the Manage Connections screen

appears, as shown in Figure 16.13

Figure 16.13: The Maintenance Plan Designer assumes that you want to create

your Maintenance Plan on the SQL Server instance you selected from within SSMS.

On the Manage Connections screen, you see the connection information for the SQL Server

instance you selected when you used SSMS to start the Maintenance Plan Designer Should you want to change to a different SQL Server instance, or to change the authentication method, you could do so using the Add and Edit buttons However, I suggest you keep

everything simple and use the default, which is to connect to the local SQL Server instance If you need the ability to connect to a different instance in order to create a Maintenance Plan there, it is better to do this using SSMS

Reporting and Logging

The Reporting and Logging icon allows you to configure the sending of text reports that

detail the tasks that were executed as part of the plan, and the level of detail that these reports provide

When you click on the icon, it brings up the Reporting and Logging screen, shown in Figure

16.14 You may notice that it looks similar, though not identical, to the Select Report Options

screen available from the Maintenance Plan Wizard

Figure 16.14: Use this option to configure the Maintenance Plan text file reports.

The first option is to Generate a text file report It is selected by default and I strongly

recommend that you leave it selected, as these reports are invaluable when troubleshooting a misbehaving Maintenance Plan Notice that one report will be created for every subplan that

is executed So if a Maintenance Plan has four subplans, you'll get four reports each time that