The Real MTCS SQL Server 2008 Exam 70/432 Prep Kit- P61 pdf

Example 7.23 Restoring a Damaged Page Online-- First, restore the filegroup A and C RESTORE DATABASE AdventureWorks PAGE='1:57, 1:202, 1:916, 1:1016' FROM DBFile2_Backup WITH NORECOVER

Example 7.23 Restoring a Damaged Page Online

First, restore the filegroup A and C

RESTORE DATABASE AdventureWorks PAGE='1:57, 1:202, 1:916, 1:1016'

FROM DBFile2_Backup

WITH NORECOVERY;

RESTORE LOG AdventureWorks FROM LogFile1_Backup

WITH NORECOVERY;

RESTORE LOG AdventureWorks FROM LogFile2_Backup

WITH NORECOVERY;

BACKUP LOG AdventureWorks TO TailLog_Backup

RESTORE LOG AdventureWorks FROM TailLog_Backup WITH RECOVERY;

GO

The following system databases must be backed up for production servers: Master

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Model

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MSDB

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Configuration/Distribution

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The recovery model is set to Simple for all system databases except MSDB The recovery model for the MSDB database can be configured to Full or Bulk-Logged

If you notice that system databases are damaged, you have a choice of restoring the databases from backup or rebuilding them to their initial state If you can start

Head of the Class…

Disaster Recovery

Considerations for System Databases

SQL Server stores important configuration information in system databases Unfortunately, the backup of system databases is often overlooked This oversight results in difficulties when SQL Server is rendered inoperable by

a disaster, and you must restore it to the last known state When you are restoring an entire server, always restore the system databases before user databases.

the SQL Server service, it is recommended that the system databases be restored

from the most recent backup If you cannot start the SQL Server service, you must

rebuild the system databases first then attempt to restore the databases Perform the

following steps to restore the Master database:

1 Configure SQL Server to run in single user mode

2 Restore the Master database from backup using the RESTORE

DATABASE statement

3 After the restore, SQL Server service will disconnect your connection

4 Configure SQL Server to run in multiple user mode and restart the service

Performing Ongoing Maintenance

Many repetitive administrative tasks are critical to maintaining your SQL Server’s

health and performance These tasks include database validation, index maintenance,

and backup SQL Server 2008 makes it easy to follow best practices for ongoing

maintenance The SQL Server Agent feature allows you to schedule administrative

routines by creating multi step jobs The SQL Server Agent feature can also notify

people when a certain event occurs You can use the Maintenance Plans feature to

visually create, schedule, and monitor ongoing maintenance tasks Maintenance Plans allow you to consolidate all individual administrative tasks into a coherent strategy

Policy-Based Management allows administrators in large organizations to monitor

and configure any number of SQL Servers and databases for configuration settings

and compliance Using this feature, you can also enforce compliance rules and

standards on the naming and configuration of SQL Servers and SQL Server objects

Using SQL Server Agent

SQL Server Agent is a service installed with SQL Server 2008 This service allows

you to schedule activities to run at certain times SQL Server Agent is widely used

by administrators to schedule database backups, performance data collection, policy

applications, and other routine tasks SQL Server agent has the ability to notify

people by e-mail of certain events, a feature known as notifications

Let’s examine the three key concepts behind SQL Server Agent:

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■ Jobs Jobs are the tasks you wish to execute on a schedule Jobs consist of

job steps, which define the individual task to run and what happens if the

step fails Steps are defined using Transact-SQL; however, multiple wizards

generate the required Transact-SQL statements from a friendly interface

When defining job steps, you can specify their order and which step to execute next on success or failure of the previous jobs Jobs are associated with flexible schedules Figure 7.3 shows the types of schedules you can configure

Figure 7.3 SQL Server Agent Schedule Options

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■ Alerts Alerts are actions that SQL Server will perform when a particular

event occurs Alerts consist of conditions and actions Conditions can be specific error codes, error severities or object states like databases files growing to a certain size Actions performed by an alert are notifying a person, or running a job

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■ Operators Operators are people who will be notified of alerts or job

completion SQL Server Agent can notify operators through e-mail, pager,

or a net send network command

SQL Server Agent stores the configuration for jobs, schedules, alerts, and operators

in the MSDB system database This is why it is very important to backup the MSDB

system database in production environments If you don’t back up this database, you

risk losing the entire maintenance related configuration you have spent countless

hours implementing

Exam Warning

SQL Server Agent is widely used by system activities like Maintenance

Plans and replication Therefore, if you are using any of these features,

you must ensure that the SQL Server Agent service is running Ideally,

you should set the Startup Type for this service to Automatic to ensure

the service is not accidentally stopped during server restart.

Also remember that there is a separate SQL Server Agent service for

every instance of SQL Server installed on the computer.

In order to enable SQL Server Agent to notify users by e-mail, the Database

Mail feature of SQL Server must be configured Database Mail uses a Simple Mail

Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server to relay its e-mail It is recommended that you

turn off the Database Mail feature if you are not going to be notifying operators

by e-mail This is to avoid the risk of your server being compromised and used as

a relay point for unauthorized bulk e-mail If you wish to enable Database Mail

settings, use the Database Mail Configuration Wizard accessible from the Object

Explorer To configure it, expand Management, right-click Database Mail and

then click Configure Database Mail This feature is not reliant on the availability

of SQL Server service as it caches the e-mail profile and credentials Therefore,

SQL Server Agent can notify you of a server outage by e-mail

Using Database Maintenance Plans

Database Maintenance Plans are a wizard-based way to perform recommended tasks

on your SQL Server 2008 servers The Maintenance Plan Wizard allows you to

select from a set of best practice based tasks and will create and schedule SQL

Server Agent jobs to perform these tasks on a specified schedule It is strongly

recommended that you start with the guidance offered by the Maintenance Plan

Wizard and set up the core administration tasks You can later customize the plans

by adding extra tasks or modifying the tasks themselves You can schedule

Maintenance Plans or run them manually You can also target linked servers with

your maintenance plans if you wish

Let’s examine the important routine management tasks that can be created easily using the Maintenance Plan Wizard:

Maintain indexes by reorganizing or rebuilding them with a Fill Factor

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Routinely rebuilding indexes prevents overall performance degradation due to fragmentation Routinely enforcing a Fill Factor ensures that write performance is optimal This plan option uses the ALTER INDEX WITH REBUILD | REORGANIZE statement

Maintain indexes by updating index statistics to ensure optimal query

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formance This plan option uses DBCC UPDATESTATISTICS command Keep used disk space to a minimum by data in database files so that any

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empty space is moved to the end of the file Then, the maintenance plan can physically shrink the file by truncating empty space This plan option uses DBCC SHRINKFILE command

Validate database integrity, detect database corruption, and attempt to

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repair it This plan option uses DBCC CHECKDB command

Backup the databases and transaction logs customized for your backup

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strategy This plan option uses BACKUP DATABASE command

Run any SQL Server Agent job

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As you can see, although you can use SQL Server Agent to create and schedule these tasks manually, it is quite complicated and easy to view and change Database Maintenance Plans allow you to configure and schedule these vital tasks using a simple user interface When maintenance plans execute, they produce log records

that are written to a file-based report, which by default is stored in the %Program Files%\Microsoft SQL

Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\LOG folder and is named starting with the Maintenance Plan name followed by the execution date and time Execution results are always written to Sysmaintplan_log and sysmaintplan_logdetail tables stored in MSDB

TEsT Day Tip

Your user account must belong to the sysadmin fixed server role to view, create, or modify Maintenance Plans If you are connected with an

account that is not a member of sysadmin, the Maintenance Plans item will not appear in Object Explorer.