SQL Health Check

Our SQL Health Check comprises the following high-level tasks that will be performed on the clients SQL Server environment to ascertain its overall health and to audit the current configuration.

• Server and O/S configuration
  • Details on server configuration
  • Suitability of hardware and software setup
  • Memory, CPU and NIC
  • Storage types: DAS, NAS, RAID, SAN
  • Other software systems on same servers
  • SQL Server Instance configuration
  • Server settings
  • Versions and service packs
  • 32 bit vs 64 bit
  • SQL Agent
  • Jobs and alerts
  • Mail configuration
  • Service Broker
  • Full text indexing

• Security Analysis
  • Firewall rules
  • Security model
  • Login methods used by applications
  • Password policies
  • Group allocations
  • SQL Server and SQL Agent accounts and auto-start mode
  • Job proxy model and job usage
  • Network library configuration and usage
  • SSL traffic encryption
  • Database encryption
  • Linked servers, logins and usage
  • Endpoints security checks
  • Kerberos setup and server trusts

• Database analysis
  • Are databases configured appropriately
  • File placement analysis
  • Collation sequences
  • Fragmentation analysis
  • Size and growth management
  • Partitioning (Tables and Views)

• Replication
  • Analysis of replication distribution and publisher and subscriber configuration
  • Replication Security
  • Replication performance

• Fault Tolerance
  • Analysis of existing cluster or requirements
  • Analysis of existing mirrors or requirements
  • Analysis of existing log shipping or requirements
  • SAN usage and replication
  • Backup of database and logs
  • Log size management
  • Disaster Recovery Strategy
  • Are maintenance plans and other jobs in place to maintain database integrity

• Data warehouse
  • Is SSIS in use and configured correctly
  • SSIS packages storage, security and execution
  • Analysis server installation and configuration / clustering
  • Reporting services installation and configuration
  • Is Reporting services running SharePoint integrated mode and if so is it configured correctly

• Performance Analysis
  • Are the basic performance measures for the server in line (CPU, Memory, IO etc)
  • Are databases performing adequately with respect to I/O
  • Are there any obvious badly performing queries