1. © 2013, Envionmental Systems Coporation Improving StackVision Server Reliability and Monitoring June, 2013

2. © 2013, Envionmental Systems Coporation No Webinar – July 4 th Holiday Week Working with ProcessNow – 7/10 Overview of StackStudio – 7/17 Email suggested topics to etraining@envirosys.com etraining@envirosys.com Upcoming Webinars

3. © 2013, Envionmental Systems Coporation Other ESC Trainings Managing Your DAS Training - Austin, TX August 20 th –August 23 rd

4. © 2013, Envionmental Systems Coporation Housekeeping Please feel free to ask questions at any point of the presentation. Please ask all questions through the chat window as all Phones are on mute to minimize background noise. We will have a few polling questions throughout the presentation.

5. © 2013, Envionmental Systems Coporation About me: Daniel Frome 5+ years of experience @ ESC (Development/IT) IT + DBA + SV Superuser = Dangerous Server Management Hosted Private Cloud Manager for Remote Services Troubleshooter (Work with Support)

6. © 2013, Envionmental Systems Coporation Topics Look at monitoring methodology Monitoring – using SQL alerts and Database Mail DBCC CheckDB (Integrity Checks) Disaster Recovery Planning Various real-life scary encounters (names have been changed to protect the innocent). Survey Question #1

7. © 2013, Envionmental Systems Coporation Reactive  Take immediate action after, no monitoring, just get a call from an operator that “something isn’t working right”. Proactive  Set up alerts and monitoring Preventive  Maintenance, Patching, Process Planning, Reviewing Lessons Learned

8. © 2013, Envionmental Systems Coporation Methodology Identify  How do we determine that we are having a problem? Diagnose  How do we isolate the root cause of a performance problem? Resolve  How do we fix the problem or stop it from recurring?

9. © 2013, Envionmental Systems Coporation Reactive Scenarios  Server is not responding  Server is frizzing (alarm, blinking amber/red lights, etc)  Data Controllers are not communicating with the server  Low disk space alarms  Data corruption Action must be taken immediately!

10. © 2013, Envionmental Systems Coporation Be Proactive Anti-Virus Setting  Exclude for scan the *.mdf, ldf, ndf,.bak or other backup extensions Review Services  Do you have unnecessary services/programs running? Remove Unnecessary Software  Do you need all of the programs installed on your ESC|StackVision server? Operating System (OS) patches*  Have you applied the latest firmware to your servers? Action is taken first!

11. © 2013, Envionmental Systems Coporation Be Proactive (cont.) Hardware firmware updating (Raid/Bios/NIC)* Have you applied the latest firmware to your servers? Hardware Spare Parts! Extra hard drives are a must Clean out the dust – literally Dust and other foreign debris can harm sensitive electronics/components Baseline * Be careful, try to do some research before applying patching in production environment! (Tale from trenches)

12. © 2013, Envionmental Systems Coporation Survey Question #2

13. © 2013, Envionmental Systems Coporation SQL Toolset:  SQL Server Reports  Database Mail  Notifications

14. © 2013, Envionmental Systems Coporation SQL Server Management Studio Reports ◦ Standard Reports Easily executed from inside SMSS ◦ Server Dashboard ◦ Backup/Restore Events ◦ Memory Consumption ◦ Job execution status A full list with in-depth discussion can be found here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2008/04/17/sql- server-management-studio-standard-reports-the-full-list.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2008/04/17/sql- server-management-studio-standard-reports-the-full-list.aspx (copy and paste the above link if it fails to load)

15. © 2013, Envionmental Systems Coporation

18. Database Mail ◦ Get SMTP information ◦ Configure Database Mail ◦ Test email ◦ Setup Operator Account(s) ◦ Set up Alerts ◦ Set up SQL Agent to utilize DB Mail for Alerts Hint: Anytime you change the SQL Agent Properties you need to restart the SQL Agent Service (but not SQL Server) for the change to take effect

19. © 2013, Envionmental Systems Coporation

23. StackVision  About 95% of everything StackVision related is in the StackVision database ◦ Configuration ◦ Data ◦ Reports – stored in Report Server Database

24. © 2013, Envionmental Systems Coporation SQL Server and StackVision  Mythical Performance Concerns  Memory usage  Database Size  Less Size = More performance  Purging in StackStudio  Raw versus Average  Shrinking the database (or data files)

25. © 2013, Envionmental Systems Coporation Disaster Recovery Planning Only backup what you need to: ◦ SQL Server Backups – which one fits for you?  Full  Differential  Incremental (Transaction Log)  Backups only contain pages that contain actual data ◦ 40GB database with 25% free space will be 30GB uncompressed  Backups can be compressed which consumes more CPU but is also faster (less I/O), and the compression ratio is generally 3-4x ◦ 185GB Database = ~36GB compressed *Compression is only available with SQL 2008R2 (and later) and SQL 2008 Enterprise / Development

26. © 2013, Envionmental Systems Coporation DBCC CheckDB (Integrity Checks) DBCC CheckDB (‘Your Database’) WITH ALL ERRORMSGS, NO_INFOMSGS ◦ Checks not only the logical integrity (e.g. Index Trees and relationships), but also the physical integrity of each page. ◦ Data is stored on 8K pages that comprise a “b-tree” for indexing (like a phonebook). ◦ Errors ◦ Worsen over time

27. © 2013, Envionmental Systems Coporation DR (cont) Where are your backups? ◦ Local – (Good) at least you have “a” backup  RAID 1+0 or 5 helps  Pros: Fast Backup (local)  Cons: It’s local ◦ USB/different physical drive (Better) –  Pros: If the server dies you have something to restore from  Cons If your server catches fire/flooding/stack falls on server, out of luck ◦ Offsite/NAS (Best) -  Pros: Offsite storage  Cons: Generally takes longer to perform backups

28. © 2013, Envionmental Systems Coporation DR (cont. 2) Have a PLAN ◦ Spare Server? ESC Test License? ◦ How long will it take? Run a test (bring a server online and installed ready to poll) ◦ Lessons Learned – revaluate plan quarterly/yearly ◦ Retention ◦ Survey Question #3 (Last one I swear)

29. © 2013, Envionmental Systems Coporation Summary Monitoring ◦ Do something, even if it’s not automated Planning ◦ Backup & Monitor only what you need Test & Review ◦ Test processes, review, and adjust accordingly

30. © 2013, Envionmental Systems Coporation References Links and References  Step-by-Step Video of Job creation and mail setup via video: (also covers reports) 3 parts http://envirosys.com/media/g/fall_2011_new_ orleans_presentations/default.aspx http://envirosys.com/media/g/fall_2011_new_ orleans_presentations/default.aspx  Database Maintenance Whitepaper and Best Practices: http://envirosys.com/esc/svsupport/pages/sta ckvision-downloads.aspx http://envirosys.com/esc/svsupport/pages/sta ckvision-downloads.aspx