DBA Best Practices Book; Available Now…
I've just spoken with my publisher after submitting the final manuscript for my book. In a celebration of sorts, they've decided to offer my blog readers 40 % off the retail price. From as little as $16.50, you can download the book today, and receive the hard copy when it goes into print in about 3 months from now.
Download here and use discount code sqlcrunch40
I’m keen for opinions on the front cover. Where is this guy from, and more importantly, what’s he smoking?
Now for a little information on the book itself. It’s essentially a best practices book for SQL Server DBAs (or developers that find themselves administering the database when they'd rather be doing something else). Whilst the main focus is on the new administration features in SQL Server 2008, there’s a lot of information and best practices which are version independent, therefore, over half of the book is suitable for SQL Server 2005, 2000 and earlier.
Given its best practices nature, the book does not spend a lot of time on step by step instructions. There are plenty of other resources for that, including Books Online. It’s main goal is to cover as many best practices as possible, whilst providing background information on why they are so important. For example, in addition to recommending the use of SQLIO/SIM and track aligning partitions, it describes why these tasks are important, and includes an overview of how these tasks are performed.
Each chapter closes with a bullet point list of all best practice statements. The chapter list is as follows;
Part I: Planning and Installation
1. The SQL Server Landscape
2: Storage System Sizing
3: Physical Server Design
4: Installing & Upgrading SQL Server 2008
5: Failover Clustering
6: Security
7: Configuring SQL Server
8: Policy Based Management
9: Data Management
Part III: Operations
10: Backup & Recovery
11: High Availability with Database Mirroring
12: DBCC Validation
13: Index Design & Maintenance
14: Monitoring & Automating
15: Data Collector & MDW
16: Resource Governor
17: Waits & Queues: A Performance Tuning Methodology
Appendix A: Top 25 DBA Worst Practices
Appendix B: Suggested DBA Work Plan
Appendix C: Common Performance Monitor Counters
Appendix D: Top 10 Management Studio Enhancements
Appendix E: Date/Time Data Types in SQL Server 2008
Cheers!
