Keeping Your SQL Server Environment Healthy

In the first chapter, we have seen that SQL Server is a complex tool consisting of many services that work together. Based on the deployment scenario, we can even have more instances of the SQL server running on the same host. SQL Server is usually a key service in the enterprise environment because many other applications and tools depend on SQL Server as their primary data storage. It's a crucial task to keep our SQL Server healthy with proper maintenance and monitoring but also with proper post-installation configuration. Installation, as we have seen in the first chapter, is not configuring many of the settings and keeping the default values. Default configuration might not be ideal for your production environment and it's important to understand the benefits of the modification to the default values.

This chapter will cover the following points:

• Understanding SQL Server patching
• Post-installation configuration of the SQL Server
• Creating a performance baseline
• Understanding the monitoring tool set