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Manageability

SQL Server 2008 Manageability

Overview

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 provides a policy-based system for managing one or more instances of SQL Server along with tools for performance monitoring, troubleshooting, and tuning that enable administrators to more efficiently manage their databases and SQL Server instances.

This functionality helps streamline tasks related to ensuring security and compliance, deploying patch upgrades, and resource utilization.

Top New Features

  • Use Performance Data Collection to troubleshoot, tune and monitor SQL Server 2008 instances across the enterprise

  • Define configuration policies for your enterprise by using Policy-Based Management

  • Use built-in framework facets and policies to manage surface area configuration and apply best practices

SQL Server 2008 Management Studio

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SQL Server 2008 Management Studio

 

Scale

SQL Server 2008 includes tools that make the administrator successful and which are scalable across multiple servers and instances

Single management console

  • Increase database administrator effectiveness by using SQL Server Management Studio to manage all SQL Server 2008 instances and services including relational databases, Reporting Services, Analysis Services, Integration Services, and SQL Server Compact databases

  • View standard and custom reports in SQL Server Management Studio to help gain insight into the status of your system

Microsoft PowerShell Support

  • SQL Server 2008 introduces support for Microsoft PowerShell, a powerful scripting shell that helps administrators and developers streamline server administration and application deployment.

  • Supports more complex logic than Transact-SQL scripts, giving administrators the ability to build robust administration scripts to streamline tasks.

  • Use PowerShell scripts to administer other Microsoft server products, giving administrators a common scripting language across servers for management as scale.

Performance Data Collection

Performance Data Collection

 

System Center Operations Manager Management Pack

System Center Operations Manager Management Pack

 

SQL Server Profiler

SQL Server Profiler

Optimize

Monitor with insight and optimize the performance of your data services.

SQL Server Performance Studio

  • Use SQL Server Performance Data Collection to help integrate the collection, analysis, troubleshooting, and persistence of SQL Server diagnostics information

  • Collect performance data from performance counters, dynamic management views, SQL Trace, and other sources

  • Centralize storage of performance data from across the enterprise in a management data warehouse for baseline and historical comparisons

  • View performance data with built-in reports such as server activity, disk usage, and query activity reports

End-to-end Service Monitoring with System Center Operations Manager

  • Use the SQL Server Management Pack to enable broader system administration that is scalable across your enterprise

  • Implement end to end service management of line-of-business (LOB) applications for greater visibility

  • Use rich, new reports and an easy-to-customize reporting environment to bring additional insight when troubleshooting and planning

Real-time diagnosis of performance

  • Use SQL Server Profiler to capture server events for real-time diagnosis

  • Correlate traces with performance counters to analyze events and diagnose issues

Increased Visibility

  • Use dynamic management views (DMVs) to provide greater visibility into the database and a powerful, flexible, and security-enhanced infrastructure for proactive monitoring of database health and performance

Flexible tuning environment

  • Use Database Engine Tuning Advisor (DTA) to tune multiple databases from the same workload. Just select the databases to tune and DTA generates indexing and partitioning recommendations

Policy-Based Management

Policy-Based Management

 

Policy-Based Framework

Policy-Based Framework

Automate

Use automation tools and policies to help reduce the time that administrators spend on routine maintenance and help enable them to be productive immediately.

Policy-Based Management

  • Use Policy-Based Management to define configuration policies and apply them to servers, databases, tables, and other targets

  • Enforce policies proactively, on a scheduled basis, immediately following changes, or explicitly in real time

  • Organize servers into groups and apply policies to the group to scale management of servers

  • Define policies based on sets of logical properties called facets, which model the behavior or characteristics of policy targets

  • Create new policies easily from facets based on the configuration of existing objects, and apply these policies to other similar objects throughout the enterprise

Policies for secure server configuration and applying best practices

  • Use SQL Server Management Studio to define policies that enable and disable server functionality and help to ensure that potentially unused features are not enabled and left in an unprotected state

  • Use best practice policy notifications to check configuration and database settings to warn against and prevent potentially problematic conditions in your environment

Schedule tasks anytime

  • Automate routine tasks by using the distributed job scheduling and alert management capabilities of SQL Server Agent

  • Schedule tasks with the click of a button. Create database maintenance plans to help new administrators protect data assets

  • Use the Maintenance Plan Wizard or design surface to create workflows for your maintenance tasks

 

Additional Resources

 

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