Database Maintenance
Perhaps the most obvious way
to keep your SMS site systems from experiencing failure is to keep them
running in top form, much like you might develop an exercise and diet
program for yourself or regularly change the oil in your car. In
addition to developing a backup and restore strategy, you can do several
things for your SMS servers on a regular basis, both to keep them
running well and to spot problems before they cause damage. For the most
part, these maintenance tasks can be broken down into four groups:
general, daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance tasks.
General Maintenance Tasks
Probably the
most important general task you can perform for any Microsoft Windows
system is to develop a backup plan for your servers. At a minimum, you
want to develop a backup strategy for your SMS site server and SMS
database server, as these are your key systems. Much has been written
about backup strategies—full versus differential, daily versus weekly,
and so on.
For example, one backup
strategy might be that you perform a full, or complete, backup of your
database once a week, say on Friday nights, while you perform a
differential backup of the database Mondays through Thursdays. Different
backup types can take longer to run the backup process and take longer
to restore as well. For example, a full backup backs up all the data
each time and so will necessarily take longer to back up and restore. A
differential backup, in contrast, backs up only data that has changed
since the last full backup and will result in reduced backup time and
less backup space used.
Other general
maintenance tasks might more properly be called troubleshooting
assistance tasks, such as configuring the Status Message Viewer,
configuring the Performance Monitor and SQL Server alerts, performing a
database and site backup, and monitoring the performance of the site
systems.
Configure the Status Message Viewer to view status messages .You can configure the display interval for status
messages, set filters, have programs such as pager alerts executed
based on message events, and so on. Take some time to determine how the
Status Message Viewer might figure into your overall maintenance—and
ultimately disaster recovery—strategy.
Configure Performance Monitor alerts for key events You
can set up alerts for the events, such as low disk space,
overutilization of the processor and memory, excessive pagefile access,
and so on.
Configure SQL Server alerts
You can set up the alerts in the SQL Server Enterprise Manager to
monitor database space usage, user locks, and connections. (For more
information about setting up SQL Server alerts, refer to the SQL Server
product documentation.)
Determine a fault tolerance strategy
If your server supports a fault tolerance method such as RAID 1 (disk
mirroring) or RAID 5 (disk striping with parity) either through a
hardware method or through Windows, consider configuring one of these
fault tolerance methods. Maintaining data redundancy is a hallmark of
disaster recovery.
You
will undoubtedly think of many other troubleshooting assistance tasks to
add to this list. Be as creative—and redundant—as you like. In the
following sections we’ll explore some specific daily, weekly, and
monthly tasks you can perform as an SMS site administrator.
Daily Maintenance Tasks
As the SMS administrator,
you decide when various maintenance tasks should be performed within
your organization and with what frequency. No single blueprint will
provide a perfect fit for every SMS site or site structure. Microsoft
recommends that you perform the following tasks daily to protect your
SMS servers. You can modify this list to suit your needs.
Perform a site backup This task ensures that you can recover to at least the previous day’s state.
Review status messages
This is especially important if SMS generates a status message alert
indicating a potential problem with a component. By default, the Status
Message Viewer displays only messages generated since the previous
midnight. If you skip a couple of days, you might miss significant
status messages. Consider changing the display interval or setting up
custom filters so that you will be alerted about serious events. You
should review site server and site system status messages every day.
However, SMS clients also generate status messages. Although it might be
unrealistic to review client status messages on a daily basis, perhaps
because of the number of clients you might have installed, you should
consider reviewing them on a weekly or monthly basis.
Monitor the Windows Event logs and SQL Server logs Check
for errors or warnings that might be indicative of an impending failure
of your SMS site. You can view the SQL Server logs in SQL Server
Enterprise Manager.
Monitor system health and performance through the Performance Monitor and SMS Service Manager tools
Check for performancerelated events, such as low disk space,
overutilization of the processor and memory, excessive pagefile access,
and so on, to help determine when your server isn’t running at optimum
performance levels and what processes might be affecting performance.
Monitor network utilization using a network traffic analysis tool such as Network Monitor
This task is especially important if package distribution or intersite
communication appears to be poor in order to determine when and where
traffic congestion is occurring.
Monitor SMS system folders for file backlogs
The appearance of a large or growing number of files in the SMS system
folders might indicate that the site server is unable to process
requests for information. You should check status messages and SMS
services for errors.
Weekly Maintenance Tasks
Microsoft recommends that you perform the following tasks weekly. Again, you can modify this list to fit your needs.
Monitor
the size and percentage of database growth of the SMS site database as
well as the software metering database, if you’ve implemented that
feature. SQL Server 2000 automatically
monitors the size of the SMS database and makes adjustments
appropriately. Of course, this doesn’t absolve you from monitoring the
database on a regular basis to determine how fast the database is
growing and especially whether you might run out of disk space. However,
you might not need to look at the database so frequently, and you can
set a SQL Server alert to let you know when and how much the database
grows.
Monitor
the amount of free disk space on the SMS database server, the site
server, and the site systems (client access points [CAPs], logon points,
distribution points, and software metering servers). Remember, with few exceptions, SMS components will just stop working if they run out of disk space.
Purge data that’s no longer needed or relevant. Remove bad Management Information Format (MIF) files, duplicate computer records, aged inventory records, and so on.
Perform regular disk cleanup tasks.
This cleanup would include your weekly full virus check or disk
optimization routine or monitoring for unused or old Temp files. Check
the SMS directories as well for folders that have an unusually high
number of files, such as a BadMIFs folder or an inbox with files that
aren’t being processed, and cross-check these folders with status
messages and logs for the specific components involved.
Monthly Maintenance Tasks
Here are some of the recommended maintenance tasks that you might perform on a monthly or an as-needed basis:
Verify and test your ability to restore the database or the site server.
Modify SMS accounts and passwords for those accounts you have control over.
Review SMS object permissions.
Review SMS site boundaries and component configuration.
Review your maintenance plans.
You can protect your SMS
site by scheduling and performing these maintenance tasks regularly. In
the following section we’ll look at how to schedule these tasks.
