CSS can deliver a performance audit of your Microsoft SQL Server database to ensure your system is fully optimised. Our SQL Server Health Check assesses all aspects of your database environment and will enable CSS to identify any bottlenecks or medium term considerations for the ongoing performance optimisation of your database and application.

Our health checks use a combination of leading edge SQL Server monitoring tools and third party software, along with all the practical experience and incident libraries that our consultants have gained over the past 10 years.

Further to our review we will produce a report that provides comprehensive diagnostics and will make practical recommendations for any performance or configuration optimisation. Many organisations decide to have an independent assessment of this nature carried out on a regular basis, whether for compliance purposes or just for additional peace of mind.

We offer two different SQL server database health check packages

Corporate

Enterprise

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A Standard SQL Server database Health Check includes


A SQL Server database health check involves investigation of the database and the surrounding environment:

* Backup and Recovery health check
The SQL Server Health Check will validate your backup and recovery procedures to ensure that your SQL Server database can be recovered in cases of hardware or software failure.

* SQL Server best practices health check
We ensure that your database follows best practices for manageability and configuration.

* SQL Server Performance health check
A SQL Server Health check will review all of the SQL Server parameters and disk configuration to ensure that your SQL Server database is optimized to make maximum use of all available hardware resources. This includes a check of the disk I/O sub-system latency (disk bottlenecks) and a review of Network, RAM and CPU utilization.

Within the SQL Server database we must examine many areas of SQL Server performance. These area of health checks include:


* Hardware review
We review your complete external hardware to identify potential bottlenecks and areas of contention. This step examines disk I/O latency (seeking disk bottlenecks) and a cursory review of Network, RAM and CPU utilization.

* Windows review
We verify your release and patch levels for Windows. We also review SQL Server integrity checking (if installed). We also check SQL auditing setting.

* Log Review We also examine all logs (Windows Event Logs, SQL Server long and SQL Agent logs) for alerts and important messages.

* Transaction logs We review the transaction log for optimal size and bottlenecks.

* Workload analysis We check the SQL Server sared environment in which many databases compete for memory and background process

* Disk Utilization check Disk space utilization needs to be examined.

Files near maximum size - For files where autogrowth is enabled we check whether any database or log is nearing its maximum file size limit.


* Disk throughput analysis We also check I/O stall read and writes times, to see timing details regarding read and write throughput problems for each SQL Server data file.

* I/O distribution analysis I/O details for databases and files are obtained, and for SQL Server 2005, we drill down and get I/O at the object level. From a throughput viewpoint, the iostall column should be zeroed in on as it will reveal which files are experiencing the most delays in terms of accomplishing I/O goals. The higher the iostall, the worse the files are doing. These files are likely candidates for physical disk relocation or other such actions.

TEMP space - We review tempdb to ensure optimal sizing (disk sorts)


* Table fragmentation check Fragmentation is the natural result of table usage, and reorganization of correct fragmentation issues.

* Server Configuration Options check BC verifies that all SQL Server configuration parameters are optimized for the system workload.

* Review Scheduled tasks Review users and document all auto-start and SQL services options