What if you have 100's of SQL Server 2005 in your company and you would like to configure all the servers based on some standards (Example: Surface Area Configuration Properties). Take an example you have just installed a SQL Server and also have configured the surface area configuration (SAC) for that SQL Server based on your standards and now you would like to replicate this configuration to 100's and 1000's of other SQL Servers in your company. How would you do that?

Post by: Silin Kuang (Bellevue College, WA)

In nowadays, our lives have heavily relied on information that is available for us.  To make sure database high availability, in another word, to make sure the information is available when you need it, has made a DBA’s role crucial in an organization.  As a consumer, you use the most updated product information available on the website to make a purchase decision.  As a doctor, you use the patient’s information available for you to judge the operation procedures for a surgery.  As a marketing analyst, you use the sales transaction history available to make marketing forecast and financial reports.  With the huge amount of data being added to the database every second, how does DBA’s ensure database high availability?  This article demonstrates the major high availability technologies in Microsoft SQL server 2005 and 2008.

One of the best features of SQL Server 2005 & 2008 that I like is that it lets you perform restore on portions of the database which is damaged and yet keep the database ONLINE. This was not possible with earlier versions of SQL Server. In SQL Server 2005/2008, you no longer have to take the database offline to perform a restore on a small portion of a database. Once you have identified the pages that need to be restored you have two options:

1) You can perform a PAGE level restore (My recommendation is to do this when you have small number of pages)

2) You can perform a FILE level restore (My recommendation is to do this when you have large number of pages)