Importance of DAILY CHECK LIST!
Here I am, back from long holidays to my blogs! I was thinking of writing in which happens to be part of any DBA on production support (it can different levels as such). So, have chosen to blog the importance of Daily Check list.
Daily check list:
The following is purely what we have adopted as part of the routine daily check. The check can be done at one time everyday and at a convenient time so that we don’t miss anything.
First thing, we have selected list of servers which are very critical for the business and have to be part of check list.
Secondly, the above doesn’t mean that alerts are not configured; 
The servers have been configured with all the necessary alerts flow.
And finally, the servers are part of daily check list which helps in identifying any kind of errors and work proactively to avoid any outages that may follow.
Ok, now we have the list of servers, What all to check? how do we start?
Let me answer each of the above questions posed -
What all to be part of Daily check list -
- Routine Jobs\Job steps failures
- Maintenance Plans\Jobs
- SQL logs and Agent logs
- NT logs (application and System)
- Replication Monitor (if configured)
- Log shipping Monitor (if configured)
- Space Issues (from collective Report)
- Additional check like “Agent Mail” check from servers, Services etc
How do we start?
First, make sure to read “ALL” mails with respect to project. This makes it easier to understand the alerts recieved. Once we are through the mails; we understand which are the servers with errors and what was the action taken. I am sure this is the best possible way!
Next would be to go through one by one on all the above listed as part of daily check list. The check can be done in any order… no hard rule to follow
Ok, now that we know from where to start and also what all to check… the next thing would be to capture the results. Again it is the DBA who can develop his or her own format for capturing the results.
So, that is all I wanted to share for now.
For more reading on check list one can refer to following link.
http://www.mssqltips.com/tip.asp?tip=1240
Enjoy reading! 
