Ever wonder if you’re missing a step when you set up your SQL Server? Get a checklist to install and configure your SQL Server the right way!
We’ve built an easy-to-follow SQL Server Setup Guide for systems administrators, DBAs, and developers that helps you prevent the most common issues we see out in the field. The guide includes explanations about why we recommend various settings and gives links to the relevant Microsoft knowledge base articles that go into even more details. (We know, you don’t really have time to read those, but you do wanna know that we’re not making this stuff up.)
Our most recent version adds more details about all kinds of topics including AlwaysOn AGs, network teaming, and service accounts. We also reorganized it to make it a little easier to follow.
This guide walks you through:
- Validating you’ve got the right basic redundancy in your hardware
- Configuring HBAs and multi-pathing
- Configuring your Operating System, system drive, and page file for SQL Server
- Provisioning storage for backups
- Creating Service Accounts and granting permissions
- Formatting drives and settings like Instant File Initialization for the best SQL Server performance
- Setting up Anti-Virus with Microsoft recommended best practices
- Installing and configuring SQL Server
- Setting up maintenance to run backups, manage index fragmentation, and check for corruption
- Getting basic monitoring and alerting from the SQL Server Agent
- Designing the right number of files and layout for tempdb
- Copying SQL Server logins from other servers
- Installing free tools and running a health check against SQL Server
This setup checklist works for all current versions of SQL Server. (Whew!)
