Ensuring the optimal health of a database is vital to maintain ongoing operations. As a Database Administrator, this is one of the main tasks associated with database performance.
Although it may sound challenging given the complex operations involved, there are simpler ways to achieve this without expending significant time and energy. Here, we’ll briefly explain six such tips to keep an eye on database health, even if you did download free SQL server.
6 Ways to Maintain the Health of Your SQL Database
If you want to know how to keep your database functioning optimally, here are a few tips:
- Try not to decrease the size of the database too often.
There are numerous guides and tutorials present online to help you shrink a SQL database. Even if it may be useful for certain reasons, one of its major downsides includes greater fragmentation – this, in turn, has a substantial impact on the database’s overall performance. It is because repeatedly doing so actually decreases space instead of giving you extra space, due to defragmentation.
- Build a habit of taking frequent offsite backups
This point is extremely essential and cannot be stressed enough! The more frequent your offsite backups would be, the better prepared your organization will be in the event of data loss due to possible situations such as hardware damage and software crashes.
All you will have to do is perform a SQL fix operation or use a database copy in case a user commits a manual error, like forgetting the password, for example.
- Keep an eye on database consistency – on a regular basis
Database corruption is already a big issue in itself. It doesn’t necessarily happen when you download free SQL server but it does create problems. That’s because users receive incorrect results or no data at all, even after inserting the right statements. However, it spells greater trouble because it can lead to extreme consequences such as a total breakdown of the SQL instance.
You can easily prevent such mishaps from occurring with the help of certain SQL queries. In fact, you don’t have to run them manually either; you can schedule them to run automatically whenever it is most convenient.
- Check your SQL backups periodically
Creating backups of your database is part of the solution: you also have to frequently ensure the backups are operating as desired. They have to be readable and available for when they will be required. Some situations can lead to a point where your incremental backup fails due to server breakdown. In such cases, you can fall back on the backup that was last available.
- Monitor the health of your server, too
Aside from monitoring the health of the database, it is also important to check the health of your server. What if your database is working perfectly but something goes wrong with the server? You need both to maintain operations, which is why you must also conduct routine server maintenance sessions. Set yourself consistent reminders to do so regularly.
- Keep tabs on deadlocks to prevent them from affecting database performance
Deadlocks can be inevitable in situations where several connections are trying to access the same information at the same time. The victims end up being the users whose requests were blocked or denied by the server. Deadlocks can be prevented with the help of application codes.