Chapter 2. THE SQL SERVER LANDSCAPE

I started my DBA career working for a small software development company, where I had a handful of SQL Servers to administer. As in many small companies, the term "DBA" was interpreted rather loosely. I was also, as required, a Windows server administrator, network engineer, developer, and technical support representative. I divided my day equally between these tasks and only actually spent a fifth of my professional time managing the SQL infrastructure.

When I moved on to a much larger organization, I found that my first days, as a DBA managing nearly 100 SQL Servers, were daunting, to the say the least. I was astounded by the lack of documentation! Some fragmented efforts had been made to pull together information about the SQL infrastructure, but it was sparse. As a result, my first week found me manually and hastily clicking through server property windows, perusing SQL Server error logs, pouring over reams of stored procedure code, sifting through SQL Agent job failures on each server, and generally just floundering about picking up whatever tidbits of information I could.