How to check if you truly have a grip on your SQL Server estate

UPDATED 16.2.2021

If you manage a SQL Server estate and deal with plenty of Microsoft SQL Server instances in your business, have you ever stopped to think what a critical role they are playing in your IT infrastructure?

Surprisingly often the amount of SQL Server resources grows and evolves significantly over a long period of time along the overall growth and development of the IT infrastructure. It is also common that no one in the organization has a proper grip on the whole SQL Server estate. This can get both risky and costly.

If you are not 100% sure about the current status of all the SQL Servers in your company, keep reading.

Even if you or someone else in your team knows a lot about the SQL Server estate, quite often the picture is still not complete. It actually can be far from that.

Luckily, there are a few surprisingly revealing questions you can ask to test whether you actually have a grip on your SQL Server estate.

SQL Server Estate Checklist: Do you REALLY your SQL Server estate?

Remember to answer for each SQL Server and instance!

The health status of the SQL Server estate

• Are there any performance bottlenecks now? Can you tell if there will be later?
• Are you able to identify risks for availability issues now or later?

The capacity situation of the SQL Server estate

• Is there potential for underutilization or overutilization now or later?

SQL Server version situation

• Are there any outdated versions in use?
• Would it be possible to upgrade the current versions?

SQL Server software licensing situation

• Do you have the optimal license types?
• Do you have an optimal number of licenses in use?

The status of the current server infrastructure under your SQL Server instances

• What type of hardware or virtual servers are in use?

Reduce risks and save money by knowing your SQL Server estate

The eight questions above might sound exhaustive, but here’s the truth: if you don’t master all this knowledge on your SQL Server estate, you take unnecessary risks. Sooner or later they can cause serious issues in your business. Imagine, for example, the cumulative effects of system downtime and slowness hitting the productivity of your employees or customer satisfaction.

You can also end up wasting numerous server resources, eventually causing your organization to needlessly lose bags of money. Based on our experience the amount of waste in a large SQL Server platform can add up to 50 %. Or as an optimist would put it: your saving potential can be as much as 50 % of total SQL Server costs.

Analyze and manage your SQL Server estate with SQL Governor

With modern and proper tools, it is straightforward and easy to map out and analyze your current SQL Server estate to achieve a good grip on it. SQL Governor is a next generation software tool that combines the performance and capacity management of SQL Server platform. With SQL Governor, you gain full control and a comprehensive understanding of your SQL Server estate.

We get it – implementing and utilizing a new software tool is often quite an undertaking. SQL Governor is easy to implement with the help of experienced database consultants and official SQL Governor partners who will happily complement your own staff in this large yet much needed task, depending on the resource and skills situation of your organization. 

If you wish to learn more about how SQL Governor might help you with your data platform, try out our free online assessment tool or fill in the contact form below this blog post to book a demo with one of our experts.

Kari Tuisku
CEO
SQL Governor