Database Maintenance Checklist

Manually Check (Daily)

1. SQL Server Logs
2. SQL Agent Jobs
3. Windows Event Logs
4. Drive Space (unless you have a trustworthy tool/script that does so)

Automate these via Maintenance Plans / TSQL Agent Jobs -

• Backups - Full
• Backups - Transaction Log
• Backups - Delete old backup files from file system
• Indexes  - Rebuild vs Reorganise
• Statistics - Update (if reorganising indexes)
• History tables - Trim regularly
• SQL Server Error logs - Cycle Regularly

Schedule them so they do not clash and are appropriate to the

• RPO (Recovery Point Objective)
• RTO (Recovery Time Objective)

Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
What time do we need to restore to? (acceptable data loss).
1 day / 1 hour / none

Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
How long is acceptable for data recovery to take? (in the event of issues)