Brad’s Sure Guide to SQL Server Maintenance Plans- P20: SQL Server has a reputation as being a simple database application to install, configure, and maintain. This is a little misleading. SQL Server is a powerful relational database that can handle the needs of the largest organizations and, as such, its proper maintenance almost certainly requires the attention of an experienced DBA. | Chapter 5 Check Database Integrity Task When and How Often to Run Integrity Checks As a DBA you do not want to allow corruption to creep unnoticed into your databases so it is essential that the Check Database Integrity task is scheduled to run on a regular basis. At the same time it is also important to keep in mind that this task is very resource intensive and running it at the wrong time can have detrimental effects on your SQL Server s performance. You will want to treat it as an offline task to be performed when as few people as possible might be accessing the database. Generally speaking this means during a scheduled maintenance window. Here are my specific recommendations on when and how often the Check Database Integrity task should be run. If you have a nightly maintenance window that allows you to run the Check Database Integrity task daily then do so as you want to discover any data integrity problems as soon as possible. If you can t perform this task nightly then at a minimum it should be run once a week. If you don t have a maintenance window long enough to run this task at least once a week then you probably shouldn t be using the Maintenance Plan Wizard for your maintenance plans. T-SQL or PowerShell scripts offer greater flexibility. Configuring the Task Now that we know what this task does let s see how to configure it using the Maintenance Plan Wizard. The first option on the Define Database Check Integrity Task screen is the Databases drop-down box. As described in Chapter 3 choose the All user databases option and click OK. This means that the task will run on all current user databases on this SQL Server instance and that any new user databases that are subsequently created will automatically be added to the list and subject to the task. The resulting screen will look as shown in Figure 96 Chapter 5 Check Database Integrity Task Figure Configuring the Check Database Integrity Task. The Include indexes Option The only option that is .
