Ian Kirk - SQL DBA

No - I haven’t gotten into Policy Based Management (PBM) as much as I really want to, especially after seeing so much of it at PASS this last November.  And no, I’m not going dedicate this blog post to lots of first-hand information that will help you get further in using it.  This is, for all intents and purposes, a really big tweet to @SQLBatman.

First, the MSDN PBM blog that isn’t updated too often, but the (current) top post for “complex” policies seems pretty helpful.

Next, Lara Rubbelke, who had a presentation at PASS that I missed.  She’s been working with Policies, PowerShell, and built an entire framework to help you get it done.

Third, Buck Woody, who seems to be a lot more of PowerShell kind of guy, but knowing PowerShell, I think, is going to be key to automating policy evaluation across your enterprise.  (Of course Lara may have taken care of that for us…).  Buck offers an awesome PowerShell framework that he presented at PASS on his blog as well.

As for my first hand experience, it came before PASS and it was a great experience.  I used a policy stored on my sandbox SQL 2008 server and evaluated 8 instances that were a mix of SQL 2000 and SQL 2005.  I had that policy check specific server configuration items (such as Max DOP) and correct the instances that didn’t meet the stated policy.  After creating the policy, it was just a click of the mouse to evaluate.  Like I said earlier, though, to automate, you’re going to need to know a scripting language like PowerShell.

As a final link, I’ll send you to the PASS Presentation Decks, where you can search through for the presentations and find a number of slide decks regarding PBM.  Specifically:

• DBA-320-M
• DBA-412
• AD-301-M

Enjoy - and be sure to let me know if you figure it all out because learning PBM is high on my personal list… it’s just that I haven’t had any time to devote to that particular list!