by Sharon Dooley, SQL Server
consultant, former MVP, and author. Sharon is an active member of PASS (the
Professional Association for SQL Server) and has presented at numerous
conferences.
This paper
explores Policy-Based Management, a new management feature introduced in SQL
Server 2008. Policy-Based Management allows DBAs to define a set of policies
that can control many different aspects of SQL Server. Policies can be applied
to a single server or to groups of servers. For example, a DBA could define a
policy that specifies how a particular configuration option should be set on
all the servers in the enterprise. What used to be time-consuming tasks and
referencing paper manuals can now be virtually automated.
Because this
paper is very long (55 pages) reading it in an online format such as the
Library becomes impractical, so we offer it as a downloadable Microsoft Word
document.