EMS SQL Backup has several predefined policy templates that allow adjusting and planning minimal required set of operations for maintaining SQL Server. This article describes the fastest method to setup maintenance of several SQL Server instances using the policy templates in the program.

In order to create maintenance policies it is necessary to perform the following preparatory actions:

• Register all the required SQL Server instances in the SQL Backup Administration Console;
• Install SQL Backup server-side components on all registered instances.

Then when creating the policy for all servers one should choose the group including these servers. Right-click it and select the ‘Maintenance Policies | Create from Templates’ context menu item.

The dialog that appears on the screen demonstrates all the predefined SQL Backup policy templates.

Select the template ‘Typical data warehouse maintenance’, which is suitable for the most of the servers having databases of the size 10Mb up to 10Gb and Simple recovery model. Click OK. After that the policy editor window with all the created tasks and schedules will open. Here one can correct settings for tasks, schedules and notifications.

Click OK to apply the policy settings. The policy will be deployed and started on all servers. Statuses of tasks and the time of the next initiation will be reflected on the Policies panel in the right part of EMS SQL Backup main screen.

If the Policies panel looks like the screenshot, it means that the maintenance is adjusted correctly. Summary status of all policies is shown in the top right panel as a sign: green – all is Ok, red – there are some problems with policies.

A brief review of the used template is described in the table:

* template includes all user’s databases except for system ones: master, msdb, tempdb, model

Other predefined maintenance templates of EMS SQL Backup can be seen at the ‘Templates’ tab. In order to see the used tasks and the frequency of their execution, one should open the template in the editor.