I’m working on a presentation for SQL Saturday in South Florida. The more I look at this, the more I really like it.

1. Not Setting Min and Max Memory
   • MIN: ”Use this much so nobody else can have it.”
   • MAX: “Save some for the Operating System” – Prevents Paging
2. Schema Changes at Peak Times
   • ALTERing TABLEs causes locks on the entire table
   • High Risk
   • Difficult to roll back at peak times
3. Using your Server as a Workstation
   • Avoid Remote Desktop
   • Never use SSMS directly from your server
4. Improper Use of Traces
   • Avoid in Production
   • Never store on your Database Server
5. Enabling Auto Shrink
   • You can’t control when it runs
   • What you shrink will just grow again
   • Fragments your indexes
6. Allowing Data Files to Grow in 1 MB Increments
   • Causes disk fragmentation
   • Every growth will ALTER the database
7. Not using a Domain Account for SQL Services
   • Allows you to interact with other servers. Very helpful with backups over the network.
8. Not Configuring SQLMail Alerts
   • Allows you to know when something fails
   • Allows you to be active instead of reactive
9. Not Testing Restores
   • The worst time to test a restore is when your production server fails
   • It’s good practice for when something does fail
10. Not Configuring Instant File Initialization

There are a lot of good people out there who don’t realize they’re doing things to kill their system’s performance. Obviously this is a work in progress, but I refine it more and more all the time.