Best Practice Analyzer

I have seen a lot of people asking "Are we following best practices for our SQL Servers?". The Best Practice Analyzer cantry and guide you along a path which would lead to the right answer. A simple answer is not possible because of the following reasons:

1. We are not conversant with your environment and setup
2. We do not know what kind of business implementation this SQL Sever is
3. We do not know what constraints are present which prevents some of the best practices from being followed
4. We do not know which data/databases are critical/non-critical etc. and also do not know what kind of SLAs need to be met.

Even then, an attempt is made using the Best Practice Analyzer to verify if common best practices are being implemented across your SQL Server. It creates a repository on the our server and stores the analysis for the server in the database which can be used at a later date.

The SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) gathers data from Microsoft Windows and SQL Server configuration settings. BPA uses a predefined list of SQL Server 2005 recommendations and best practices to determine if there are potential issues in the database environment.

This tool is available at
For SQL Server 2000
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=B352EB1F-D3CA-44EE-893E-9E07339C1F22&displaylang=en
For SQL Server 2005
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DA0531E4-E94C-4991-82FA-F0E3FBD05E63&displaylang=en