New DBA checklist

If you're a new DBA, you're probably a little overwhelmed by all the stuff you need to learn. The following is a fairly comprehensive list of topics to research. This list assumes you are coming into the job with a bunch of production servers already setup and are vaguely ordered by importance. I will link to subsequent posts containing guidance when I write them.

When I began as a DBA my company had just a few servers with about 15 databases. Some points mentioned below had been considered, others hadn't.

• Backups
• Databases
• Automation
• Jobs and Maintenance Plans
• msdb database
• Failover
• Transaction Log Shipping
• Replication
• Security
• Logins
• Server and Database Roles
• User access to objects
• Monitoring
• Activity Monitor
• DMOs
• Central Management Server
• Database Mail
• Notifications
• Alerts and Errors
• SQL Profiler
• SQL Trace
• Data Collector
• Performance
• Autogrowth/Autoshrink
• I/O, memory (available to SQL Server), CPU
• Creating Indexes
• Index defragmentation
• Integrity check
• Reporting
• BIDS
• Server stats
• Restore
• User databases
• System databases
• Agent Accounts
• Theory
• Database structure
• Installing
• Planning server resource requirements
• SQL Server architecture
• Tips