* Backups
- Check your backups to validate that they were successfully created per your process.
* Nightly Processing
- Review the nightly or early morning processes.
* SQL Server Error Log
- Review the SQL Server error log for any errors or security issues (successful or failed logins) that are unexpected.
* Windows Event Log
- Review the Application Event Log at a minimum to find out
if any Windows or hardware related errors or warnings are being written.
o Some of the hardware vendors write warnings to the Windows Event Log
when they anticipate an error is going to occur,
so this gives you the opportunity to be proactive
and correct the problem during a scheduled down time,
rather than having a mid day emergency.
* SQL Server Agent Jobs
- Review for failed SQL Server Agent Jobs.
* HA or DR Logs
- Check your high availability and/or disaster recovery process logs.
Depending on the solution (Log Shipping, Clustering, Replication, Database Mirroring, CDP, etc.)
that you are using dictates what needs to be checked.
* Performance Logs
- Review the performance metrics to determine
if your baseline was exceeded
or if you had slow points during the day that need to be reviewed.
* Security Logs
- Review the security logs from a third party solution
or from the SQL Server Error Logs to determine
if you had a breach or a violation in one of your policies.
* Centralized error handling
- If you have an application, per SQL Server or enterprise level logging,
then review those logs for any unexpected errors.
* Storage
- Validate you have sufficient storage on your drives
to support your databases, backups, batch processes, etc. in the short term.
* Service Broker
- Check the transmission and user defined queues
to make sure data is properly being processed in your applications.
* Corrective Actions
- Take corrective actions based on the issues and/or errors that you found.
* Improvements
- Look for opportunities to improve your environment
based on the review and analysis you have performed.
* Learn something new
- Although this review and correction process could be time consuming,
take some time every day to learn something new
to improve your knowledge of the technology you work on every day.
Source:
http://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/1240/sql-server-dba-checklist/