Are Urgency and Inertia Putting Your SQL Servers at Risk?

In today’s world, we are constantly bombarded with a never-ending stream of urgent tasks and deadlines. It’s easy to get caught up in the daily grind and lose sight of the big picture. This is where inertia comes into play. And inertia can put your SQL Servers at risk.

How urgency creates inertia

Inertia is a powerful force that often masquerades as busyness. There are budgets to finalize, new software implementations to oversee, and promised features to be released. The list is long. Never-ending.

We might think we are too busy to work on important tasks, but the truth is that we are stuck. Stuck doing urgent things while putting off the important things. Some call this inertia “the tyranny of the urgent.”

The problem with inertia is that it can lead to costly emergencies down the road. By ignoring important tasks in favor of urgent ones, we are essentially living on borrowed time. Or put another way, we’ve lit a fuse and at some point it will explode.

For SQL Server, that means downtime. And downtime can be costly. Some estimates put the cost at $7,900 per minute, and that was back in 2016 (The Cost of Database Downtime – SQLServerCentral). Of course, that will vary widely by company and database. Whatever the hard and soft costs of downtime are in your business, it’s probably safe to say it will be unpleasant at the very least.

To overcome inertia, we need to take action. This doesn’t have to be a monumental effort. Even small steps can make a big difference in the long run.

Inertia and your SQL Servers

For many organizations, SQL Server is a critical component of their IT infrastructure. It stores and manages mission-critical data, from financial records to customer/patient information. As such, it’s important to keep SQL Server running – securely, reliably, and smoothly.

However, maintaining SQL Server is not always a top priority. It’s easy to give into the inertia that exists, thinking that as long as everything seems to be working, there’s no need to invest time and resources into maintenance and optimization. There are, after all, urgent things to tend to.

This is a dangerous mindset. Neglecting SQL Server can lead to a host of problems down the road.

For example, without regular maintenance, SQL Server can become slow or seemingly unresponsive, causing delays and frustration for users. In more extreme cases, SQL Server can crash or data corrupted, leading to data loss and downtime. Or perhaps it’s ransomware because the SQL Server wasn’t patched.? (See Vulnerability assessment for SQL Server – SQL Server | Microsoft Learn)

Avoiding inertia that put your SQL Servers at risk

To avoid these issues, it’s important to take proactive steps to maintain SQL Server. This may include tasks such as regularly monitoring performance metrics, identifying and resolving bottlenecks, and implementing backups and disaster recovery plans.

For example, you might set aside some time to schedule routine maintenance tasks, such as updating statistics, defragmenting indexes, or running integrity checks. This can help ensure that SQL Server remains running smoothly and can reduce the risk of emergencies down the road.

Another proactive step you can take is to invest in monitoring and automation tools. These tools can help you identify potential issues before they become major problems. But, make sure you take the time to learn how to use them. Don’t let them become shelfware.

But what if you really don’t have the time?

Overcoming inertia and taking proactive steps to maintain SQL Server is critical for ensuring the reliability, security, and performance of your SQL Servers and the protecting the data they contain. By prioritizing maintenance and investing in monitoring and automation tools, you can avoid costly emergencies down the road and free up time for more strategic work.

So resolve to overcome inertia and take action today. Your future self will thank you.

But what if you really do not have the time? Or the expertise?

That’s where we can help. With our SQL Server Health Checks we can help determine your starting point and identify what you need to do to improve your SQL Server environment. With our SEROShield DBA Team as a Service, we can help protect your data assets and give you the SQL expertise and capacity you need.

Want to learn more? Let’s schedule a short call to discuss.