The importance of easy access to your SQL Servers

Sometimes, when access to a machine is not intuitive, admins tend to initiate such a connection “only when required”.

Problem is – the “when” is sometimes undefined.
I see a lot of DBA’s having their “morning routine”, where they’ll connect to each of their servers (either through Remote Desktop, or through Management Studio for SQL-Only checkups) and see that they’re working, that no jobs have failed, that the disk space is OK etc…

But what if the problem occurs five minutes after you disconnect?

Or – what if you didn’t follow your written protocol as to what should be checked, and missed out something?

The surprise is (at least for me personally) that I’ve seen many organizations that as of today (beginning of 2010), actually work that way!

So, (aside from the fact they see SqlStripes and get all excited, and that I am having thoughts about why  marketing didn’t get to them earlier J), I wonder how could that be?
How can wide-production systems have SQL-Service monitor at best?

If you have a minute, click on the poll below to state what’s your way of monitoring your SQL Servers

Cheers,

Adi