SQL Server 2012 : Delivering Manageability and Performance (part 3) - POLICY-BASED MANAGEMENT - Database — Data and Log File Auto-Grow Increments

3.7 Database — Data and Log File Auto-Grow Increments

This policy checks the auto-growth increments for data and log files to ensure they are optimized given the database size. This particular policy is a good example of how the optimal value for the auto-growth increment varies according to the size of the database. It would be unreasonable to grow a 10MB log file by anything more than a few MB. Similarly, it would be unreasonable to grow a 100GB data file by anything less than 1GB.

To get started with this policy example, create the four conditions shown in Table 3. Figure 3 shows values for a medium data check condition.

TABLE 3: Example Autogrow Conditions

FIGURE 3

Before creating the policies, four further conditions are required that will be used in the target to ensure that each policy is applied against the correct database (see Figure 4). Table 4 summarizes the additional conditions required.

FIGURE 4

TABLE 4: Additional Conditions for Filtering Targets

Once these conditions are created, the next and final step is to create the policies. Four policies are required, and these policies will connect the check condition to the target conditions and specify the evaluation mode for the policy. Table 5 summarizes the four policies required. Figure 5 shows an example dialog using the Small Data condition.

FIGURE 5

TABLE 5: Example File Autogrow Policies

Creating these eight conditions and four policies enables the automated policy evaluation to ensure that small databases have KB growth increments, and databases with data or log files larger than 1GB have autogrow set to 1GB or larger.