Check Your SQL Server Configuration

I blog a lot about best practices, defaults and paying attention to your installations. It’s a huge pet-peeve of mine to see improperly configured instances. One of the things I always do when doing a health check is review an instances configuration options. On quite a few client environments, just a couple quick knob turns with the right config options makes an important and noticeable deal. I’ve blogged about sp_configure and sys.configurations and how you can look at them. But to be honest, I’ve always just sort of selected all of sys.configurations and manually looked at the results row by row. It works, because I’m always looking for the same handful of settings typically. As we look to improve the efficiency of our WellDBA™ Exams at Linchpin People, though, I like being more proactive and cutting out garbage/noise. I also don’t remember all of the defaults for every setting, so I don’t always know if someone changes some odd or obscure setting.

The SQL Server Configuration Check Script

I wrote a really simple (and you could say ugly) script to help filter out the noise. It works well and it let’s me quickly see which configuration options are off from the default, which defaults haven’t been changed that I often like to at least consider changes to and if the client has made any recent changes without running reconfigure or a restart. It has helped me out and I wanted to share it with you if it can help you out. You can download it here – SQL Server Configuration Check Script.