Taking over from a DBA. What should you find out?

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@SQLShark asked Feb 11, '14

Taking over from a DBA. What should you find out?

Hi, I am moving companies and taking over from the new companies only DBA. What sort of questions would you ask before they leave? I have a list of general questions (Back-ups/restore/HA/DR etc) but I am hoping you have some questions I might not haven thought of. I cant see that this has been asked here before. Sorry if it has. Thanks in advance.

dba best-practice

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Answer 1 · 2014-02-11T19:31:14Z

JohnM answered Feb 11, '14

Brent Ozar just did a blog post about this very topic, soliciting ideas from the SQL Community. Read it here: http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2014/01/what-do-you-ask-the-leaving-dba/ There a number of good things to have and most are listed in Brent's blog post. Backups are probably number one, any passwords (password safes?) & processes to be aware of are also excellent. Hope this helps!

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@SQLShark commented · Feb 11, 2014 at 08:02 PM

Thank you very much!

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JohnM commented · Feb 11, 2014 at 08:08 PM

You're very welcome!

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Answer 2 · 2015-03-26T10:34:31Z

half fast dba answered Mar 26, '15

Now that some time has passed. What should you have asked the DBA but missed at the time?

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Kev Riley ♦♦ commented · Mar 26, 2015 at 10:53 AM

I like it!

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@SQLShark commented · Mar 26, 2015 at 11:16 AM

Ha! Good question! I should have kept a list! Ones that spring to mind: Domain Account credentials for Service accounts Passwords for global SSRS accounts Credentials for source control What are the agreed RPT/RTO For a full list of the SQL servers - Inc random dev servers not on the domain. I will have a think and add some more.

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