For the last two days, in between other tasks, I have been kicking around ideas to organize or reorganize scheduled jobs and maintenance plans into a grander scheme solution that sends me ONE e-mail a day.   Sounds like a minor operation, but I have 32 SQL servers including four clusters.  Currently, many of the 300 databases send me nightly e-mails to let me know whether the individual operations succeeded or failed.  There are still some maintenance plans that I have not replaced yet.  I have also implemented Ola Hallengren’s backup solution on many of the servers which greatly reduced the number of e-mails that I receive.  The plan is to install that solution on every server.  This solution has saved me hours upon hours of work, check it out if you have not already. 

Sometime ago, I wrote or found a script (no, I cannot remember) that would send me an e-mail letting me know the backup type and date/time of the last backup.  So here we are, and I am trying to take this to another level by exploring solutions to greatly reduce e-mail traffic and reduce the amount of time it takes me to assess my server’s overnight maintenance thus allowing me to spend more time being proactive.  With all that being said, I found the following article, Use PowerShell to Report SQL Server Backup Status, written on the Hey, Scripting Guy! Blog.

As this plan develops, I will post new blog posts.  Enjoy or let me know how you handle it.  Let’s share ideas!