Central Management Servers (part 1) - Creating a Central Management Server

1. Creating a Central Management Server

You must designate a SQL Server 2008 instance as a central management server, but you can register and manage previous versions of SQL Server with the central management server, including the ability to evaluate policies. The central management sever maintains the information needed to connect to each server. Windows authentication is the only method of connecting to each registered server, which means that no usernames or passwords are stored on the central management server. Using Windows authentication also means that you may have different levels of security access on each server, depending on how your account is configured on that individual server.

Let's start by configuring a SQL Server 2008 instance as a central management server. Right-click on the Central Management Servers folder located in the Registered Servers window in SQL Server Management Studio, and select Register Central Management Server from the context menu. This will bring you to the New Server Registration dialog box, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Dialog box used to create a central management server

Enter the name of the SQL Server instance that will be designated as the central management server, along with the appropriate connection information in the New Server Registration dialog box. Notice that you can use SQL Server authentication to create the central management server; the Windows authentication rule only applies to the registered servers being managed by the central management server. Click Test to test the connection. If the connection is successful, click Save to create the central management server.

The next thing you need to do is create a server group to organize the servers you will be registering and managing. Right-click on the central management server you just created and select New Server Group from the context menu. This will bring up the New Server Group Properties dialog box, as shown in Figure 2. Enter Production as the group name and enter a group description, such as Production SQL Server Group. Click OK to close the dialog box and create the group.

Figure 2. New Server Group Properties dialog box

Now we need to add a few servers to the group in order to take advantage of the centralized management features offered by the central management server. Right-click on the Production group you just created and select New Server Registration from the context menu. This will open the New Server Registration dialog box, as shown in Figure 3. This is similar to the dialog box that was used to register the central management server with one small exception: The Authentication selection is preset to Windows Authentication and cannot be changed. Click Test to test the connection. If the connection is successful, click Save to complete the registration. We will repeat the process a couple of times to add a few servers to the Production group in order to demonstrate the benefits of using a central management server.

Figure 3. Dialog box used to register a server to be managed by a central management server

You can see the final central management server configuration we have created for this example in Figure 4. We are using an instance of SQL Server 2008 named KEN-PC\SQL2K8 as the central management server. There are three registered instances of SQL Server in the Production group, each a different version:

KEN-PC is running an instance of SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition.

KEN-PC\SQL2K is running an instance of SQL Server 2000 Developer Edition.

KEN-PC\SQLEXPRESS1 is running an instance SQL Server 2008 Express Edition.

Figure 4. Sample central management server configuration

Right-clicking a server group provides you with a couple of options you can execute against all the servers in the group. Two options that are particularly interesting are New Query and Evaluate Policies. Being able to run a single query against multiple servers and having the ability to evaluate policies from a single location, regardless of the version and edition of SQL Server, is where the true power lies in central management servers.