I was wondering if it is necessary to perform maintenance tasks on the SQL Express 2005 instance associated with SCE 2007? I know that the database is configured to perform grooming, and other data cleanup, however are tasks such as Index Rebuild's/Reorg's, statistic updates, and integrity checks a good idea? I was looking to use ExpressMaintenance to provide the mechanism to perform these tasks, but I just want to make sure it is necessary before creating the scheduled tasks.

Hello, It is not necessary if there's not any performance issue on the DataBase. You can configure the database grooming by following the thread below: Automatic database grooming configuration http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/systemcenteressentials/thread/0adce9ed-6d3b-47fe-b3d8-79e4a1dfa465 Besides, I would suggest the following article from Kevin Holman's Blog: Understanding and modifying Data Warehouse retention and grooming http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2010/01/05/understanding-and-modifying-data-warehouse-retention-and-grooming.aspx Hope it helps, Yog Li -- Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Thank you for the response. Besides the removal of data what other functions does SCE perform on the DB? Does the application perform tasks such as integrity checking?

Hello, To edit "Database Grooming Settings", Essentials will only remove the data that have expired. There's not a task to check the database integrity. Thanks,Yog Li -- Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

I would have to disagree with the statement "It is not necessary if there's not any performance issue on the DataBase." This is entirely the point of running tasks such as DBCC or a index reorg or rebuild. Personally I'm somewhat disappointed that for a product targeted at SMB's that such tasks are not done by default on a scheduled basis. I'm curious to know what other individuals are performing for SQL maintenance on their SCE SQL Express Instances.

Hi CFSI-IS, I believe Yog Li is right. In Essentials 2007 I was unable to find any place where you can configure or review this because it is done via rules. I looked for places in our documentation that confirms that, but I was unable to confirm this in a document. However, there is a blog post in the System Center Central site that applies to this issue and documents what are the rules that do all the maintenance jobs in Essentials 2007. http://www.systemcentercentral.com/BlogDetails/tabid/143/IndexId/13015/Default.aspx This is for OpsMgr, but you can have it as a reference http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2008/04/12/what-sql-maintenance-should-i-perform-on-my-opsmgr-databases.aspx For SCE 2010, that is another story. You have an UI and you can have more info about it here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff603616.aspx. Please let me know if you have any question. Thanks! Jose.

Thanks Jose, That was the information that I was looking for.