Book Image

SQL Server 2019 Administrator's Guide - Second Edition

By : Marek Chmel, Vladimír Mužný
Book Image

SQL Server 2019 Administrator's Guide - Second Edition

By: Marek Chmel, Vladimír Mužný

Overview of this book

SQL Server is one of the most popular relational database management systems developed by Microsoft. This second edition of the SQL Server Administrator's Guide will not only teach you how to administer an enterprise database, but also help you become proficient at managing and keeping the database available, secure, and stable. You’ll start by learning how to set up your SQL Server and configure new and existing environments for optimal use. The book then takes you through designing aspects and delves into performance tuning by showing you how to use indexes effectively. You’ll understand certain choices that need to be made about backups, implement security policy, and discover how to keep your environment healthy. Tools available for monitoring and managing a SQL Server database, including automating health reviews, performance checks, and much more, will also be discussed in detail. As you advance, the book covers essential topics such as migration, upgrading, and consolidation, along with the techniques that will help you when things go wrong. Once you’ve got to grips with integration with Azure and streamlining big data pipelines, you’ll learn best practices from industry experts for maintaining a highly reliable database solution. Whether you are an administrator or are looking to get started with database administration, this SQL Server book will help you develop the skills you need to successfully create, design, and deploy database solutions.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
1
Section 1: Provisioning the SQL Server Environment
4
Section 2: Server and Database Maintenance
9
Section 3: High Availability and the Cloud with SQL Server 2019

Encrypting SQL Server data

When you are storing sensitive data on your SQL Server, you may need to encrypt the data to protect the data from accidental misuse. Your company may have business and technical requirements to encrypt the data, or even legal requirements to encrypt any sensitive information.

SQL Server has many options on how to protect data with encryption, depending on the need to protect data at rest or in transit. The whole encryption ecosystem in SQL Server is quite complex and offers many options, as can be seen in the following diagram:

Fig. 4.12 – Encryption hierarchy for SQL Server

Transparent Data Encryption

One of the options on how to encrypt the data in the database is Transparent Data Encryption option. This feature has been available since SQL Server 2008 and works at the input/output (I/O) level. Both file types—data and log—are encrypted on the disk, and SQL Server does the encryption...