Managing Policies through SQLSERVER:\SQLPolicy - Professional SQL Server 2008 Administration with Windows PowerShell - page 259

Managing Policies through
SQLSERVER: \ SQLPolicy

Policy-Based Management (PBM) is a new feature in SQL Server 2008 that helps SQL Server admin-
istration. It enables database administrators to manage SQL Server instances by intent through
clearly defined policies, thus reducing the potential for administrative errors. In Chapter 11, man-
aging databases and database objects through the SQL folder under the SQLSERVER: drive was
discussed. In this chapter, you will learn how to access Policy-Based Management objects, such as
policies and conditions, through the other folder, SQLSERVER: \ SQLPolicy .

This chapter covers the following topics:

❑ SQLSERVER: \ SQLPolicy folder

❑ Conditions

❑ Policies

SQLSERVER:\SQLPolicy Folder
If you are not familiar with the Policy-Based Management (PBM) feature in SQL Server 2008, here
is a brief introduction. As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, Policy-Based Management
helps database administrators manage SQL Server instances by applying clearly defined policies
that reduce the potential for errors. The Policy-Based Framework implements the policies behind
the scenes with a policy engine, SQL Server Agent jobs, SQLCLR, DDL triggers, and Service Broker.
Policies can be applied or evaluated against a single server or a group of servers, improving the scal-
ability of monitoring and administration. The operative terms used in Policy-Based Management
include target, facet, condition, policy, and category.

Before creating a policy, you need to identify the entities in SQL Server to which you want to apply
the policy. The entities are the targets of the policy. A target could be a SQL Server instance, a
database, a table, a login, and so on. You can also apply conditions to filter the targets in a server
instance in order to get a target set , such as all the user databases on an instance.