I had another tip go live over at MSSQLTips today, this one involves the use of Policy Based Management to verify that your backup files are still available on disk. I had recently published a similar tip that was just a script that used the undocumented stored procedure xp_fileexist to achieve the same goal. I decided that wrapping that concept into a policy would be a nice thing to have as well. Plus it gave me an excuse to play a bit with PBM, which I have not been doing enough of lately.
If you are interested in importing the policy into your environment, you can do so by clicking on this link:
Database Backup File Check Policy
Depending on your browser and settings, you may need to right-click the link and do a ‘save as’ an XML document. From there you should be able to import from SSMS.
I think PBM offers a nice complement to the monitoring we have with Operations Manager. Between the two tools I should have just about everything I need to effectively monitor our environment here.
If you do try the policy please let me know, I would love to have some feedback. I have been thinking of making other policies (and custom Management Packs in OpsMgr) available for the community to try.
