Systems will degrade over time; therefore, monitor your Project Server to identify potential problems in performance and functionality. Taking this proactive approach to maintaining the system ensures reliability, efficiency, and up-time for your users.
Numerous tools are built into the operating system, such as the Event Viewer (EventVwr.exe), and applications are available to assist in monitoring and troubleshooting. In addition, Microsoft provides several free utilities for testing, troubleshooting, and monitoring Project Server 2003. These utilities are freely downloadable from Microsoft.
Create backups of the Project Server databases at least once every 24 hours. Larger organizations should consider more frequent backups. All organizations should consider the recovery mode options built into SQL Server 2000 and design a backup strategy accordingly. Verify and test backups regularly. Often, database backup corruption is not detectable until a restore is necessary.
Document and maintain a solid disaster recovery plan. Make sure that you include testing in the plan. Good planning only goes so far. Servers do fail and databases do corrupt, but a solid disaster recovery plan alleviates the risks of data loss.
Baseline your installations. This helps greatly in troubleshooting performance issues and can even help to distinguish between hardware and software problems.
Leverage the advantages of Terminal Services. Speed, reliability, and manageability, as well as increased security, are tremendous benefits to any organization.
Keep your servers and applications up-to-date. Install emergency patches within 24 hours and critical updates within 14 days. Install hotfixes only when necessary and service packs as they are released. Whenever possible, test all updates prior to implementing in a production environment.
