Specifications
Managing Utility Administration Settings CHAPTER 2 39
REAL WORLD
M
any organizations have large teams managing their SQL Server infrastructures
because they have hundreds of SQL Server instances within their environ-
ment. Let’s say you wanted to grant 50 users the read-only privilege for the SQL
Server Utility dashboard and viewpoints. It would be very impractical to grant every
single database administrator the read-only privilege. Therefore, if you have many
database administrators and you want to grant them the read-only role for the SQL
Server Utility within your environment, you can take advantage of a Role Based Ac-
cess model to streamline the process.
For example, you can create a security group within your Active Directory domain
called Utility Readers and then add all the desired database administrators and Win-
dows administrator accounts into this group. Then in SSMS, you create a new login
and select the Active Directory security group called Utility Readers. The nal step
involves adding the Utility Reader role to the Utility Reader security group on the
Security tab in the Utility Administration node within Utility Explorer. By following
these steps, you provide access to all of your database administrators in a fraction
of the time. In addition, the use of RBA makes it quite easier to manage the ongoing
maintenance of security of the SQL Server Utility.
The Data Warehouse Tab
You view and modify the data retention period for utilization information collected for man-
aged instances of SQL Server on the Data Warehouse tab in the Utility Administration node in
Utility Explorer. In addition, the UMDW Database Name and Collection Set Upload Frequency
elements can be viewed; however, they cannot be modied in this version of SQL Server 2008
R2. There are plans to allow these settings to be modied in future versions of SQL Server.
The following steps illustrate how to modify the data retention period for the UMDW:
1. Launch SSMS and connect to a UCP through Utility Explorer.
2. Select the Utility Administration node in Utility Explorer.
3. Click the Data Warehouse tab in the Utility Explorer Content pane.