Managing Servers

Microsoft® SQL Server™ server management comprises a wide variety of administration tasks, including:

• Registering servers and assigning passwords.
  
  
• Reconfiguring network connectivity.
  
  
• Configuring linked servers, which allows you to execute distributed queries and distributed transactions on OLE DB data sources across the enterprise.
  
  
• Configuring remote servers, which allows you to use one instance of SQL Server to execute a stored procedure residing on another instance of SQL Server.
  
  
• Configuring standby servers.
  
  
• Setting server configuration options.
  
  
• Managing SQL Server messages.
  
  
• Setting the polling intervals.

In most cases, you do not need to reconfigure the server. The default settings for server components, configured during SQL Server Setup, allow you to run an instance of SQL Server immediately after SQL Server is installed. However, server management is necessary in those situations where you want to add new servers, set up special server configurations, change the network connections, or set server configuration options to improve SQL Server performance.