DBAs have plenty of day-to-day tasks to do as part of the administration, but one overarching task is managing the entire SQL Server environment. To do this, the full SQL Server estate must be discovered and inventoried. To accomplish that all SQL Server instances, that exist, must be found.
Inventory
A system inventory is always the go-to document for vital information for everyone whether youβre a consultant or an in-house DBA; you must have a reliable inventory of the servers that you manage. The inventory can be defined in different ways since it takes many different dimensions but at its core, itβs an aggregation of information about the system installation topography. However, often, we tend to forget to update the inventory when we add a server or update software. We deploy new servers, decommission existing servers, keeping track of servers in the environment, upgrade process, patching, migration from physical to virtual machines, moving to the cloud, license validation, IT forecasting and many more such areas strongly rely on the inventory list.
Further reading
Auto-discover SQL Server instances
Prashanth Jayaram 