Best Practice No.21

When choosing service accounts, consider the principle of least privilege.

Best Practice No.20

Don’t forget to backup System Databases (Master, Model and Msdb) while configuring Backups for your SQL Server Instance.

Best Practice No.19

Always keep Data and Log files on separate Physical Disk.

Best Practice No.18

Avoid using SELECT * FROM <Table_Name>, try to use only the required Columns & Rows – if possible.

Best Practice No.17

Configure start-up mode of your cluster SQL Services to Manual.

Best Practice No.16

Try not to place user data on Primary File-group.

Best Practice No.15

If you are using Fill Factor don’t forget to enable Pad Index.

Best Practice No.14

Change the recovery model of your databases to SIMPLE where you don’t need point in time recovery and don’t wish to configure Transaction log backups also (Testing Databases etc.)