Kevin Hill has a public service announcement:
Most SQL Server crashes don’t come out of nowhere.
They leave breadcrumbs – red flags that something’s not right. The problem? If you don’t know where to look, you miss the signs…until it’s 2am and your CEO’s calling.Let’s talk about how to listen for those whispers before they turn into full-blown alarms.
Click through for some advice on the topic. I’ll also note that everything Kevin mentions, you can automatically retrieve and centralize in a monitoring system, and once you have more than a couple of SQL Server instances, I’d recommend doing so.