A lightweight always-on monitoring, collecting, diagnosing, and correcting utility operates in an enhanced storage manager that manages a data storage management system. The always-on utility provides a comprehensive and pro-active approach, which is intended to reduce, if not altogether eliminate, the need for after-the-fact diagnostics. The always-on utility also enforces so-called best practices and other heuristics, which include pro-actively activating certain database settings that are not enabled by default; manipulating certain aspects of the database to improve performance; and reporting aspects that are outside best-practice parameters to the trouble report system so that system administrators and/or developers may intervene before a catastrophic failure occurs. In some cases, the best-practice parameters represent heuristics designed by the present inventors to improve the performance and general health of the management database.