What does a best-practice SQL Server maintenance plan look like? I am a student from Fontys University in Eindhoven, and I am currently carrying out a series of interviews to help with the development of a SQL Server tool and I would like to get feedback from the experts in the field. 

One of my questions is:

What does a best-practice SQL Server maintenance plan look like? Do you use the SQL Server maintenance plans for this, or do you use custom scripts?
You have to plan it with the business needs in mind.  Sometimes it's a maintenance plan (like when a shop doesn't have full time DBAs or wants a minimum of complexity.)  Other times it's Ola Hallengren's maintenance scripts.  Whatever you do, it has to take into account the business needs for that data.  I discussed it in my post Ozar's Hierarchy of Database Needs.