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Category: SQL Agent

Parsing SQL Agent Job Step Output

Published 2020-08-27 by Kevin Feasel

Thomas Rushton has a function for us:

(This follows on from my previous script about emailing SQL Job ouput.)

There are times when a SQL server scheduled task needs to look at the output from the previous step, and make decisions based on that – particularly when parsing output from noisy/chatty scripts.

I have, therefore, put together a quick and dirty script to check the output from a SQL Server job step, and pull that into a string, so that it can be examined and a script can then make decisions about what to do next.

Read on for the function definition as well as a few notes on its usage.

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Creating a Fail-Safe Agent in SQL Server

Published 2020-08-26 by Kevin Feasel

Garry Bargsley wants the buck to stop somewhere:

Did you know it is possible for SQL Server Agent to  alert you of problems if something goes haywire with your Agent? Have you ever had an issue with Alerts not being sent after critical events? Then you might need to configure the SQL Server Agent Fail-Safe Operator to save the day. A Fail-Safe WHAT you might say?? This is a special SQL Agent Operator configured in the SQL Agent Alert System in the chance any of the following situations occur.

Click through for the situations as well as configuration steps using Powershell + dbatools.

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Sending an E-Mail with SQL Agent Job Outputs

Published 2020-08-13 by Kevin Feasel

Thomas Rushton shows how to send an e-mail with the outputs of a SQL Agent job:

I came across a need for SQL Server Agent job output to be emailed out to the developer who created the code that the job was running. For various reasons, they don’t necessarily have access to the SQL Server itself – hurrah – but need to see what’s being generated by their scripts in case something goes wrong.

So, I ended up writing this extremely rough and ready SP

Rough and ready, but it works.

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Fixing Availability Group Issues with Alerts

Published 2020-08-07 by Kevin Feasel

Wayne Sheffield automates a few problems away:

The first of the Availability Group issues to discuss is that, for whatever reason, data is no longer moving between the primary replica and a secondary replica. This puts the Data Movement in a Suspended state.

If the data movement remains suspended for too long, you might have to take some undesired actions to get things back in sync. Things like removing the database from the AG, restoring log files, then reattaching it to the AG. When the data movement becomes suspended, we want to get it flowing again as soon as possible. Let’s have SQL Server try to get the data flowing again.

Read on for more, including a second issues that Wayne helps solve.

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Finding Running SQL Agent Jobs

Published 2020-08-05 by Kevin Feasel

Garry Bargsley has a quick dbatools script to find running SQL Agent jobs:

Do you run SQL Agent Jobs in your environment?  Do you know what is running at any given time?  Most people do not know what is currently running if you ask them.

There are several times I need to know what job(s) is running on which server. For instance, let’s say on the morning of monthly maintenance you want to check to make sure all your important ETL jobs are complete or that there are currently no database backup jobs running.

Read on to see the cmdlet and how you can use it to query across a broad set of servers.

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Sending Messages from SQL Agent to Microsoft Teams

Published 2020-07-31 by Kevin Feasel

Rob Sewell is waiting for a message and it comes in two parts. First up, sending SQL Agent results to a Teams channel:

Using dbatools we can create a simple script to gather the results of Agent Jobs form a list of instances. Maybe it would be good to be able to get the job runs results every 12 hours so that at 6am in the morning the early-bird DBA can quickly identify if there are any failures that need immediate action and at 6pm , the team can check that everything was ok before they clock off.

But that’s not enough for Rob:

Following on from yesterdays post about creating an overview of SQL Agent Job Results and sending it to a Teams channel, I was given another challenge

Can you write a job step that I can add to SQL Agent jobs that can send the result of that job to a Teams Channel

The use case was for some migration projects that had steps that were scheduled via SQL Agent Jobs and instead of the DBA having to estimate when they would finish and keep checking so that they could let the next team know that it was time for their part to start, they wanted it to notify a Teams channel. This turned out especially useful as the job finished earlier than expected at 3am and the off-shore team could begin their work immediately.

Read the whole thing, as Rob has some detailed code examples.

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Azure Elastic Jobs Now GA

Published 2020-07-14 by Kevin Feasel

Niko Neugebauer gives into Azure Elastic Jobs, now generally available:

They key feature that needs to be well understood and which points to the potential of the Elastic Job Agent is that you are in no way limited by your own Azure SQL Database, nor by the logical Azure SQL Server where this database is located (contrary to the MSDB Database on the SQL Server), nor will you be limted by the Azure Region, Azure Resource Group or even Azure Subscription – you can configure the Elastic Job that will be reaching out to potentially any Azure SQL Database (given the necessary settings & permissions are correctly configured).

Read the whole thing. Niko shares some interesting thoughts on how it works, how you can tie your one server to a whole host of SQL Databases, and a wish list on what should come next.

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SQL Agent Job Control Based on AG/Mirroring Status

Published 2020-05-28 by Kevin Feasel

Eitan Blumin has an interesting solution for us:

Lo and behold, my new and improved scripts, which implement the following logic:

Create a single Master Control Job with an hourly schedule, and also set it to run when SQL Agent is started up. The Master Control Job will do the following:

Automatically detect which jobs have steps that run on databases that are involved in an HADR solution.

For each such job, automatically detect whether there’s at least one step run on a database which currently has the Primary/Principle role.

If so, make sure it’s enabled. Otherwise, make sure it’s disabled.

Create an alert for a role/state change event, if such doesn’t exist yet, and set it to run the Master Control Job when triggered.

Click through for more details and links to scripts for Availability Group and database mirroring scenarios.

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