Kevin Hill satisfies Betteridge’s Law of Headlines:
Too many IT teams treat SQL Server Agent jobs like a coffee timer “Set it and forget it!”
Unfortunately, that mindset only works if everything else is perfect forever. Whether its backup jobs failing silently, index maintenance running on the wrong replica, or nobody getting alerts when things break, unattended SQL Agent jobs are one of the sneakiest ways to rack up technical debt. Let’s dig into what DBAs and non-DBAs alike need to keep an eye on to avoid job-related headaches.
Kevin includes some good tips on monitoring SQL Agent jobs. If you’re feeling paranoid or have a particularly important job to watch, it may also make sense to set up some monitoring alerts around the end results, tracking things like the latest load date (for an ETL job) or some other indicator of doneness, and have a monitoring solution independently verify this.