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Category: SQL Agent

Updating a SQL Agent Job Step across Multiple Servers

Published 2022-07-20 by Kevin Feasel

Chad Callihan needs to deploy a job step change to multiple servers:

I recently needed to update the command of a job step for a job existing on multiple servers. Logging into each server to make the same changes can be time consuming. Thankfully, there are better methods.

Let’s look at a couple of ways to update a job step more efficiently.

There is also using a TSX/MSX arrangement, which would keep the jobs in sync as well. If the job is the same across each instance and you have enough cases where you need to think about this sort of thing, MSX is a good thing to look into.

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Sending E-mails on Database Blocking

Published 2022-06-20 by Kevin Feasel

Thomas Williams combines a few tools:

If your SQL Servers are under pressure, you want to know. Blocking and blocked processes impact end-users, and if not addressed can slow or even stop a database. In this post, I’ll outline a method I use to get timely notifications of blocking processes that you can use too.

I adapted my approach from Tom Collins’s excellent – and still relevant – 2017 article “How to monitor Blocked Processes with SQL Alert and email sp_whoisActive report” at https://www.sqlserver-dba.com/2017/01/how-to-monitor-blocked-processes-with-sql-alert-and-email-sp_whoisactive-report.html. You could implement exactly what Tom covers in his post and come out on top. I’ve gone one small step further to send a formatted HTML e-mail with a table of blocking & blocked processes; like Tom, I generate the table using Adam Machanic’s fantastic sp_WhoIsActive stored procedure, which I’ve assumed is present in the master system database. The complete solution is the sp_WhoIsActive stored procedure (which you’ll need to download and create, see http://whoisactive.com/downloads/), a SQL Agent job with a job step that runs sp_WhoIsActive and sends the e-mail, and an alert that calls the SQL Agent job when there’s blocked processes.

Read on for the script, as well as some important notes.

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Finding SQL Agent Jobs with Invalid Job Owners

Published 2022-03-22 by Kevin Feasel

Chad Callihan is trying to clean up this town:

Do you know which account is the owner for your SQL Server Agent jobs? Some jobs might be owned by user accounts which can become a problem. What happens if that job owner isn’t around forever and goes away? Will that job just keep chugging along?

Without an existing owner, a SQL Server Agent job will not run. Once a user gets disabled or removed from Active Directory, a job is still going to try running under that user but will begin failing.

Click through to see what kind of errors you might find.

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Testing Failover Group and TCP Connectivity with Managed Instances

Published 2022-01-14 by Kevin Feasel

Niko Neugebauer has a pair of connectivity tests for us. First up is failover group connectivity:

When you set up a failover group between primary and secondary SQL Managed Instances in two different regions, each instance is isolated using an independent virtual network. Replication traffic needs to be allowed between these VNets.

To allow this kind of traffic, one of the prerequisites is:

– “You need to set up your Network Security Groups (NSG) such that ports 5022 and the range 11000-11999 are open inbound and outbound for connections from the subnet of the other managed instance. This is to allow replication traffic between the instances.”

Click through for a SQL Agent job script which helps with the test. Meanwhile, you can also test TCP connectivity from a managed instance:

In this post we shall focus on helping you determining the TCP connectivity from SQL Managed Instance against a given endpoint and port of your choice.

If you are interested in other posts on how-to discover different aspects of SQL MI – please visit the  http://aka.ms/sqlmi-howto, which serves as a placeholder for the series.

There are scenarios where it would be nice to be able to test if a SQL Managed Instance can reach some “external” endpoints, like Azure Storage as an example.

Check out both posts.

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Executing T-SQL with a Proxy Account

Published 2021-08-04 by Kevin Feasel

Tom Collins answers a question:

I have some t-sql code added to a job step on a SQL Server Agent job. The problem is I need to run the code as RUNAS . I though of executing the job with a proxy account – so progressed with the Credential & proxy set up.    But I still can’t view the Proxy\Credential in the RunAs list . Is there a way around this problem?

Read on to learn why and for the answer.

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Errors and Return Codes in SQL Agent Powershell Job Steps

Published 2021-05-17 by Kevin Feasel

Ron the Polymath has a framework:

PowerShell job steps offer a lot of advantages, but when things don’t work as expected, it can frustrating to understand why. Things like when a non-zero exit code reports the step as successful. Some important points I found with PowerShell steps (especially the first item):

Read on for those interesting points, for a block of Powershell code you can use to track errors, and a SQL Agent job template to boot.

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When You Can’t Win for Trying: SQL Agent Failures

Published 2021-04-01 by Kevin Feasel

Garry Bargsley troubleshoots a strange issue:

What are your troubleshooting steps when a job failure is reported?

1. Open SQL Agent Job History for the failed job
2. Look at the SQL Server Log
3. This was an Ola job, so look at the CommandLog table
4. Look at the text log file stored on the file system
5. Open the job step and get the code being executed and run in a new query window

Now that you and I have performed the same steps and found no smoking gun, where do you go next?

But what happens when all of your indicators look fine, yet the job is still failing? Read on for one possible answer.

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The Importance of Configuring SQL Server Agent Alerts

Published 2021-03-08 by Kevin Feasel

Chad Callihan has a story in three acts:

Once upon a time, I was having a relaxing morning…until I received an e-mail alert about an Error Number 825 on a database. The error stated:

‘D:\sql_dat\DatabaseName.mdf_MSSQL_DBCC47’ at offset 0x00000004b9e000 succeeded after failing 1 time(s) with error: 121(The semaphore timeout period has expired.). Additional messages in the SQL Server error log and system event log may provide more detail. This error condition threatens database integrity and must be corrected. Complete a full database consistency check (DBCC CHECKDB). This error can be caused by many factors; for more information, see SQL Server Books Online.

That’s not how you want your day to go. Fortunately, the database was not one that needed to be online 24/7 so I felt I could relax a little bit while starting to investigate. At this point, the issue seemed to be with one database.

Click through to see if everyone lived happily ever after.

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Getting SQL Agent Jobs and Job Steps

Published 2021-02-04 by Kevin Feasel

Anthony Nocentino takes the dbatools approach to a problem:

Recently I needed to take a look at all of the SQL Server Agent Jobs and their Jobs Steps for a customer. Specifically, I needed to review all of the Jobs and Job Steps for Ola Hallengren’s Maintenance Solution and look at the Backup, Index Maintenance and Integrity Jobs to ensure they’re configured properly and also account for any customizations and one-offs in the Job definitions. This customer has dozens of SQL Server instances and well, I wasn’t about to click through everything in SSMS…and writing this in TSQL would have been a good candidate for a Ph.D. dissertation. So let’s check out how I solved this problem using dbatools.

Click through for the script.

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