unnecessary Job did not start alerts

fatherjack2fatherjack2 Posts: 311
edited February 19, 2009 8:58AM in SQL Monitor Previous Versions
Hi,

we are running maintenance jobs on our server today and as part of the process stop we SQL Agent for a period of time. We still have Job did not start alerts coming through (every 10 minutes on some of our jobs). Is that intended behaviour? Surely if the agent service is stopped the Job did not start alerts are not necessary?

can anyone suggest a workaround, other than having to turn on/off the alerts? Just worried I'll forget to turn them back on ...

Jonathan

Senior DBA
Careers South West Ltd

Comments

  • Eddie DEddie D Posts: 1,780 Rose Gold 5
    Thank you for your post into the forum.

    The behaviour you are experiencing with the 'Job did not start' alert is expected behaviour.

    SQL Response maintains a list of the scheduled jobs configured and the frequency or timings set. For example, if you have a Transaction Log Backup Job that is scheduled to start every 10 minutes, you will receive an alert for this job every 10 minutes whilst the 'SQL Agent' is in a stopped state. It is only alerting you to the fact that the job did not start as expected. The fact that the 'SQL Server Agent' is in a stopped state, is just one of the causes for generating this alert.

    Unfortunately the 'Job did not start' alert and the 'SQL Agent not running' alert are not linked within SQL Response. Therefore the 'Job did not start' alert does not know that the 'SQL Agent' is in a stopped state or that the 'SQL agent' alert has been generated.

    I can submit a Feature Request for the development team to consider, preventing the 'Job did not start' alert if the SQL Agent has been in a stopped state or in a stopped state after a certain amount of time. Please reply if you wish me to submit this request?
    Eddie Davis
    Senior Product Support Engineer
    Redgate Software Ltd
    Email: support@red-gate.com
  • Hi Eddie,

    thanks for the reply.

    I think it would be worth putting this forward as a suggestion. I would not class my servers as the busiest servers but we had a huge number of alerts that seemed to over crowd the screen and mask the other server alerts that i did have to work on. We have replication in place and a number of jobs that run every 15 minutes so we had plenty of alerts on display after a day of maintenance.

    An alternative may be to find some way of grouping or summarising these alerts while SQL Agent is stopped. Maybe having a counter in the SQL Agent alert showing how many job executions have failed to start or being able to configure the alert to not show (or show summary data only every hour or two) if the SQL Agent is stopped?

    regards

    Jonathan

    Senior DBA
    Careers South West Ltd
  • Eddie DEddie D Posts: 1,780 Rose Gold 5
    Thank you for your reply.

    I have submitted a Feature Request for the development team to consider linking the 'Job did not start' alert with the 'SQL Agent not running' alert.

    I cannot guarantee the that the Feature Request will be successful, or if approval is given, what future version of SQL Response the requested feature will appear in. The reference number for this request is SSR-1472.

    Many Thanks
    Eddie
    Eddie Davis
    Senior Product Support Engineer
    Redgate Software Ltd
    Email: support@red-gate.com
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