Managing SQL Server Jobs

Take full control of your SQL Server Agent jobs with the Nodinite Database Monitoring Agent. Prevent critical batch failures, automate maintenance tasks, and ensure business-critical ETL processes run on schedule.

Why Monitor SQL Server Agent Jobs?

SQL Server Agent jobs automate essential database tasks—backups, ETL processes, maintenance, data synchronization. When jobs fail or run too long, consequences include:

• Data integrity issues – Failed backup jobs leave databases vulnerable to data loss
• Business process delays – ETL failures prevent reporting, analytics, and downstream applications
• Compliance violations – Regulatory requirements for timely data processing go unmet
• Cascading failures – Dependent jobs and processes fail when upstream jobs don't complete
• Performance degradation – Long-running jobs consume resources and block other operations

Without proactive monitoring, teams discover job failures only after business users report missing data or failed processes.

What Does Nodinite Monitor?

The Database Monitoring Agent automatically discovers and monitors all SQL Server Agent jobs, providing:

✅ Auto-discovery – Instantly detect all jobs across your SQL Server instances without manual configuration ✅ Failure detection – Get immediate alerts when jobs fail, are disabled, or have never run ✅ Duration monitoring – Identify jobs running longer than expected thresholds ✅ Schedule compliance – Alert when jobs haven't run within their expected timeframe ✅ Remote control – Enable, disable, start, and stop jobs directly from Nodinite ✅ Execution history – View job run history to identify patterns and troubleshoot issues

When to Use SQL Job Monitoring?

Use this feature when you need to:

• Protect critical batch processes – Ensure nightly ETL, reporting, and data feeds complete successfully
• Validate backup operations – Confirm database and log backup jobs run as scheduled
• Meet SLA requirements – Detect and resolve job failures before breaching service commitments
• Empower operations teams – Enable NOC and support staff to restart failed jobs without DBA intervention
• Identify performance trends – Track job duration over time to spot degradation
• Support 24/7 operations – Automate alerts for after-hours job failures

How It Works

The Nodinite Database Monitoring Agent automatically discovers all your Jobs in configured SQL Server instances. When this feature is enabled, each Job yields one Resource that the System Administrator can include in one or more Monitor Views. A user gets alerts using at least one of the built-in Alarm Plugins.

The Display name of the Resource is the same as the name of the Job in SQL Server. The Jobs group by the Category name 'SQL Jobs':

Here's an example of a Monitor View filtered by the 'SQL Jobs' Category.

This diagram illustrates how each SQL Job is mapped to a monitored Resource in Nodinite for job tracking.

What are the key features of Monitoring SQL Jobs?

• State Evaluation – Instantly monitors and evaluates the state of each SQL Job
• Actions – Perform Remote Actions such as enable, disable, start, stop, and edit thresholds directly from Nodinite
• Auto Discovery – Automatically detects all jobs in your SQL Server environment
• Centralized Visibility – View and manage all jobs in a single dashboard
• Proactive Alerts – Receive notifications for job failures, delays, or abnormal durations

Note

SQL Express and Azure SQL Databases do not have a SQL Agent, so the SQL Jobs feature is not available.

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What is evaluated for SQL Jobs?

The different possible evaluated states for your SQL Jobs are provided in the table below:

	State	Status	Description	Actions
	Unavailable	Resource not available	Evaluation of the 'SQL Job' is not possible due to network or security-related problems	Review prerequisites
	Error	Error state raised	SQL Job reports one or more major problems/errors by raising an exception Job failed on last run A job that has not run within specified time interval A job that runs for a longer duration than specified	Edit
	Warning	Warning state raised	SQL Job reports one or more minor problems by raising an exception with state warning A disabled job A job not running A job that has never run A job that has not run within specified time interval A job that runs for a longer duration than specified	Edit
	OK	Online	SQL Job is valid, executes, and reports that no problems were detected	Edit

Tip

The System Administrator can override the Monitoring state using the Expected State feature on the Resource within Nodinite.

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How do I configure the thresholds for SQL Jobs?

There are two different ways to configure thresholds for SQL Jobs:

• Global Configuration
• Specific configuration

Global Configuration

SQL Server Jobs are included in the Monitoring when the checkbox Enable monitoring of SQL Jobs is checked from within the Remote Configuration dialogue for the Database Monitoring Agent.

From the Jobs tab, you can configure the global settings.

Here's an example of the Jobs tab with global monitoring thresholds

The System Administrator can manage the following properties:

• Enable SQL Jobs Monitoring – When checked, SQL Jobs Monitoring is enabled
• Allowed Timespan for last evaluated run, expressed using timespan property: (days.hours:minutes:seconds)
  • Warning: Allowed time before state evaluates as Warning
  • Error: Allowed time before state evaluates as Error
• Duration for last evaluated run, expressed in seconds (any negative value disables the check)
  • Warning: Allowed time before the job is evaluated as in the Warning state
  • Error: Allowed time before the job is evaluated as in the Error state
• Description – A user-friendly description for the Job

Info

Timespan format is (days.hours.minutes.seconds)

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Actions

The Database Monitoring Agent category SQL Jobs supports the following Remote Actions:

• Enable job
• Disable Job
• Edit thresholds
• View history
• Start Job
• Start at step
• Stop Job

List of available Remote Actions for the SQL Jobs Category.

Enable Job

The following dialogue is displayed after clicking the action button menu item Enable. Click Yes to Enable the Job.

Here's an example of confirmation dialogue to enable a disabled SQL Job

Disable Job

The following dialogue is displayed after clicking the action button menu item Disable. Click Yes to Disable the Job.

Here's an example of confirmation dialogue to disable an enabled SQL Job

Edit thresholds

The following dialogue is displayed after clicking the action button menu item Edit thresholds.

Here's an example of dialogue changing global thresholds to specific thresholds.

The Default values are set using Remote Configuration. Review the Global configuration section of this document for further details.

The same properties as described in the Global configuration are available and in addition the following can be managed:

• Expected State – Checked if the job is expected to be enabled

View history

View the last number of runs for the selected job. The number of available logs is managed within SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS).

The list is paginated, conserving bandwidth and improving performance.

You can update the list by clicking the Reload button in the upper right corner.

Start Job

The following dialogue is displayed after clicking the action button menu item Start. Click Yes to Start the Job.

Here's an example of confirmation dialogue to start Job.

Review the View history to manually get the outcome.

Start at step

The following dialogue is displayed after clicking the action button menu item Start at step.

Here's an example of SQL Job with multiple steps

Click the Start on this step button to Start the Job at the selected step. You will then be prompted with the following dialogue:

Here's an example of confirmation dialogue to start job at selected step

Review the View history to manually get the outcome.

Stop Job

Click the Stop button to stop the Job. You will then be prompted with the following dialogue:

Here's an example of confirmation dialogue to stop a running SQL Job

Review the View history to manually get the outcome.

Save

You must click 'Save' or 'Save and close' for changes to persist. The new settings/thresholds are evaluated on the next synchronization.

Here's an example of the Save options.

Note

Depending on the synchronization interval set for the agent, there might be a delay before the Web Client reflects upon the change. You can force the agent to synchronize the Configuration for all Nodinite Monitoring Agents.

Save and close – Save and close the dialogue.

Cancel – Close the dialogue without saving any changes.

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Next Step

SQL Categories

Related Topics

Add or manage Monitor View
Database Monitoring Agent
Monitoring Agents
Monitor Views
Resources