14 September 2021

Finding Job Step Failures

by Steve Jones

3,215 0 Best Practice

Metrics install automatically if you have Redgate Monitor installed.

If you are using Redgate’s SQL Server monitoring tool, Redgate Monitor, you can instantly install and run this metric on your servers.

This metric returns a count of the job steps that failed in the latest execution of all jobs on the instance. This should be a calculated measure, where the change is what should alert the DBA. If any step in a job fails in the latest execution, this alert counts those failures and returns a value. This means if a job step fails in a job, and the job still reports success, this value changes.

If the job re-runs, and no steps error out, then this metric would report a 0.

Metric definition

Name

Finding Job Step Failures

Description

The T-SQL query that will collect data


		
			
			
Transact-SQL
			
			WITH cteActivity (job_id, start_execution_date)
AS ( -- get the latest job execution for all jobs
    SELECT job_id,
           MAX(start_execution_date) AS start_execution_date
    FROM msdb.dbo.sysjobactivity
    GROUP BY job_id)
, cteJobStep (Job_ID, Step_Name, run_date, run_time)
    AS (SELECT jh.job_id,
               jh.step_name AS JobStepName,
               jh.run_date,
               jh.run_time
        FROM msdb.dbo.sysjobhistory jh
            INNER JOIN cteActivity ja
                ON jh.job_id = ja.job_id
        WHERE jh.run_status = 0 --step failed
              AND jh.step_id != 0
              --         and jh.job_id = CONVERT(uniqueidentifier, '8C673935-F8C1-4E7D-94D3-1F3CAE50D7DC')
              AND --this block ensures that we just pull information from the most recent job run
            (
            -- The start time of the step, converted to datetime
            CONVERT(DATETIME, RTRIM(jh.run_date))
            + (jh.run_time * 9 + jh.run_time % 10000 * 6 + jh.run_time % 100
               * 10
              ) / 216e4 >= ja.start_execution_date -- the time the job last started
            )
			
				
					
				
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						WITH cteActivity (job_id, start_execution_date)
AS ( -- get the latest job execution for all jobs
    SELECT job_id,
           MAX(start_execution_date) AS start_execution_date
    FROM msdb.dbo.sysjobactivity
    GROUP BY job_id)
, cteJobStep (Job_ID, Step_Name, run_date, run_time)
    AS (SELECT jh.job_id,
               jh.step_name AS JobStepName,
               jh.run_date,
               jh.run_time
        FROM msdb.dbo.sysjobhistory jh
            INNER JOIN cteActivity ja
                ON jh.job_id = ja.job_id
        WHERE jh.run_status = 0 --step failed
              AND jh.step_id != 0
              --         and jh.job_id = CONVERT(uniqueidentifier, '8C673935-F8C1-4E7D-94D3-1F3CAE50D7DC')
              AND --this block ensures that we just pull information from the most recent job run
            (
            -- The start time of the step, converted to datetime
            CONVERT(DATETIME, RTRIM(jh.run_date))
            + (jh.run_time * 9 + jh.run_time % 10000 * 6 + jh.run_time % 100
               * 10
              ) / 216e4 >= ja.start_execution_date -- the time the job last started
            )

Instances to collect from

all

Databases to collect from

msdb

Collection frequency

every hour

Use collected or calculated values

Leave the Use a calculated rate of change between collections check box unchecked

Metric collection

ENABLED

Alert definition

Alert name

Job Steps Have Failed

Description

A step in a job failed, whether or not the job itself reported success.

Raise an alert when the metric value goes

above the defined threshholds

Default threshold values

High:
Medium:
Low:	1

Raise an alert when the threshold is passed for

1 occurrence collections

Alert is

ENABLED

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Finding Job Step Failures

Metric definition

Name

Description

The T-SQL query that will collect data

Instances to collect from

Databases to collect from

Collection frequency

Use collected or calculated values

Metric collection

Alert definition

Alert name

Description

Raise an alert when the metric value goes

Default threshold values

Raise an alert when the threshold is passed for

Alert is

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