Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

Moving Tasks with Copy-SqlJob
More dbatools experimentation for me. This is a great set of Powershell cmdlets that solve simple, handy problems. In this post, I want to look at Copy-SqlJob, which will allow me to easily move jobs from one instance to another.

The Job Subsystem

Jobs in SQL Server are part of the SQL Agent subsystem, which means they’re a part of SQL Server, but not really. Maybe the one part of the jobs that is really complex is getting the code for the job. You either need to use an SMO interface and script out the job, or you can decode the tables in msdb. Neither of which is handy.

We do need to move jobs, though. Perhaps the most common places I need to copy jobs around is for a DR (disaster recovery) situation. Clustering will move jobs from node to node as it covers the instance, but all the other technologies (AGs, Log Shipping, Mirroring), all of these only work with databases. So items like jobs need to be manually moved.

That’s not good.

Over time, we’ll edit, add, change jobs, but I’ve never seen anyone do a great job of actually ensuring the DR systems are up to date with jobs, logins, etc. all the time. There’s too much of a manual process.

That can change with Copy-SqlJob. I can now not only copy particular jobs between an instance, I can use a –Force command to ensure the copy takes place. This means that I can easily ensure the most recent version of my job is copied over. Or I can just skip this, and if the job exists, it’s not copied.

Running the Cmdlet

It’s easy to use this cmdlet. It can use Windows Auth or SQL Auth. It’s up to you. The documentation leaves something to be desired, so you’ll need to use the PowerShell Get-Help to learn what parameters exist.

For a simple copy, I’ll move all jobs from one instance to another. Here are the jobs on my primary SQL Server 2016 instance.

These are administrative, backup jobs and index jobs from Ola Hallengren. I don’t have these on my QA instance, which isn’t good.

Suppose this is a new instance and I want to add them? I can use Copy-SqlJob, but I want to know what will happen. I’ll use the –Source and –Destination parameters and then include a –Whatif. This gives me a list of jobs that will be copied, and those that won’t be.

If I use the –Force parameter, you’ll see that all jobs are copied.

Well, not copied, but they will be.

I could limit this to specific jobs. For example, let me just copy over these jobs
- DatabaseBackup – SYSTEM_DATABASES – FULL
- DatabaseBackup – USER_DATABASES – FULL
When I run the command with the –Jobs parameter, I see just these jobs moved:

Let’s actually do that. Once I remove the “”-Whatif” and run the command, I see this:

Note, this doesn’t actually move the dependent objects. Meaning the first job uses this procedure: [dbo].[DatabaseBackup]

I’d have to make sure this is copied separately for the job to actually run and succeed. Right now it will fail with an error that an object can’t be found. However, if you have jobs that you are using in a DR situation, this ensures the job itself is moved over.

Rather than copy the syspolicy_purge_history job, I’ll exclude it. I can do that with the –Exclude parameter. Note that the two jobs I’ve already copied are shown as warnings.

All the parts of the job itself are copied. The description, the owner, the comments, the schedule, the steps. Everything is copied, which makes this perfect for ensuring that when you deploy a job, it can be deployed to all of the places you need it deployed by copying it from the source.

Of course, you’ll also want to ensure you use some method to disable the jobs on the DR instances (along with re-enabling them on failover).
December 2, 2016
First Class Jobs

I was looking through the forums the other day and noticed that someone wanted to track changes to the Agent jobs on their instance. However, they couldn’t find a DDL trigger to capture the changes to a job. That’s because a job is really data in a table, in dbo.sysjobs, dbo.sysjobsteps, etc. in msdb. To capture changes to a particular job, one would need a DML trigger that captures the insert/update/delete actions on these tables. You could also use XE, Audit, or some other feature that can track data changes in the msdb tables.

I’m not sure that makes sense to me. This week I’m wondering if any of you feel that SQL Agent jobs aren’t well integrated into SQL Server.

Do you think that jobs should be a first class database citizen and managed with CREATE JOB, ALTER JOB, etc. DDL commands?

I think so. In fact, this would be the first step (in my opinion), towards getting jobs as a more useful database work process. Let’s have a job system that handles automated mechanisms inside the database as actual objects we can manage, set permissions on, and control just as we do other objects. Let’s treat these objects for what they are, actual items in SQL Server that should be objects.

Could this be implemented? Sure. In fact, I think this might be one of the best ways to start containing jobs inside of a database. Make them a first class object inside a database. We can use msdb as the container for instance wide jobs. Then any sort of scheduler, including SQL Agent, could use an API to pick up the code from within the database and execute it however they determine is best.

I don’t think this is simple or easy, but it’s possible. It would take some engineering effort from Microsoft, but I’m confident they could build a great ssytem. Making a job a first class citizen could help us control and simplify everything to security to transfer of the work from instance to instance. When the database moves, so does all the work associated with it.

Steve Jones

The Voice of the DBA Podcast

Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.1MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

December 2, 2016
Hey Posh, Are My Services Running?–#SQLNewBlogger
Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.

In a previous post, I looked at escaping strings. The reason I needed to do this was that I was trying to do some automatic work with building and starting SQL Server instances. Part of laying the base for this was checking if services are running, and then perhaps taking action, like starting or stopping.

I knew there was a Get-Service command, and ran that. The output from this is much more than I’d like to consume.

I’d like to limit this to SQL Server services. I know there is usually an MSSQLServer service, but since I tend to use named instances, this doesn’t work. Plus, I don’t want to search for just a particular service. I want all services for SQL Server.

There is a Where-Object command, that allows me to search. There is also a –Like option for comparisons. I’ll structure a command like this:
```
Get-Service | Where-Object ($_.Name –Like “SQL*”)
```
That is less than successful.

Why not? Well, PoSh has some syntax requirements and one of them here is that I don’t want parenthesis, I want curly braces. If I change this, things work better.

If you’re older like me and don’t necessarily read small print easily, this might be one that catches you for a bit. However, notice that I only have my SQLAgent and system services, not the core database engine. My wildcard needs work.

Now I see all my services and I can easily decide if I want to stop, start, restart, etc.

#SQLNewBlogger

This was a quick post. It took me 10 minutes to relearn a few PoSh things and practice and then about 5 minutes to write this.

I’ll remember it, and it shows how I’m building my administrative skills. You should do that as well.
December 1, 2016
Learn to Earn

Could you double or triple your salary by learning more technology skills? Sure, and here’s a great story about someone learning PowerShell and dramatically increasing their earnings. This is a good read, looking at the journey of someone through their career and how they credit learning PowerShell for the changes in salary.

When I read this, I don’t view this as PowerShell being the reason that Mr. Duffney increased his salary. Instead, I think the takeaway is that professional learning and regular skill development, focus across time, and producing results for an employer as being the primary reasons for raises. I think that the right part of the salary curve in the post, which has a steeper slope, is also likely due as much to speaking and giving back as it is to solving problems. The other lesson in this piece is that Mr. Duffney is constantly gaining skills, and looking to move forward in his career.

The world of technology is ever changing, with new platforms, additional features and changing paradigms constantly appearing. I’m sure many of you have experience with management that becomes excited by the latest buzzword or hot topic in the media, expecting that each of us can quickly build a proof of concept. Perhaps you’ve dealt with a boss that assumes we could buy a product or build a tool that easily solves some problem because they read about some other company in a publication having success.

Tackling a new project or technology is a challenge, but we can learn to ease the way for ourselves. We should be constantly learning something, anything that exercises our minds. One of the best talks on the topic I’ve seen is from Andy Warren, and I’d encourage you to check it out. Andy talks about directing your learning in an area that can help you. That may sound daunting, but I think that building the habit of regularly learning something is important in this business. We never know where our career may take us, and being accustomed to the idea of picking up some new technology and using it for a task is a skill you should practice and develop. The more often you try to improve your skills, the more comfortable you will be with the idea of tackling some new technology. In the first piece linked, we see that Mr. Duffney had a plan to become a CCNA, but over time that plan morphed into something else, as did the focus of his learning.

I certainly have been able to raise my salary by learning more about databases. This usually comes about not just from learning, but from applying that learning to my job, showing my employer (and potential future employers) that I provide lots of value for my salary. Using new skills in a valuable way is the method by which I’ve most often been able to translate learning into a raise.

Steve Jones

The Voice of the DBA Podcast

Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.2MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

December 1, 2016