Documentation forSQL Sentry

Multi-Server Administration (MSX/TSX)

SQL Sentry provides additional functionality for multi-server administration. Any server designated as a master server has MSX after its name in the Navigator pane. You also see an additional sub-node called Multi-server Jobs. This node provides the same functionality and context menu items as the standard Jobs node; however, jobs under this node are distributed to target servers. Just like the Jobs node, if you open it by single- or double-clicking, a Calendar/List view appears of all multi-server jobs across all target servers. By default, this view is filtered to show only failed or long-running historical events just like the Global and Group views. The filter criteria can be changed in the Filter pane.

Target servers appear in the Navigator pane with TSX: <SERVERNAME>, where SERVERNAME is the name of the master server to which it is enlisted.

Publishing Configuration to Target Servers

Just like standard local jobs, conditions and actions can be explicitly configured for multi-server jobs by selecting a Multi-server Job node in the Navigator pane. Also, just like local jobs, multi-server jobs on a master server inherit any conditions explicitly configured for the master server connection, which is accessed by selecting the Master Server node. However, multi-server jobs don't execute on the master server; they're created and configured on the master server and then pushed out to one or more target servers for execution.

The multi-server jobs exist on the master server strictly for configuration purposes, and this applies to a watched status and actions as well. These settings for multi-server jobs don't do anything on the master server; they exist only so that they can easily be applied to target servers to avoid having to manually change configurations on each target server individually. This is accomplished by using the Publish Configuration Wizard. When a change is made to configured conditions or watched status for multi-server jobs on the master server, those changes can easily be pushed out to selected target servers using the wizard.  

The Publish Configuration Wizard can be run for an individual multi-server job or at the master server level. To start the wizard, right-click any job under the Multi-server Jobs node, or at the instance level by right-clicking on the MSX Server node.

Select Publish Config to Targets, and the Publish Configuration Wizard appears. After selecting Next at the introduction, select the target servers that you wish to publish conditions and a watched status. If you launch the wizard from the Master Server node, you have the option of publishing Watched/Unwatched settings, SQL Server instance-level conditions, and/or job-level conditions. If you launch from an individual job, you may only publish the Watched setting and conditions for that job; the instance-level conditions option is unavailable. 

After making your selections, the wizard confirms your actions and executes the script to make the changes to the specified target servers. All specified targets are now configured identically to the master server, based on the options you selected.

Note:  Target (TSX) SQL Servers are really no different than any other SQL Servers managed by SQL Sentry. Other than the fact that they can include a mix of local and multi-server jobs, the hierarchical configuration process used by SQL Sentry applies to target servers and all jobs on target servers just as with any other instance or object. For example, if you never run the Publish Actions Wizard, but have configured global actions, the global actions are inherited by all target servers as usual.

If you set auto-watch new objects to True for SQL Agent Jobs at the global level, either manually or using the Quick Start Setup Wizard, any local or multi-server jobs on a target server are watched by default.

There isn't a two-way relationship for a Watched status and actions configuration between target servers and a master server. Once you've published these settings to a target server from the master, you can override them later on the target server as usual, but a Watched status and actions change made on a target server have no effect on the master server configuration.