We have a load-balanced web farm talking to a single SQL server instance. It is easy to demote web servers, install Windows updates, reboot, and then bring them back into the fold. However, we have to schedule downtime to service the SQL Server machine. What options are available to avoid such downtime?
I have used several top tier third party Exchange providers over the years, and all of them have had regular scheduled downtimes for routine maintenance (roughly once a month). I am wondering what is it about Exchange that makes it impossible to avoid downtime of this nature? Is it truly impossible to maintain 24x7 uptime or just prohibitively expensive and why?
How can I set up Nagios to monitor the health of SQL Server (SQL Agent) backups?
Has anyone set up monitoring of Macrium Reflect backups using Nagios? If not that specific backup software, any general suggestions for how to set up Nagios to monitor backups?
My instance of SQL Server 2008 SP1 crashed, which is a separate issue, and I see the following set of messages in the SQL Server Agent log:
[139] AutoRestart: Attempting to restart the MSSQLSERVER service (attempt #1)...
[368] AutoRestart: Unable to restart the MSSQLSERVER service (reason: Access is denied)
Is there an authoritative place that describes what permissions should be assigned to a domain account that the SQL Server Agent runs as?
Thank you!