Email alerts in a SQL Clustered environment

Question

Email alerts in a SQL Clustered environment

Dorothy Boesel

Ten Centuries

Points: 1024
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December 16, 2004 at 9:54 am

#108911

Good morning,
I am running SQL Server 2000 on Windows 2003 in a clustered environment. I am not able to get SQLMail working consistantly. I realize that SQLMail is not supported in a clustered environment. Are there any other tools available that can email reports and alerts? I have jobs(backups and such) that I need to be notified if they don't run.
Thanks in advance.

Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

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AJ Ahrens SSC-Insane Points: 20676 More actions · Answer 1

Dorothy,

You need to ensure that Outlook is ALWAYS open regardless of which node is currently ACTIVE. An oldie that got re-introduced with Windows 2K3. If you want to move away from that you can research CDONOTES (I think) or look for the either sp_ or xp_ with smtp either here or you can search for it on the web. Both of the latter use SMTP to send e-mail and may help you.... These may require VB development in a DTS package or strictly in a job that is scheduled to run every (n) minutes

Good Hunting!

AJ Ahrens

webmaster@kritter.net

Dorothy Boesel Ten Centuries Points: 1024 More actions · Answer 2

Thanks for the info. I can not open Outlook on the server the currently active SQL instance. I get an error message that a mail box file is open. I only can open Outlook on the server that is currently passive. Am I missing some option that I need to set?

Thanks in advance.

AJ Ahrens SSC-Insane Points: 20676 More actions · Answer 3

I would get with a server engineer that is responsible for that cluster and ask for their help. Opening Outlook on PASSIVE will buy you $0.00. The SQL instance won't see it..

Good Hunting!

AJ Ahrens

webmaster@kritter.net

Karl Klingler SSCertifiable Points: 5869 More actions · Answer 4

Hi,

if you want to use Outlook, be sure to have only the Exchange-Mailbox in your Mail-Profile, not any Mailbox-File.

An other possibility is using a command line tool like commail.

(For sending mail from Jobs or procedures)

karl

Best regards
karl

Steve-3_5_7_9 SSChampion Points: 10832 More actions · Answer 5

1. Stopping SQL Server Agent will allow you to open Outlook on the active node. Essentially you have a sharing violation

2. We were able to get mail to work on an Activie/Passive and Active/Active cluster by the following:

-- Note: Outlook 2003 had problems and we did have to keep it open as mentioned in previous post. Instead we decided to use Outook 2000 which doesn't require that you keep it open. We are moving to Exchange but I haven't configured this yet. It will be nice not to use the Outlook client at all.

-- ensure Outlook 2000 is installed on both nodes

-- make sure the mail profile is set up exactly the same on both nodes. Use exact same path and name for the pst file, so when the node failes over it behaves identically

-- if you are using the address book for your "Operators" addresses make sure this is identical as well

James E. Morales SSC Journeyman Points: 95 More actions · Answer 6

We have SQL Mail running on an Win2000 and SQL 2000 active/active cluster using an exchange server and outlook 2000 client installed on each node. The mail profiles on each node are configured exactly the same. One thing we had to do was remove the reference to the address book from the mail profile and always sendmail to the fully qualified name. ex. username@companyname.com. We still have inttermittent problems but they are rare and they are usually with SQL Agent mail. We can fix that by stoping and restarting the SQL Agent service.

When you are setting up the mail profile you have to be signed with the same account that you are using for the mail profile. Otherwise you won't see the profile at all.