This particular message is more than likely caused by the fact that the SQL Server Agent service is either running as LocalSystem or is still running under the "legacy" NT...

Instead of just making your proxy account a member of the sysadm role, just grant it execute permissions to the xp_cmdshell Extended Stored Proc (i.e. GRANT execute on xp_cmdshell to...

Make sure that you gave the non-sysadmin account access to execute xp_cmdshell. Here are the steps that I use:

use master

go

xp_sqlagent_proxy_account N'SET', N'Yourdomain', N'nonsysadmin user', N'nonsysadmin user's password'

go

-- retrieve the...

Check out this KB article. It tells you what "rights" the service account should have and how to manually configure it.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;283811

I have personally just set...

Like Steve Jones, I too have had a negative experience with the Veritas Solution (this was a few years ago, so it may not be relavent at this time), but...

Since everyone is giving there scripts .. here are 5 steps that I have used in the past. I don't remember where they came from originally (or I would...

That's right ... also Task Manager does not know how to properly display memory that is mapped via AWE (and/or the Programmable Address Extensions).

Perfmon or Pstat can can give you...

Or just check out this article/script and schedule it as a job that runs every hour ... http://www.sqlservercentral.com/scripts/contributions/829.asp

"Is there anything we can do on this end, from a front end application design, that will minimize the log size or is that something we will just have to...

You might want to try just setting /PAE in the boot.ini file and not adding the /3GB switch. If you AWE enable SQL Server, it will use up the...

Agreed. Once AWE is set, SQL Server shouldn't release the memory that it allocated. Did you also set the working set size option to 1? That option...

We also use Patrol, and just like Steve mentioned, it is great for getting to the performance counter data and automating actions for exceeded thresholds. I have not seen...

I agree. The question asks what is the "best" way. A firewall is one way to thrawt a would be hacker from UDP 1434, but if the port...

You can use a utility called pslist from the pstools suite at Sysinternals - http://www.sysinternals.com.

Create a quick script to run the pslist utility passing it the process name...

We have been presented with a similar scenario with our management and have settled on a 60-day reboot schedule for our most busy SQL Server,and 90-days for all of the...