How to verify the agent is up on a remote host?

Hi,
Somtimes the agent will just die on some computers...
I'd like to have a job monitoring the agent every 20 minutes or so..
Do you know of a way to tell if the agent is up or no using plain Tsql?

Thanks
GasparGaspar_Gonzalez@.hotmail.com (Gaspar) wrote in message news:<e9fbe762.0309092128.72828b9d@.posting.google.com>...
> Hi,
> Somtimes the agent will just die on some computers...
> I'd like to have a job monitoring the agent every 20 minutes or so..
> Do you know of a way to tell if the agent is up or no using plain Tsql?
> Thanks
> Gaspar

It's probably better to look at it as an operating system issue - how
to monitor the state of a service (I'm assuming you're not using
Windows 98). You can use WMI to query the state of any service, or the
SQLDMO JobServer.Status property for SQL Agent specifically.

You could do this from TSQL with the sp_OA% procs, but I find tasks
like this are a lot easier to implement outside MSSQL, from some sort
of monitoring station (even if that's just your own PC running a Perl
script). And then you have a solution that you can easily modify to
monitor any and all services you may need to watch.

Simonsql