Question

You manage a SQL Server 2022 instance on an Azure VM. A nightly SQL Server Agent job has a step that connects to a remote linked server to pull data. The step occasionally fails because the remote server is briefly unavailable during its own maintenance window, but succeeds if run again a few minutes later. You want the job to automatically recover from these intermittent connection failures without alerting operators, while still failing the job if the problem persists. What should you configure on the job step?

Accepted Answer

Set the step's Retry attempts and Retry interval (minutes) on the Advanced page of the job step properties.

Answer

Change the step's On failure action to 'Go to the next step' so the job continues.

Answer

Add a second schedule that runs the entire job again 10 minutes after the first schedule.

Answer

Enable the 'Include step output in history' option so failures are logged for later review.