SQLServerAgent Service Startup Account

The service startup account defines in which Microsoft® Windows NT® account the SQLServerAgent service runs. This information defines the network permissions of the SQLServerAgent service. These are the available options:

System account

The system account is the built-in local system administrator account. It is a member of the Administrators group on the local computer, and is therefore a member of the sysadmin role within Microsoft SQL Server™.

Click System account if your jobs require resources from the local system only.

This account

This account enables you to specify in which Windows NT domain account SQLServerAgent runs. The Windows NT domain account that you specify must be a member of the sysadmin role on the local server running SQL Server.

If you are running SQLServerAgent in an account other than a Windows NT account:

• CmdExec and ActiveScripting steps of jobs owned by nonsysadmins will fail.
• The autorestart features in SQLServerAgent will not work.
• On-idle job schedules will not allow the job to run.

Note For best results, use a Windows NT domain account that has sufficient permissions across the Windows NT domain to access information necessary for SQL Server Agent job execution.

Select This account if:

• You want to forward events to the application logs of other Windows NT computers.
• Your jobs require resources across the network, including replication resources.
• You want to notify operators through e-mail or pagers.

Note If the Microsoft Exchange/Outlook client is configured to deliver mail to a personal folder that is password-protected, SQL Server Agent cannot start its mail session. To avoid this, remove the password protection from the .pst file.

To set the service startup account for SQL Server Agent

Note If you are running SQL Server Agent on Windows NT, using SQL Server Service Manager, you can specify to autostart SQL Server Agent when the operating system starts. However, this option is not available on the Windows 95/98 platform.

To set the mail profile for SQL Server Agent

See Also

Creating SQL Server Services User Accounts