Starting SQLServerAgent Service

The service startup account defines the Microsoft® Windows NT® 4.0 or Windows® 2000 account in which 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™.

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

• This account

  This account enables you to specify in which Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 domain account SQLServerAgent runs. The domain account that you specify must be a member of the sysadmin role on the local instance of SQL Server.

  Use This account if:

  • You want to forward events to the application logs of other computers running on the Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 operating system.
    
    
  • 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 or Microsoft 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.

If you are running SQLServerAgent in an account other than a Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 domain account, the following will occur:

• 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.

For best results, use a Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 domain account that has sufficient permissions across the domain to access information necessary for SQL Server Agent job execution. You can change the SQLServerAgent service account to a non-Windows NT 4.0 administrator account. However, the Windows NT 4.0 account must be a member of the sysadmin fixed server role to run SQL Server Agent.

To set the service startup account for SQL Server Agent