Maintaining SCRM 2006 and Managing DTS Jobs

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By using the SCRM Administrator console to manage SQL Agent Jobs and Data Transformation Services (DTS) packages, you enable the system to populate SQL Agent Jobs and DTS packages on both the SMS operational database and the SCRM data warehouse servers. These jobs and packages should be maintained through the SCRM Administrator console. Creating, deleting, modifying, or running any SCRM 2006 SQL Agent Job or DTS package outside of the SCRM Administrator console is not supported in SCRM 2006.

Scheduling DTS Update Jobs

Multiple MOM DTS jobs cannot run simultaneously on a SCRM 2006 server. If a second job starts to run before the first has completed, the second job fails. SCRM 2006 has no queuing mechanism to ensure that a MOM DTS job has completed before another job starts. Therefore, you must schedule enough time between MOM DTS jobs to ensure that one has completed before another starts.

Multiple full or delta SMS synchronization jobs cannot run simultaneously. However, if a SMS synchronization job is running, other scheduled SMS synchronization jobs are queued. A queued SMS synchronization job runs after other running synchronization jobs have completed.

Scheduling SMS Delta Synchronization Updates

You should schedule SCRM DTS jobs used to synchronize SMS to run at shorter intervals than SMS uses to delete aged data. By running SMS delta synchronization jobs more frequently than SMS deletes data, you ensure that SMS data marked for deletion is picked up by SCRM 2006 before SMS deletes the data. This prevents records from becoming orphaned in the SCRM data warehouse.

SMS runs the following database maintenance tasks every 90 days by default to remove information from the SMS site database:

  • Delete Aged Discovery Data

  • Delete Aged Inventory History

  • Delete Aged System Center Reporting Data

For more detailed information about SMS DTS jobs, see About SMS DTS Jobs. For more information about SMS DTS job status, see Determining SMS DTS Job Status.

Effects of a Failed DTS Job

When an SMS DTS job fails to complete, SCRM retries the job every five minutes. The most common reasons for DTS job failures include insufficient disk space, loss of connection to the SMS site database, the SCRM SMS Site Service on the SMS server is stopped, or the SQL Service is stopped. While a DTS job is running or is being retried, other jobs that utilize the same data source cannot run until the first job completes—regardless of their scheduled start times. However, DTS jobs that utilize a different data source continue to start and run as scheduled.

For example, if a DTS job for SMS site AAA fails and you create and schedule a second job for SMS site AAA, the second job cannot run until the first job completes successfully.

In another example, if a DTS job fails for SMS site AAA and another DTS job that accesses site ZZZ is scheduled, the job for site ZZZ starts as scheduled. Upon completion of the job for site ZZZ, SCRM continues to retry the job for site AAA every five minutes until it runs successfully.