Service State

Summary

The monitor alerts when the windows service for the SSAS instance is not in running state for a duration greater than the configured threshold.

Causes

When this monitor reports the “SQL Server Analysis Service Windows service is not running” Alert, this indicates that the SSAS instance is configured to start automatically, but remained in a Stopped state over a duration exceeding the configured threshold. The default configured value is 900 seconds (15 minutes).

The monitor will not trigger the alert prior to the configured duration, when the service is stopped. This allows an administrator to restart the service without triggering the alert. But if the service does not entered the running state within the configured duration subsequently though, the alert will be triggered.

The SSAS Windows service could fail to start even when configured to start automatically, for many reasons, including startup failure for the process, operating system issues that prevent a successful startup, or authentication failures for the service account.

Resolutions

Resolving this alert requires administrators to understand and consider numerous factors including normal expected instance startup time, causes for unexpected failures of the service to start, authentication requirements for the server, and conditions in the environment.

Instance started times can vary depending on the size of the database and other factors. Administrators may configure this setting accordingly to adjust for normal expected startup times for a given SSAS instance accordingly.

Actions to remediate the condition when the SSAS service is not started (or does not start when attempted):

• Attempt to start SSAS service.

• Review Windows System and Application event logs for indications of root cause.

• Review the OLAP\Log folder for the instance, which may contain evidence of root cause including:

  • Crash dumps (.mdmp files), which may contain stack traces from the threads in the process at the point of failure, or if configured accordingly, full contents of the process’ memory space, which can allow Microsoft support to investigate to determine root cause. Particularly, noting time stamps on any dumps to see if they correspond with failures is a good way to know if a particular crash dump in the folder may correspond to a particular known failure.

  • FlightRecorder traces, minimal traces of the server, which do nevertheless sometimes contain information to indicate root cause.

  • Msmdsrv.log may contain details to indicate root cause.

• Use other tracing tools or utilities, such as Performance Monitor, SQL Server Profiler, or Network Monitor, to discover potential issues, which may indicate root cause.

• Use the SQL Server Setup to repair a damaged instance.

• Use the Process Monitor tool to trace file and registry access by the SSAS service process (msmdsrv.exe) while attempting to start the service. This may reveal if a permissions failure occurs when attempting to access data the process requires during its initialization, which leads to the failure.

• Check the service configuration in the Services control panel, to confirm the location of the SSAS configuration file is correct. The command line for the service’s startup is displayed on the General tab of its properties page, accessible by right clicking on the service.

• Contact Microsoft Support to investigate an unexpected failure of the service to start.

• Disable the monitor entirely if the SSAS service state is not a concern on the server.

External

Starting and Stopping SQL Services

Overrideable Parameters