1. ​SQL Server Agent Alerts
​ source­ ​ ​https://msdn.microsoft.com/en­us/ms180982.aspx
Being a database administrator has many responsibilities, and knowing what is
happening on your SQL Server is one of them. Being proactive and alerted to errors is
one of the traits that makes someone a great DBA. And I’m not just talking about things
failing, which is what most people think of being alerted about; you can also be alerted
about performance problems. Within SQL Server you have the ability to create SQL
Server Agent Alerts (which I’ll just call ‘alerts’ from now on), and this is easily
accomplished using the GUI or T­SQL.
Configuring SQL Server Agent Alerts
To use alerts you must have Database Mail and a SQL Agent Operator configured. Most
SQL instances I have come across already have Database Mail configured for job
failure notifications.
A lesser­known task is configuring the Operator. You can create the Operator using
SSMS or T­SQL. Within SSMS expand SQL Server Agent, right click on Operator and
chose New Operator. You will have a new dialog box open where you can give the
operator a name and specify the email address to notify. I prefer to use a distribution
group for the email notifications. Most companies have more than one person
responsible for the SQL environment and if you specify a distribution group then the
entire team can be notified of the alerts. Using distribution groups also makes it much
easier to add or remove people from the alerts​.

2.
​ Below is an example screenshot of the New Operator dialog:
I prefer using T­SQL so I can make sure that creating the Operator is part of a server build
template. Example code for creating the above Operator is as follows:
EXEC​ msdb​.​dbo​.​sp_add_operator​ @name​ ​=​ ​N'SQL_Alerts'​,
​@enabled​ ​=​ 1​,
​@email_address​ ​=​ ​N'sql_alerts@mydomain.com'​;
Once you have Database Mail and the Operator configured you can create the alerts and
assign them to the Operator.
If using SSMS, you can expand SQL Server Agent and then Alerts. By default, no alerts are
created. If you right click and chose New Alert, you will get a screen similar to the figure
below:

3.
You will notice that under Severity, there are 25 severity codes. Just like it sounds, error level
severity describes how important the error is. Severity 10 is informational while 19­25 are fatal
and you will want to be notified when those errors arise. If a severity 23 error arose, for
example, then you most likely have corruption in one of your databases. These fatal errors
can all impact the performance of your server, which in turn impacts the customer experience.

4. You can create each of the Alerts by specifying the name and selecting the severity. For Error
825 you would select Error and type the number. As with the Operator, I prefer to use T­SQL.
If I can easily script a process then it is much easier to reuse and include as part of a server
build.
Below you will find the script that I have used on my SQL Server 2014 Enterprise Edition. This
script creates each of the alerts and adds a notification for the alert to the Operator
SQL_Alerts.
EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_add_alert @name = N'Severity 19 Error',
@message_id = 0, @severity = 19, @include_event_description_in = 0;
EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_add_notification @alert_name = N'Severity 19 Error',
@operator_name = N'SQL_Alerts', @notification_method = 1;
EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_add_alert @name = N'Severity 20 Error',
@message_id = 0, @severity = 20, @include_event_description_in = 0;
EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_add_notification @alert_name = N'Severity 20 Error',
@operator_name = N'SQL_Alerts', @notification_method = 1;
EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_add_alert @name=N'Severity 21 Error',
@message_id = 0, @severity = 21, @include_event_description_in = 0;
EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_add_notification @alert_name = N'Severity 21 Error',
@operator_name = N'SQL_Alerts', @notification_method = 1;
EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_add_alert @name = N'Severity 22 Error',
@message_id = 0, @severity = 22, @include_event_description_in = 0;
EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_add_notification @alert_name = N'Severity 22 Error',
@operator_name = N'SQL_Alerts', @notification_method = 1;

5. EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_add_alert @name = N'Severity 23 Error',
@message_id = 0, @severity = 23, @include_event_description_in = 0;
EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_add_notification @alert_name = N'Severity 23 Error',
@operator_name = N'SQL_Alerts', @notification_method = 1;
EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_add_alert @name = N'Severity 24 Error',
@message_id = 0, @severity = 24, @include_event_description_in = 0;
EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_add_notification @alert_name = N'Severity 24 Error',
@operator_name = N'SQL_Alerts', @notification_method = 1;
EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_add_alert @name = N'Severity 25 Error',
@message_id = 0, @severity = 25, @include_event_description_in = 0;
EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_add_notification @alert_name = N'Severity 25 Error',
@operator_name = N'SQL_Alerts', @notification_method = 1;
EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_add_alert @name = N'Error 825',
@message_id = 825, @severity = 0, @include_event_description_in = 0;
EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_add_notification @alert_name = N'Error 825',
@operator_name = N'SQL_Alerts', @notification_method = 1;
If you have followed along, you would have database mail configured, created an Operator to
email you or a distribution group about potential errors, and SQL Server Agent Alerts
configured for Severity 19 – 25 and error 825.
This is great. Any time one of those alerts are triggered an email will be sent to your team. In
addition to event alerts, alerts can be configured for a performance condition, To find the SQL
Server performance condition alerts, in the new alert dialog box, click the drop down box for
Type. There you will see SQL Server performance condition alert listed. Once you chose that

6. option you can browse the types of objects you can configure a performance condition alert
on.