I'd check with the admin of your e-mail system to see if the SQL Server needs to be whitelisted or anything to allow sending SMTP e-mails (which is what database...

Just a thought... it would initially seem that the problem isn't SQL Server Agent, but what it is running.  If you were able to setup Agent to run on a...

I'd have to agree like everyone else with Jeff's list, and with the ETL tools.  I think in trying to make SSIS too flexible and GUI point and click based,...

Here's a good article describing the generally accepted best practices for a clustered index:
https://www.simple-talk.com/sql/learn-sql-server/effective-clustered-indexes/
Of course the best clustered index for your table will depend on a number...

" It works perfectly thanks to the internal magic of CTEs and hidden row identification using RID that's associated with the return of the generated ROW_NUMBER() OVER.."
Good to know,...

So did anyone else see this title and think "The Great and Powerful OZ"?  Seems appropriate to me in a way... the IOT people seem to want you to ignore...

How many rows are in the table?  It might be easier to copy the data to a new table with a SELECT DISTINCT ... INTO .. and then rename the...

a good place to start with is probably sysjobhistory table in MSDB:
https://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/2850/querying-sql-server-agent-job-history-data/

You should be able to query this table, joined to sysjobs to find the job...

I second Beatrix's recommendation on Brent Ozar's training.  I've been going through a number of them the past few months and even after working with SQL Server for a decade...

you mentioned this was a virtual machine "VM server on Windows 2012 and SQL 2012 SP3 with 4 instances and 294 gb of memory and 16 CPU's"
is there anything...

Have you done any analysis to determine which one (index or checkdb) is causing the long maintenance window?

You're trying to do index maintenance every day, what method are...