Recently I was looking at SQL Server ERRORLOG of one of my instances on my Azure VM. It was interesting to see and research the message mentioned in the subject. In this blog, I would share my understanding of the message “This instance of SQL Server has been using a process ID of”.
Here is the screenshot of SQL Server ERRORLOG as seen in SQL Server Management Studio.
The top last two lines, sorted by date, are as shown below.
2020-03-07 00:00:52.760 spid19s This instance of SQL Server has been using a process ID of 5684 since 1/19/2020 2:05:40 AM (local) 1/19/2020 2:05:40 AM (UTC). This is an informational message only; no user action is required.
2020-03-08 00:00:27.270 spid45s This instance of SQL Server has been using a process ID of 5684 since 1/19/2020 2:05:40 AM (local) 1/19/2020 2:05:40 AM (UTC). This is an informational message only; no user action is required.
They are having exactly the same message. The only difference is time and SPID.
Here are a few observations I made.
- This is not an error message. The text of the message itself says “This is an informational message only; no user action is required.”
- The message is logged on every SQL Server at midnight, within the first minute of the clock day. The time always is between 00:00:00 to 00:00:01 every day.
- The process ID mentioned in the message is the ID of the SQL Server Process on the server. This can be seen from the task manager.
- When we check sys.messages, this has severity as 10.
| message_id | 17177 |
| language_id | 1033 |
| severity | 10 |
| is_event_logged | 1 |
| text | This instance of SQL Server has been using a process ID of %s since %s (local) %s (UTC). This is an informational message only; no user action is required. |
To read more on severity levels, please read my earlier blog SQL SERVER – ERROR Messages – sysmessages error severity level
- This message also tells the start time of the SQL Service. This means we can use this to find since how long SQL Service has been up, also called as uptime.
- This message can be used to find the time zone of the SQL Server. The message shows both local and UTC time. In my server, both times are the same because my Azure VM is in the UTC time zone.
Is there anything I missed? Please comment and let me know.
Reference: Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com)
1 Comment. Leave new
Why do we see the time and date format different in different systems for this message? Is this based on SQL version? Do we have a list of formats that will be shown based on the SQL server version?