Can I loop an SSAS processing task, until it succeeds?

Question

I have an older machine, running Windows Server 2003 and SQLServer 2005. It is nearing its end of life, but until all the users have migrated to the new server, we need to keep an SSAS cube on that machine up to date.

The problem is the network connection is sometimes flaky. The cube on this server points to a SQL database on another server, and if the connection experiences a problem while the cube is being rebuilt, the process stops with an error message.

Since 99 out of a 100 times when there is a processing error it is caused by the network, I'm looking for a way to repeat the processing of the cube if it fails. The perfect solution should stop after x tries (just in case this is the 100th time and it's not a network issue).

I've looked at SQL Server Agent Jobs, and SSIS, and don't see a way to loop until it succeeds or reaches the x number of tries. Isn't there a command line option to run the cube processing, so that I can include it in a Powershell loop or something? Or is there an option is SQL or SSIS that I have missed?

Answer 1

We ran into a similar situation with our processes and were able to have the Agent jobs retry 3 times after a 10 minute wait period. Only if all 3 tries failed did our process alert us that "this is a real failure and not a transient issue."

In any SQL Agent job step type, the Advanced tab ought to look like this.

As you can see, you can specify your Retry attempts and an interval in minutes for it to retry.