I have two instances of SQL Server, the default instance which will be the master, and MSSQLTarget that will be the target. The first registry setting I will change is MsxEncryptChannel option for the target server. This resides under "HKEY_local_machine\software\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server" then the instance name followed by the SQLServerAgent key. That needs to change from two to zero, which means turning off encryption.

The next registry key I need to change, also under SQLServeragent is AllowDownloadedJobsToMatchProxyName. This needs to change from zero to one for both the master and the target servers. Now that we've taken care of that pre-configuration, let's go to our master server. Right-click on SQL Server agent and choose "Make this a master" from the multi-server administration context menu.

Going through this wizard is reasonably straightforward. I'll enter an email address for the operator and then I will choose my target server. Once the wizard has finished, we can see that the SQL Server agent on both the master and the target servers have little annotations appended to them. On the master server it's MSX, and on the target server, it's TSX, followed by the name of the master.

Now I'll set up a job that will run on both instances by going into jobs, right-clicking on multi-server jobs, and clicking new job. The only difference between a multi-server job and a normal job, is that you need to select the server targets for the job. So, that is under the targets page, and I can see the target server sitting in the list. The job itself is not important so I will just create a one-step job that will rebuild an index on a table that is present in the database that is on both server instances.

As maintenance plans can also be targeted to multiple servers, let's set up a basic multi-server maintenance plan as well. So, the same as last time, right-click on maintenance plans and select maintenance wizard. Just name that multi-server plan, and not worry about a schedule and click Next. I'll select both the local and the target server and click next. And just check "backup database full." I'll just select the Skyport database, remembering that the target database has to be present on both servers.

I'll click next and finish. And we can see the plan is set up and saved as well as the plan jobs appearing under local jobs of the master SQL Server agent. The multi-server plan is also now visible under the multi-server job node. If I right-click on SQL Server agent on my master instance, then choose managed target servers from the multi-server administration menu, that will bring up a target server status window. And in the download instructions, we can see the multi-server job that I set up earlier plus the multi-server plan, and in each case, these are being downloaded to the target server.

Going to the target server and expanding jobs under the server agent, we can see that both the multi-server job and the multi-server plan are now visible there.