Central publisher with two subscribers merge replication

  • Scenario:

    I am (not very professional) a DB admin of a company located in CityA with two branches in CityB and CityC. Their working hours are from 8 AM to 5 PM. The boss is working in CityA and wants to monitor CityA, CityB and CityC data all the time (with a windows application that I developed for him). in order to do that I have created a Publisher in CityA and two Subscribers in CityB and CityC. and this is a Merge replication.

    I am using SQLServer 2008R2, Windows Server 2008R2, Clients are using Windows 7

    Problems:

    Sometimes I don't know why the replication gives me some weird errors that finally I have to drop my replication and create them again.

    But the problem is before I want to start the new replication I have to take a full Back up from the three databases. the CityB database is around 200GB, CityC is around 200GB and CityA around 400GB. so taking full back up before starting the replication is very time consuming (about 4h).

    The other problem is when I have central publisher merge replication, it deletes all my subscribers data at the initialization and all the data may not transfer until the next day at 8 AM. So in order to do it an a safe way I have to postpone this job always to the weekend (which is too boring).

    Questions:

    1- Is that a better way to coupe with this scenario instead of replication at all?

    2- Is that possible to not delete the subscribers at initialization?

    3- Is there any automated software for this job?

    4- What can I do to make it easier and safer?

    5- How can I do it during the weekdays?

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