Replication VPN/Timeouts

  • Hey all,

    Replicating from SQL 2K to SQL2K over a VPN. The VPN gets taken down for 5 hours at a time on weekends. It comes back up with a new IP.

    1) Will using the Hosts file and just putting the new IP in there allow us to reference the SQL Server by name? Will this require a reboot?

    2) Can we set the retry flag for it to continue retrying replication even though it cannot see the other server? We want it to carry on as normal once we put the new IP in place, without having to kick off replication manually.

    3) I did a test where I cut the VPN half way through replicating 1000 new records. The subscriber received 600. I then entered 2000 new records on the publisher. Replication failed after 10 connection attempts. I then turned the VPN back on. The 2000 new records replicated, but the 400 previous ones did not get across, even though they are listed in sp_browsereplcmds.

    Any ideas on a complete recoevery solution?

    Many many thanks in advance!!!

  • The hosts files doesn't require a reboot, but not sure if that's cached. If it is, that's an issue.

    2 - Replication will still run and wait for the server to come back up. Be aware that stuff will stack up in the distribution database, so watch your space there.

    3 - not sure what happened here. It should resend those. Need someone with more repl experience to answer this.

  • Dont think I've ever seen it not finish up a batch like that. When I can find some time I will try to duplicate just out of curiousity! It sounds like orphaned records from a repl transaction marked as completed, but not. You run validation each day to make sure your record counts match.  The biggest thing to worry about with VPN is having your subscription expire if it was down for a very long time (check your settings, I'd recommend at least 7 days to cover long weekends, etc) and would require a snapshot. Nothing wrong with having the job keep doing the retry.

  • How can I get the job keep doing a retry though? It seems to give up after 10.

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