Linked Servers vs Remote Servers and Replication

  • Ok I've got a query here and I just want to confirm a few things.

    With regards to replication what is the best way to have your connectivity set up? Should you be using remote servers? or linked servers?

    To the best of my knowledge linked servers are a better way to go, but I need to know the exact advantages.

    The reason I ask is that I've taken on a server with a number of databases, 4 of which are running transactional replication. The other servers that I am replicating to are set up as remote servers. Now I would like to change this to linked servers.

    I would like to know what advantage I would gain by doing this, and secondly would I have to recreate the various publications and subscriptions?

    In theory it should be a simple job but has the potential to go horribly wrong (One of the database's replication job's takes 3 days to re-initialize because the line is to small), so basically I'm trying to avoid any nasty mishaps and taking a few clients down for couple days, while at the same time improving the performance of the replication.

  • don't do it. Replication "needs" remote servers when replicating to sql and msde subscribers. It uses a special account to fire rpc commands back and forth. Changing this to a linked server allows other accounts to use this security context.

     

    You can run sp_serveroption 'RemoteServerName','Data Access True'

    to get your remote server to be enable for 4 part server access. With replication this is disabled by default. For other server types you will need to use linked servrers.

     

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    Hilary Cotter

    Looking for a SQL Server replication book?

    http://www.nwsu.com/0974973602.html

    Looking for a FAQ on Indexing Services/SQL FTS

    http://www.indexserverfaq.com

  • Thanks, this server is a headache, its got around 8 databases, 4 of which are replicating to 4 different servers, in differen't manners and its getting a bit of a headache when replication falls over from time to time (mainly because some stupid idiot does something stupid, ie bounce the box its replicating to). So I'm trying to streamline the whole process and improve efficiency.

    Thanks.

  • schedule your distributor agents to run every 1-5 minutes. This way they should restart on bounce.

     

    --

    Hilary Cotter

    Looking for a SQL Server replication book?

    http://www.nwsu.com/0974973602.html

    Looking for a FAQ on Indexing Services/SQL FTS

    http://www.indexserverfaq.com

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