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SQL Express as a remote distributor Transactional Replication

  • October 3, 2008 at 5:30 am

    #382935

    I need to change our replication strategy to include a remote distributor, does anyone know if it is possible to use SQL Express for this?

    also does anyone know of any issues with having our remote distributor and witness server running on the same box?

  • October 3, 2008 at 2:44 pm

    #880712

    What do you mean by "witness"? i thought "witness" is available only in case of mirroring and logshipping.

    If you meant having publisher and distributor on the same box, then following are the cons:-

    1. Added load on the server, whenever sp_replcmds is fired to find out transactions to be replicated.

    2. If one of your subscribers goes offline and you have a large time-to-live limit specified for the data,

    then you will end up with big distribution database, which will eat up your disk space.

    Hope that helped 🙂

  • October 6, 2008 at 2:54 am

    #880994

    Thanks,

    We are running a database mirroring setup between two servers, and I am using one SQL express server as witness for this, I wanted to know if it was possible to use the same SQL express server that I use for a mirroring witness as a distibutor for database replication as well.

  • October 6, 2008 at 7:01 am

    #881069

    The problem with express is that it doesn't have SQL Agent and hence cannot run any of the replication jobs. I don't know if it's possible to run all of the jobs at either publisher or subscriber. I suspect it's not.

    Gail Shaw
    Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
    SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability

    We walk in the dark places no others will enter
    We stand on the bridge and no one may pass

  • October 6, 2008 at 8:54 am

    #881128

    Oaky thanks for that, looks like i will need another sql 2005 license.

  • October 6, 2008 at 9:15 am

    #881146

    See if you can pick up a 2008 licence. I don't know if there's a difference in pricing, but picking up a 2008 server to act as the distributor gives you chance to play with the new features and possibly expand out the role of the server later.

    Is there no existing server that can handle the load of the distributor?

    Gail Shaw
    Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
    SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability

    We walk in the dark places no others will enter
    We stand on the bridge and no one may pass

  • October 10, 2008 at 7:57 am

    #883417

    Thanks, no we don't have another server available that we can use. We have decided to go ahead with a 2008 license to act as a Distributor.

    Do you know of any issues with using 2008 as the distributor when the rest of the publisher and subscribers are 2005?

  • October 10, 2008 at 9:26 am

    #883498

    steveb (10/10/2008)

    Thanks, no we don't have another server available that we can use. We have decided to go ahead with a 2008 license to act as a Distributor.

    Do you know of any issues with using 2008 as the distributor when the rest of the publisher and subscribers are 2005?

    The Distributor in SQL Server Replication can be the LATEST VERSION always.


    * Noel

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