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What is the wisdom of automatically restarting replication on failure?

  • November 22, 2005 at 7:32 am

    #92304

    Hey All,

    I have setup merge replication between two SQL Server 2000 servers.  One of them loses it's network connection several times a day, sometimes for as long as 10 minutes.  This causes the merge agent to report a failure and stop replication.

    Until I can get the sys admin to fix the network problem I've changed the Merge Agent to restart as soon as it fails.  In the Merge Agent properties, on the Steps tab there are 3 steps:

    1) Merge Agent startup message

    2) Run Agent

    3) Detect nonlogged agent shutdown.

    Step 3's on failure action was to quit and report a failure.  I changed it to "GoTo step : [2] Run agent"

    This works.  It retries forever and when the other server is available again replication restarts.

    My question is: is this a good idea or is there a better way to accomplish this?

    Thanks,

    - Dan

  • November 22, 2005 at 8:03 am

    #605236

    Dan,

    I'm not the authority on this by any means...but this guy is:

    http://searchsqlserver.techtarget.com/tip/1,289483,sid87_gci1119737,00.html

    Item # 7 on this lists suggests doing exactly what you have done I think. So it sounds like a good idea to me!

    Nate

  • November 23, 2005 at 11:55 am

    #605521

    By the way, Dan, are you using pull or push subscriptions? I am actually trying to do what you have already done using the instructions provided in the link that I posted, but the merge agents for my pull subscriptions only have 1 step: Run agent. My push subscriptions have the 3 steps that you described. I was wondering why there is this apparent difference and what I need to do in the case of the pull subscriptions?

    btw it's the same whether I look at the agent on the publisher or on the subscriber.

    Any ideas?

    Thanks,

    Nate

  • November 28, 2005 at 9:19 am

    #606142

    Nate,

    Thanks for the link, I hadn't discovered that site before.  It's good to have a little validation that a solution is a good idea.

    I have no real insight on the pull subscription.  But it would stand to reason that you can change the OnFailure step from what ever it is to 'Step 1. Run Agent'

     

    Thanks again,

    - Dan

  • June 26, 2006 at 4:43 pm

    #645944

    Have you guys already tried this (I mean having Merge Agent set to run again on failure)?

    I have exactly the same thing (agent has only one step) and I'm not sure I can set it

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