Subscriber moved to another server

  • We currently have a replication topology set up that replicates between our corporate HQ (publisher) and 200+ remote sites (subscribers).  We actually have 200+ publisher databases with a 1 to 1 mapping to subscribers.  Many of the subscribers are old NT servers and we are in the process of replacing these servers with new Windows 2003 machines.  In most cases, the server name is being changed to conform to our new naming scheme.  Consequently, after the subscription databases are moved, replication fails with a message of "Subscription is invalid".

    An interesting wrinkle is that in this topology, although the corporate database is the publisher, we actually consider the subscriber database to be the true, accurate data.  Consequently, after the database move, we are backing up the subscriber, copying to our corporate server and restoring the database over the old publisher database.  Then, we recreate the publisher and subscriber.  In order to keep the subscriber and publisher in synch while this is occurring, I've spend many an early morning (late night?) working on this.

    Seems to me, there must be a better way.  Any thoughts out there?

    Gordon

    Gordon Pollokoff

    "Wile E. is my reality, Bugs Bunny is my goal" - Chuck Jones

  • You didn't specify if you have push or pull subscriptions. If you have push subscriptions than it's really simple. You simply install SQL Server and restore (or atach) your subscriber database. It got to work. I've done this many times. If you rename your server, than you could create an alias on the publisher server. In that case you wouldn't need to drop your subscription.

    If you have pull subscriptions then you must keep your msdb and master database too.

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