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Category: Replication

Upgrading Replication To SQL Server 2016

Published 2017-02-07 by Kevin Feasel

Amit Banerjee explains the steps for upgrading replicated SQL Server instances to 2016:

  • A Distributor can be any version as long as it is greater than or equal to the Publisher version (in many cases the Distributor is the same instance as the Publisher).

  • A Publisher can be any version as long as it less than or equal to the Distributor version.

  • Subscriber version depends on the type of publication:

    • A Subscriber to a transactional publication can be any version within two versions (n-2) of the Publisher version. For example: a SQL Server 2012 Publisher can have SQL Server 2014 and SQL Server 2016 Subscribers; and a SQL Server 2016 Publisher can have SQL Server 2014 and SQL Server 2012 Subscribers.

    • A Subscriber to a merge publication can be any version less than or equal to the Publisher version.

There are several options available here, and it’s worth reading through if you’re looking to upgrade soon.

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Replication Error When Listing Directory Contents

Published 2017-02-06 by Kevin Feasel

Andrew Peterson troubleshoots a replication issue:

You’re trying to setup SQL Server Replication on a server, and it fails. Looking thru the error message you find this:

        An exception occurred while executing a Transact-SQL statement or batch.
        (Microsoft.SQLServer.ConnectionInfo)

        Destination path ………….is not valid. Unable to list directory contents. Specify a valid
            destination path.
            Changed database context to ‘master’. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 14430)

Read on for the solution.

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Replication And Date Conversion

Published 2017-01-17 by Kevin Feasel

Jeffrey Verheul digs up a strange replication bug:

After a lot of different variables in the test-setup, I found out that it’s probably an old bug that wasn’t properly patched when upgrading the SQL Server engine to a newer version. Let me elaborate on that:

– The bug is reproducible on the test server, which is an upgraded engine from SQL 2012 or 2014 to SQL 2016 RTM
– The bug is reproducible on the production server, which is an upgraded engine from SQL 2014 to SQL 2016 RTM
– The bug is not reproducible on a clean install of SQL 2014
– The bug is not reproducible on a clean install of SQL 2016 RTM
– The bug is not reproducible on a clean install of SQL vNext CTP

There’s a lot of good investigative work here, so check it out.

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Replication Support For Dropping Tables

Published 2017-01-10 by Kevin Feasel

Drew Furgiuele recovers from a case of the vapors after discovering a replication codebase update:

To enable this change though, there’s more to it than just “you need to be running this service pack level on your publisher.” It’s far, far more than that:

  • Your publisher needs to be running SQL Server 2016 SP1 or 2014 SP2. We’ve already seen that is a requirement based on the content of the KB article. Big whoop.
  • In addition, if you have the same article in more than one publication, you have to enable this feature on all of them or you’ll still get the error that a table is in replication and can’t be dropped.
  • Your subscribers don’t care about the SQL Server version (except when you have a data type that exists in the publisher that doesn’t at the subscriber. Then it cares. But for this change, it doesn’t).
  • Your distributor also needs to be running a version that supports this functionality.

I can’t make that last point any bolder; that’s not documented anywhere that I could find. I’ll explain why later, but for now, roll with it. In fact, let’s see what happens if we don’t upgrade our distributor as well. Time to go to the lab!

Read the whole thing, particularly the warning about how dropping a table on the publisher will not drop tables on the subscriber.

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Testing Transactional Replication

Published 2017-01-03 by Kevin Feasel

Jes Borland wraps up her series on transactional replication from an on-prem Availability Group to Azure SQL Database:

Congratulations, you’ve configured a remote distributor, configured all of your AG replicas as publishers, and configured your SQL Database as a subscriber! Now you want to ensure that transactions are replicating to the database, and that they continue to do so if there is a failover in the AG.

Read on for the two testing scenarios.

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Replication Subscriber To Azure SQL DB

Published 2016-12-30 by Kevin Feasel

Jes Borland continues her series on setting up transactional replication between an on-prem SQL Server Availability Group and Azure SQL Database:

This subscription is going to use an Azure SQL Database.

Go to the AG primary replica. (In this demo, this is SQL2014AG2.)

Expand Replication. Expand Local Publications. Right-click the publication and select New Subscription.

It turns out that this is a basic push subscription.  Jes’s post is full of screenshots, making it even easier to follow.

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Replication Publisher To Azure SQL DB

Published 2016-12-29 by Kevin Feasel

Jes Borland continues her series on transactional replication from on-prem SQL Server + Availability Groups into Azure SQL Database:

After initializing, check the Snapshot Agent and Log Reader Agent for success. (To do so, go to Replication, right-click the publication name, and select Snapshot Agent Status and Log Reader Agent Status.) I ran into problems with the Snapshot account not having high enough permissions in the databases (it needs db_owner), and then not having enough permissions on the snapshot folder (it needs Full). (This forum post, answered by Hilary Cotter, helped: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sqlserver/en-US/899857db-e38e-4026-a34c-2a8c2628c6fc/access-denied-to-sql-replication-snapshot-folder?forum=sqlreplication.)

Except for the final section, it’s pretty much the same as dealing with on-prem SQL Server sans Availability Groups.

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Transactional Replication To Azure SQL Database

Published 2016-12-28 by Kevin Feasel

Jes Borland has a five-part series on replicating a series of databases in an Availability Group to Azure SQL Database.  Part 1 involves planning:

There are tasks you’ll need to take care of in SQL Server, the AG, and the SQL DB before you can begin.

This blog series assumes you already have an AG set up – it won’t go through the setup of that. It also assumes you have an Azure SQL server and a SQL Database created – it won’t go through that setup either.

Ideally, the publishers, distributor, and subscribers will all be the same version and edition of SQL Server. If not, you have to configure from the highest-version server, or you will get errors.

Part 2 prepares the replication distributor:

The first step in this process is to set up the remote distributor. As I mentioned in the first blog, you do not want your distribution database on one of the AG replicas. You need to set this up on a server that is not part of the AG.

Start by logging on to the distributor server – in this demo, SQL2014demo.

Stay tuned for the remainder of the series.

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Replicating To Azure SQL DB

Published 2016-12-09 by Kevin Feasel

Jeffrey Verheul shows how to enable replication from your on-prem SQL Server up to Azure SQL DB:

Replication to another on-premise instance is easy. You just follow the steps in the wizard, it works out-of-the-box, and the chances of this process failing are small. With replicating data to an Azure SQL database it’s a bit more of a struggle. Just one single word took me a few HOURS of investigation and a lot of swearing…

The magic word is “secure.”  Read the whole thing if you’re thinking of migrating an app to use Azure SQL DB and want to minimize downtime, or if you just want that extra level of protection that having a copy of your database out of the data center can give you.

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Replication Raiserror Procedure Change

Published 2016-09-21 by Kevin Feasel

Matt Slocum documents a change to a replication stored procedure in SQL Server 2014 SP2:

I ran into this replication error the other day and I was completely stumped.
Procedure or function sp_MSreplraiserror has too many arguments specified.
 
We started getting that error message shortly after we had applied SP2 for SQL Server 2014 to a server that is a replication Publisher (source of replicated data).

We dug into the commands that were being replicated and found that there were missing rows in the table on the replication Subscriber (destination for replicated data).  Once the rows were populated the errors stopped.  However, after digging in a bit more, we found that this error has an explainable source.

Read on for Matt’s solution to the issue.

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