Are you monitoring your Vault replication environment?

I hope your answer is “Yes”. If not, read this blog thoroughly and setup replication alerts and database mail ASAP.

When replication is setup, a retention period is configured which subscribers must synchronize within to continue to participate in replication. The retention period defines the amount of time that metadata will be stored for the subscriber in a replication configuration.  This metadata is used to keep the publisher and subscriber(s) up to date with changes at each location. The default retention period is 14 days.

A subscription expires when a subscriber has not synchronized with the publisher within the retention period. If the subscriber has lost communications to the publisher but the communication has been re-established within the retention period, the subscriber will synchronize the changes that have been made while communications were down. When the subscription has expired, any subscriber data that has not synchronized with the publisher is lost as the subscriber has to be rebuilt with the information from the publisher.

If you are recovering a subscriber from a backup, the restore has to be made from a backup that is within the retention period. If you do not have a backup within the retention period, you must delete the subscriber’s workgroup in the ADMS Console on the publisher and recreate it as previously mentioned. If you are restoring the publisher, the backup used for the restore process must not be older than the retention period from the last synchronization date of all subscribers.

How do you monitor the environment?

Utilize the Replication Monitor provided with the SQL Management Studio. This tool can give details on the replication status and helps troubleshoot problems with replication.  Most importantly is to configure SQL Database Mail to send email alerts before there is a problem.  Alerts can be configured when thresholds have been exceeded, and warnings are happening in the environment.  See the links below to learn and configure replication monitoring in your environment.

References

• Monitoring Replication
• Set Thresholds and Warnings in Replication Monitor
• How to: Set Thresholds and Warnings for a Merge Publication (Replication Monitor)
• Configure Database Mail
• Configure SQL Server Agent Mail to Use Database Mail
• Check the Status of E-Mail Messages Sent With Database Mail

Irvin Hayes Jr., Product Manager