Replication (Dec'd)

[fatherjack]

Hi,

We have (had) 3 servers on our network all happily working together in replication ...
Server 1
1 database published

Server 2
distribution server

Server 3
1 database subscribed.

on friday night it would appear that we had a power failure that KO'd Server 2. We are unable to rebuild the server so have brought a new server into the equation - Server4. this server is now in the domain, set up with SQL2000 and is a distributor. I have register the other servers and have set server 1 as a publisher.

however, i cannot get replication restarted. If i run the sql scripts from the working publication there are loads of errors saying that the publication already exists and that the distribnutor cannot be reached.

what step am i missing that will get this back together?

any help much appreciated.

[rmiao]

I think you have to remove replication from server 1 and 3 first then start over.

[fatherjack]

Even trying to stop replication brings up a message along the lines of 'server 2 cannot be found'.

Surely Microsoft left a back door in place for such an emergency ???

i am now in a position where we are going to have to name the new server 'server 2' and stop replication then rename the server to 'server 4' and restart replication again.

'server 2' is broken with a capital F. we are going to have to format it to get it back on the network - replication will therefore go with it

[Stephen]

Have a look at sp_dropdistributor in BOL. It has a parameter called '@ignore_distributor' that look like it might be what you need. This doco for this sproc has information on this parameter. Most of the other replication sprocs say that this parameter is 'reserved for internal use'.

I am not sure what this will do for your subscription/subscriber. You will probably need to do something on that server as well.

Given that the distributor has died, you cannot determine what transctions have arrived at the subscriber. You will probably need to re-initialise the subscription and deliver a new snapshot.

A rmiao says, you will have to remove replication and start over.

[fatherjack]

getting replication started again is not my main worry at the moment. we are prepared to take the system offline to create the snapshot etc but we cannot get the remains of the old set up off the servers that survived the power failure.

thanks for the pointer to sp_dropdistributor i will take a look at it. At the moment the setup is broken so we cant make it worse !!

some progress though, i have managed to get the subscription subscriber to stop trying to stop trying to pull the subscription, it is now out of the replication set up